Do you really need a sermon to convince you that being alive is being better than dead? Well if you weren’t sure, hopefully I can talk you around!
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The following is a scenario in an imaginary world:
A seller is selling all the diamond rings in the world, and the world consists of him and ten other people. All ten potential buyers would like diamond rings, but every time a diamond ring is offered for sale and everyone makes an offer to buy a ring, two of those ten people offer more. This results in a bidding war until the other eight people can no longer afford to buy the ring. Consequently, all the diamond rings go to just two people.
But at the end of the day, these are diamond rings. Who really cares? They could never be considered essential for living the good life.
Also in this world: A seller is selling all the food in the world. In advance, we will rule out “but you can produce enough food for yourself without the seller,” by declaring, as part of the thought experiment, that this would require so much time that people could not work for a living, and it would in many cases require resources (such as suitable land) that people do not have. So this is ruled out.
Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Luke 9:62
I’m about to write about what the Bible says about men, women, and the church, and I do so with a sense of weariness at what might follow.
I have come to truly, truly hate the conversation among Christians about what the Bible says about the sexes and their roles (or lack of specific roles) in the church. I don’t say that about many conversations. People put their hand to the plow of biblical exegesis and then look back. Actually that’s possibly too kind – people put their hand to the plow of biblical exegesis as a gesture because they know that Christians are supposed to do biblical exegesis, but they are looking back the whole time. They are looking over their shoulder, away from the text and at the values they already hold. They are looking away from the text and at the world, fearful that they will look backwards or insufficiently progressive in the eyes of others. They cannot, at least as far as I can tell, make any distinction between “this is what I, a Christian person with my values, believe and is important to me” and “this is what this piece of text, external to me and written by somebody else, means.”
The Bible might convey things that you find offensive.
As an individual Christian person with your own beliefs, values and priorities, you must be willing and able – not just with your lips but with your actions – to reconcile yourself to the fact that when you are interpreting a piece of text, even a piece of text in the Bible, you might not agree with it. The Bible might convey things that you find offensive. You need to be willing and able to shut up, keep your voice out of it, and let the text speak even when it violently rides roughshod over what you would have said if you had been the author. Even when it sounds bigoted in your opinion. Even when it’s embarrassing. Shut up and listen.
The universe has a personal cause, since God created the universe and God is personal. But does the “principle of determination” demonstrate that the cause of the big bang must be personal, or must we rely on other reasons for maintaining this? I’m currently (although tentatively) inclined towards the latter.
Partly a product of social media, the way we talk about those with whom we disagree has changed a lot.
In particular, at the risk of sounding partisan, here is the way I see those who view themselves as “progressive” (what a terrible name to give yourself) engaging religious conservatism: Instead of talking to people about why they disagree and why they think people of a conservative bent should change their minds or behaviour, they talk about them to the world. When they do so they are not critically engaging with them (even if they tell us that this is what they are doing). Instead they are serving the social function of shaming them, not so that they will change their mind, but so that they will be afraid of speaking.
Many progressive Christians, if I have observed things correctly, think that they are the real followers of Jesus (who, we are told, was an inclusive, tolerant, liberal-minded progressive), while religious conservatives are more like the religious hypocrites from whom Jesus distanced himself. Sweeping generalisations are usually wrong if taken as hard and fast rules. This description is true of many religious conservatives, no doubt There are plenty of them, after all. But to a large extent it is self-flattering nonsense. While many progressives like to say that religious conservatives “pick and choose” which commands of Jesus they follow, sometimes it’s helpful to hold up a mirror to this outlook, if only because of its irrepressible self-confidence in being real, authentic, pure-as-the-driven-snow, Jesus-following Christianity, along with its current occupation of a position of social power, something Christians are justified in being suspicious of (let’s remember that it’s not just a worrying combination when it’s manifested in the religious right).
Progressive Christianity, had it existed in the first century, would have found opportunities to shame Jesus himself.
Note: When this article was first written it made reference to Christianity Today. This was an error. In fact the website in question is Christian Today. My apologies for the initial error.
Clickbait. Clickbait is everywhere. What happened next will blow your mind. You won’t believe what this guy said. Personal trainers hate this guy for telling everyone this one weird trick to lose weight. OMG, #5 on this list gave me chills!
