As I watched the Red Sox edge out the Athletics last night, I noticed, again, the curious necklaces some MLB players wear: The Phiten Titanium Necklaces.  Some time ago, I ran across an article about them on Scienceline, which may or may not be a scientifically accurate commentary on the product.  BTW, in typical Web 2.0 fashion, the comments quickly degenerate into name-calling, verbal abuse, and irrelevant rantings, but you can get the gist of what supporters’ and detractors’ of Phiten’s effectiveness claims have to say about the product.

According to Phiten’s Web site (http://www.phitenusa.com/t-about.aspx):

Through dedicated research, we have developed a number of unique wellness technologies and products. Accordingly, we’ve won the trust of many consumers and increasing numbers of athletes use our products. We are building on this trust to offer new products, adapting and applying our technologies to a wider range of uses to support your health and well-being.

Curiously (riiiiight), there is no mention in the actual product developer’s web site as to what this research actually was, or the results thereof – like the comments in the Scienceline article.  Which gets me to thinking – do the people who use them believe they actually work?  I doubt it.  Because if they believed it really worked, they’d believe it was cheating because it made use of some sort of artificial means to enhance their abilities.  If substances like steroids and HGH are banned partly because of the unfair advantage they give to their users, then a magic necklace should be banned also… the reason why they’re not banned is because they aren’t believed to work.

So, why do so many MLB players wear them?  They cynical part of me attributes it to the marketing deal that Phiten struck with MLB in 2007. I mean, if a company paid me to wear something in order to enhance its exposure, as long as I didn’t have some sort of objection or aversion to it, heck, I’d probably wear it.

On the subject of the article How Do Christians Become Conservative? by Mike Lux, I had some thoughts I believe the world would do well to read, so I figured I’d make a couple posts about it.  The first one is here, which is a collection some general thoughts about the fallacy of equating a Christian worldview with political liberalism.  Of course, being a non-Christian, he stepped way out of his element by trying to explain Christian principles such as the nature of God, Jesus’ mission and teachings, the content of the Bible, heaven and hell, the church, etc.  So I thought I’d offer a different perspective, a Christian perspective, on these issues, and at the same time point out theological errors and logical errors in his arguments.

Understand that I’m not trying to school a non-Christian on Christian doctrine, but I’m trying to address the issue of Christians who are political liberals agreeing with arguments like this, possibly because he’s on the same side politically, rather than matching up what he says with the truth we find in Scripture and observe in human behavior.  He’s way off theologically, which is excusable, but what’s inexcusable is for Christians to agree with some of the theological errors.  If you read my former post, which you really should if you haven’t already, you will know that this response follows on the heels of a flurry of comments on a Facebook post.  A few lines at ta time isn’t enough of a platform to state my case, so I figured I could ramble on for as long as I wanted on my own blog.

So here’s a collection of logical and theological fallacies I thought I’d expose:

