Hospital Beds

"There's nothing to do here, some just whine and complain, in bed in the hospital."
-Cold War Kids

The analogy of the Church being a Hospital is a tired one. It rarely conjures images of what a hospital is really like, not to mention if it did, why would people be attracted to Church? On the other hand, its a brilliant metaphor. It is actually a rather unfortunate one for the people who spit this cliche into meaningless jargon. If Church is a hospital, does that make pastors simply educated, better paid, cold and condescending members of a community? That seems an unfortunate comparison and in all honesty, a realistic assessment for a lot of people outside the church.

So does the metaphor then imply the church members are the sick? Are church members helpless and bored, whining and complaining and requiring the simplest tasks to be accomplished by the pastors? Also a realistic assessment to the outside observer, but not a flattering one to the members...who often use the analogy.

One of the reasons people don't like Hospitals is because they enter into a place where they are told something is wrong with them and there's an implication that the bearer of bad news is somehow equipped, as a more elite member of society, to help them.

All people are thirsty for affection and affirmation. Maybe Hospitals are a great analogy for modern churches. Maybe the modern church is a noisy place littered with sirens and incapable of real significant service because of deeply tangled bureaucracy, while people who can't help themselves are dismissed as lazy or selfish. And maybe Priests and Pastors are not doctors and members are not patients whose remission is far past and empowers them to diagnose the new walk-in appointments?

The solid connection might be the hospital bed. A place of care in the midst of sickness, where comfort is provided through the suffering and medication comes by way of someone outside ourselves. The difference between "us" and "them" is we volunteer to lay in the beds and the outsider's perception is based on whether we embrace our treatment. If it looks like torture, then who would volunteer for treatment? But if it looks like healing, people might just check themselves in. Embrace the bed, others will follow.