Fireworks over the Hungarian Parliament Building. -Pixabay
“Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark, it’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year!”
― Collected Verse from 1929 On
We have some exciting posts coming in the next week or so. In the meantime, I looked back on posts I planned to get to but never did.
J D Hall and his negative view of being a pastor.
Many of you might remember our posts about JD Hall. Here is a link to many of them. In 2022, we left Hall having been fired from his job as a pastor due to an apparent addiction to Xanax or other medication. He had been accused of strangling his wife, who survived, and embezzling money from the church. He moved from the area and purportedly sought help for his drug addiction. On October 26, 2023, The Christian Post featured Being a pastor is an awful existence,’ JD Hall says a year after being removed from the pulpit.
Hall, who formerly led Fellowship Baptist Church in Sidney, Montana, and was known for his scathing criticisms of Christian leaders on his polemics website Pulpit & Pen, and, more recently, Protestia, was removed from his roles with those organizations after news broke about his arrest on DUI and a weapons charge last summer. However, no alcohol was found in his system when a blood alcohol test was administered.
…Hall revealed he is now living a quiet rural life with his family and doesn’t miss vocational ministry.
“You know, I always felt like I was thrust into it. But David, I’m sure I’ve had conversations with you over the years where I talked about the stress and the burden of it. … To have 100 or 120 people with their problems somehow become your problems. Never knowing when the phone is going to ring, being gone from my family so much,” Hall said.
…“I don’t miss it. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out why guys who seem like they just can’t get out and go do something else, why they would persist. Being a pastor, I’ve said this for a long time, it’s an awful existence. It just is.”
He claims he has no intention of returning to the pastorate. It appears he is still married to his wife.
I look at guys like Perry Noble or Mark Driscoll who just don’t know when to quit. And I’m thinking, you know, … you’ve heard me say that for years, that if you’re in the ministry and you become disqualified, get out and stay out,” Hall said.
“If nothing else, I hope to practice what I preach in that. It’s the last thing I want to do.
Many might be surprised to learn that Julie Anne Smith and I had a cordial relationship with Hall. We would freely speak about our concerns for his ministry. And that is where I think Hall might be mistaking the ministry goals as a pastor. Much of Hall’s time was spent confronting other churches about their differences from his view of faith. This view of faith also landed him in the political arena. It is safe to say that Hall was considered an outspoken advocate for right-wing politics and its yoke to the church. Let me say this just in case he is reading this (he has changed his cell so that I couldn’t contact him).
Jordan, had you dropped the need to confront church all over the state and even nationally, you might have found the pastorate easier to bear. However, I am grateful that you received treatment and have established a new life, more in keeping with your health.
Rick Pidcock and Shiny Happy People
I have long appreciated Rick Pidcock’s writings. I learned that his posts at Baptist News Global were generally the most-read articles of 2023. Congratulations! We have discussed the documentary Happy Shiny People, but I recently reread this article and found it worth the time. How to connect the dots while watching Shiny Happy People.
He reviewed the IBLP’s statement on the documentary, which it claimed was sensationalized.
IBLP, the organization founded by Bill Gothard that is responsible for building the theological blueprints of the Duggars, released a statement June 2 about how Shiny Happy People covered their organization. They believe Amazon’s coverage is a reflection not of a problem in evangelicalism or even in their organization, but of “today’s culture.”
“Its misleading and untruthful commentary mocks that which is good and moral in the most sensationalized way possible, both for shock value and for profit,” IBLP claimed. Instead, they point to “several million people” who have been “positively impacted by our ministry.”
Pidcock claimed the IBLP was trying to distance itself from IBLP and the Duggars, but that did a disservice to the victims.
Indeed, there is nothing in their statement of faith any mainstream conservative evangelical ministry would take issue with. So is the entire theological structure they all hold in common to blame? Or is it enough for conservative evangelicals to wash their hands of IBLP, or for IBLP to distance itself from Bill Gothard or the Duggars?
Reflecting on one moment when Dillard said, “No one was supposed to find out,” Drumsta wrote: “What I saw was a triggered Jill who fell back into her inner child. … It was her trauma, her hurt, her shame speaking. She was a victim. No one protected her. No one defended her. … It was a quick, yet very deep moment that to me, revealed a wounded child that still needs time to heal.”
