Take Me to Church
Uber, community, and Original Sin.
One of the most hilarious categories of ideas is a category I will call pre-existing ideas. I’ll give you an example.
You arrive at the airport. It’s late. You’re tired and you request an Uber. You get outside and stand there in the parking lot for 30 minutes watching an animated car zigzag around a glowing map.
Isn’t it silly, you think, that all these people are just standing around waiting for a car at a location where the incoming demand is plainly listed on an arrivals board? It would be so cool if Uber built a feature where a line of cars were stacked in a queue and you could just hop in one and go.
For a moment you emerge from a jet-lagged haze and proclaim yourself king of the geniuses. A true innovator and prophet of the bright future ahead of us all. That is, until you realize your future is actually the past. And what you’ve just invented is called a taxi.
That’s how I feel every time I walk past a church. Wouldn’t it be great, I think, if every neighborhood had a community center where everyone could socialize and meet? A place free of substances and removed from the usual capitalistic bent. A place where young and old could gather together to uncover their commonalities and understand their differences.
Wouldn’t it be great?
But then I think about going to church. Of long masses, stale wafers, and the blood of Christ. Of latin operas with one too many verses. Aesthetic, but out of touch.
I think about two thousand years of violence and persecution. Of overly dogmatic doctrine and a deeply embedded resistance to change. I’m reminded that I was born with Original Sin and although it wasn’t my fault it’s something I need to contend with. Hmm.
At this point I’ve walked a few more blocks. Past the ice cream shop. Past the Starbucks and the Lululemon. Past another church.
It’s unfortunate, but maybe that’s what it takes to truly bring people together. Some shared trauma or a set of shared constraints. A sense of purpose comes just as much from identifying what you are as it does from identifying what you are not.
Maybe it’s time I start a church and proclaim “meet your neighbors or go to hell.” A new community for the modern age.