looks like i wasn't the first...

...to notice the "Bible idolatry" argument some like the emergents are starting to use.

And, thankfully, some better able to form arguments against it have done so.

A Thought on Bibliolatry

The Psalmist is a Bibliolater?

From the second link...

Those who use it often draw a false dichotomy saying we should follow Jesus or God but not be enslaved to a book. A simple response could be: which Jesus? Whose God? How do I know them. To say we should follow Jesus and not the Bible or Jesus more than the Bible is a radical dichotomy of the worst sort. Jesus teaches us that all of the Scriptures point to Him. Jesus Himself uses the Bible authoritatively--i.e. in a way that those leveling the charge of bibliolatry consider idolatrous. In fact, the Bible is the only infallible marker to Jesus Christ. It is a covenant treaty that is given to God's people...almost like a marriage certificate. It is a treaty from our Great Kind announcing to us that He is reconciling Himself to the world in the person of Jesus Christ. In short, we have no kingdom charter without the text of Scripture... no way of being sure if the kingdom of God has indeed dawned in the Son

This link is found in the second link above.

Is Bibliolatry Possible?

A fine theologian of whom I asked the question thinks that bibliolatry is possible and that the scribes and Pharisees were guilty of it. Now we must guard against laying all the intellectual sins ever conceived at the feet of the poor scribes and Pharisees. They have quite enough sobering problems. But were they bibliolaters to boot? Well, they did highly honor the words of Scripture. Whatever else you say about scribes and Pharisees, they knew the Book. Look, for instance, at those of whom Herod inquired regarding the Messiah's birthplace. "Bethlehem of Judea!" they snapped off, "For so it has been written by the prophet, 'And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah...'" Let me ask you. How well do you know Micah's prophecy?

But it is a tragic fact that the scribes and Pharisees, though knowing the words of the Book, knew not its Author. "You know neither me nor my Father," pronounced Jesus. Perhaps it is bibliolatry to know the Book but not its Publisher. To know dead precepts, but not the living God. "Thou shalt love the Bible thy Book with all thine heart, soul, and strength. But God is expendable." However, let me ask you this: How did Jesus answer the bibliolatrous folk of his day?

Jesus answered wrong users of the Book with the Book. Is bibliolatry possible then? Not easily, but yes, I suppose bibliolatry may possibly occur in some extreme cases. Yet is it bibliolatry to hold to a high view of Scripture or to attribute infallibility or other divine attributes to God's Word? How about substituting God's actions with the Bible's record of his acts? "The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith. . . ."

No, what some may call bibliolatry is not always- indeed, is rarely such. Let us truly love the Lord our God with all our hearts and worship him only. But "to reverently esteem" the Book, "the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole...is to give all glory to God." 3 Even to love God's Word has good precedent in our Lord Jesus himself: "Oh, how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day long...I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law...But these things were written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life."

I now call on those who posted on this blog, and accuse me of bibliolatry even if they did not use that name, to respond to these things I've posted here. Put up or shut up.

phar i see

Finally, he (Neo) spoke up. He seemed to have been having his own internal conversation: "Besides, the whole notion of authority as so many people conceive if is thoroughly modern." Now, I must have looked even more confused, because Neo gently hit me on the shoulder, smiled, and winked. "Relax, Dan, I'm only saying what the Bible says. That oft-quoted passage in Second Timothy doesn't say, 'All Scripture is inspired by God and is authoritative.' It says that Scripture is inspired and useful--useful to teach, rebuke, correct, instruct us to live justly, and equip us for our mission as people of God. That's a very different job description than we moderns want to give it. We want it to be God's encyclopedia, God's rule book, God's answer book, God's scientific text, God's easy-step instruction book, God's little book of morals for all occasions. The only people in Jesus' day who would have had anything close to these expectations of the Bible would have been the scribes and Pharisees. Right?
Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christian, p. 52

Delve into the world of emergent enough, and you'll find that they love to play the Pharisee card--all those who question them in the wrong ways (question as in seriously challenge), who disagree with them, who stand by what the Bible says, and don't approve the things they (emergents) want us to approve of, almost invariable get the Pharisee label stuck on us by them.

You can see it in the above, pretty easily. Those of us who accept the word of the living and true God about how He created the world over the words of men who can't even agree among themselves over how the process of evolution took place, are labelled those who want the Bible to be "God's scientific text". Those of us who look to the Bible for moral guidance and standards are labelled those who want the Bible to be "God's little book of morals for all occasions".

And, of course, we are shelved right down there with the Pharisees.

But was that the Pharisees' mistake? Were they wrong?

I've had some experience with being around Christians who were legalistic.In my youth, I heard plenty about the evils of rock music, tv, movies, smoking, long hair on boys and pants on girls. But I still call them Christians because, even while legalistic, they would say that living their way was not the thing that saved a person, but only faith in Christ. Whatever their faults, they didn't go that far.

In Romans, Paul deals with the problems his people had with the way God had opened for their salvation. "They have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge". Their problem was that they had tried to use the law to "establish their own righteousness", and "did not submit to God's righteousness". Salvation is by grace, not by works.

In one of Jesus' stories, he contrasts the prayer of a Pharisee with that of a tax collector. The Pharisee's prayer was full of pride in his own goodness and good works, while the tax collector could only pray for God's mercy. It's plain from the story that Jesus approved of the tax collector and not of the Pharisee.

The Pharisees' problem, I think it may safely be said, was that they tried to make themselves right with God through their own works, they tried to earn eternal life, and at least one result was a pride that could only be considered noxious.

One thing that I think their problem wasn't was in taking the Scriptures seriously--if anything, they should have taken them even more seriously then they did. Their problem wasn't in thinking there was an Adam, a Noah, and a Moses, but in thinking that simply because they could trace their ancestry back to Moses, then they were ok (something that even a cursory reading of the OT should have made plain wasn't true).

And so, I can only smile and shake my head at what I consider a false and misleading little misdirection of McLaren's part here. Sorry, but the Pharisee label doesn't fit.

(oh, and note to neo--if the pharisees were so all-fired modern, then obvious it shoots down your argument about authority as we think of it being thoroughly modern, right?)

jones is so right, and so wrong

Why It Matters that Jesus REALLY Rose

One of the strangest things about Tony Jones is that, at least in the emergent circles he runs in, he seems to be the most "right", in more ways than one. But then, he's also the one who's most publicly come out in support of the wrong, especially in regards to so-called sexual lifestyles.