If survivors are going to put themselves out there to share their stories with the hope the abuse they suffered never happens again, then we do a disservice to them and to the children still suffering within the towers of abuse if we are unwilling to connect the dots. Their trauma is not fodder for our entertainment. It is a prophetic warning about how power is pursued and abuse is sacralized by the most influential conservative evangelical ministries today.
The Gospel Coalition hired Alex Harris, Josh Harris’s brother, to make matters worse. (Nothing ever changes for this group, does it?))
Then, criticizing the series itself, Harris wrote: “On the few occasions the filmmakers try to connect Gothard’s teachings to broader themes in Christianity, the attempts are invariably heavy handed, often equating Gothard’s genuine extremism with beliefs held by the vast majority of evangelicals.”
But the outsiders Harris characterizes as throwing stones are women and children who were abused within the hierarchical tower conservative evangelical ministries have built. Harris and The Gospel Coalition cannot pretend to value listening to survivors of abuse when they merely give lip service to their suffering, as evidenced by the way they question their “agenda” and characterize them as outside stone throwers.
Pidcock looks at what he calls examples of delegated, gendered authority as the extension of power, suffering by submitting to abuses of authority with forgiveness, or fighting the culture war by having lots of children.
Some of these quotes are priceless…
Kevin DeYoung says, “Patriarchy, rightly conceived, is not about the subjugation of women as much as it is about the subjugation of the male aggression and male irresponsibility that runs wild when women are forced to be in charge because men are nowhere to be found. What school or church or city center or rural hamlet is better off when fathers no longer rule? … The choice is not between patriarchy and enlightened democracy, but between patriarchy and anarchy.”
In other words, God’s created design of men being in charge is ultimately a power driven by fear (according to Pidcock.
…Evangelical views of hell as a justice of violence against the human body motivates their embrace of spanking children. Shiny Happy People exposes a world where fear of hell and destruction are used to promote spanking as “encouragement” in order to break “the rebellious spirit they’re born with.”
Voddie Baucham calls babies “vipers in diapers,” tells a story about spanking a little girl 13 times at church because she’s too shy to shake a male deacon’s hand, and recommends having “an all-day session where you just wear them out.”
…John Piper goes even further than calling on survivors of abuse to respond with forgiveness. He says survivors of child molestation must see “God’s sovereignty … at the moment of causality,” and that if they don’t, “You will now be left with no God to help you deal with this … . You have just shoved him off … and in your pain you shoved him so far to the edge of the universe that for the rest of your life you are crying out to a God to do miracles yet you have pushed him away… . And so you try to say there is no sense in which the sovereign God willed that, you will lose God for the rest of your life.”
…With the Duggars, IBLP and Kevin DeYoung, this shows up by promoting “a culture war strategy conservative Christians should get behind: have more children and disciple them like crazy.”
DeYoung says: “Strongly consider having more children than you think you can handle. You don’t have to be a fertility maximalist to recognize that children are always lauded as a blessing in the Bible.” He goes on, “Do you want to rebel against the status quo? Do you want people to ask you for a reason for the hope that is in you? Tote your brood of children through Target. There is almost nothing more counter-cultural than having more children.” Then he climaxes with, “The future belongs to the fecund.”
I have skipped over much of this post, which is worth reading in its entirety.
Barbie, the mojo dojo casa home, and patriarchy.
I just finished watching the Barbie movie. I loved every minute of it. Rick Pidcock wrote Why the patriarchy is hyperventilating over Barbie. I particularly enjoyed the section on the contrast between male and female experiences.
As Barbie and Ken venture into the real world, their different experiences are on full display. While Barbie feels “ill at ease” due to the way men are looking at her, gesturing toward her or calling out to her, Ken says, “I’m not getting any of that. I feel like what could only be described as admired, but not ogled. And there’s no undertone of violence.”
Barbie responds, “Mine very much has an undertone of violence.”
I somehow missed this quote by Sproul, who described salvation as rape. Good night!
Violence against women has been so normalized among patriarchal men that R.C. Sproul described salvation as rape. “You will resist it as hard as you can, but God will overcome your resistance,” he preached. “(Jonathan) Edwards called it ‘the holy rape of the soul.’ Some people are violently offended by that language. I think it’s the most graphic and descriptive term I can think of for how I was redeemed.”