• “If that [not being religious or thinking about religious stuff] sends one to hell, at least I’ll be there with a lot of my favorite people.”
  Sarcastically saying that he prefers to spend eternity in despair based on his company, without the God Who is the source of all joy and significance, demonstrates that he has no concept of, or maybe no regard for, the teachings about hell that are in the bible he claims to know “pretty well”.
• “Conservative Christians’ primary argument regarding Jesus and politics is that all he cared about was spiritual matters and an individual’s relationship with God.”
  False and absurd.  I am, hang around with, and am taught by Conservative Christians, and we all know that He is concerned for peoples’ physical well-being, as well as economic and cultural status.
• “…if you actually read the Gospels, it is clear that Jesus’ main concern in terms of the people whose fates he cared about was for the poor, the oppressed, and the outcast.”
  Blatantly false.  If you actually read the gospels, you will see Him demonstrate that He cares for all people regardless of their socioeconomic status.
• His “serious class warrior” paragraph is all over the place — this could be a whole separate post.  “[Jesus] didn’t seem to like rich folks very much.”  So when Progressives spew their mantra about loving everyone, they mean everyone except rich people?  “In Matthew 6, he focuses on the love of money as a major problem.”  The love of money applies equally to people who have it and don’t have it.  “In Luke 12, he says that the wealthy who store up treasure are cursed by God.”  That curse is a consequence of misuse, not of being successful.  “…it is the poor who will get into heaven.”  Even if his beliefs aren’t as extreme as what he writes, we all know that getting into heaven doesn’t depend on a low economic status – if we thought so, we would try to keep poor people poor and make rich people poor in order for them to have a better chance of getting into heaven.  “He chases the wealthy bankers and merchants from the Temple.”  Presumably Lux is talking about Mark 11, which says nothing about the merchants being wealthy, and even if they were, that’s not why he drove them out.
• One of Lux’s favorite passages is the end of Acts 2.  But this passage talks about an individual church of faithful believers, not about a larger society – these people are bound together by their identity in Christ, not by being under some governmental authority.  Moreover, this small-group communal sharing is voluntary, not orchestrated by government.
• The thesis of his diatribe is that Conservatives do not do what Jesus taught about having compassion for the poor, because conservative politics are antithetical to His teachings.  Yes, the bible is loaded with passages about helping the poor, but contrary to what he wants us to believe, Christianity is loaded with conservatives who put this into practice.  Somehow pretending that it’s the political conservatives that are not doing the Word of God in this regard is just plain ludicrous, and propagating this nonsense is just plain irresponsible.

So we see that Lux is incapable of handling and applying the biblical text.  Not that he should — after all he’s not a Christian and has no regard for biblical authority.  That’s what disturbs me about Christians citing this article as a “great article” — how can an article that’s logically inconsistent and full of falsehoods and mischaracterizations be “great” to anyone?  How can an article that mischaracterizes God and misquotes and misapplies His Word be “great” to any Christian?

So, a link to this article was posted by a Facebook friend…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-lux/how-do-christians-become_b_570361.html

The title of the article is “How Do Christians Become Conservative?”, and the meta description that Facebook extracted to display is “Jesus may not have been primarily concerned with politics, but for what politics he did have, it is virtually impossible to argue that he was anything but a progressive thinker.”

Knowing that “progressive”, just like “moderate”, is a code word for “liberal”, you’d think that this is another article written by a liberal Christian telling everyone that God is a liberal and that if you’re a Christian you should be liberal too.  And you’d be right.  Except for the Christian author part.  It’s an article written by a non-Christian, trying to explain why he’s bewildered that any Christian can be a conservative.

If you haven’t read the article, do so now.
If you still haven’t read the article, do so now.
If you’ve read some of the article, and skipped over it because you liked it or didn’t like it or whatever, finish it now.

If you still haven’t read the article in its entirety, I encourage you to read on anyway through my comments, because they’re useful, but if you don’t get the complete context it’s your own fault.  What a terrible intolerant conservative thing to say, I know.

Here are Facebook comments I posted in reply to the original post, after some commenters said things like “nice article” and “great article”:

What a terrible article – a non-Christian taking his best shot at explaining the nature of God, Jesus’ mission and teachings, the content of the Bible, heaven and hell, the church, etc. is bound to miss the mark on many counts, and he sure does. I can excuse him for not knowing what he’s talking about, but I can’t excuse a Christian for accepting his false assumptions and being dragged along to some of the places he goes.

As expected, there were responses.  I would like to thank pretty much everyone who commented for being civil.  I hope the others can say the same about me.  A guy, I’ll call him “Ivan”, said:

So you have issues with the article. Fair enough…but you didn’t mention what any of them were. And you can’t accept a christian….I’m assuming a friend of yours…..from pondering this subject? Pondering, questioning….is a good thing. People should do more of it. God forbid someone might have a different interpretation. <name of unknown person>, help me collect some rocks so we can “stone” <Original Poster> when he comes to work. =)

I should have known.  Yeah, I did have an arm-length list of issues I was typing, but I didn’t want to be the guy who monopolized the post comments.  So I replied:

Ivan – I started to list my disagreements, but it was just too long. Look for Plan B, my own blog post, where anyone can make a comment.
What I said is that I can’t excuse a Christian for accepting false assumptions about the Christian faith from a non-Christian … friends included, friends especially. Pondering, questioning is indeed a good thing – I do so from one direction just as others do from the other.
<Original Poster>, I don’t want to stone you. My beef is with the content of the article and certain thought processes, not with you as an individual. I would like to caution Christians not to use the arguments Mr. Lux uses to arrive at  his conclusions. If you arrive at a similar place and can justify it properly, that’s one thing, but not the way he does it.