In the blog entry linked to above, he makes one of the better arguments for the reality of Jesus' life and death and resurrection.

While the Jesus Seminar infamously rejected the miracles as mythological fables, I think it's important that Jesus healed real people of real maladies. The inauguration of a new age would be rather impotant if Jesus wasn't able to heal an actual, physical, historical woman who had suffered from non-stop mentrual flow for years, thus disqualifying her from Temple worship. Yes, she was real, and her blood was real, and her healing really meant that she could join with God's people and experience temple worship.

Why is that important? Because I'm a real person. Because the people to whom I have ministered in Jesus' name are real persons. We're not hypotheses, fables, or legends. And we need real healing, all of us. While our realities may be largely socially constructed, we have real DNA, real physical, material properties.

Thus, since the resurrection of Jesus is his defeat of death, evil, and grief, it's important to me that it really happened. Without a resurrected Jesus, Christianity is impotent. (Exhibit A: liberal Christianity) And I don't mean a Jesus who was "resurrected" in the Disciples' hearts, and in my heart. I mean a real resurrection in the space-time continuum by a physical being known as Jesus of Nazareth, as 99.99% of Christians for the last two milennia have believed.

Despite the pomo-creep into his thinking here, it's actually pretty good. He mentions nothing about the Bible's own accounts of the resurrection and how important it is, as Paul wrote "If Christ is not raised, our hope is in vain, we are still in our sins, and are of all people most miserable". Still, kudos to the good try for Jones.

But literally bookending this statement of his, he tries to tie himself in knots.

And I understand where they're coming from, because I don't feel the same way about the historic facticity of Adam and Eve, the Tower of Babel, Jonah living in the belly of a fish, or Job's family and cattle being wiped out by God...

So, here's my pledge: I'm going to keep theologizing about ways to affirm historic, orthodox Christianity while undermining the historic Christian perspectives on social issues like slavery, the role of women, and homosexual rights.

It would be amusing, if it weren't so sad.

Jones has bought into the liberal definition of love, which isn't love at all--call it permissiveness, relativism, tolerance, but never call it by the noble name of love. Should he ever see that the most unloving thing he can do is to encourage people in their sinful lifestyles, he will have made a great step forward. Other men may say he is unloving if he should do so, but that is not important.

coincidence???

First, a couple of things, recent comments people have left on this blog. This first from a few weeks ago.

I would say the verse from roman's you quoted was describing a time before the Bible was together - the hearing there was not hearing the Bible.

And, if you are some how suggesting that faith starts with the Bible, then I might suggest that your faith is really in the Bible and I implore you to put your faith in God.

And this recent one, from this past weekend.

oh good grief, Jazzact. You never change.

Simple question for you: Is *scripture* the *source* of your salvation? If you answer yes you are an idolater. If you answer no than you are in agreement with Blake on this more than you care to admit.

It was in thinking about how to respond to this last one that I remembered the first, and it was in think of that that I noticed that there seems to be some parallels in their thinking--the implication and accusation that I (and likely by extension, all like me) have faith in the Bible rather than in God.

Which leads me to wonder if this is emergent's new tack, to accuse those who believe in the inspiration, infallibility, and authority of the Bible of having faith in the Bible rather than in God.

I don't know if anyone else has encountered this, or how they have responded, but if this is as new to you as it was to me, here's the deal--it's an absolutely asenine argument, not worthy of these people's supposed intelligence to be making, and they should know better.

I have faith in God's Word because I have faith in God. I don't make some kind of stupid distinction which says "I believe in God, so I can not believe what He has said". We tell people what the Bible says so that they know what God said, so they have in Him that is more than a mere vague assent to a new-agey warm fuzzy.

I don't play the "Bible is a man-made construct" because it isn't--it is the divinely inspired Word of God.

2 Peter 1
"19And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. 20Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. 21For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

To my mind, I see no reason to answer the accusations in the above quotes from (I suppose) emergent commentors here; rather, they and emergents as a whole should answer to how they play fast-and-loose with Scripture, trying to make it fit their own pre-conceived notions and either discarding or openly opposing it's moral teachings.

happy b-day

Since Dilbert is an occasional source of inspiration and insight here, it's only fair to shout-out Scott Adams' self-cameo in the strip, and to hope his birthday is a good one.

the continuing

I really didn't read this until a few minutes ago, though I'm not unfamiliar with Tickle and her attempts to say the sola scriptura is ending. I think this does lend a perspective to what I pointed out in the last post about McLaren's words about scripture. Emphases mine.

What Happens After Sola Scriptura?

So, admitting the immanent end of Sola Scriptura is not a categorical rejection of Scripture as much; rather, it is a coming to terms with our own limitations and finitude as human beings and adopting a certain humility about our readings. I seriously doubt whether the Bible is infallible since it was written by pre-modern men (yes, they were men). But that doesn’t mean I don’t think the Bible is authoritative or instructional. It merely means that I believe our ability as humans to fully understand the Bible is severely limited. The history of hermeneutics is indicative of this. We can very quickly identify points today where we believe our theological ancestors were absolutely wrong in their interpretation of Scripture (slavery, subjugation of women, etc.). I’m sure 50-100 years from now our grandchildren will say the same about us. We know things today that we didn’t know in the past and we don’t know things now that we will in the future. That deeply affects out readings. We are fallible, broken people. We need to hold our hemeneutical lenses loosely.

But how do we avoid simply throwing out the baby with the bathwater? Here is what I propose: let’s use a new word, a word that still retains a deep sense of respect and affection for the Scriptures and the history of God’s salvific action in history with God’s people. A word that doesn’t allow the spirit of the Reformation (and the Enlightenment) to crust over into static dogma. I like the word prima. Prima Scriptura. Scripture is without a doubt our primary authority and primary source for theological reflection, but is not and cannot be our sole source. We are more complex than that. Scripture is our prime witness to God’s interaction with God’s people, beckoning them/us to join in God’s divine endeavor of restoration and renewal. It seems to me that opting for a phrase such as this preserves our identity as Christians whose story and history is told in the Bible, but at the same admits our limitations, approaching divine revelation with deep humility, and understanding that we get it wrong all the time so we mustn’t hold our readings so tightly because they are fallible. What better way to remain open and attentive to the movement and dynamism of the Spirit? A Spirit that no matter how limited and broken we have become, meets us exactly where we are pushes us — and our readings of Scripture — toward continual transformation and revision.