Read his thoughts or, better yet, watch the movie. I had some laughing-out-loud moments, especially the closing sentence by Barbie.
Here are three more articles at Baptist News Global that I found interesting.
- “What has John MacArthur actually said about race, slavery and the Curse of Ham?” by Rick Pidcock, June 20, 2022 — MacArthur says slavery is a legitimate institution when used correctly and, in fact, is the “perfect scenario” with the appropriate master.
- “Why I have empathy for Karen Swallow Prior,” by Rick Pidcock, July 5, 2023 — Compassion and grace are found in the kindness shown amid human suffering, the author says.
- “‘Pastor Johnny’ is the head of a family empire that feeds off the SBC,” by Maina Mwaura, Jon Bullock and Mark Wingfield, May 22, 2023 — This article details how Johnny Hunt and his family make money off the SBC: Numerous members of Hunt’s family are involved in his business, NAMB is a frequent client, and he and his wife own three homes, including two valued at more than $1 million apiece.
Happy 2024 to all of you. Thank you for bearing with me the last few difficult months. I am grateful for your support!
Ever grateful to and for you, too, Dee.
OT, but regarding extreme violence against women:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html?campaign_id=190&emc=edit_ufn_20231229&instance_id=111277&nl=from-the-times®i_id=119462681&segment_id=153825&te=1&user_id=ffbfa5f14e4d96548cd9b0d7d01cdee7
Sharing this from the Texas Tribune, because it very much implicates the SBC among others:
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/12/29/southern-baptist-convention-sexual-abuse-lawsuit-settlement/
It’s a long article.
So God is the one who PENETRATES! COLONIZES! CONQUERS! PLANTS!
And his Anointed (men only) must conform to that Image.
P.S. Which R.C.Sproul? Senior or “Precious(TM)”?
i.e. Beat the Shy out of Fluttershy.
Wasn’t VB also the guy who said that as a man gets old his eyes turn towards young women and that’s why God sends him daughters?
Headless Unicorn Guy,
I am slowly reading my way through Lore Olympus, a fantastic series. In volume 1, Persephone is date raped. She doesn’t understand why she has been so negatively affected by what happened. In volume 2, she tells a male friend what happened, and he very compassionately tells her that what was done to her was wrong.
“The world” seems to get it.
Send them all off to the S&M community where they belong and be done with them. Yuck. Gross. Disgusting.
Alex Harris: Gothard is an extremist. We theologically sound evangelicals aren’t like him.
Dee: *produces receipts*
(That Piper quote is un-freakin-hinged. Where did it come from?)
Kristin du Mez wrote this about Gothard in Jesus and John Wayne: “As the author of a popular homeschooling curriculum, he inculcated generations of children in his teachings of biblical law and patriarchal authority…many families who would not have identified as Christian Reconstructionists nevertheless came to embrace the tradition’s core precepts. In this way, authoritarian teachings infused Christian homes, churches, and the wider evangelical subculture.” And further, “a generation later, ideas once considered extreme would resonate widely, advanced by young culture warriors in positions of power.”
The thing that alarmed me most about JD Hall’s ministry was that he had a following! A scary pulpit begets a scary pew. Those characters were capable of anything. And they are still out there somewhere!
“Sproul, who described salvation as rape”
And we wonder why the New Calvinists are so messed up! They idolized the man, along with others like Piper & Wilson who preach crazy stuff like that.
http://thewartburgwatch.com/2015/10/23/john-piper-explains-gods-will-in-scrabble-and-child-molestation-and-we-pick-up-the-pieces/
Whoever released John Piper on the American church ought to be ashamed of themselves!
Like others with empires, his empire was a group effort.
These freaky fringy leaders with followers wouldn’t have a shekel to live on if it weren’t for their donating followers.
It takes a village of donors to keep the nonsensical weirdos in their respective pulpits. And oh my, in the US we love our off-the-rails preacher boys. (Mostly they are men. Intermittently, a woman appears.)
Sorta like those tabloid magazines filled with sensational news stacked by grocery store check-outs. Folks such as Piper preach/teach in a way that is intended to provoke interest and excitement, at the expense of accuracy. Personally, I have never found anything about Piper interesting or exciting. I’m not a spiritual giant, but Piperettes are some of the most spiritually immature folks on the planet. Whenever the Father of New Calvinism speaks, his loyal followers exclaim “Wow, Daddy, Wow!” It’s the darnedest thing I’ve ever seen and a barometer of the poor condition of some corners of the American church.