I listed out some example “issues I have with the article” and said I’d follow up with a more appropriate way to expound on them, to write as much as I want to without being too intrusive into someone else’s Facebook page. So here is is:

What I originally wanted to say and had to prune it down is this:

Mr. Lux says “I am always puzzled by how people who claim to be followers of the Jesus I read about in the Bible can be political conservatives.”  There are many who would say “I am always puzzled by how people who claim to be followers of the Jesus I read about in the Bible can be political liberals.”

What a terrible article – a non-Christian taking his best shot at explaining the nature of God, Jesus’ mission and teachings, the content of the Bible, heaven and hell, the church, etc. is bound to miss the mark on many counts, and he sure does.  I can excuse him for not knowing what he’s talking about, but I can’t excuse a Christian for accepting his false assumptions and being dragged along to false conclusions.

He uses his thoughts about God and the Bible to support the notion that political liberals care for the poor and outcast, while political conservatives don’t.  Hogwash.  The trend is this (not absolute, but a trend): Christian political liberals advocate empowering a government to deal with the poor and marginalized, while Christian political conservatives advocate taking personal responsibility for such.  Why the conservative perspective?  Because when God says to care for people, he isn’t talking to a centralized government – he’s talking to individual believers.  Not surprisingly, Mr. Lux doesn’t communicate that.  Pagans can feel good about pooling their money to give to some societal entity to distribute as it sees fit and believe they’re being altruistic, but if Christians do that, they’re being irresponsible.  I don’t want to beat up on liberals (because, honestly, some conservatives weaken the conservative position by doing so) but rather offer some challenging food for thought: if we really want to help the people who need it, we should take responsibility for it ourselves — a responsibility God explicitly gives to individuals — instead of passing it along to an impersonal entity.  I say impersonal entity to be purposefully general — this could be local or state governments, a federal government, a charity or cause that’s funded by government or businesses, whatever.

If the resources over which I have stewardship aren’t taken by a government to be mismanaged, some of which gets to the people an impersonal entity determines need to be helped by it, then responsibility falls on me to use those resources to help the people I personally am determined to help.  Do I embrace that?  Do I like that?  Not necessarily, admittedly, and less than I should, but that’s the way it should be.  God mandated it.  When He (in the person of the Father in the OT through the prophets, and in the person of Jesus in the NT) tells his people to care for others, he’s talking to “me” and “you”, not to the unbeliever or to “society”.  There are a lot of issues in play – here are some that come to mind:

• Even the most socialist liberal wacko will agree that governments are wasteful and inefficient.  If the US government collects $1.00 from me to help people, how much has already been spent because we’re trillions of dollars in debt?  Answer: all of it.  But let’s put reality on hold and pretend that the government isn’t in debt: How much of that dollar is eaten up by overhead?  You have to pay government employees to process those resources, pay their benefits, pay for the buildings and air conditioning, etc., not to mention some of it undoubtedly swallowed up by corruption (arguably more in a socialist government), overspending.  If 43¢ of the $1.00 I give is absorbed in overhead and 16¢ in mismanagement, that leaves 41¢ to go to the recipients.  If I distribute that myself, it’s the whole $1.00.  If the process is managed by a small or concentrated private group, there is incentive to be more efficient.  If that organization is Christian, the incentive is directed by the Holy Spirit.  (If you’re not a Christian, I lost you on that one, but Mr. Lux’s article is explicitly addressing the Christian perspective, so I am too).  If I find a good reputable organization that uses 17¢ in overhead and loses 6¢ in mismanagement, that leaves 77¢ to go to the recipients.  If I truly care about people, I’ll pray really hard and ask God if he wants the poor and outcast to get 41¢ or 77¢ of His $1.00 that He’s entrusted me to manage for Him.
• As a Christian, if you embrace the responsibility to help people yourself through your own social network, you target where your resources go.  So if you have a particular affinity or desire to minister to a focused group of people like Muslims or single moms or the elderly or photographers, you interact with those people and understand their needs on a personal level, and are more able to determine their needs than someone who sits in a building in Atlanta and processes a check to send them every month.  Does that mean you don’t care about Buddhists or jobless fathers or children or painters?  Of course not, but you are making your best effort to care for a group of people you have in your sphere of influence, investing resources including money but also including prayer, time, materials, social connections, and other things an impersonal entity is ill-equipped to provide.
• Speaking of targeting resources, if a “society” pools its resources and a central entity determines who needs what out of that pool, there is the very real issue of those resources used in a way that individuals don’t agree with.  From the conservative Christian perspective, if those resources are ultimately used for <insert heinous immoral filth here>, the control and responsibility of those decisions has been taken away from the individual.  The point here isn’t which things are bad and which are OK, the point is that individuals and focused groups are the right ones to make those determinations, not politicians and lawmakers and agency officials.

There is a whole lot more to being a Christian liberal or Christian conservative than helping the poor and outcast, but Mr. Lux (thankfully) doesn’t go into that in his article so neither will I.  Staying on-topic: certainly, the conservative is in danger of being a hypocrite by hoarding wealth as his own rather than using it to further the kingdom of the One who entrusts him with it; conversely, the liberal is in danger of being a hypocrite by substituting ‘society’ for a personal faith and integration within a community of believers.  Shamefully, Mr. Lux and others are quick to point out the former but ignore the latter.

So in terms of “helping the poor and outcast”, the political conservative approach is more than compatible with God’s will, and I would argue, even a better fit than political liberalism — assuming that either is wrapped an authentic biblical Christian worldview.   In the spectrum of political conservatives, it’s obvious that many are to some degree heartless, uncaring, ruthless, tyrannical, profit-oriented, oppressive, immoral.  You’re fooling yourself, however, if you believe that the same doesn’t apply to many political liberals.  What’s at issue here is, assuming one is a Christian, how does that Christian worldview inform the political philosophy you have regarding care for the poor and outcast?  To further narrow it down, what if you are a Christian and have a decent biblical perspective on the nature of God, sin, and the person and work of Jesus, and are at least trying to do a fairly good job of obeying His Word?  If that’s where you start, where I believe I am, then the mandate to care for the poor and outcast is to be embraced on a personal level (the political conservative approach), and not on a societal level (the political liberal approach).

Furthermore, I believe that the societal approach does a discredit to Christianity by divorcing the meeting of needs from the gospel.  Mr. Lux wouldn’t agree with me here, but I frankly don’t care: the purpose of a Christian showing love and mercy and care for people who need it is to demonstrate God’s provision connected with the gospel message, not to make them more comfortable — this isn’t to say that God doesn’t want you to be more comfortable, it’s to say that God wants you to realize that true comfort is by His provision, not by the provision of “society” or an intangible “goodness”, or a pagan deity or impersonal “spirituality”.  If we take the societal approach, we give the impression that humanity’s greatest needs are solved by governments and institutions and programs rather than by a personal God interacting personally through His people.  If the problems are addressed on a personal level by Christians, that personal interaction will (should!) include an introduction to the God who cares enough about the person to interact personally.  The societal approach sends the message “society cares”; the personal approach sends the message “God cares”; the personal approach coupled with a proper perspective on God and the bible sends the message “God cares, and by the way, let me clarify what I mean by ‘God’”.  Yes, you can fall on either side of the political spectrum and still be engaged in the personal approach, but I would argue the conservative side is no less biblical, even more so, because if the resources a person is using aren’t dumped in to society’s pot, the individual — on whom the responsibility lies –  can better target their use.

