No, I think the pastor might be more than a bit off in his reading.

Psalm 1 is, first off, from the Old Testament, the Torah to the Jewish people. It’s a fairly core bit of the Torah as well, as it serves, to many scholars, as a sort of guidepost for how one should comport one’s life in relation to God. Study and prayer, day and night, a devotion to the righteous path. All this in the knowledge that God knows the righteous from the wicked, and in some respect the righteous does as well. Judaism embraces this concept of avoiding and shunning the wicked, the unclean. Even extending to dietary laws like keeping kosher.

In the Christian faith the idea of avoiding the wicked is actually something Jesus speaks almost directly against. He speaks highly of the Samaritan (a group who were despised at the time by many Jews for their role in the Babylonian captivity) his relationships with people of ill-repute (prostitutes, tax collectors). Jesus message was far less one of keeping good company and more one of reaching out to those who would be rejected by religion of the day.

Now that’s classical Christianity. What you experienced is more of the “Great Revival” modern Protestant branch. The “by faith alone” and “Christ as personal savior” breed of Christianity. This is where you find your literal readings of the Bible, you’re lack of theological muscle and some very off interpretations of scripture.

So no, I’d say that, if anything, your friend should be inviting you in, not casting you out.

My Bona Fides? I’m a former Catholic seminarian and current Unitarian Universalist with an MA in Islamic history who grew up as a Shabbos Goy in my largely Jewish neighborhood. So yeah, I get around.

–Some Dude