“The future belongs to the fecund.”–Kevin DeYoung
++++++++++++++
i think Kevin should start a greeting card side business.
goodest griefest ever.
alternatively, i’ve heard the future is female. it was men who told me this, and applauded it.
Probably part of the formula or algorithm…
For a cult, of personality.
Narcissistic leader + manboy followers w/submissive princess wives.
Nothing adulting or mature about any of this.
i.e. Outbreed the Heathen (and overwhelm them with numbers).
Quite Darwinist, actually.
When Darwin coined the term “Survival of the Fittest”, he was talking in terms of relative reproductive success over time. Those who were most successful at reproducing over several generations would dominate the gene pool, their mixture of genes crowding out others.
I find this funny that those who are into this form of Darwinism are usually hardcore YECs.
And their attempts to deliberately force the issue (with Quiverfull and 200+ year Dynastic plans) are practicing Eugenics in all but name. A Spiritual, Biblical Eugenics, with each Quiverfull family as a Christian Lebensborn for The LORD (and the Patriarch sowing his perfect seed) instead of for Der Fuehrer.
“THE VOICE OF A GOD, NOT OF A MAN!
THE VOICE OF A GOD, NOT OF A MAN!”
— (Max should know the chapter, verse, and context of that excerpt)
Anyone remember Braxton Caner?
If they did, it would not surprise me if the BDSM reject them with a Double YUCK.
As in they go way too far, especially in rejecting the whole concept of Consent and Safewords.
Think about that.
Sensational tabloid-style preachers …
… it’s a type. A list immediately comes to mind.
Apparently a free society with freedom of religion and freedom of the press (today, social media) is just too irresistible, overpowering,
and stimulating for the sensational tabloid-style religious leaders who crave crave crave attention and adulation. A drug they gotta have. “Here’s my arm, inject me now!” (And you look at their arms and see track marks, metaphoric track marks.)
Perhaps it’s why each of the badboys keeps re-emerging. More than the money, it’s the attention, a powerful highly addictive drug.
“PENETRATE! COLONIZE! CONQUER! PLANT!” is a rapist’s mentality.
Like the photo-meme from many years ago with a scuzzy rapist type smirking and the text caption
I WAS HORNY
SO SHE WAS WILLING.
That’s because they’re only Godless Heathen, living in the Flesh instead of The Spirit. [/sarc]
Scary. Makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
The ruling men over their non-consenting women. Right out of a horror film. Taught and practiced as “biblical”.
Wasn’t that guy then eaten while alive by maggots, right in public before a crowd?
Beg your pardon for saying this, but this entire particular post reads TOTALLY like a grocery store checkout line tabloid with creepy headlines.
Not Dee’s fault, though.
The attention-craving Jerry Springer Show auditioning guest type of preachers create this climate for themselves with no assistance or prompting from TWW or any other blog posting.
The headline grabbing activist religious leaders own their spots in the grocery store checkout line tabloids of Religion World.
Well, quoting from memory here, so I may eell be misquoting, but IIRC John Donne famously wrote:
Ravish my heart, Three-Person’d God….
And he lamented that he could never be chaste “unless Thou ravish’st me.”
Again… could be misquoting here. It’s been a while.
I’m certainly not defending Sproul. And yes, I see the issues and the dangers. But this sort of language does go back a long way.
The Catholic tradition, with its resistance to determinism and emphasis on free will, sees the dynamic more in terms of seduction than rape. IIRC St Bernard of Clairvaux was the first to spiritualize the Song of Solomon as the bridal relationship between Christ and the Church / redeemed soul. (The first that I know of… unless some early Church Father beat him to it?)
Then there’s the mystical poetry of St John of the Cross, of course!
But this approach is certainly part of historic Protestantism, too. There’s a lovely old American hymn, “The Heavenly Courtier,” that’s all about this stuff. Again, it’s about courtship, not rape, though. It appears on one of the awesome CDs of Early American music issued by The Boston Camerata under Joel Cohen. Highly recommended!
Sproul was as sick as they come.