Let us celebrate the end of Sola Scriptura. But let’s not stop there. Let’s provide a healthy alternative, something that still places its trust in the Holy Writ as the primary source for revelation and yet is still open to continual revision and divine redaction. Let us embrace Prima Scriptura.

Why is this person trying to downplay the role Scripture to mere a role (though a primary one), instead of the source for us? Why is he unwilling to say that Scripture is infallible? A bit of diggin on his own site, which he links to on the EV blog above, probably shows why.

“Thoughts on Homosexuality.”

I am confident that 50, maybe 75 years from now we will have resolved the “gay issue”
as some call it. We will have reached a consensus and moved on. It will be a non-issue,
instead we as a church will likely be splintering over another hot button issue. In fact, I
imagine my grandchildren and great-children will look back on my generation with the
same sort of wide-eyed amazement and disbelief that I feel when I look back on my
ancestors who participated in slavery, denied women the right to vote, and promoted
white supremacy. They will wonder why in the world it took us so long to shake free
from our oppressive self-imposed myopia of denying the reality that God uses all persons
even those of different sexual orientations. They will wonder, like many have since
Constantine officiated the wedding of the church and the nation-state, why the church,
who should always be the first to decry injustice and oppression, once again remained
silently and paralytically complacent with the diseased status quo.

One of my favorite passages in the New Testament is Galatians 3:28 where Paul conveys
this message most explicitly, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or
free, there is no longer male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Because I
believe that Christianity is inherently contextual–indeed, that is the very essence of the
incarnation–and because I believe it is the task of the church and of the Christian to
interpret and re-interpret the scriptures within their contemporary worlds, I can’t help but
wonder how Paul might write that verse were he here today. Perhaps it might be
something like this, “There is no longer graced or ungraced, there is no longer gay or
straight, there is no long heterosexual or homosexual; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

I could go on and talk about Jesus’ life and his welcoming the unwelcomed, accepting the
unaccepted, and loving the unloved, enabling the disenfranchised, but I won’t. We know
the story. At least I think we do. Perhaps we know the story, we just don’t believe it.
Perhaps we need to be converted to the true essence of the gospel, to our high and noble
calling to re-imagine the world, acknowledging that all persons, regardless of sexual
orientation, are invited to respond to grace and to participate in God’s work in/with/to the
world nurturing this alternative reality called the kingdom of God.

Amazing, isn't it, how for these emergents, it all comes back to sex.

There is an agenda behind their attempts to diminish Scripture--Scripture simply doesn't support their positions, so they must find ways to work around it while saying they're not abandoning it.

taking His Word for it

..."Over here you have the conservatives, who look at the Bible the same way medieval Catholics looked at the church and pope: infallible, inerrant, absolutely authoritative. Then over here you have the liberals, who see the Bible more or less as a collection of artifacts, reflections of the religious life of the Jewish and early Christian people--inspiring, perhaps even inspired in places, but not authoritative..."

He (Neo) continued "What if the real issue is not the authority of the text down on this line but rather the authority of God, moving mysteriously up here on a higher level, a foot above the ground? What if the issue isn't a book we can misinterpret with amazing creativity but rather the will of God, the intent of God, the desire of God, the wisdom of God--maybe we should say the kingdom of God?"
Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christian, pp 50-51

There is a subtlety here that I've had a hard time seeing through, but I think I'm starting to understand it now.

I can't remember where, but I've heard or read of some emergent who has said the we conservative have made the Bible into a "paper Pope", which seems to be what McLaren is saying in that first paragraph, when he says conservatives view the Bible as Catholics used to view the Pope.

But that argument refutes nothing. If anything, it's like taking a forgery of an art work and using it to disprove the existence of the real piece of art. Mankind taking the words of a mere man as being as authoritative and infallible as the Word of God only shows mankind's errors, not that the Bible is not to be viewed as infallible, inerrent, and absolutely authoritative.

The subtlety comes in in the next paragraph, where McLaren through his character Neo tries to separate the will of God from the Word of God, or maybe a more accurate way of saying that is he's separating what one thinks is the will of God from what one thinks of the Word of God.

He begins by trying to separate the question of the authority of the Word of God from the question of the authority of God. The problem becomes, though, that once he's done that, how does he intend to know the authority of God in regards to what God's will is? If God is authoritative, then why is the Word He gave us less authoritative? If God's Word isn't authoritative, then how are to know for certain what the will of God is?

One can see how this works out in the ideas of liberals such as Borg and Crossan and Spong--the Bible to them is largely a work of mythical fiction, with little real history buried in the obviously fantasy accounts of miracles and angels and all that stuff. We can know little if anything of the real Jesus from the Bible, and obviously the accounts of his death and resurrection are mostly if not totally made up by sincerely but ignorant followers who wrote them many years after the fact, and perhaps there is Paul who may have seen the early church as a way to make a name for himself or what not. While the Bible is of course respected and revered (in the same way a wife-beating husband may claim to love his wife), there is no compulsion to follow it's obviously barbaric dictates by those who have progressed beyond such things.

And so, the Word of God is merely...there. If anything, they seem to take far more time trying to explain it way than anything else. And in the end, one can see that their ethics and morality and almost completely contrary to anything in the Bible.

That is the door McLaren opens with this idea, back in 2001. And does anyone care to deny that emergents have walked through that door, and are becoming more like the liberals referenced above?

This attempt to artificially separate the authority of the Word of God from the authority of God is not good, and in the end doesn't make sense. Imagine, for example, a king issuing a decree. The words of the king in the decree have authority, because the king has authority. It would not do to say that while the king yes has authority, the words of the king are really not so authoritative.

And if that could be said of merely human king, how much more for the One who is King of all Kings? To say that He has authority, but to say that His Word does not, is a tricky bit of sophistry that will not work, but will only undermine the idea of God's authority.

he should stop trying so hard

A sojo writer is again trying too hard, trying to read too much into modern-day things and the Bible to make his liberal point.

He tries to use the account in the book of Ruth as a way to bludgeon the US, particularly conservatives, and it just won't work.

What if the Bible’s Ruth Came to America Today?

