Crazyanity

 

Today is Halloween. Of course, a good Christian should have nothing to do with this sick, wicked holiday. After all it’s Satan’s day. So let’s all get up a petition to get the day renamed “Harvest Ween” or something less demonic-sounding. At the very least we should provide an alternate venue for our children. Something healthy and wholesome in the church gymn-atorium with costumes of Bible characters. And we should remember to pray for all those lax parents who need to wake up and be very afraid of this day. After all, I heard that covens of witches perform human sacrifices of children they nab on this most wicked of nights. ( I know it’s not an urban myth because I heard it on Christian radio.) Okay. Time out. Maybe right-wing talk radio’s fear mongering  needs to do a little fact-checking.  Like the fact that Halloween IS a Christian holiday. It goes back to the 1500s. The day was the Hallowed Eve (by the way, hallow means holy). It was the night before All Saints’ Day. Young, Christian boys would dress up to mock the devil. Martin Luther had it right. “The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him.”  Or as the Bible says, “Greater who is He who in us, than he who is in the world.” So let’s all take a break. Take a pitchfork to Old Harry. Study a little church history and stop trying to muck with a Christian Hallowed day.

Liberals, get a soul

Social pyschologist Jonathan Haidt offers insight into the culture wars. He sees the religious right’s willingness to believe the most preposterous accusations against Obama and health care reform as tied to the soul-less, materialism of the left:

The materialism of the secular left opens it up to charges that it promotes a “culture of death.” Liberals are said to like to kill fetuses and the elderly; they don’t treat anything as sacred. This term has been bandied about on the right for many years, and while it is a gross exaggeration, it is based in a real truth, a real difference on the question of the sacredness of life. So when Palin threw out the term “death panels,” the term struck a chord that had been played many times in recent years. Liberals were flabbergasted, because it’s a blatant lie, but it’s false only in a logical sense, not an emotional one. And once again, logic has little to do with morality. If a pro-life social conservative asks himself whether Obama is secretly plotting to create death panels, he is not asking whether this is likely to be true, he is asking only “can I believe it,” and the answer is usually yes.

The Prince of Peace vs. the King of Kings

It was his first speech before the UN assembly. He was received with more enthusiastic  applause than his predecessor. His speech was smooth, full of the same sort of rebukes of global apathy and calls to work together that you might find in any US presidential speech before these united nations. If Bush was seen as a global bully, Obama is seen as Mr. Nice Guy. And of course, right wing radio will argued that he just gave away the farm and emboldened our global enemies by being “too nice.” The second coming of Neville Chamberlain. At the end of the day, the UN will not be any the better for the Obama speech. Then came Omar Khadafi, or as he was introduced, “the King of Kings.” Wearing a robe that would make a 42nd Street pimp green with envy, he rambled on incoherently from a wad of misfiled scribblings. He received the sort of chilly applause you would expect for a global thug––a slightly better reception than he received in New Jersey. All in all, our Prince of Peace and Libya’s King of King were more eloquent than effectual. And isn’t that always the case? Which means the man who reigns from God’s throne is still the best bet for peace on earth and goodwill toward men.

Jesus Camp

The film documentary Jesus Camp spends a week with a summer camp of Pentecostal kids. There, they get a version of Christianity that is wrapped in the American flag and double-dipped in a gooey adoration of policies of George W. Bush. This is a video of a group of kids from a large, conservative Dallas church. These kids put on a camp that reflects a different sort of Christianity. It is one where the cross is picked up, not pinned on. It is one where “values” aren’t simply slapped on T-shirts. They are lived out. Can I get an “Amen”?