Yep, spiritually sick. Yet, the New Calvinists idolized him. Which says a lot about their spiritual health, too.
Sometimes it’s necessary to paint a picture before some church folks get it. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.
The 21st century church needs to witness some Biblical encounters like that. A few Ananias and Sapphira moments would also do the church a lot of good.
An addiction that is enabled by an unspiritual pew. There wouldn’t be a celebrity pulpit if it weren’t for a gullible pew willing to finance a bad-boy pastor’s quest for power, prestige and prosperity (all are powerful drugs).
“…at that time Herod [Agrippa I] the king [of the Jews] arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to harm them … Herod dressed himself in his royal robes, sat on his throne (tribunal, rostrum) and began delivering a speech to the people. The assembled people kept shouting, “It is the voice of a god and not of a man!” And at once an angel of the Lord struck him down because he did not give God the glory [and instead permitted himself to be worshiped], and he was eaten by worms and died [five days later].” (Acts 12 AMP)
Yes! Thx, Max. That’s it. That’s what happened.
Impersonating God is deadly.
Sadly, if they are grocery store checkout line flashy titillating tabloid consumers, maybe this type of preacher is their preferred genre.
Sadly.
Oh yeah! No doubt about it! There’s a segment of the American church which likes bad-boy, potty-mouth preachers (think Driscoll) … it makes them feel better about themselves.
When Heaven finally declares “Enough is enough!”, we may find that out in certain segments of the American church.
Max,
Or, they are all in with the cool crowd?
Dunno, don’t get it, really.
“They have become a burden to Me;
I am weary of bearing them.”
(Isaiah 1:14)
R.C. Sproul described salvation as rape.
The first thing that popped into my head when I read this………. Great. So Sproul thinks Jesus raped the apostles? No wonder Judas turned on Him!
How do otherwise intelligent and rational adults allow themselves to be ruled by these jokers?
It’s baffling, it really is.
“I just finished watching the Barbie movie. I loved every minute of it.”
——
“Today is the best day ever! And so was yesterday! And so is tomorrow!”
Sproul hated Kant, who decried government interference in religion, and who gave the lie to “Manifest Destiny” Hegelism (“material dialectic”) which was pre-Darwinism in the social sciences; the EIC being of course, exactly applied social sciences (even Pius X foresaw that).
Evolutionism in the social sciences existed prior to Darwin and got imprinted onto biological findings to the extent that biological darwinists refuse to strengthen their own theory (because science doesn’t conflict with faith but, apart from the late atheist darwinist S J Gould and a smattering of epigenetists, they prefer not to risk that).
The dominionists have been ruling the world for 57 years and counting, precisely because evangelising was made by their corporate apparatus (from which I exclude handfuls of old style believing genuine evangelists I’ve known) to equate to stalking, preferably on a mass scale ignoring McLuhan’s warning; moralisers even projecting sexual motives like their father Freud or – in the case of dodgy schools like Dawkins’ prior to the IICSA window period – acting them out.
Some groups of people specially assembled for the purpose, get approached by intermediaries offering to “insert them into” the church. Anglo-America is “burned over country” because the wrongfootsiers insist the last time we were wrongfootsied we didn’t get wrongfootsied properly enough.
On p 138 of Speculum Mentis under the heading ‘The task of religion’ R G Collingwood commented wrily that when conformist convention becomes a game, its ethics go from semi-sane to near idiotic.
He identified four common gambits (partly his terminology follows):
The retort courteous from conventional ethics: if you won’t play with (whichever) other people, they won’t play with you (while Jesus in Mt 11:17 isn’t trying to back anyone into corners)
The countercheck quarrelsome or verdict of expediency: if you annoy people in this way they can and will crush you.
The lie circumstantial or verdict of duty: other people have a (not honestly spelled out) claim on you which you are a cad to ignore.
The lie direct, or verdict of (mutually self-installed) ethicists: you are making a fool of yourself, doing your best to become an idiot by your own act (when it was them, as ontology police, that cut off our free choice).