In the biblical story, Ruth was a foreigner from the nation of Moab, which was despised by all patriotic and God-fearing Israelites. Yet when she came to Israel as a widow, companion to her widowed mother-in-law, Naomi, she was welcomed onto the fields of Boaz, where she gleaned what the regular harvesters had left behind. Boaz made sure that even this despised foreigner had a decent job at decent pay. When she went one night to the barn where the barley crop was being threshed, he spent the night with her — and decided to marry her.

First, I will say that the most distasteful thing here is the insinuation (which is repeated later and more clearly) that the time Esther met with Boaz on the threshing floor was a sexual encounter between the two of them.

When she boldly “uncovers the feet” of Boaz during the night they spend together on the threshing floor, has she violated the “family values” that some religious folk now proclaim? Or has she affirmed that love engages the body as well as the heart, the mind, and the spirit, and that sometimes a loving body comes before a wedding?

The Bible does not say that, and for this writer to say that reveals his agenda. He is clearly insinuating that moral bounds have no place where "love" is concerned--in other words, that sex outside of marriage is ok so long as the two "love" each other (one may also wonder if he is working in the "love" argument of the homo/trans/whateversexuals, too.)

In the biblical story, Ruth was a foreigner from the nation of Moab, which was despised by all patriotic and God-fearing Israelites. Yet when she came to Israel as a widow, companion to her widowed mother-in-law, Naomi, she was welcomed onto the fields of Boaz, where she gleaned what the regular harvesters had left behind. Boaz made sure that even this despised foreigner had a decent job at decent pay. When she went one night to the barn where the barley crop was being threshed, he spent the night with her — and decided to marry her.

Here is a bit, from the biblical account.

1 Now Naomi had a relative on her husband's side, from the clan of Elimelech, a man of standing, whose name was Boaz.
2 And Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, "Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor."
Naomi said to her, "Go ahead, my daughter."
3 So she went out and began to glean in the fields behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she found herself working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelech.
4 Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, "The LORD be with you!"
"The LORD bless you!" they called back.
5 Boaz asked the foreman of his harvesters, "Whose young woman is that?"
6 The foreman replied, "She is the Moabitess who came back from Moab with Naomi.
7 She said, 'Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters.' She went into the field and has worked steadily from morning till now, except for a short rest in the shelter."
8 So Boaz said to Ruth, "My daughter, listen to me. Don't go and glean in another field and don't go away from here. Stay here with my servant girls.
9 Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the girls. I have told the men not to touch you. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled."
10 At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She exclaimed, "Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me—a foreigner?"
11 Boaz replied, "I've been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before.
12 May the LORD repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge."

One wonders if this blogger would have approved of Boaz, if this were to happen today. After all, Boaz seems to have based his decision on allowing Ruth to continue gleaning on her character, not her status as poor/immigrant/foreign/whatever PC label may or may not fit. He knew of Ruth's support for Naomi, and of her leaving her home (and perhaps by extension her false gods) to come to Israel. I could as easily see this blogger saying Boaz was being discriminatory in his hiring, because he took her actions and character in account in his decision.

In ancient Israel, everyone had the right simply to walk onto a field and begin to work, begin to use the means of production of that era. And then to eat what they had gathered.

I would like to see what scripture he has in support of that position. Perhaps it's there, but he gives nothing for it here.

Here is a bit about the gleaning that Ruth did.

Levitcus 19
9 " 'When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10 Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.

Leviticus 23
22 " 'When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.' "

One thing that isn't in dispute in these passages is that the one who owned and worked or paid workers was entitled to the lion's share of the harvest, and even the first of it. And even with the gleaning, it was hardly a "wait for a check in the mail" type of thing--the poor people had to actually get out and do some work to get the food, not expect the government to do the work for them.

Parts of the blogger's entry are simply ridiculous, as he tries to vilify the US.

Would she be admitted at the border?
Or would she be detained for months without a lawyer, ripped from Naomi’s arms while Naomi’s protest brought her too under suspicion — detained because she was, after all, a Canaanite who spoke some variety of Arabic, possibly a terrorist, for sure an idolator?
Would she be deported as merely an “economic refugee,” not a worthy candidate for asylum?
Would she have to show a “green card” before she could get a job gleaning at any farm, restaurant, or hospital?
Would she be sent to “workfare” with no protections for her dignity, her freedom, or her health?
Would she face contempt because she and Naomi, traveling without a man, might be a lesbian couple?
Would she be waterboarded — drowned again and again, revived at the point of death to be drowned yet again — until she confessed that she had supplied a foreign enemy with mass-destruction weapons to attack America?

Perhaps he should go out into the real world, and see how immigrants are actually treated here, instead of relying on biased sources that have their own political leanings and agendas (though this man has them himself, so I doubt he's going to look hard to see contrary evidence, no matter how obvious it is). And his comments about waterboarding her can only be seen as a stretch, as that was done only to known terrorists.

This blogger's article is silly to the point of hilarious. Whatever point he's trying to make is lost in his biases and agendas and poor support for whatever scriptural claims he's trying to make (and, again, the fact that he's saying that premarital sex is ok only makes one wonder what other bad interpretations he's using).

This Sojo article is Total Fail.

honor

My family has a bit of military history. My father was in the military, as was my brother, as is one of my brothers-in-law. When I was in college, I attempted to join the ROTC, though I was not accepted.

Without shame, I have much respect and honor for those who serve honorably in our military. And none at all for those who seek to spread lies and defamations about them.

I grant the possibility of a person being a thoughtful and principled pacifist, but I've met few if any of them. My own view of most of those I've had any kind of contact with is that, they are the kinds of people who will gladly take the freedoms (freedoms of speech, assembly, the press, and so on) won for them by the sacrifices of warriors who fought to gain them, and use them to criticize and castigate the ones who have and are now defending those rights for them.

Someone else wrote a very good piece about Christians and the military. The writer, one Kevin DeYoung, says very well things that I think, too.

Why Memorial Day is Worth Remembering

1. Being a soldier is not a sub-Christian activity. In Luke 3, John the Baptist warns the people to bear fruit in keeping with repentance. The crowds respond favorably to his message and ask him, “What then shall we do?” John tells the rich man to share his tunics, the tax collectors to collect only what belongs to them, and the soldiers to stop their extortion. If ever there was a time to tell the soldiers that true repentance meant resigning from the army, surely this was the time. And yet, John does not tell them that they must give up soldier-work to bear fruit, only that they need to be honest soldiers. The Centurion is even held up by Jesus as the best example of faith he’s seen in Israel (Luke 7:9). Military service, when executed with integrity and in the Spirit of God, is a suitable vocation for the people of God.

