so long, most likely

Making a move, especially a rather significant and lengthy one, usually involves changes of various kinds. As one now in the process of moving, some things will no doubt change for me.

One thing about moving is that some things need to be left behind. One thing I am not moving is a large portion of what passes for my library. One part of what I'm not taking is the rather more numerous than I thought number of books by emergents and those they have claimed as inspirations. So the numerous books by Bell, McLaren, Pagitt, Jones, and those they recommend like Wilber, Borg, and Fox, are not among the things I'm taking with me.

But not to worry, they will soon be in what I only consider a better place--biodegrading in a landfill. I suppose I could have taken them to a used book store, but I refuse to spread their rot in such a way.

So, most likely, this will be it for EP. It's been good, I hope you've enjoyed it and found it helpful, or if you're emergent, I hope you're either honked off at me or well on your way to not being emergent any more.

an emergent action/horror movie

No, seriously, I'm (more or less) serious. Ok, pretty serious.

Anyway, recently, in my movie watching, I saw a preview to movie that I thought could have been written by Peter Rollins, or at least based on a Peter Rollins parable and then embellished by someone else so that it had lots of guns and grannies crawling up walls and all that stuff.

The movie is called "Legion". What made it seems so Rollins-ish is that the 'hero' of the movie is an angel who...

A. Decides to break his relationship with God because he disagrees with God having lost faith in humanity.
B. Tries to keep the instruments of God's wrath from killing a baby, one may assume at God's command.

Remember, Rollins is the one who thinks that disobedience is the sign of true discipleship and that god should have man's permission so he can stay in heaven. A movie where the archangel Michael has a falling out over God's wrath at humanity and starts working against Him, a movie where God is the big bad guy, how could such a movie not meet the approval of Rollins and perhaps other emergents? Wouldn't Michael be Rollins' ultimate disciple?

For a bit more on the movie, look here.

'Legion' film a slap in the face to Christianity

The premise of the movie is typical of the garbage that Hollywood spews these days. "Legion," in a nutshell, is about mankind, how we have angered God somehow, and how he is going to take vengeance on His own creation: man. God does this by unleashing various plagues, Gabriel the Archangel, and hordes of "warrior angels" on mankind. But wait, the blasphemy gets even better. Mankind's faux messiah is an unborn baby who was recently released from his wings and his allegiance to God. Archangel Michael has to protect the unborn baby. Michael, in his graciousness, decides to protect mankind from God and His angels. The blasphemy is really set up as a delightful dichotomy as Michael, releasing himself from his servitude to God and the Messiah, is essentially going to be reborn in a desert in the Southwest United States.

scary!!!

Churches actually doing evangelism? The horror!!!

Oh, sure, this Sodrones article is all about the war imagery, but come on, we all know what's really scary to them--real Christians really trying to convert people from the world to Christ.

But Butler-Basse's (Christianity for all but the real Christians) histronics make for interesting reading in their own right.

“Taking the Hill” is a bizarre call to evangelize depicting Christians as “soldiers” in a war for souls under their “real” commander-in-chief, Jesus. It reveals almost pornographic-religious obsession with guns and violence that should be deeply disturbing for any faith community.

Reminds of the Robins guy from a post a few days ago, and his disgust with the hymn "Onward Christian Soldiers".

But all this is is spin. I am pro-gun-rights, but not obsessed with violence.

I know that it is a free country, and that we have both religious freedom and certain rights to own guns. But when these two rights interweave — as they are doing — it is dangerous to both church and state.

Oh, dear, the church-goers have guns, runnnnnn!!!!!

(and watch out for the zombies)

Now, who's fear-mongering here? This church's use of military metaphors is "dangerous to both church and state"?

Guns and grace don’t go together.

Yeah, I guess that's what she's saying. It's silly, I know, but that's her take on it.

offending liberal sensibilities

...In the future liturgies of the church, the word "trust" should replace the word "faith" as often as possible. The word "wisdom" should replace the word "salvation". "Blood" should disappear altogether--along with all military metaphors and images. Bloody liturgies in church only encourage and sanctify the bloodletting of the battlefield. Please, for God's sake--no more "Onward Christian Soldiers".
Robin R Meyers, Saving Jesus from the Church, p. 179

There is a certain fascination at seeing the kinds of things that offend these genteel, liberal souls. Why is salvation offensive? Because it is individualistic. Why is the blood of Christ something to be replaced? Because it's an icky thing that only primitive pre-enlightened people would value, and we have progressed so much since then, and don't make me send the ACLU after you to make you stop!