Ava Aaronson,
Bolsec in his book on Calvin wrote that Calvin died the same death of Herod and others “* “Returning, then, to the vexations of various serious illnesses, with which Calvin was miserably afflicted, even to the point of death; besides those which Theodore Beza recounts, he was still tormented by a kind of illness, of which we read of having been punished, by the just judgment of God, several enemies of God, usurpers of his glory and honor ; it is an itch of lice and vermin all over his body; and particularly, of a very-pungent (stinging) and virulent ulcer in the foundation and shameful parts, where he was miserably eaten away with worms. Thus Honorius the second, king of the Vandals, after having persecuted the Orthodox Church for eight years, perished finally eaten by worms and lice. Arnoulph, emperor, successor of Charles the Fat who was a great plunderer and ransacker of the Christians temples, also died miserably. Maximian, a very cruel, bloodthirsty emperor: Antiochus Epiphanius, a very wicked and cunning man, plunderer of the temple of God, and contemptuous (despiser) of His glory; who, out of contempt for the only true God, placed an idol of Jupiter in the temple of Jerusalem: Herod, murderer of the innocent, and usurper of the honor and title of divinity; and other hypocrites and foes of God, who, under the pretext and appearance of holiness or zeal, persecuted the truth; were exterminated, by the just judgment and vengeance of God, from this kind of vexation, gnawed with lice and worms in their life, until death; and after this life, thrown to the second death, in eternal misery and infernal condemnation, on whom the psalmist’s saying is verified: “God has consumed him with double consumption”.
Bolsec was put in prison because he spoke against the Predestination and had his life spare by the grace of the churches of Bern and Zurich.
I just wonder that is the Calvin was buried in an unnamed sepulcher, he who loved so much the honor .No wonder the Calvinists rejects Bolsec !
The final words of the Bible.
Come. Drink. Live. It’s free.
“The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ . . . Let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.” Revelation 22:17
John Piper
Hall was quoted in the article as saying something like “being a pastor means all the congregations’ problems are your problems”. I’ve seen this attitude projected by other pastors (I’m not sure if they actually mean it), and I’ve seen congregants pity and sympathize with the pastor. IMO, if a pastor has this attitude it’s really an indication of pride. I could go on and on about this, but, in summary, pastors and congregations need to understand the pastor is a mere mortal and should not be expected to work outside his competencies or beyond what would be considered healthy regarding time away from family.
Nancy2(aka Kevlar),
I’m attending a Lutheran church in which every Sunday we pray the Lord’s prayer. It just hit me that we pray, “…your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
If Calvinism is true, why would Jesus teach his disciples to pray that?
There are a lot of Bible passages which hit the careful reader, refuting the tenets of reformed theology. Scripture speaks much about the sovereignty of God. Scripture speaks much about the free will of man. It all works together in a way that is beyond human comprehension. To put the mind of God in a neat systematic theological box is to stand in arrogance before Him.
Not really.
This branch of Christianity has a lot of answers in it.
There’s no nuances or interpretation.
The bible is exactly (as in to the last jot and tittle) God’s word.
Including every missive to put six feet under anyone who’s ‘not like you’, every talking animal, even the most far out stuff like nephilim going easy with earth girls.
It’s all 100% true and under the omniscient eye of Dolph Lundgren…. sorry….god.
This means that god watches abuse with a dispassionate eye. It is all for his glory. The pain we experience, the disease, the horrors of genocide.
All of it is good in the name of gods glory.
And the beauty of it is, if you’re an elect, you’re already in. You were in from the beginning. This is great news for the local holy psychopath! And if you’re an elect you place yourself under authority of the local elect psychopath because it’s all ordained.
And abusers were pre-ordained to abuse and they’re still elect!
So suck it up, Buttercup. If you think god has it in for you… you’re right!
Frances,
Whew! They don’t teach you that at reformed seminaries!
There’s a spirit at work in this movement … and it ain’t Holy!
Ever heard of “Intelligence 18, Wisdom 3”?
And it’s to the advantage of “these jokers” to keep their pewsitters as arrested-development cases. Helps when your Plain Biblical Theology has gone beyond paradox to outright absurdity.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
― George Orwell, 1984
“Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities Can Make You Commit Atrocities.”
— Attributed to Voltaire by way of urban legend/folk tradition
More likely (like Deep Throat Driscoll), we’re getting another unwanted peek into the ManaGAWD’s sexual appetites.
Another factor in play is that the bad-boy style is such a contrast to the usual uptight holy respectability that it stands out as fresh and different.