5. This may be controversial to some, but I believe the facts of history will demonstrate that on the whole, the United States military has been a force for good in the world. Obviously, as a military power, we have blundered at times, both individually and corporately. But on the whole, the men and women of our armed services have fought and are fighting for causes that promote freedom, defend the rights of human beings, and reject tyranny. War is still hell and a tragic result of the fall. Praise God for his promise to one day end all human conflict. But in a world where people are evil by nature and leaders are not always reasonable and countries do not always have good intentions, war is sometimes the way to peace–at least the best peace we can hope for between peoples and nations this side of heaven.

There is more to it, and I hope you will read it. It is worth reading.

(oh, and you emergents (yes i know you're out there), maybe just maybe, in a faint whisper so none of your leftie pacifists friends can hear you (because we all know how ugly those peace-loving types get when you don't agree with them), maybe you'll want to show at least enough integrity to whisper a "thank you" to the soldiers who gave you the freedom to blog against them and what they do, ok? thanks)

the whole smorgasbord

First, a bit of a reminder, from the Ooze.

MYTH #6: You Must Believe Jesus Is the Son of God To Follow Him.

Because it may help to explain this.

FAITH HOUSE ADVISORY COUNCIL

So, from the monotheistic religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam (not mentioning the athiesm of humanism), we now have a practicing Hindu on their council.

Prediction--They'll soon be adding a Buddhist, too. Not long after that, a shaman. Or maybe the shaman will come first, but I suppose the Buddhist would more politic, since it is a major religion.

Because now the door is open to the polytheistic religions (though if Buddhism is nontheistic, and a humanist was already a part of it, then why has it taken so long to put a Buddhists in the mix?)

It would be almost amusing to watch, if it weren't sad. Some people will go to such great lengths to do things any way but God's way.

backwards

Like many people, I believe in the Bible because I believe in God. But I know plenty of people who think it ought to happen the other way around, that a person needs to believe the Bible in order to believe in God. So they'll give a Bible to a non-Christian in the hope that by reading about God, that person will be enlightened. Certainly that can happen, but it seems kind of backward to me. I mean, what possible reason would someone have for believing this story if they didn't already believe in God?
Doug Pagitt, A Christianity Worth Believing, p. 64

A bit ago, I saw a couple of accounts from this video.

More Than Dreams - DVD

The two I saw were the accounts of Khalil and Khosrow.

One thing of note in each of their accounts was that, for each of them, their starting point was the Bible--Khalil was given the assignment to study the Bible so as to prove it wrong, and Khosrow was given a New Testament when he visited a church.

Here is another site, with links to YouTube versions of the videos.

More Than Dreams: The Power of the Bible

Romans 10:17 (New International Version)
17Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.

How could they have knows what to believe, had they not started with the Bible? These were men who already had faith in a god, what could have changed that except the Word of God?

filth

A few weeks ago, I made comment on what an emergent named Rollins said, that I could only call "Evil". This time, another emergent at The Ooze has come out with something that I can only call "Filth".

"PORNABLE," "PORNADY," AND DRAG IN REVELATION 17

I think for many of us we read the scriptures and pass over verses and sometimes whole chapters and not realize the explicit graphic sexual and violent content that is found within them. With the help of Queer Theory and a bit of Poststructrualist pizzazz, I seek to disrupt a normal reading of Revelation 17 as an attempt to bring about more dialogue and to help others to see the divinely inspired horror that lies within some of our sacred biblical passages.

First, a link to the "real" Revelation 17

Revelation 17

And now, what the Ooze writer has to say.

We have an interesting situation where this mysterious messenger with seven bowls in hand came to this supposed holy man named John. We are not sure if this messenger was a guy or a girl but whoever he or she was, he/she was perfect. I am not sure what was in the bowls but whatever it was sure smelled funny. This messenger strangely enough, wanted to take John of all people, to a sadistic porno of sorts starring an amazingly beautiful and alluring drag queen prostitute. Apparently John did not resist.

Little did John know that this kinky sexcapade would also involve some kind of animal or wild beast dressed in some sort of weird sex suit with some horns and heads sticking out of it with whom the fancifully dressed prostitute would ride like a wild cowgirl while she spewed nasty, degrading and blasphemous dirty talk at the poor animal.

compare that with the real thing.

1One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, "Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits on many waters. 2With her the kings of the earth committed adultery and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries."
3Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a desert. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. 4The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. 5This title was written on her forehead:
MYSTERY
BABYLON THE GREAT
THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES
AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.
6I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus.

First, there is nothing pornographic about what the Bible really says here. It is a view of evil, yes, but there is no hint of what the emergent writer is trying to find it in.

Second, there is no hint in the biblical passage of the harlot spewing "nasty, degrading and blasphemous dirty talk at the poor animal". The biblical passage does, however, say "the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus". If this emergent joker is trying to say that the beast the woman rode on is the church, than I would say that he or she has not clue on how to read.

This emergent's perversion of the biblical account of the vision given to John has to rank among the most vile things I've ever read.

is this a stretch?

I don't think so.

Ok, here's how it's gone...

Emergent Village recent had a blog entry that pimped for the ideas of Matthew Fox, among other things.

This Fox guy, proving that one can make a farce out of real dramatic history, wrote 95 Theses.

They can be found at Yes Magazine

This magazine has a Our Own Agenda :: 10 Policies For a Better America

Here's what they say...

Bring back the Fairness Doctrine and get broadcasters to open the people's airwaves to fee campaign information.

Translated: Do away with free speech.

btw How are radio stations the "people's airwaves"? And doesn't that rhetoric sound suspiciously like what communist leaders say to pull the wool over the eyes of those they want to put under their red thumbs?

Restore voting rights to ex-felons who have served their sentences.

Because there's not better pro-lib no-punishment constituency than ex-cons.

Increase minimum wage and worker protection for all, documented and undocumented.

So, we should should make sure the people here illegally get paid by a rate set by law? Does anyone else see the irony in that?

Adopt the Employee Free Choice Act to increase opportunities to unionize.

Translated: Make sure the union bullies get bully everyone with a not-secret ballot.

Provide everyone vacation and family leave.