The Third Great Awakening

The first Great Awakening featured the Calvinistic preaching of men like George Whitefield. The result was a burgeoning young country falling to its knees to confess personal and corporate transgressions and embrace the crucified Christ. The second Great Awakening was of a different sort. It featured the man-centered, manipulative techniques of men like Charles Finney. The result were short-lived conversions, burned-overed districts and shallow, religious emotions. Now Republican congressman Mike Pence predicts a third Awakening. Apparently it will feature Bible-pounding Glenn Beck bigotry, a growing fear of goverment and a tea-party-caffinated resentment of taxation (it is, after all, the root of socialism). All which has this third Great Awakening shaping up in manner that would make Whitefield spin in his grave. A true, biblical Awakening will recognize that the evil in the world isn’t in rooted Hollywood or D.C., but in our own wicked hearts.

“The village idiot”

Wow! And I thought I was hard on the Christian Right. Frank Schaeffer, son of evangelical apologist Francis Schaeffer, lashes out at the evangelical political block. Or as he likes to call them, “the fifth column of insanity.”

Obama and the little children

Well, the religious right have found something else to be afraid of. The President is planning to address our kids on September 8th via the Internet. This has Christian radio up in arms. Parents are being exhorted to pull their children out of school. Really? This is a scary prospect to Christian parents? The President saying to study hard and play nice? Wow! Go figure.

Let us pray

Mordecai had his Esther and we have our Michele Bachmann. Clearly, God must be against healthcare reform. Or so that seems to be the idea here. If we fast and humble ourselves before Jehovah, He will unleash His terrible, swift wrath against imaginary death panels and the left’s wicked attempts to intervene for the poor. Congresswoman Bachmann explains:

“We all need to consider that in God’s timing that he may have allowed us, as members of Congress, to be in the position that we’re in just for this specific issue right now,” she said. “Everything that all of us have worked together and labored for over the years, all of it could be undermined with this one bill. President Obama realizes that. The radicals that are on the pro-abortion left, they realize that. They could win it all. And the unborn, and the vulnerable, the disabled and those at the end of life could lose it it all.”

But it was Bachmann’s fervent call to utilize prayer and fasting to beat back health-care reform efforts that was the true highlight of the call.

“That’s really where this battle will be won — on our knees in prayer and fasting,” she told the listeners. “Remember: faith without works is dead. So we’re asking you to do all of it: pray, fast, believe, trust the Lord, but also act.”

Calling all born-agains

When the Republican Party needs the conservative evangelical vote, they know just how to wind us up. All we like sheep…

Nice girls get abortions

If a recent study is correct, a girl who has attended private religious schools is more likely to get an abortion than a girl who has attended public schools.

Despite Adamczyk’s finding that rates of reported abortions were higher for young women educated at private religious schools, the type of religious school was not a factor: Catholic schools had similar rates as other religious schools.”Religious school attendance is not necessarily indicative of conservative religious beliefs because students attend these schools for a variety of reasons,” Adamczyk said. “These schools tend to generate high levels of commitment and strong social ties among their students and families, so abortion rates could be higher due to the potential for increased feelings of shame related to an extramarital birth.”

Sadly, American Christianity has done a bang up job in making men and women feel more shame than mercy. Their learning institutions from 4K to grad school has also done a swell job of demanding a strong witness for their schools (i.e., Don’t get caught drinking or knocked up while unmarried, after all, what would Jesus do?). Conservative schools and well-meaning parents have encouraged Christian kids to put off marriage and never to settle for less than perfection. They have given religous girls a bubble in which to live that knows little of grace and forgiveness and plenty about not dressing trashy. A bubble that, in the end,  is as useless as a faulty condom.  The message is clear. Bad behavior must be kept on the down low, and upstanding, church-going parents must never be dissappointed. Worst of all, in this uptight, graceless system Jesus is reduced that cool dude hanging on the cross who we must never fail, rather than the Incarnate friend of sinners who understands and forgives messy lives. Maybe it’s time for Amercian Christianity to come to Jesus. After all, he is the one who famously had little patience with shame-bound religiosity. “Woe unto you, Scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites! You have omitted the weightier matters of the law––justice, mercy and faith.”