Sometimes clickbait is blatant, as in examples like those. Other times it’s in the wording, where you can argue that there’s a sense in which the headline is true, but the writer knows quite well that people will understand it to mean something that is blatantly false yet titillating.
I expect clickbait from some places, as well as headlines and even stories that spin things so extremely that they basically amount to what is being dubbed fake news. Yes, Huffington Post, I mean you.
Now here’s a recent tweet from Christian Today:
That looks pretty clear, right? Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is going to express remorse over The Reformation. I don’t think there’s any honest doubt about what those words will be taken to mean by most readers: The Archbishop of Canterbury, to a considerable extent at least, regrets that the Reformation happened. Typical. What a wishy-washy, Ecumenical liberal who doesn’t think theological distinctives matter. He’s basically a Catholic! Anglicans, huh? What else would you expect?
Bait laid. Next come the clicks for which the bait was laid. And when you click on the link, you’re taken to the story, with this headline:
Oh. So… he doesn’t regret the Reformation. He regrets that it was accompanied by violence. Well. How about that?
Actually, CT used as its source a story from the Daily Mail (yes, really), which is entirely about violence and people being burned to death etc, something Welby regrets.
Decide for yourself whether or not this constitutes clickbait. The answer will shock you!
NOTE: I am about to slowly make my return to regular blogging, and I have a number of partially-written pieces that I will finish and publish first. I wrote most of this article some time ago, shortly after the Ashley Madison website, which promotes extramarital affairs, was hacked and personal details of members were leaked to the public.
I defend child molesters and adulterers. You should too, depending on what you’re defending them from.
In the past, I’ve upset people by denying that you have the moral right to kill a child molester in retribution for what they’ve done.
Some of the same people who (I think) want to see themselves in Jesus’ sandals as he stood between the adulterer and the accusers, saying “let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” have been having far too much fun in the stoner mob when this or that Christian has confessed to having an Ashley Madison account. I wonder what degree of satisfaction they will have gained from the suicide of John Gibson. Hey, you didn’t actually throw a stone, so you’re all good, right?
Abortion and politics are two areas where people’s ability to think is seriously compromised. People use and share arguments that employ reasoning they would never find acceptable in another setting. With the American Presidential election looming and with abortion being a perennial political hot potato (not that I realistically see any real change likely with either major candidate), the noise of contorted reasons for why you should vote for this or that candidate is rising to a deafening level.
This morning I spotted this argument being shared on Facebook by a prominent Christian blogger, as follows:
Recently a group of Islamic State sympathisers entered a Catholic Church in Normandy, France, during Mass, took hostages and murdered a priest.
Naturally, the French authorities condemned this violent act. This line in particular caught my eye:
François Hollande, the French president, promised to win the war against terrorism. In a televised address to the nation he said: “To attack a church, kill a priest, is to profane the republic.”
The republic? The irony here was a little rich. The republic, established by the French Revolution? The revolution in which clergy were literally being killed by those advocating atheism and reason, because the clergy represented allegiance to a foreign power? The republic whose violent birth is still celebrated on Bastille Day, commemorating a day of shocking violence, killings and beheading? Surely there is a fundamental disconnect here. I mean sure, of course I get that Mr Hollande condemns the attack. I don’t doubt his sincerity. But there doesn’t seem to be much careful, consistent thought to this statement in a French context, that an attack on the Church is an attack on the Republic.
I took to Twitter thus: “A Muslim kills a priest and he’s bad. Atheists murder the religious and people celebrate Bastille Day because of it. You silly Frenchies.” Yes its short and snarky, but such is Twitter.
You might think that when people dismiss “social justice warriors,” it is because they just don’t want their own bigotry to be challenged. You’d be wrong. It’s because social justice warriors kill the very conversations about justice they want to be seen as having. The reaction to Mike Hosking’s comments about Māori representation on the local councils is just the latest example.
The back story: There’s a current affairs TV show here in New Zealand called Seven Sharp, so named because it screens at 7pm. It’s normal on this show, as on many others, for the presenters to offer their own editorial comments on stories, discussing the issues raised with each other and provoking conversation from viewers.