Yeah, because we all need the law to make sure we get days off.

Provide gay and lesbian couples with the legal protections afforded to straight couples.

Yeah, sliding down the slippery slope of legalizing anything that involves sex.

There're other things there, too. It's pretty much a liberal screed.

And one can ask, and I think rightly, if this is another indication of the direction in which emergent is going.

And I think the answer is, quite resoundingly, "YES, IT IS!!!"

Which is why they are the ones who need to do the repenting.

doing injustice in the name of justice?

Two things define 'justice' in a biblical context.

First, there is no understanding without standing under.

Second, the question is not "What are you standing for?" but "Who are you standing with?"
Leonard Sweet, in a 'meditation' in the book "Justice in the Burbs" by Will and Lisa Samson, p. 94-95

Actually, I can't think of a more sure way to bring to about injustice than by saying it's about "Who are you standing with?"

First, is his claim true? Is this what the Bible teaches? Consider these passages.

Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge you neighbor fairly.
Leviticus 18:17

Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd,

and do not show favoritism to a poor man in his lawsuit.
Exodus 23:2-3

Do not show partiality in judging; hear both small and great alike.
Deuteronomy 1:17a

The Bible does say much about making sure the poor are treated justly, and that's understandable. It's the rich, after all, who are able to bribe and influence in order to have unjust decision made in their favor. Such is human nature.

But as can be seen in the passages above, the Bible most certainly does NOT say that justice is siding with the poor. The poor and the rich are both to be shown justice. It is no more right to favor the poor over the rich then it is to favor the rich over the poor.

So, I think Sweet is dead wrong in what he writes. Justice is about "What are you standing for?" Justice is about treating all justly, with no favoritism and no partiality.

And one can see how Sweet's ideas can only backfire--demonizing the rich as oppressors and exploiters without regards to whether a rich person is that way or not; enforcing taxation policies which are designed to punish those who work and succeed in gaining wealth while rewarding those who did not work for it; spreading poverty by taking away the incentive to better one's life through the reliance on a small but (theoretically) steady stream of welfare funds.

If you think I'm reaching in my logic, consider this.

Obama Sees Supreme Court Justices as Champions of the Weak Over the Strong
For Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, Supreme Court justices should champion the weak against the strong.

Obama outlined his views on justices in the speeches he gave on the Senate floor in opposition to the confirmations of Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

In both speeches, the Illinois Democrat chastised the nominees not for their positions on specific constitutional issues or matters of law but for what he perceived as too often siding with the strong instead of the weak. He chargied Roberts, for example, with being dismissive of claims of racial and gender discrimination and criticized Alito for making a habit out of siding with government and corporations against plaintiffs and workers.

These article is from last year, right before the US made the currently abyssmal decision to put this man into our highest office.

But for the sake of this discussion, focus on what he's saying--that the courts should favor the poor against the rich. How different that is from what the Bible really says, that neither poor nor rich should be favored.

Obama and Sweet are supporting injustice, pure and simple.

weighed and found wanting

Heal or heel?

While the Bible shows that God can heal people supernaturally, claims of particular faith-healers should be examined. Here’s what WORLD learned about the “Lakeland Outpouring” healings of television preacher Todd Bentley

This whole article is an indictment against those in WoF and apostolic/prophetic movement that try to make much over someone who claims to have "power" or "the anointing" or "the power of God" or whatever they wish to call it.

It's pathetic that these so-called prophets and apostles and healers can be so easily duped, and do nothing or next-to-nothing, and even endorse, when these charlatans come along, draw bigs crowds, draw in big bucks, put on a big show, make a loud noise, and claim big things while not deliving much of anything.

At the height of what many called a revival, WORLD asked Bentley to talk about the healings, like Fogle's, and asked for a list of people who had been healed at the services. His associates told me Bentley was out of the country and a list could not be produced. But six weeks and more than a dozen requests later, the ministry eventually sent a list of 13 names. Fogle was No. 12 on the list, along with this note: "Healed through the Outpouring and is back to fishing."

That was on Aug. 8, 2008. There was just one problem. Two weeks earlier, on July 22, Christopher A. Fogle—according to his obituary in the Keokuk (Iowa) Daily Gate City, "left this life . . . after a courageous battle with cancer."

When contacted, Ansley confirmed that she had attended the Lakeland Outpouring for about a week, and she confirmed that she did ask for prayer for an old skiing accident. She said that after the prayers the knee "was not as stiff" as it had been. As for the migraines: "I still have migraines," she said.

And then there's this person, who gives a whole other meaning to what some may mean when they say they have been 'healed'.

Not only did any healing take place elsewhere, Smith now admits that the scans are not now clear. "The doctors tell me that my numbers are going up," said Smith, who told me that she, too, had a healing ministry. "But we don't buy into that. That's a fact, but it's not the truth. The truth is that I've been healed."

Not sure where the Bible says that we should stick our fingers in our ears and ignore when told bad news about our health. Must have missed that somewhere.

Anyway, this article highlights one of my frustrations with charismatics. I'm someone who believes that the gifts are still for today, which is one reason I'm not a very good Baptist. At the same time, it seems that most charismatics are going off-the-deep-end with regards to legitimzing anything that has 'manifestations' and uses the right lingo.

Charismatics need to stop letting these fakers get away with it. More than that, they need to stop letting their apostolic/prophetic "leaders" get away with letting this kind of thing go on, let alone legitmizing it. Which means they need to stop just taking the words of these apostles and prophets without discernment, but to weigh what they are saying by the Bible and see if it's really so. And if these apostles and prophets get their undies in a knot over that, well, that probably answers the question very well.

an athiest gets it

As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God

The whole article is a fascinating read, and I recommend it. My main focus here has to do with these words of his.

Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the know-how that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

In my reading of emergents, one of the bogeymen they often come out against is individualism. They question of concept of God saving individuals, and stress instead concepts of community and group-think. One of their 'churches' even has the congregation help in making it's services.

But this athiest sees the truth, that Christian individualism is a good thing.

Rather, this now holistic trend emergents are so hyped on is nothing more than a new form of conformity and servitude, where the group decides, and please check your brain at the door lest your opinions not be conducive to the conversation, and state are opinions in the form of a question, and please don't expect an answer. We will tell you how to think, after you're sufficiently conditioned by our mystical disciplines to be open to acceptance without question.

