http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/frogboil.asp

Ok,

maybe I am being too cynical–maybe not. Why (oh why) do Christians think star power is so important? Why are we so enamored with celebrity? Why are we so convinced the Spirit cannot move on hearts with the simple message of the Good News?

Is it wrong to pray for people to come to Christ? Of course not! But this seems so misguided, and so man-centered…

Go Here…

I am amazed  often we Christians are misled and lacking in discernment. Specifically, I am addressing how this shows itself in the continual and rapid spread of so many false stories from Christians.

Does anyone remember how often we heard the Janet Reno “Christians are cultists” fabrication? How many times have Christians proliferated stories which started from the satirical website “The Onion” as though they were true? How many emails have you received from your Christian friends that proved untrue? And at the end of the emails they always write something like “if you REALLY love God, country, freedom, blahblahblah…you won’t just delete this–you’ll send it to 10 of your friends!” (BTW, watch their response when you send a kindly worded email to only them, pointing out the truth–it’s wierd, they get quite snippy. As though it was better to be ill-informed, yet loving God, country, freedom, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, blahblahblah, instead of having truth.)

I remember, not that long ago, when some new coin was coming out, and “In God We Trust” was going to appear on the circumference of the coin instead of on the face. You would have thought the Anti-Christ was running the US Mint! When I pointed out the truth of the matter to the promulgators of the email, (while attempting to do so in a humble, even self-effacing way–I hope!) I received quite a cranky response! Funny, now I don’t get those emails any more! Saweet!

Why are we not the examples of discernment, instead of appearing as though we have only a modicum of working grey matter? Why are we so eager to spread stories which prove to be false?

Are any of our motives in spreading this kind of thing bound up in our desires:

• to see the US “become a Christian nation again”–so-called?
• to have again the godly, political clout we believed the Christian political Right had?
• to live in a country where it was safe and easy to be Christian–though, truth be told, we weren’t doing much that told people how to become a Christian?
• to retain freedoms to which we think we are entitled–rather than seeing them as gifts from God?
• to believe that we are promoting the cause of Christ by passing on these stories? <i>”Real Christians will pass this on!”</i>
• to try to get back at those we see as our opposition–where we often confuse our own political urges with the biblical agenda of promoting the Good News?
• to see America transformed by legislation and regulations–rather than by the Good News?
• to feel some sort of “fellowship” with other Christians–when actually it is more like “we’re in this political/victim rights group together”-kind of feeling?

Maybe I am overstating the case–I don’t know that I have.  (I know that I have been party to spreading this stuff in the past–and was ashamed when I found out what a rube I was.)

The questions I have for myself, and others are: “Will I spend as much time promoting the Truth of God, especially in the Good News of Christ, as the time I have spent passing on these kind of stories (true or untrue?)

Will I make sure that what I pass on to others is Truth?

What are my reasons for passing this on–do I have wrong expectations about what God has promised for me as a Christian living in America?”

This post was prompted by a short video clip from Penn Gillette, in which  he points out the result of Christians spreading false or misunderstood stories about him.

Seriously, what are Billy Ray, and parents promoting this to their children thinking? Breaks my achy-breaky-heart… BTW, it might be best just to take Billboard’s word for the dancing that is performed…

This is just too precious…

I know every White House has mundane things that must be done, but this made me laugh...

“When the consumer is allowed to be sovereign in Church, the Church is abdicating from its responsibility because it is allowing truth to become displaced by spiritual and psychological desire. However, once the concession has been made, we then discover that satisfying needs becomes a frustrating undertaking. Needs, in a therapeutic society, multiply faster than fruit flies. No sooner is one need met than two take its place. Co-opting the needy to church is not the same thing as seeing a sinner converted and brought into the Church. [BTW, "needy" here is not a reference to poverty.]

Furthermore, needs that are identified, the ones that are felt, may in fact conceal far deeper and more real needs. The need to be amused and distracted, for example, though it may be very real and deeply felt, may conceal what lies beneath it, a gnawing, aching emptiness. And that emptiness itself would be misread as a need if it were not seen as an emptiness which has been unrelieved and unaddressed by God in Christ. Retailing help for felt needs is what the massive self-help industry is about. What distinguishes the Church from this industry is truth. It is truth about God and about ourselves that displaces the consumer from his or her current perch of sovereignty in the Church and places God in the place where He should be. There is much idolatry in the making in the current situation [the Seeker-sensitive/Church Growth model of 'doing church.'] As sinful human beings, we have an instinctual, compulsive bias towards forms of religion that we ourselves can create and control and that is precisely what consumer-driven religion invites us to do.

