day no. 17,424: majoring on minors

"There is nothing stranger today than the importance of unimportant things. Except, of course, the unimportance of important things." — G.K. Chesterton, Collected Works

Modernity majors on the minors. That fact is strange enough, but the fact that majors are now electives, is even stranger.

It is odd enough that there exists a trope that many churches split over something as insignificant as carpet color, but it is even odder that there exists a tendency for churches to rally around an indifference to sound doctrine. It is strange that someone would consider joining a church based on the ability of the drummer, but it is stranger that someone would plant a church for the purpose of ignoring the teachings of the Bible.

And yet, here we are. The phenomenon is one we are familiar with. An uninvolved person attempts to make up for his or her lack of involvement by being overly invested in some seemingly random detail of their neglected duty. So, a parent who is never around is always ready to throw down over what sports team the child cheers for or the wife who is otherwise indifferent to her husband has a vested interest in what he eats for lunch. We pick something to do and then we do it with all of our might in order to distract from the fact that we do nothing about everything else. And that, in a nutshell, describes the spiritual condition of many parishioners and unfortunately many pastors.

The same is true in politics, but unfortunately the pun takes on new meaning when considering their majoring on minors. In their case, they are not interested in small things to cover up their lack of interest in large matters, they are interested in little people and use their interest in big government to pursue them.