the emergent buffet

Spiritual bricolage is the mining of ideas and concepts about God that already exist in the world and creating a whole new vocabulary, as well as new concepts and understandings of what it means to have a spiritual life.
Burke and Taylor, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, p 143

What a perfect way to view the emergent and progressive 'religion' that people like Burke and Taylor are wanting to create--religion as buffet. Your first trip through, maybe you get a main course of materialistic atheism seasoned with a bit of something that's like Christianity but isn't (remember No-Salt?) Go over to another table and get a spoonful or two of eastern mysticism, maybe a bit of hot-and-sour new-agey gunk, and a touch of Islamic garnish on the sides just to be religiously correct. Some things in the Judaism section may be safe, though one can have such awful heartburn when it's combined with the Islamic garnish.

Oh, and for dessert--a heaping helping of marxist-socialist social-justice pudding sweetened with artificial Jesus-talk (remember Sweet-and-Low?) with chunks of all the above mixed in.

Yeah, I did use the word "chunks" intentionally.

But don't bother about the Orthodox Christianity table. It's old hat stuff. Sure, it's got all the necessary vitamins and minerals, but it's all so...unexciting. Who wants plain oatmeal with berries when you can have superultramega oats with chocolate sprinkles? How do you know your apples are natural if the proper authorities have not labeled them as organic? Do you really want your grandma's cookies, or cookies baked in all-natural cookie-stuff and filled with raisins certified to have had bugs all around them because no pesticides were used, were hand-picked by illegal immigrants who were paid a wage someone arbitrarily decided was fair, and no puppies were harmed in their making? Can your granny honestly say her cookies never harmed a puppy? I didn't think so.

Oh, sure, Orthodox Christianity was good enough for your grandparent. It helped them through a couple of world wars and severe financial depression, not to mention the other things they went through. And, yes, they're old and going to kick the bucket soon, so you really don't want to tell them that Heaven is just a myth--let them have their comforting lies, just like kids and Santa.

But you! You're young! You're different! You're special!!! You have the internet, Google, television, channel after channel of ESPN, coffeehouses on every corner! You're postreligious postchristian postright-and-wrong postmodern postmoral postcapitalism postElvis posteverything!!! You don't want plain food, you want super-foods! You want postfood foods!!