Whoa, this post is quite long.  But quite good, if I do say so myself.  I have a slew of particular logical and theological problems with what Mr. Lux says, but in order to break things up a bit I’ll make another post about them.

Andy Box recently posted a blurb about a Theological Worldview Quiz which piqued my interest somewhat.  I’m always interested in what people think about theology, so I took the quiz and scored like this:

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 79%
Neo orthodox 57%
Fundamentalist 50%
Emergent/Postmodern 46%
Reformed Evangelical 39%
Classical Liberal 32%
Roman Catholic 18%
Modern Liberal 14%
Charismatic/Pentecostal 14%

Looks like the quiz setter-upper has nine worldview categories and scores the taker as to what percentage agreement he has with that worldview.  I suppose, for example, that a Catholic who is big on ceremony and ritual and tradition would score high in Roman Catholic and low in Charismatic/Pentecostal.  The quiz results also show you a summary description of what his perspective on your highest category is.  Mine was:

You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God’s grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly [sic] by John Wesley and the Methodists.

Interesting… I went to a Methodist church for years during high school and college, where I learned nothing, zero, zilch about doctrine except “God loves you”. My doctrinal beliefs are derived more from Hank Hanegraaff and DTS grads than from Methodism. But if you throw out Methodist and Neo orthodox (what’s that??), I think it’s a fairly accurate portrayal of me as a half-fundamentalist who is open-minded enough to see some merits of the Emergent & Liberal perspectives.

I was going for the high score on the “fundamentalist” and “orthodox” part of “neo orthodox”, but someone else beat me out, scoring 64% in Neo Orthodox and 64% in Fundamentalist.  Dang.  But I see the reason why — I don’t like the results’ description of Fundamentalist.  The guy who scored higher than me in Fundamentalism has this said about him:

You are a fundamentalist. You take the Bible as the foundation of your faith and read it very literally, and it shapes your worldview. Non-fundamentalist Christians have watered-down the Gospel in your view, and academic study of the Bible stops us from ‘taking God at his word.’ Science is opposed to faith, as it contradicts basic biblical truths.

Unfortunately, the popular and official definition of Fundamentalist is quite different from my (more correct IMHO) definition.  I would define Fundamentalism as “adherence to the fundamental, basic, foundational elements of a belief system without particular regard for extreme or less-substantiated variations thereof”.  I consider myself a Fundamentalist in that I think I adhere to the Fundamentals; however, the popular conception of Fundamentalism has replaced “fundamental” with “extreme”, as this description does – just look at yourdictionary.com and merriam-webster.com.

If my conception of Fundamentalist were applied, we would see that:

• the Fundamental is that God created the natural universe whereas the Extreme is that He created it in six literal 24-hour days
• the Fundamental is that Jesus will return and reign as King forever whereas the Extreme is that believers will be raptured before a seven-year tribulation and subsequent 1000-year earthly Kingdom
• the Fundamental is that God is sovereign judge whereas the Extreme is that he sends hurricanes and floods as divine punishment on an apostate people
• the Fundamental is that God blesses us with giftedness which we are to use to serve others and glorify Him whereas the Extreme is that He specifically fills us with the ability to speak in other languages

I could go on.  The point is, in these examples, the Extreme position is not necessarily wrong, it’s just that it’s not Fundamental. The popular conception of Fundamentalist is what I would call Extremist. The quiz results’ conception of Fundamentalism is not far off, basically characterized as believing in miraculous or supernatural occurrences without critical thought, as evidenced by the comments on academic study and science being opposed to faith.

Academic study does not stop us from taking God at His Word – it helps us to understand what His Word actually means.  Science is not opposed to faith – they are two different realms – indeed countless scientific discoveries have come about as a result of faith and many serve to confirm the validity of faith, but at the core, science is concerned with measuring the physical-natural world and does not apply to anything that is not physical-natural.

