Last week I risked souring the fruit of the Spirit when I expressed my “discontent” with self-proclaimed “Thought Leader” Steve McSwain’s “6 Things Christians Should Just Stop Saying.” However, my feeble attempt at wrath only had room for three. Here are the others.

The rapture of Jesus is imminent.

Again, if you want to believe in some secret rapture of Christians from the earth just before the Tribulation, if you want to believe in and carry around in your hip pocket detailed charts and graphs of how its all going to happen, then so be it. But do the rest of us a favor and stop saying so in public.

So far, your record of correctly predicting the future earns a flunking grade. And I and scores of other Christians are frankly tired of apologizing for your arrogant — and so far, absolutely wrong — predictions as to when it’ll happen.

If you’ve been following along in the last post, you will see a familiar theme. Steve, in a flurry of tolerance, admits that Crazy Christians can believe whatever they want but really should just keep it to themselves. Trouble is that Steve doesn’t take the time to distinguish his targets and and does the columnist equivalent of carpet bombing Damascus. There is a HUGE difference between those who believe there will be a rapture at any time and those who think they can play pin-the-tail on the Antichrist. Let’s do a quick test, Continue reading …

Dear Reader, I was prepared to write this week about a really bad  Abortion Argument on Salon.com. But it seems that stupid arguments must alas trump bad arguments. Self-proclaimed “thought leader” Steve McSwain decided to vent his frustration with American Christianity by posting “6 Things Christians Should Just Stop Saying” at the mixed-bag that is Huffington Post. This particular post follows his other attempts at criticism such as “I Wish Christian Preachers Would Just Shut Up“  and “Why Christianity is Dying but Spirituality is Thriving.”

As I read through McSwain’s commentary I was struck with what I hope is righteous indignation but I’m humble enough to admit is probably my sin nature bathed in deep and cultivated sense of sarcasm. My friends, there are some things that people say with such thoughtless disregard for both decency and logic, that perhaps the only appropriate response is sarcasm.

Douglas Wilson has defended the use of sarcasm in Christian commentary with his book, A Serrated Edge: A Brief Defense of Biblical Satire and Trinitarian Skylarking. He points out several examples of the use of satire in the Bible. When Elijah taunted the prophets of Baal who were desperately trying to make a altar burn, I smugly imagine he was feeling the way I was when I read McSwain.  Before I launch into my snark, I would like you to know that I have thought and prayed over how to respond to McSwain’s post. I even sought council from several Godly people to make sure I wasn’t simply wallowing in angst or just trying to make a name for myself. After seeking their council, they agreed: Continue reading …

Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it or so it is said. I think there is a great deal of validity to this thought. The sexual revolution of the 1960s has made fairly big changes in the thinking of culture in the area of accepting sexual behaviors which had been regarded as deviant or at the very least, outside of the norm 50 years ago. Marriage was monogamous between one man and one woman for life. Sure, there were divorces but families in that situation were thought of as “broken” and the children were from “broken homes” signifying a less than ideal home life. Men and women may have “affairs,” sex outside of marriage but these relationships were regarded as wrong and most tried to hide them. These “ideals” are diminishing as the church continues its pursuit of trying to be acceptable to culture rather than speaking to and influencing culture and it is likely this trend will continue. In many ways we live in a book end of time. The time we live in now is more like the 1st Century than any other time in between then and now. The church transformed the way culture thought of themselves, God and their place in the universe. This included the area of sexuality.

The founders of Chic-Fil-A took a pro-traditional marriage position and Chicago Mayor, Rom Emmanuel worked to prevent them from opening a store in Chicago claiming that their traditional view of marriage “were not Chicago’s values.” The disregard for traditional marriage by the mayor surprised a few but passed with barely a ripple. Marriage is now being defined merely as two people, regardless of gender, entering into a legal union being called marriage. Continue reading …

Book Review: Buyer Beware Finding the Truth in the Marketplace of Ideas, Janet Parshall, Moody Press, 2012, 199 pages, $14.99

If you are looking for an informative and stimulating Christian book this one is instructive, thought provoking and practical. Janet Parshall is a columnist, author and radio host. In Buyer Beware she begins by taking us back to the 1600’s and John Bunyan’s classic work, Pilgrim’s Progress. She borrows Bunyan’s Vanity Fair imagery to launch into discussions about our present public square; “Vanity Fair” was and still is a rough place. Surely Christian and Faithful would have preferred the gentle countryside that lay not far beyond the fair. After all, who really wants to go into all that messy stuff – the shouting, the stealing, the lying, the sexual promiscuity, the turning of Truth on its head?

So let’s go visit Vanity Fair together. We’ll visit the booths and see for ourselves what is being bought and sold. Come and study the counterfeit goods being offered in the public square today so that you can better know how to offer the countervailing gift of truth. (Pages, 19 and 21).

Parshall transitions to the Old Testament Jeremiah Continue reading …

Many well meaning Christians, even those who have a fairly good grasp of Scripture, often try to defend their faith with what is rightfully called, Incorrigible truth. It is a claim or claims, which by definition cannot be corrected or falsified. Let me give you an example from the world of construction which I had happen years ago. I had built a suite of offices in Chicago. In this particular project one of the requirements was that we had the thermostats calibrated and the supply and return air ducts tested and balanced. We also had to check the relative humidity. All was completed and the reports submitted and accepted. The offices were then occupied. On one side of the space was a row of about 10 offices which were staffed by females. I am not certain gender was involved but it is at least possible. Continue reading …

Our second highly annoying habit is one that belongs almost exclusively to evangelicals. I don’t really know who thought up the idea of parody t-shirts but they should be subject to some serious church discipline. I really seriously defy anyone to look at this list of the worst Christian t-shirts and tell me how they are more effective at spreading the Gospel than simply having a conversation with someone about their understanding of Jesus. Maybe (and its a “big” maybe) there is someone who saw someone sporting what, from a distance, looked like a a cool Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirt and thought, Continue reading …

My son, Wesley, is getting to the age where we have to talk about stranger danger. This is particularly a concern for my wife and I because Wesley is, to put it mildly, sociable. He talks to everybody. While I was waiting for my oil to be changed at Wal-Mart the other day, Wesley was carrying on a conversation with a bicycle mechanic, a 70 year old grandmother of two, and a 19 year old co-ed. While I was at the counter being told I absolutely must get that $65.00 radiator flush or else, I overheard Wes announce to his companions “My dad turned forty and has a lot of grey hair because of me and my sister.”

So obviously we need to explain that striking up conversations with complete strangers is something we only do when a parent is around. Christian bioethicst and Eastern Orthodox Christian, Tristam Englehardt Jr., writes about a different kind of strangeness. Moral strangeness:

Moral strangers are persons who do not share sufficient moral premises or rules of evidence and inference to resolve moral controversies by sound rational argument, or who do not have a common commitment to individuals or institutions in authority to resolve moral controversies.

Here’s a way to illustrate the problems with having a substantive moral debate between moral strangers. Suppose that an Evangelical Christian and an Atheist both see the following picture posted on facebook.

Continue reading …