What is going to happen to the Church when those from our postmodern culture bring into it, not simply their musical tastes, but the disposition, worked out in varying degrees of severity, for living as if there were no viable worldview, and no absolute truth?” David Wells–”Above All Earthly Powers” pp. 302 – 303.

What happens? We get men like Rob Bell writing Velvet Elvis, calling into question the ability to truly define orthodox Christian truth, labeling doctrinal dogmatism as impiety, and claiming that true Christianity is best expressed by saying “I don’t know” when answering questions involving the virgin birth, the divinity of Christ, the Trinity, etc. An innumerable amount of people bought his book–hailing it as the Answer to the Church’s problems. Seeker/Church growth models produced people who think like Bell–oddly enough, many of them reject the excesses of Seeker/Church growth model churches–even speaking derisively of their Seeker-Church roots. Such ones often are connected to Emergent/Emerging churches, or movement.

The bodies chopped up in the prop-wash, floating in the wake of the boat, often feel helpless and hopeless. We meet them all the time–they have possibly been steamrolled by fundamentalists, recruited by the Christian Right to find hope through civil change, entertained by the Seeker churches, and now have been given no eternal hope by the Emerging people.

What revival the Church needs! What return to Cruciform living is needed! What phenomenal necessity for Christ-centered, grace-motivated, Gospel preaching!

God help us to do so!

Why write something new when another pastor has said it so well? Hey, I've got stuff to do you know...

Dan Phillips at TeamPyro on women and girls helping men, and young men in the battle against impure thinking. “Suitable for framing.”

“…The thought of loving God, and occasionally of being in love with God, that characterizes postmodern hymnody has replaced the emphasis on consecration and committment that was so characteristic of classic hymnody.

At this point, the essentially mystical nature of postmodern piety becomes obvious, even though it is a mysticism that is filtered through modern, psychological assumptions. This is evident, first, in the way this kind of spirituality believes in direct access to reality. The experiencing self is admitted, as it were, into the innermost places of God directly, without any wait. The result of this assumption is that personal intuition about the purposes of God, how His will is being realized in one’s personal life, tends to blur with divine revelation and become indistinguishable from it.

Second, the God so approached is often beyond rational categories. Third, grace, in this form of Christian life, is often understood as a power that brings psychological wholeness rather than as God’s favor by which we are constituted as His in Christ. And worship is less about ascribing praise to God for who He is, than it is celebrating what we know of Him from within our own experience.” From Losing our Virtue–Why the Church Must Recover its Moral Vision, by David F. Wells.

Hi!

I am not foolish enough to say there is no financial crisis. But, as I look at this video,  I am reminded that the true crisis is not that our freedoms are being taken away, or that our individual and national finances are in trouble.

Sadly, this video, though humorous in some sense, is a snapshot of the spiritual crisis we face. The Holy Spirit tells us that the Gospel preached is foolish enough–we do not need to add to the perception which people have of Christ and Christianity, by engaging in any folly that is in anyway related to things like this! But, how often do we find more comfort in something which we think is “spiritual” outside of the God’s revelation? Why are so dissatisfied to live by faith, and not by sight?

Let us make sure that the Jesus we “see” is the God of the Bible.

Let us redouble our efforts to help our family, friends, neighbors and coworkers see the Christ of the Scriptures!

Let us not spend the greater portion of our life efforts struggling for the American Dream! Let us rather give ourselves in an ever-increasing way to promote and defend the Good News of Hope in Jesus Christ! Let us hold to and hold forth the fundamentals of the Christian faith…

May God help us to recognize and confront the true crisis which lies before us!

HatTip: The Enlightened Redneck

Penn Jillette, other than being a magician, and entertainer (and by the way, one who flies WELL beyond the sound barrier of decency and propriety, IMO) is a vocal, avowed atheist. This clip of him is fascinating to me because it rebukes me of my gospel timidity.

Click on this Youtube video to see what I am talking about.

HT: http://teampyro.blogspot.com/2008/12/penn-jillette-on-evangelism.html