As for the role of the Bible… I’ll throw away the “you read it very literally” clause because I find it very misleading.  At least 4 of the first 5 respondents I saw on Andy’s blog in the first few days attend a “Bible Church”, but scored low on Fundamentalism — presumably, hopefully, because of a wrong definition of Fundamentalism.  “Bible Church” is not a denomination, so there’s no official doctrinal statement that spans all fellowships that have “Bible Church” in the name, but the very word Bible in the name suggests that the bible is of fundamental importance.  Indeed, if you look at the “what we believe” or “our beliefs” or “doctrine” section of your favorite local Bible Church (samples: IBC, NWBC, BCBC, Grace), you will likely find things like “supreme source of truth”, “truth without any mixture of error”, “inerrant in the original writings”, “of supreme and final authority”, “without error in the original writings”, “supreme and final authority in doctrine and practice”.  Sounds pretty fundamental to me.  The worship, sermons, lay teaching, educational programming, and outreach ministry I’ve experienced in Bible Churches demonstrate that the bible is of fundamental importance.  The Bible Churches have arrived at this doctrine not whimsically, but rather because the pastors and elders and staffs have, as a result of careful consideration, determined that there is sufficient evidence that the Bible is divine rather than human in origin, and as such authoritative.

Which brings me to the disparity in the quiz’ treatment of Fundamentalist and Emergent/Postmodern.  Emergent and Postmodern are displayed together, and the definitions and popular conceptions of Fundamentalist and Postmodern are that the two are opposing positions.  Of course we’re not given the details of how the quiz is scored, but I see a few examples of questions that necessarily set up an either-or relationship between the two – answering such a question in a non-neutral way necessarily leans you toard one and away from the other.

For the past year or so, I have personally become very interested in observing, maybe even participating in, dialogue that describes the dynamics of Fundamentalist vs. Emergent thinking.  I say “vs.” because I see it as just that – Fundamentalism pitted against Emergentism.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who sees a correlation between the Fundamentalist/Emergent sides of the theological spectrum and the Conservative/Liberal sides of the political spectrum.  You might not like it, but I will generalize: it’s not always the case, but is often the case, that theological Fundamentalists are political Conservatives and theological Emergents are political Liberals.  I’ll go ahead and say it so there’s no ambiguity: I lean decidedly toward theological Fundamentalism and political Conservatism.

This thought process led me to check out one prominent example.  Well-known Emergent pastor and author Rob Bell’s church has a very different “what we believe > theology” statement.  Interestingly, the church’s name is Mars Hill Bible Church, but their theology statement stands in stark contrast to the other Bible Churches I’ve referenced here.  The lone reference to any thought of scripture being authoritative or inerrant is the word “inspired”, and it’s weakened by the fact that it’s not talking directly about the scriptures themselves but about the people who wrote them.

An important and legitimate criticism of churches that would be termed “Emergent” or “Emerging” and the more liberal denominations is that they in general have a low view of scripture and place more emphasis on subjective experience and conversation to heighten or broaden spirituality.  In my view, there is a very real danger of having those who lead from such perspectives floating their followers along untethered to a guided scriptural interpretation, leaving them to rely on something wavering and subjective (experience, feelings) rather than solid and objective (the Bible).  That’s closer to Oprahism than Christianity.

All this is not to say that I am against the “emergent church”, whatever that is, in all its forms, whatever those are.  Nor am I against a certain amount of liberal thinking in terms of spirituality.  But as a Conservative I err on the side of caution.  I am all for the Emergent and Liberal ideas of engaging culture in dialogue without being dogmatic, integrating arts as part of worship, and showing love to people who don’t behave as we think they ought to.  The beef that I have with Emergent entities (whether they be people, pastors, churches, or books) is only insofar as they are “propositionless”.  There’s too much to go into here, so I’ll make another post about all this, but the point here is that I believe that I am quite justified in my insistence that the bible be central to the Christian’s theology, and that will not do damage to one’s own spirituality or evangelism.

For all of us out there who attend Bible Churches, whether you’re at IBC, NWBC, or BCBC, I pray that we keep the B in BC and sound an alarm when it’s in danger of being dropped in favor of something else.  If your congregation doesn’t have a B in the name, that’s OK; for you I pray that you have a B in your doctrine.