Remember things like this when they tell you that they take the Bible "seriously but not literally", but it shows that that statement is a lie, and they take it neither seriously nor literally. If they took it seriously, they would see how seriously the Bible takes "the precious blood of Christ", and would not treat that blood as something to be "trampled". And they would see that the Bible says no nice things about those who do that.

But this man, and those like him, not only do so, but encourage others to do so. Thinking themselves wise, they have become fools. In their eyes, the wisdom of man is to expose the foolishness of God.

And do not be ashamed of the military metaphors. They are based on the Bible, and no amount of spin these people can put on them can take away from their power and accuracy.

Onward Chrstians Soldiers
Marching as to war
With the Cross of Jesus
Going on before.

a question one emergent doesn't like

Coming up soon--emergents start having questioners screened to make sure they ask questions only emergents want to answer, so they don't have to sound like abject wafflers.

btw ht http://christianresearchnetwork.com/?p=13569

One day I hope to believe in God…

Bear in mind, Rollins is a pastor (or at least plays one on the internet).

The first question that William asked was, ‘do you believe in God’?

Yeah, such a plain, straight-forward question. In fact, one a pastor who is suppose to Christian should be able to answer with conviction in the affirmative. Heck, one would expect a dyed-in-the-wool atheist to answere it with conviction in the negative. I may disagree with such an atheist, but at leat the honesty would be respected.

But for Rollins, the question becomes...difficult, through no fault of the questioner.

The first thing to notice however is that the question itself rests on the idea that we all have a shared understanding of what belief is and what we mean by the word ‘God’. And, of course, in our cultural context most of us do have a shared understanding of these terms. If we use Saussure’s linguistic theory of the sign we can begin to isolate what that shared understanding is. For Saussure a linguistic sign is composed of a signifier (sound/word) and a signified (a concept that the word brings to mind). Using this idea the question basically can be broken down as such,

I'll let you check out the "as such". I just want to show you the types of hoops and loops he twists himself in to try to avoid the question.

Rather tell, though, is this statement, from a paragraph or two later.

If I was asked this question in the university I would be happy to discuss it, but being asked it in ikon is problematic as it might suggest to people that ones answer to this question is somehow important to the life of faith. To me it is as relevant in the setting of ikon as the question, ‘do you believe in string theory’.

So, to him, the question of his own belief or disbelief in God is not important to his life of faith? The question of any person's belief or disbelief in God is not important to their life of faith?

On may think that is what he's saying, by this statement later on...

So the question remains… as a Christian, do I believe in God? Well, while I am drawn to the idea that there is a Supreme Being I must confess that I don’t believe in God, at least most of the time.

One could certainly say that verbal shenanigans are going on in his "answer". For example, his attempts to redefine God.

The ideas that God should be described as love and that belief in God is intimately connected to how we treat our neighbor are, of course, deeply heretical and one must be wary of even suggesting them.

I've already dealt with someone else, Steve Chalke, trying to make the love of God the big thing with God while leaving out all the other things God tells us about Himself in the Bible. It's at this link...

come on, at least do a bit of research

And his attempt is make it seem as if how we treat other people is somehow only something a waffler like himself sees as important is laughable. As someone who has been for years in fundamentalist and evangelical churches, I know the ideas of "walking the walk" and "living like you believe" are very much a part of what they teach.

Rollins is a poser. That's all he is, that's all he has.

hall of as shameful as it gets

Scorsese, Allen, Aronofsky&others join "FREE POLANSKI" petition

I have no idea who most of those people are, but some are disturbingly familiar, and I would expect better from them.

Here's one of the parts of the petition that is perhaps most telling.

Roman Polanski is a French citizen, a renown and international artist now facing extradition. This extradition, if it takes place, will be heavy in consequences and will take away his freedom.

Umm...he gave drugs to a 13-year-old girl and sexually abused her. I would hope he would get some heavy consequences from such an act, including having his freedoms taken away by being put in prison.