pain

There is a form of pain which recalibrates one's understanding of the word.

It is a pain where knowledge enters a cocoon, dies an excruciating death, and emerges as compassion.

So many go to great lengths to avoid pain and death.

Avoidance breeds superficiality.

Any wonder, then, why so much shallowness in churches today?

com - "with"

passion - "pain"

Any churches where the ongoing message is pain (the path to compassion) instead of pleasure (blessing) and praise (the path to superficiality)?

And knowledge...why heralded as the end-all of the faith, instead of as one of several introductory stepping stones on the path toward something far beyond it, infinitely more powerful?