Looking at the old

I passed a church building this morning. It seemed like it had been built in the 1960s, judging from its architectural style. It was red brick and looked formal with its white pillars in front of the main entrance.  It looked as old as its 50 years of age  because the white of the pillars was chipped and somewhat faded.  The brick didn't have any luster. Rather, it had stains in places, faded patches in other places, turning the red to brown and rust. The windows were very much the old style, with panes like houses, just like the 50-year-old style it was.  There were no cars around it. But the lawn looked kept and the parking lot had been recently repaved.  Everything looked to be in pristine condition.

That reminds me so much of religion.  It's really old, but it has been kept up well for the 2000 years it has existed (the church was Christian).  The people practice it well if they are anything like the building's condition.  But, religion is old and has to be patched and repaved, interpreted and reapplied for each age.  Stains from past storms are apparent like the crusades and the reformation and the Age of Enlightenment.  Religion is good for its rules, but bad because of them also just like the church building was beautiful in its time, but its beauty doesn't hold for much more than the generation that built it.

Maybe it's ok for religion to be like an old, out-of-place building in a modern neighborhood, but it seems that the message of the Son of God never belonged in a building in the first place for a comparison like mine to be written about.