Frustration

Not that I've completely solved the issues from the last post, but I think I've narrowed down some of my problems with Evangelical use of Scripture a bit. It's not merely that I see so many bad presentations; everyone ought to be able to read Scripture, and I need to have faith in God that God can help anyone get the important parts out of it (though I still am struggling over the issue of how exactly God has proposed to get this knowledge across). I think the problem lies more in the fact that as soon as people open the Bible, they assume that they are fully competent teachers on everything, despite protestations to the contrary. Distressingly, I even find this in seminary, where so many would-be pastors simply want to be told what to think so that they can get their bit of paper and go tend to a flock. I wonder if this has anything to do with general trends in America (probably elsewhere too, this is just where I have experience) to not really think too hard about anything, but to form a hard and fast opinion about everything.

This particularly frustrates me when I go to someone from whom I should be able to get advice and am told more or less to stop thinking about things and be more "optimistic" (which as far as I can tell means forming opinions quickly enough that one can manufacture peace and telling oneself that the world is basically good in all ways so that one can manufacture joy, since meaning in life really comes from the same things for the Christian as for the atheist). And despite protests about their own simplicity and down-to-earthness, they proceed to judge everything under the sun, putting everything they don't understand "man's wisdom" and everything they think understand under "God's wisdom."

Ok, </rant>. You can all go back to your own regularly scheduled programming.

Edit: Maybe I should put down some clarifications. I am not attacking te Evangelical movement as a whole, I know that there are better characterizations that what I present and there are many Evangelicals whom I admire. Unfortunately, at this point most of these whom I admire are in academia, which is also the main place where I hear the good presentations of what it means to be Evangelical. I'm just really struggling with the fact that while Christianity is first and foremost for those who are not wise by worldly standards, etc., I mainly see fruits of it among the learned, or at least those educated in basic theology in one way or another (and that fruit includes love as well as wisdom, though of course not all the learned have either). It almost seems to promote willful misunderstanding of others for the average person in the churches, as well as complicity with everything society does with the exception of abortion, gay marriage, and evolutionary teaching. This isn't how it is in all churches, but in enough that it is a problem.

Edit #2: Not that anyone will most likely read this now, but I figured that I should take a couple more things into consideration with my rant. I think some of the poorer churches that I've seen have displayed a great deal of love, despite lack of education.