Capitalists gone wild

The Russian newspaper Pravda doesn’t think Obama is a socialist. They think he is a commie. Apparently, it all started with public education and televangelists.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas than the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama.

Thou shalt not kill

Does abortion terminate a life? Without question. Does a woman’s right to privacy trump an embryo’s right to live. Sadly, it seems to. At least, it always has. That’s right. Always. Roe v. Wade made it legal, but abortion has always been available. Late term abortions, in particular. In fact, leaving unwanted babies to die by exposure was once the state of the art. A grizzly procedure that makes partial-birth abortion look almost humane. Which brings us to the big question. If  abortion stops a heart beat, is it then murder? If we look at the Bible, I’m afraid I would have to say “no.” At least, the God of the Old Testament––who instituted capital punishment for everything from killing a man to dishonoring your parents–– didn’t require the taking of the life of someone responsible for the death of a child in utero (Exodus 21). Which, at the very least, makes me reluctant to call our President a baby killer. Or abortion murder. However, most pro-life Christians are not nearly as reluctant to pull their punches. Some even pull the trigger. Which is how an abortionist came to die this Sunday. At his church. As he worshipped his Savior. As his wife watched on from the church choir loft. Murder. Plain and simple. And the saddest part of all? People who call themselves followers of Jesus are reading this and smiling.

The Unlikely Disciple

Being a disciple of Jesus means different things in different denominations. For Methodists it’s performing good works and regular church attendance. For Pentecostals its having a special prayer language and a gold-leafed baby grand. For Presbyterians it is possessing a large library, a iPhone with a ESV Bible app and a micro brewery. For the Baptist students at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University it is having a burden for the lost. That’s why every Spring Break they send a busload of smiling, clean-cut kids to Daytona Beach for mass evangelism. Last year, one of these tract-pushing, Bible-thumping, soul winners happened to be a unregenerate, left-leaning non-believer named Kevin Roose. He describes his baptism in Christian witnessing in his new book, The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University:

Around 11:00 pm, the Jesusmobile pulls up to Razzle’s. Razzle’s is a Wal-Mart-size nightclub with a squadron of earpieced bouncers manning the velvet rope and a set of revolving laser lights that overflow onto the sidewalk. We won’t be going inside, Scott says, but we’ll stand just outside the rope, witnessing to people waiting in line.

The first surprise is that there are at least two other groups of Christian evangelists here. One group, a youth team from a Florida church, has set up a shaved-ice machine on the sidewalk. They’re making sno-cones for the Razzle’s patrons, which almost seems like cheating. (Some Christians call this “gastro-evangelism.”) The other group, which is affiliated with Campus Crusade for Christ, has done something truly brilliant. A well-funded national organization, Campus Crusade rented the ballroom at a hotel next to Razzle’s and set up a fake party inside, complete with strobe lights, a security team, and attractive models paid to stand outside the hotel and gossip loudly about the great party inside. When would-be clubbers enter the room, they quickly realize they’ve been duped — instead of bar specials and trance music, they get gospel tracts and a salvation message.

Our group has no such Trojan horse, just the same Way of the Master routine we used on the beach. Witnessing at Razzle’s, where everyone we meet is either drunk or well on the way, makes communication a little harder.

“Excuse me, sir. Would you help me with an opinion poll?” I ask.

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Who is the greatest person you know?”

“Hmm … gayest person I know … I’d have to say Richard Simmons.”

Roose recently shared with NPR how his semester at Liberty opened his eyes to the sincerity and compassion of these young Christians. Roose never did open his heart to Jesus. But the experience opened something else. His mind. Funny how so many liberals can have such closed ones. There’s irony.

Give me that Sci-Fi Religion

The Scienitologists are having a tough week. First, the French legal system put them through the wringer, now Wikipedia is barring them from editing their Wikipedia article. All’s left now is for the paparazzi to catch John Travolta kissing Tom Cruise.