I Think I'm In Love

I've admitted before that I watch America's Got Talent - and sometimes they have some really cheesy acts that make the the term "guilty pleasure" apt.  But then they have a performance like this that blows me away, and I remember why I watch.

In case it's not clear from the video clip, the strings he's playing on are suspended across the auditorium - he literally turned the entire theater into a musical instrument.

A Random Detour

So many things I could be commenting on, and this is where my mind goes...

(With insincere apologies to REM and a knowing nod to "Weird Al" Yankovic)

Spam in your inbox at home (wait, what’s this?)
Think about the loser who had time to send it
Spam in your inbox at work (what the frak?)
Think about your firewall, wonder how it got through at all

That Nigerian prince wants to give you his dough
This discounted drug will help your member to grow
Your bank account is going to lock down
Wild party girls, they won’t make you frown

So, spam on the phone in your car
Spam anywhere that you are
Spam in your Gmail account
Spam, it continues to mount
Oh, spam.

Miscellany

A few random things that have caught my attention lately...

1. First, a belated nod to this post that nicely sums up why Jon Stewart has become my favorite TV personality.  If only there were more journalists ("serious" or otherwise) like him.

2. Ten Cliches Christians Should Never Use.  Seriously.  Some of these made me cringe even when I was a card-carrying conservative evangelical.

3. Rachel Evans reviews a book I really need to read.  Learning how to read the Bible on its own terms instead of literally has only made me love it more, so I'm happy to see more Christians waking up to the folly of treating it like a modern history book and instruction manual.

4. Finally, this picture, which could also be the motto of the religious right...

Inclusion

Sunday's sermon at Highlands Church, for those who haven't had the opportunity to hear Mark Tidd preach (and even for those who have).  In this message Mark makes his case for the full inclusion of LGBT individuals in the body of Christ.

Food For Thought

The history of theology (Christian or otherwise) is the history of people desperately trying to fit the way things actually are into the way their holy books say they should be.  (Think of the billions of words written in tens of thousands of books on religion "explaining" pain and suffering in the light of God's purported goodness.)  So some people do what Mom [Edith Schaeffer] did: spend a lot of time making excuses for The-God-Of-The-Bible.  Others contrive their theology to make it seem more enlightened than it is: Roman Catholic medieval dogma is rechristened as "Natural Law," Creationism is rebaptized as "Intelligent Design," Islam calls the oppression of women the "protection of women," and so forth.

There is another choice: To admit that the best of any religious tradition depends on the choices its adherents make on how to live despite what their holy books "say," not because of them.  "But where would that leave me?" my former self would have asked.  "I'd be adrift in an ocean of uncertainty."  Yes, and perhaps that's the only honest place to be.  Another name for uncertainty is humility.  No one ever blew up a mosque, church, or abortion clinic after yelling, "I could be wrong."

-Frank Schaeffer, Sex, Mom & God

At the very least, those of us who believe that the Bible is something more than just another book need to be willing to admit that we (and every other Christian who has ever lived) pick and choose which parts of the Bible to emphasize and which to downplay (or even ignore) when formulating our theology.  And that, therefore, we could be wrong about a great many things even if we're right about the Bible's unique significance.

Artful

Princess of China, by Coldplay (with Rihanna)

Not part of my Life Soundtrack series, but I really like the video.  And it's an opportunity to revisit this old post, where I referenced Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (which was very likely one of this video's inspirations)...

Resistance

With society's growing acceptance of its LGBT members, especially among the younger generations, it's no surprise that gay students are becoming vocal even at the more conservative Christian colleges.  So the rise of LGBT-supportive groups at schools as conservative as Oral Roberts University, Wheaton College and now Biola University was really just a matter of time.

And I do support the right of these schools to maintain theologically conservative stances on any and all issues they see fit.  So while some of the doctrines taught in their Bible classes may do a mind job on the gay members of their student body (I speak from my own experiences at such a school), nobody is truly being forced to attend them.  I do agree with Misty Irons' point about allowing gay students to live honestly, but at the schools in question it should be possible to accommodate that without any major change in doctrinal stance.

I do, however, have to take issue with a statement that Biola's president, Barry Corey, made in a recent address to the student body (as relayed by John Shore):

Who did He [Jesus] rise up in anger and not receive? Those who quoted scripture like the Pharisees, who wanted to legitimize a certain way of life that Jesus said was not right.

This from the president of a university that includes a theological seminary?  I can see where he's trying to go with that thought, but it's a rather ironic stretch for someone accusing others of twisting scripture.  Jesus' anger at the religious leaders of his day was directed at their hypocrisy and self-righteousness, at the people they drove away from God (both directly and indirectly), and at the higher value they placed on the letter of the law over the people the law was written for.  In the rare cases where those leaders were permissive rather than legalistic, it was primarily for the benefit of a privileged few.

It's one thing to debate what Christian sexual ethics should look like, and quite another to turn Jesus' righteous indignation upside-down to condemn those who call on the church to stop driving LGBT individuals away from God.  The fact that the top spokesman for a highly regarded evangelical institution would engage in such sloppy exegesis suggests that the Biola Underground has him far more rattled than he would ever publicly admit - and perhaps even that there are cracks in the dam that aren't yet visible to outside observers.

Exodus

No, not that Exodus.  Instead, here's an insightful article on ways that Christians drive people away from the church:

8 Ways Christian Fundamentalists Make People Convert

As Points 2 and 6 touch on, it's not just about bad behavior on the part of far too many Christians - it's often about a system of belief that forces people to abandon critical thinking and to dismiss any scientific discovery that contradicts "The Bible."  That false dichotomy often remains so deeply embedded in the minds of ex-fundamentalists that they continue to believe that the Bible must be taken absolutely literally or dismissed entirely - a mindset I've come across more than a few times in the comment sections of other blogs.

Those of us who understand that one can believe in God - and that He/She/They in some way inspired the authors who wrote the Bible - without abandoning reason share the frustration of the article's author.  As long as Christian fundamentalism remains a potent force in American culture there's no simple solution to the problem.  But perhaps in the larger picture it's necessary that the current situation plays out to its logical conclusion before Christianity's healthier strains can regain control of the conversation and rebuild the church on a firmer foundation.