And you will do as we say, or else your loving and caring emergent cohorts will sorrowfully kick you out and call you a Modernist or Fundamentalist or some such thing and say that you were ruining the conversation and not giving off good vibrations or some such thing.

Yeah, something like that.

Sad, when the committed athiest sees things the uncommitted good-as-athiests don't.

another lib gets it wrong (no surprise)

In Oklahoma, the more overtly "Christian" politicians claim to be, the more likely they are to pass mean-spirited legislation, especially in regard to our treatment of the strange.
Robin R Meyers, Saving Jesus from the Church, pp.121-122

At least Meyer than goes on to explain what he means, at least in part, in the next sentence.

Anti-immigrant and English-only fever is running high, all in the name of Jesus.
p. 122

As you could imagine, even assume, the liberal 'christian' makes a misrepresentation in the above.

Conservatives like myself are not "anti-immigrant". Far from it, we are very welcoming of people from other countries and nationalities, and have much respect for them. What we are against is "illegal immigration"--people entering the US in an illegal manner.

I have been overseas several times, and every time I have done so, I have respected and abode by the rules of those countries for obtaining visas and entering the countries.

There is nothing unloving or unreasonable about expecting immigrants to abide by the rules of immigration.

English-only rules are not "mean-spirited" either. I lived in Russia for a few years, and in that time I accepted the expectation the I needed to learn to gain some measure of skill at speaking the Russian language. And I did gain it--certainly not mastery, and no doubt those skills have atrophied in the years since I left and have not needed to use them, but after a while I was able to get around. I was also fortunate enough to know several Russian people who knew English, but it would have been completely unreasonable to me to expect Russians to learn English simply because I wasn't really quick at picking up their language, and them speaking their own language was a major inconvenience for me.

Why? Because I was in their country, in their house. They had every reason and right to expect me to abide by their own rules, among them to learn their language, especially since I was there for a while. That some spoke English with me and even helped at times in translating was an act of grace and mercy on their parts, not something I should have demanded.

Perhaps English-only laws could be too invasive, though I've not heard of any being so, but there is nothing wrong with having people in an English-speaking country being told that they needed to communicate in English with a good degree of skill. If anything, it's unloving to NOT do so, because it restricts them and their abilities to make it US society.

debunking an attempted debunking

MYTH #6: You Must Believe Jesus Is the Son of God To Follow Him.

Now, in debunking this myth I want to direct your attention again to the early disciples. When they first answered the call to follow Jesus, did they believe that Jesus was the Son of God? No!

There are things of interest here. For example, what do we know of what the disciples believed about Jesus when they first started following Him?

I'm not sure how many conclusions we can come to in that, but there are a few. For example, some of John's disciples first started following Jesus when John pointed Him out to them as "the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world". We also have the account of Peter, the one when he's fishing and they make the huge catch, and Peter's response to Jesus was to ask Him to leave because "I am a sinful man". There is also the fact that John's ministry came first, and it was about one coming after him, and any influence he would have had on those who heard his message, either in person or second-hand.

On the whole, though, I'm not very inclined to take this writer's claim that the disciples had not idea of who Jesus was for a time. There seemed to be more to it than this. In fact, if I remember right, there are places in the Gospel where even the people around are asking about if Jesus would be the Messiah or Christ (though their own expectations of the Messiah were different than what Jesus did).

So, it seems there is reason to think that all around Him at the time thought of Jesus as being somewhat more than "the latest and greatest Rabbi on the religious scene" and "an amazing teacher and example" (from the blog, in another paragraph).

Perhaps more telling are these words from I John

I John 2
21I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. 22Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the antichrist—he denies the Father and the Son. 23No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

I John 4
1Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

I John 5
1Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.

There seem to be three stages of following Jesus. FIRST—Jesus is followed because He is so flawless and attractive—unimpeachable. He is the one person who has truly walked the walk and the talk perfectly. No one argues with this. And the disciples believed in Him enough to follow Him. There is nothing wrong with this type of following Jesus at all.

SECOND—Then as you follow this attractive Jesus, you will begin to embrace His lifestyle, teachings and principles and find them to be very practical and meaningful for your life. Following this Jesus just makes sense.

THIRD—Finally, as you continue to follow this Jesus and find His teachings meaningful, you will at some point discover your Creator-God. You will experience transformation of your heart and your mind and see Jesus as the Son of God.

I'm not sure where he can say "no one argues with this". Plenty of people argue with it. They may do so in 'nice' ways--Jesus was a good teacher, a wise guy making pithy sayings, an early socialist stirring up the pot, it's not his fault the early disciples made him a religious figure, very little in the Bible is really what Jesus said and did.

Second, where is anything said in the Bible of "stages of following Jesus"? Rather, by Jesus' own words "those who are not against me are for me". We don't see stages of following Jesus (if by "following Jesus" we mean conversion, which seems to be what the author is saying) at Pentacost, at Cornelius' house, or in the conversion of Saul.

So, wherever you are in this continuum of the stages in following Jesus, ultimately you are seeking and hoping to receive this gift of transformation from God Himself. When you understand this, you then can embrace the fact of Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Agnostics, Muslims and even Christians who are followers of Jesus.

I think this is the kicker right here, the a priori end goal of the author's reasoning, the goal towards which he wanted to wend the path of his reasoning--finding some way to say that people in other religions can be "followers of Jesus", even if they don't think of Jesus as being the Messiah.

And I think he is wrong. Even in regards to a Cornelius, who was by the biblical account a good man, he needed to hear the message of Peter and believe in Christ before he was truly right with God.

finding reality

My reading of things emergent and progressive have left me with the feeling that the people who write those things have no idea of the kinds of people they ridicule and denigrate. I've tried to think differently, no doubt many people have many different experiences than I have had in my years, and no doubt bad experiences do happen, and I know that conservative Christians can be far from perfect. But my overall impression has been that these people react more to caricatures than to real people, and to what people of their own like minds say about conservative Christians than in what those conservatives are really like.

That is what happened to this young person, one Kevin Ross, who has recently published a book called "The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University". He was a liberal 'christian' who decided to get some first-hand knowledge of the 'enemy' by spending a semester as a student at Liberty University, the university founded by Jerry Falwell. His reasons may have been slightly questionable (he intended to write about the wrongs he found there, thinking it was full of hate and intolerance and all PC-sins). His experience was, however, much different than his expectations.

