“Hypocrisy: prejudice with a halo”  Ambrose Bierce

 

 

 

 

Once again, your glamorous blog meisters have to deal with pull of schadenfreude when it comes to Paige Patterson. Patterson has a long history when it comes to the conservative Resurgence in the SBC. Claiming it was to get rid of the liberals who infected the Convention and seminaries, Patterson, along with buddy Paul Pressler, orchestrated the coming decades while enjoying beignets at Café Du Monde in New Orleans in the late 1960s. This coup d’état , however, took out more than just liberals. The SBC graveyard is littered with the bodies of honest Christians felled by the crusade for Baptist purity.
 

Paige, along with his wife, have always loved the spotlight and never shrink at calling attention to themselves. So, it can be somewhat interesting when, in so doing, Patterson inadvertently spotlights a problem in his own life. He wants public consideration, well, here it is.  We thank Tom Rich of the fabulous FBC Jax Watchdog blog,  Link, for calling attention to this public striptease by Paige Patterson. Pay particular attention to the picture and Patterson’s physique. 

 

 

Patterson Strip-Tease from FBCJax Watchdog on Vimeo.

 

Patterson appears to have eaten one too many beignets on his way to the Conservative Resurgence. He decries pornography and then displays food porn for the audience to have a good-natured laugh. Ha,ha. We can laugh off our sin of gluttony but let someone take a sip of wine and all hell breaks lose.
 

Folks, obesity is not a nice sin. Many people who come to see my husband for serious heart disease need to lose weight. By their indulgence and/or lack of exercise, they are shortening their lifespan, a gracious gift given to them by God. Each day, families lose a dad or a mother to diseases caused by obesity. Somehow, though, it is Biblically OK to kill ourselves with food but not OK to kill ourselves with alcohol.
 

Oh, granted, steroid usage and a few conditions can make one appear to be fat. If one is unable to exercise due to a medical condition, it is hard to keep weight off but it can be done with proper counseling. I have a friend whose daughter plays in a wheelchair basketball league. There is nary an obese teen present. It is important to note that there were no fat people found in the horrific concentration camps, which starved their prisoner population and overworked them.

 

American Christians have a particular penchant for getting on their high horse and condemning those who struggle with alcoholism and drug addiction. They really enjoy excoriating those who struggle with same sex attraction. Here is their simplistic solution. If only these sinners would come to Jesus, He would take away the addiction or attraction. They view these fellow strugglers as deviants with no will power. Interestingly, there are some Christians who specifically point fingers at the atheists and call said atheists, “obese.” Such claims have come back to bite them right in their pudgy gut. Here is the proof.
 

The well-known atheist website of PZ Meyers, Pharyngula, published a commentary entitled “Fat Christians Are a Lie.” Link.

 

“That paragon of scienciness, Conservapædia, has been arguing that atheism leads to obesity, and for proof, they have photos of grossly pig-like PZ Myers (author of Pharyngula) contrasted with slim, muscular Christian Chuck Norris. This is, of course, also evidence for their claim that "excess weight impairs brain function."

 

Is this true? Embarrassingly so!!

 

In an article entitled "Atheism and Obesity", Link, Conservapedia writes the following: 

 

“According to the Gallup Organization, "Very religious Americans are more likely to practice healthy behaviors than those who are moderately religious or nonreligious."

 

At this point, Conservapedia inserts a picture of an overweight PZ Myers (author of Pharyngula) along with the following commentary.

 

“A 2010 picture taken in Australia shows PZ Myers drinking ale/beer and he had excess weight in his abdominal area. A 2009 picture of a significantly overweight PZ Myers can be found HERE. In 2010, PZ Myers had health problems related to his heart.”

 

Unfortunately, the article does not stop there. It goes on to “prove” the premise by listing other “fat” atheists along with their pictures. Then, as proof that Christians are more healthy, this source puts a picture of Chuck Norris. Proof made. Case closed. Dee commences to bang her head against the wall.
 

Conservapedia bills itself as “The Trustworthy Encyclopedia”. Well, it isn’t and I think of myself as conservative. Here is the “rest of the story.”
 

Pharyngula goes on to report “MSNBC is reporting a correlation between religiosity and obesity, which simply can't be true. Aside from the difficulties of going from a correlation between two complex phenemona to an assumption of causality, we have it from an unimpeachable, objective source that the opposite is true.”

 

Here is an excerpt form that MSNBC article entitled Praise the Lard. Link.   
 

“It might be the potlucks, it might be those long hours sitting in pews, but whatever the cause, a new study presented this week shows a link between religious activity and weight gain.

“Our main finding was that people with a high frequency of religious participation in young adulthood were 50 percent more likely to become obese by middle age than those with no religious participation in young adulthood,” says Matthew Feinstein, the study’s lead investigator and a fourth-year medical student at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.”

 

Here is our dirty little secret. Christians are just as likely to be as fat, if not fatter, than non-Christians. However, evangelicals in America are known for pointing out the sins in others. Somehow, gluttony is the “nice” sin. We can’t help those extra pounds, can we, especially with all those homemade goodies at Sunday School?
 

True confession: I need to lose 10 pounds and I pretend like I am trying. If only I would cut down on eating and exercise more, the weight would come off. Isn’t this what we say to the alcoholic, “Just stop drinking?” And we show our disgust if they slip once or twice while the majority of us slip up every day of our lives in trying to lose weight?
 

Ah, we are all such a bunch of judgmental hypocrites and Paige and Dorothy Patterson are our patron saints. Patterson did a marvelous job shining a light into our darkness, albeit inadvertently, and he did so in a very public setting.
 

So, to honor Patterson’s faux pas and to help Paige and Dorothy lead the way to Baptist health, we offer our
 

Top Ten Suggestions to Lose Weight 
 

1. No more top secret meetings and beignets at Café Du Monde
2. On your next safari, haul your own carcass.
3. Give up bacon and eggs for Lent (or do Baptists do Lent)?
4. No more sampling delicacies in Dorothy’s BA degree in Homemaker classes.
5. Enroll Dorothy in an American Heart Association nutrition course and make her cook for you. She is, after all, the homemaker role model.
6. Train for WWE SmackDown, wrestle “Stone Cold” Al Mohler and solve both the weight and the Calvinism problem like manly men.
7. Fire the pastry chef at Pecan Manor.
8. Start chapel service with 10 minutes of calisthenics.
9. Commence the Daniel Fast as written about by your good friend, Elmer Townes. Link.
10. And, to show we have learned a thing or two from Mark Driscoll, sign Dorothy up for salsa classes while you train for Dancing with the Stars. It will bring "spice" to your marriage.

Nuff said.

 

Lydia’s Corner: Deuteronomy 32:28-52 Luke 12:35-59 Psalm 78:56-64 Proverbs 12:24