I got another one yesterday… you know, the e-mail that tells you that if you don’t forward it to everyone you know, God will be disappointed with you.

First of all, I’d like you to know that I am a Christian, adhering to the essentials of Christian doctrine. (There are many places you can find lists of essential doctrine, including at the Christian Research Institute’s Web site.) So when I challenge the content of this message, I’m doing so from a Christian perspective, so don’t think this is another post bashing those fundamentalist Christian nut cases. Rather, it’s a call to think about how to effectively communicate God’s attributes and message by guarding against some ineffective ways.

Before reading on, view the e-mail here (an html-formatted version that’s pretty close to an actual representation of the forwarded-forwarded-forwarded e-mail I received) so you’ll understand my observations and comments.

The author specifically implores you to “make a personal reflection on this”… heh, OK, I will.

Hmmm, where to start? I’ll tackle the style/format/communication issues first and then move on to the theology of the content…

I’m no marketing genius, but you don’t have to be one to understand that the gaudiness of the format is just not a good way to make the reader receptive to what you’re trying to communicate. Six different bright font colors on a black background?? 24-point font?? The subject and first two lines in ALL CAPS, which we all know means you’re being YELLED AT?? And the styles and line breaks are set up so that there’s at least 5 times the appropriate space between lines of text, so you have to keep scrolling down in the middle of each thought. Honestly, every time I receive something like this in a similarly painful format, I read the whole thing only because I want to find what all is wrong with it. Reading till the end had additional benefits: I’m pleased to know that at least two people use AVG 8.0.100, and I’m happy to have that advertisement for the now-expired “i’m Talkaton” [sic] that someone’s Yahoo! mail or whatever appended to the message.

The author makes it a point to tell you this is “very interesting, read until the end.” Why tell me it’s interesting or to read it until the end? Is it to be assumed that most of the things you send me aren’t interesting, or worthy of being read till the end, and that this is a special exception?

OK, that’s it for the annoyances having to do with formatting and communicative style. I encourage you to read, digest, and act upon my post about E-mail Stewardship to avoid promoting these and other practices. On to the theology stuff….

What purpose is there really in pointing out that some people who disparaged God in some way died in noteworthy ways? (I almost think that the intent is to pass it around in Christian circles, congratulating ourselves on being spared from God’s wrath.) After reading it several times, I really think that the author is trying to tell you that you shouldn’t dishonor God or He might zap you. That’s very simplistic, but I think that really is the point – the examples are given in such a way as to draw a corollary between a God-dishonoring statement and a horrible death.

You know what? It could be true. If you speak or act in a way that dishonors God, you just might die tragically as a result. It has happened before: in Acts chapter 5, two people withheld what was promised to God, lied about it, and subsequently died; in First Samuel chapter 17, Goliath the Philistine defied God and His people, getting a rock buried in his forehead as a result; there are a number of such instances described in the bible. The problem is, even in these miraculous instances, you don’t know for sure if their deaths were a result of their disrespect for God; you can make a good case for it, but mostly because God demonstrated that He was using it to accomplish a particular purpose in history. I would argue that the vast majority of miracles are concentrated around significant spiritual turning points in history – for example, Creation, the Flood, the Exodus, the establishment of the nation of Israel, Jesus’ earthly ministry, the birth of the Church, the bringing of the Word of God by missionaries to previously unreached regions, etc. You cannot make the case that John Lennon’s or the Brazilian girl’s deaths had the historical impact that Goliath’s or Ananias’ did. So, although it’s true that God can smite whomever He will whenever He wishes, it’s not consistent with His M.O. to do so, especially not where His greater purposes are not evident. While I grant that it’s possible that God did somehow put these people to death for their irreverent remarks, it doesn’t seem likely if you study how He has revealed Himself and and carried out His relationship with people throughout history. To reduce God to an impulsive, capricious hothead with a chip on His shoulder who one-ups his adversaries by putting them to death is to completely misunderstand His character and motives, and, worse, perpetuates the stereotypes that hide the true message of Christianity. Those who are vocal about their rejection of the Christian Faith use these kinds of things to support their views – they either don’t believe in or refuse to worship a God who kills off those who disrespect Him; and they poke fun at those who propagate such notions. Just do a Google search on “Death is certain but the Bible speaks about untimely death” and you’ll find comments like this and this, as well as numerous bitter and condescending atheistic comments on blog posts.

