It's funny. I have had this reaction before, but not to this extent. 

When I first arrived in Ohio, I was actually very sick. Last August I was in the hospital for three weeks. A combination of things, but all are manageable. In fact, I was starting to feel pretty good just before Christmas, but COVID then took me down. Took me three weeks for that, but since I have really started to feel better. I feel better now than I have in years. However, I still have the dreaded 'follow-up appointments' to deal with. Last week I had four, but not another one until November.

So last week I walked into my cardiologist's office, and I was walked back to a room by a young lady I had not met before. I sat down and she started asking the regular questions while reading my chart. All was normal until she got to allergies. 'Demurral?' 'Yes.' 'Morphine?' 'Yes.' 'Pork products? Wait. Pork? You're allergic to pork?' 'Yes ma'am.' 'Does that include bacon!?' 'Yes ma'am. And most hotdogs and pepperoni and processed lunch meats.' 'What?!? You can't eat pizza, either?' 'Only vegetable pizza, and then only if the vegetables are not fried on the same griddle the meat is fried on.' 'So, you have never had PORK?' 'Actually, I started having reactions to it at around 55 years of age and it has just gotten worse.' It was like I had just told her my only child had died in a horrific accident. She looked at me with horror and compassion. She was stunned. Like I said, never had that intense of a reaction before.

It was a bit of drive home and I thought about her reaction. It was, actually, quite funny. But at the same time, it says something about who we are. What is normal for us and our loved ones, must be normal for everyone. As a people, neither the Jews nor the Muslims eat pork, but they are not 'us.' They aren't normal. My family opened gifts on Christmas Eve. My best friend's family opened gifts on Christmas morning. They weren't normal. Some people do not eat meat at all and some cannot eat most kinds of bread and some cannot eat peanuts, and they are not normal.  If they are not like us, something is wrong.

And it extends to religion. If folks go to a different church than ours, they are really missing out. If they are a different denomination, they are really misguided. If they don't go to church at all, they are not normal.

And yet, people not eating certain foods or opening gifts on the right day or someone who has bread or peanut or pork allergies...well, that really isn't a big deal. But, in the religious spectrum, it is different. We feel sorry for them and their eternal souls. We feel pity, we feel sadness. However, do we feel badly enough to actually go to them and initiated a conversation about God? Does our feeling of sadness galvanize us into action for the name of Jesus. Or do we just shrug it off, or maybe just invite them to church and let it go at that? People don't need church, they need Jesus. 

Why do churches get smaller and smaller? Because the people in the church are not sharing. It is not the pastor or even the Elders. It is the folks in the pews.