While I enjoyed this show, this is not the alienation I have in mind.I never really understood the term in college. Maybe because I was not alienated. But sitting here in a food court of a troubled mall with lots of vacancies I get it. We humans want to belong, and we will put up with a lot to belong.
What is alienation?
al·ien·a·tion ˌālyəˈnāSH(ə)n/
noun
- the state or experience of being isolated from a group or an activity to which one should belong or in which one should be involved."unemployment may generate a sense of political alienation"
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- loss or lack of sympathy; estrangement."public alienation from bureaucracy"
- (in Marxist theory) a condition of workers in a capitalist economy, resulting from a lack of identity with the products of their labor and a sense of being controlled or exploited.
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- synonyms:
- isolation, detachment, estrangement, distance, separation, division; More
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So why do I feel alienated?
It is difficult to feel a connection of belonging when people act so oddly and say such strange things. I left one church last year because of this. How could I belong to a church where a pastor randomly burst into tears for no apparent reason and asked people to come forward so they could too?
I would have just written it off, but I knew the "backstory" behind it. The leadership was speaking in tongues and other similar Pentecostal nonsense. They were not letting it into services, but occasionally they slipped. Or maybe it was a "trial balloon" that never got off the ground. In any event I was not sure what was more disturbing, the under current of Pentecostalism or the fact they felt they had to hide it. Sure I want to belong, but not at the expense of checking my brain at the door of the church.
Checking your brain at the door is exactly what many churches want. If you get a funny look on your face that says, "That makes no sense," or worse yet you say it, you may be allowed to continue to attend, but you won't be welcomed. And "belonging"? Don't even think about it. To continue with the metaphor of checking your brain at the door like it was your hat or coat, there is a real risk if you do so. You may forget to retrieve it when you leave! What I mean by this is that if you don't use your brain you will forget how to use it. Then when a evil Jedi Pastor tells you that these are not the droids you are looking for you believe it.
This is why I keep talking about templates, or world views, or whatever you wish to call it. The people at my former church had a Pentecostal template through which they looked at everything. They are very fine people, among the best I have ever met, but because of faulty thinking and faulty theology I cannot go to their church unless I have a frontal lobotomy. No thanks.