to have felt un-Christian about this mobile phone?

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

I have had an beautiful weekend, so I'm really not seething with anger, but wondered what you would make of this!

Earlier today I was at a church service for Advent, with a choir who'd trained very hard. They were excellent, and some of them are children, so it's hard work. The service begins almost completely in darkness, then as the choir progress very slowly up the church, lights come on level with them, until eventually the whole church is lit up. It's meant to represent the light of Christ coming into the world, so it's not just a pretty effect - if you're religious, it is something that has liturgical meaning.

The order of service explained that, because of the darkness, it would sometimes not be possible to read the booklet. We were all in there for at least 20 minutes before the service began, so plenty of time to read the note telling you about this before the lights dimmed, and in any case, we'd all been told weeks ago that the service was partly in the dark.

There was very little congregation participation, but there were two hymns we sung while it was still quite dark. A bloke near me took out his mobile phone and turned on the light, flashing it around, and used it as a torch to read the hymns.

Would you think this was both rude, and actually quite disrespectful? I really thought it was.

mean - is it particularly liberals? It is a strange issue, though, I agree.

do you think Jesus would mind. this guy was trying to join in and worship

Ok, I'm off. You are spectacularly missing the point and more interested in making snarky digs at me than in understanding your reaction, which is the reason I thought you posted. If you feel justified in your irritation, and would be equally irritated in future, I feel sad for you - it is an opportunity to feel close to fellow imperfect humans, not to judge them. We don't have to be perfect in God's eyes, the man in question wasn't but you could have chosen to feel very differently towards him and the situation. Maybe you will think twice the next time someone commits a faux pas in church near you about your control over your reaction. I believe you are on some level aware you're being unreasonable as you wouldn't have posted with the thread title you did, and in AIBU.

But the fellow tutters are out in force now so I'll leave you all to it.

Fair enough, better to leave if you are so upset you can't read the thread. You're not reading what I'm saying, I think, but maybe you'll come back later?

ale - I dunno. I think (as I said upthread) that I feel uncomfortable speculating what Jesus 'would' have thought, as if he were just another human being I happened to know. I don't feel as if I could possibly know. And, based on the Bible, we know Jesus was sometimes impatient with 'dead' ritual and sometimes deeply offended by the disruption of worship by inappropriate activity. So it's hard to say from that standpoint too.

However, as I have said, I disagree with you that this man was trying to join in and worship.

It is hard to think "What would Jesus do?" for the reasons Jeanne says. but I sometimes think "what would a really lovely wise nun do?" The answer in this case is to be very very kind and try to find a way to explain or show the person how to belong in the service without disrupting it. the lovely kind wise nun does not have to approve of everything but is very very clever about how to make people welcome while perhaps offering a little corrective to their behaviour.

Me too Make- I'm out of here.

I love a lovely long catholic mass, and I also love all the kids crying and the old folks singing the wrong hynms and people getting the signs wrong and the fact that the priest after all these years still has to read it from a book and all the other things that make us human. And that (I cannot believe I am saying this...) is what I think JC would have liked too.

Maybe an enclosed order would be more appropriate for you Jeanne?

Of course nuns like that are for all we know screaming inside with irritation that years of patience and self denial have taught them how not to show.

My cousin was a nun in an enclosed order. She was a lovely woman, and she had a great sense of humour as well as spirituality. Nuns aren't un-human, you know, orange.

There's also a fab line in one of Jenny Worth's books saying something like that for a nun, a life of prayer is hard, but living with your sisters in Christ is really hard.

orange, as I said upthread (goodness, I should trademark that phrase), I like that sort of service too. I just happen to think those things are very different from what was going on here.

but he couldn't see the hymn and wanted to join in. was he a regular attendee. I'm more used to anything goes type of church service where worship is free. went to a fab concert the other night at a college. the words were on an overhead.

How do you think I'd be able to tell if he was a regular attendee? I would guess maybe not, but I don't know.

It definitely wasn't a concert, or meant to be like one. It would have been funny - in the wrong way - to have an overhead in a candlelit church, wouldn't it? Sometimes that's appropriate, sometimes not.

I don't know. I know most people at my church even though I don't always go. was it a family service?

we always have overheads and the local Anglican one does too. saves paper and everyone can see.

No, not a family service.

And I think probably your church is a regular parish church, right? As I said upthread, although I wrote 'church' in my OP, it's actually a chapel so not always open to the public and not the sort of place you'd necessarily go to every Sunday.

I think the thing with an overhead is that it would make the place more light, so would be even worse than a phone light in terms of the liturgy (plus, they'd need about six of them! I do know that this is possible to do - my mate's dad is a pastor at a US superchurch and it's huge - but I can see why they'd decide against it here).

Hakluyt nailed it ages ago.

Wtf ? I think purgatory will be preferable to this.