Liberal Student Infiltrates Liberty University to Write Exposé and Discovers Intolerance...From the Left

Roose researched the school by joining as many activites as possible. He accompanied classmates on a spring break missionary trip to Daytona Beach. He visited a campus support group for chronic masturbators, where students were taught to curb impure thoughts. And he joined the choir at Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church.

Roose scored an interview with the preacher for the school newspaper, right before Falwell died in May of that year. Roose decided against confronting him over his views on liberals, gays and other hot-button topics, and instead learned about the man himself, discovering among other things that the pastor loved diet peach Snapple and the TV show "24."

Perhaps the part that gives the best news is this here.

Once ambivalent about faith, Roose now prays to God regularly _ for his own well-being and on behalf of others. He said he owns several translations of the Bible and has recently been rereading meditations from the letters of John on using love and compassion to solve cultural conflicts.

where's the respect, man? part 2

Leave it to a leftie to...

A) want to curb our freedoms while placing the blame on people who sell guns because some who have guns misuse them (waiting for them to protest car dealerships every time an auto wreck has a fatality)

B) Use their freedoms to thumb their noses at those who work to protect them

C) Miss the point.

Why I Got Arrested on Good Friday

Claiborne may be about as much an idiot as Rollins (though Rollins does set a high standard for the low).

He and his minions could have done some pretty decent things on their Good Friday self-righteousness display, maybe. Things the Bible could be said would be good things to do.

I don't see where the Bible says anything about protesting gun sellers and military weapons developers.

But maybe this helps me answer some of the questions about how people like Chalke, a not-ver-dissimilar sort from Claiborne, react in regards to those who give them the freedoms they enjoy to abuse.

idiotic

Who invented what?

‘God and humans are the invention of the story itself’

I'm becoming convinced that pomos are far less interested in truth, than in a false wit and their own feelings of cleverness.

As disgusting as this is, though, is Rollins' attempts to weasel out of it, both in the comments to this post, and in what he wrote in the next post.

The working out of the above "Hegelian synthesis" (whether really Hegelian or not) is that God is merely a part of the story, a character, someone only doing what the story tells him to do. Hardly a being worth worshiping and serving, which may be one reason Rollins' is so much into the disciple as the one who disobeys, which I pointed out in the previous entry.

But in the end, the statement Rollins puts forth is merely idiotic. And so is he.

evil

I like thinking of clever (or clever at least to my mind) titles for these entries. The contain is often serious enough, so a bit of a clever title may be a bit of something to get people in to read it.

But I can't do that here. I can't think of anything more appropriate to call this but "evil". Evil as basic and as vile as one will ever see.

The leader is needed in order to refuse leadership

Is it not the case that among the most important teachings of a great religious leader to their most dedicated disciples will involve the words, “do not follow me”.

And is it not the case that that is one difference we have with Jesus? (I think Rollins' contention is even a bit questionable). Jesus does say "Follow me", He does say to obey what He says, He even makes it the central thing. Even if all other religious leaders were as Rollins' says (debatable), equating them with Jesus is asinine for a Christian.

So then, what if to swear that we will never betray our great teacher is to betray him already (reifying his dynamic way of love into dead letters)?

If you read Rollin's blog entry (do so), you'll see that he begins it with a 'parable' or story of whatever genre, in which a Master tells his disciple that he will never be a real master because the student has never betrayed the Master's teachings.

“But you fail to understanding my friend”, replied the Master, “The fact that you have never betrayed my teachings, and the fact that you swear never to betray them; this is to betray them already”

What is Rollins' doing, but telling people that they should disobey God? What is he saying, but that true disciples thumb their noses at the commands of God, and go their own ways? What is he saying, but that we know better than God what we should do.

This is the first evil, the one that appeared in the Garden of Eden, "Has God really said?" I have no qualms in saying that by this standard Rollins sets, the greatest heroes in the Bible are Adam (or maybe Eve for being the first to disobey) and Judas, the one whose name is synonymous with betrayal.

There is no evil more vile, no blasphemy more loathsome. Only hell would cheer at such words.

where's the respect, man?

Despite thousands of years of individual, tribal, and international bloodshed, the last century managed to produce the most horrific wars ever seen. For instance, World War I was hailed as the war to end all wars. But within less than two decades, the "defeated" enemy had rallied and was on the offensive again, bigger and bitterer than ever, and humankind had to suffer World War I part II. And who at this early stage can tell how deep the impact and far-reaching consequences of the War on Terrorism will be for all humanity.
Chalke and Mann, the lost message of Jesus, p. 127

I sometimes wonder how such people as this must feel when they run into military veterans, especially since Chalke (and perhaps Mann) is himself British. Does he see the veteran as a hero to his nation, someone who helped keep his nation from falling to the Nazis? Or does he feel unclean when around them, and in his heart would rather have been raised speaking German and raising his right arm to whomever would now be his fuhrer over having to acknowledge one who violated his dearly held principle of pacifism?

This isn't some kind of silly question, but a real one. He enjoys great freedoms because he lives in a society where those freedoms were preserved by military people, people who fought and defended, people who killed in battle and were killed. Does he honor the people who gave those freedoms for him, or does he use those freedoms to spread sentiments against those who gave those freedoms to him?

Of course, this doesn't address the ways he tries to address the issue biblically, such as his attempts were. I think I will refer the reader to the C.S. Lewis essay "Why I am not a Pacifist" for a well-thought rebuttal to Chalke's and Mann's position.

All we know is that whenever aggression is met with aggression, the beast of violence is fed and grows stronger.

Do we know that? What proofs do we have of that?

Can we really say that if we let the aggressors have their own ways, the world would be a better place? Should the people of Britain and Russia have simply laid down their arms, and let Nazi Germany take them over? Should China and all of Southeast Asia have simply resigned themselves to Japanese rule? Should South Korea have not fought against Communism from the north? Should Israel have let the Muslims run them into the sea the day after their nation was formed?

As a not-a-pacifists, my answer to those questions would be a strong "No!!". For Chalke and Mann, I fear it would be the opposite.

another tangent...

Beware the cuteness.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Don't worry, I'll get back on track in a moment. Just can't resist the cute.

because my coffee says so

Posting a Dilbert comic here, while not common, is certainly not new. Most have something to do with the overall theme of the blog.

I can't say that about this one. I can only that I'm posting it because...I like it.

And my coffee told me to.