Today I went to church at the G-Tab with a friend of mine. The Gospel Tabernacle is a tremendously huge church where people worship eccentrically, possessed with the Holy Spirit, run up and down the aisles with streamers and hankies, raise their hands to touch the Glory, dance and weep and speak in tongues.
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From my vantage point in the back of the sanctuary, I wasn't able to get a good view all of the passionate praise and jubilation at the front. Even as I tried to have an open mind, and tried to not point and stare, I can't help my juvenile impulse to laugh at these "Holy Rollers,". It's easy to think of these people as mere objects of extreme hilarity. But as I found out, these people aren't just religious crazies, they are people I would have considered, based on appearances alone, to be normal townsfolk.

I mean, what did I expect!? Of course with a town this small and a church that big of course I'm gonna run into people I know. It's kind of hard to explain my sense of awe at seeing people I encounter on a daily basis acting like complete raving lunatics. It's as surreal as a dream where you're fixing a go-cart with your ex-landlord.

I won't mention who it was , but I was very surprised at this one individual who spontaneously interrupted the preacher with an entire Biblical passage not 2 minutes after a woman all in a frenzy over Christ, ran up an stage stamping her feet and growling like some kinda cow-dog.

Maybe I should be ashamed for laughing at something I just don't understand. The feeling of that kind of passion, that will make you abandon all vanity, and self-awareness is rarely something I realize. It makes me a little sad that I just don't understand these things; that sometimes I think that I've never loved anything, or have been so moved by something to get swept away.

It's just one of those things that makes me stop wondering why people would ever want to be involved in religion.

Amen.