The author of this e-mail correlates a disrespect for God with dying a terrible death, but in fact his examples are isolated instances that he conjures up to subjectively prove the point rather than objectively coming to the conclusion the majority of the evidence leads to. If you stop for a few seconds, you can think of many people who disrespect God but live long, successful lives; even worse, you think of many who love God but whose lives are cut short tragically. You have no logical choice but to come to the conclusion that, excluding miraculous events, which by definition are not normal occurrences, speaking out in disrespect against God and dying a noteworthy tragic death are at best coincidental. To claim to claim that each of these cases is a miraculous occurrence, the work of the direct hand of God, is to claim a revelation outside of the scope of His Word – a dangerous theological position.

I can’t comment on someone’s use of a verse like Galatians 6:9 in such a way without doing what we should all do when a verse is applied: study it, which means to seek to understand it in context, which is to understand who wrote it to whom under what circumstances and inside of what train of thought. Often times, non-Christians (and many Christians, I suppose) will read bible verses like random quotes or proverbs, thinking that they are universally applicable bite-sized tidbits, rather than being phrases or sentences that belong inside a particular context. Galatians 6:9 is a sentence or two (depending on which way the translation you’re reading breaks it up) inside a paragraph that’s in a section of a somewhat long letter that the apostle Paul wrote to a group of churches he had previously visited. You need to know a little about Paul, these churches, and what he’s talking about in this sixth chapter in order to understand this verse – you can’t just snatch out this verse and throw it at whomever seems to be “mocking” or “making fun of” God. It’s doubtful that the word that’s translated into English here as “mocked” even has the connotation of disparaging or making fun of. Merriam-Webster defines “mocked” mostly in terms of contempt and defiance, which is a much better fit in the context of this passage, which addresses how to treat wayward fellow churchgoers, helping with their (spiritual) burdens, embracing your own responsibility, and being consistent in your service of others. “Mocking” God in this context is defying God’s directives with regard to church service, fooling yourself into thinking you can fool God into favoring you if you have the right pious attitudes and words but don’t give evidence of your Faith by putting some action behind it.

So, while I appreciate the author’s willingness to do a small part to propagate the proclamation of the glory of God, I can’t help but take issue with the method of delivery. Indeed, God is powerful enough to make someone pay dearly if he rejects Him as Lord; but his method of dealing with people is in most cases an invitation to willingly enter into a relationship with Him, rather than strong-arming the person into submitting against his will.

To a certain extent, evangelizing (which is a step in the direction of the Great Commission’s charge to make disciples) is ‘winning’ people to the Christian point of view, giving reason for the hope we have with gentleness and respect, or “speaking the truth in love”. This e-mail fails on many accounts: it speaks the truth some, but mixes in a good deal of fantasy; the gentleness part is missing altogether; piousness rather than love seems to be the motivator here; respect and reason are discarded as misinterpretations of selected pieces of the bible are followed to false conclusions. It shouldn’t be the goal to make everyone feel warm and fuzzy, but it sure does a lot of harm to assist critics in taking pot shots at Christianity by giving them the ammunition they want. Atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists are constantly receptive to, and on the prowl looking for, information to use in their case against ‘religion’ or ‘belief in God’. Many times this information is used to obscure and take focus off of the main points (is there one God? is Jesus human and God? is the bible the true, inerrant revelation of God?) and put it where it doesn’t belong (“see – those people are nutso and therefore what they say is wrong”). Let’s not give them those opportunities. Let’s paint as accurate a picture as we can of God and the bible – the critics’ beef needs to be with God Himself, not with us.