Like in a big election’s campaigns where every word out of every candidate’s mouth is obviously written by spinmeisters and attorneys, vetted by focus groups, and read off a teleprompter. Any in-your-face blunt-and-plain approach (up to “the bad boy”) is going to stand out and attract a following of those tired of Business as Usual.
Of course, this novelty approach only works until the “Me. Too!” bandwagon starts up and Everybody Does It.
The Rabbi from Nazareth had Bad Theology (and WE of the Perfectly-Parsed, Utterly-Correct Theology Know Better!)?
Think about it.
That’s what they’re saying.
If you are using the term “burned-over country” as in Upstate New York in the 1830s-1850s, the corollary is that said Burned-Over Country ends up as the Weird Religion Capital of the land.
That burned-over country spawned Spiritualism, Mormonism, Millerism (proto-7th Day Adventism), and those are only the ones that survived. My contacts who are into folk history say there were a myriad of little One True Faiths that didn’t survive more than a generation (or with one whose sacrament was nudity) lasted only until the first Pennsylvania winter. And some of their One True Theologies made 3 Ayem Open Phone Lines at Coast to Coast AM sound as mundane as a business memo.
Not Kewl Crowd, Ava:
MEAN GIRLS’ CLIQUE.
In the words of the prophet Alfred Yankovic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GRKQm–we4
And this is the guy that our church comrades revive in our times?
Our church comrades apparently cherry pick history to support their self-created religion?
Beware creative accounting, creative religion, creative LE, creative DOJ, creative theology, creative history.
“There have been a number of business scandals that came as a shock to the business world including the famous Enron scandal 2001, Waste Management scandal 1998, Tyco scandal 2002, WorldCom scandal 2002, Lehman Brothers scandal 2008, and so on. There always seems to be a temptation to manipulate or misrepresent financial information when it involves a large sum of money. There is an Italian proverb ‘Big mouthfuls often choke’ which appropriately represents such temptations and their outcome. Creative accounting is the term used for the process of intentional manipulation or misrepresentation of financial data, especially within financial statements.” – from Eaton Business School
And they even model his bad-boy side in their own lives. Welcome to the radical fringe of New Calvinism!
That’s why you seldom hear the New Calvinists talk about Jesus … He gets in the way of their theology! They prefer to twist the words of Paul, instead.
Augustinian Calvinism is a term used to emphasize the origin of John Calvin’s theology within Augustine of Hippo’s theology over a thousand years earlier. By his own admission, John Calvin’s theology was deeply influenced by Augustine of Hippo, the fourth-century church father. Twentieth-century Reformed theologian B. B. Warfield said, “The system of doctrine taught by Calvin is just the Augustinianism common to the whole body of the Reformers.”[1”
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BTW, progressive Christianity has hated St. Paul for a few decades now. St. Paul wrote things that are anathema to the modern mind. Yet the church fathers millennia ago debated and accepted that Pauline writings were “spirit breathed.”
Didn’t the Rabbi from Tarsus keep pointing to the Rabbi from Nazareth?
Well, that’s really informative.
I cannot map that to any known present-day diagnosis or syndrome.
Not sure what “foundation and shameful parts” means, but I assume it means genitalia.
We do know Calvin suffered from kidney stones at a time when alcohol was the only known painkiller, so renal problems, alcoholism, and its corollaries are possibilities. And “miserably eaten away by worms” could mean a parasite infestation or secondary surface ulcerations from some sort of circulatory problems (like you get from long-term diabetes, which had no treatment at the time).
As for his known kidney stone problems, I’ve known people with similar medical conditions, and kidney/bladder stones are one of THE most painful medical conditions known. With alcohol being the only painkiller of the time, he would probably have had to stay drunk just to take the edge off, which would have its own side effects.
Good way to put it.
This is another reason why it’s so important to read the Bible for oneself. In its entirety.
The Bible explains itself. Before digital Bibles, we used the Thompson Chain Reference Bible.
Now, cross-referencing is super slick on a computer. With the Gateway Bible platform, it’s free.
Headless Unicorn Guy,
Fournier gangrene. It is awful. I found it when I research Herod. Not for the faint of heart.
I use it a lot. A great resource for looking at Bible passages across numerous translations.
My “sword” of choice. I’ve carried one for decades … it’s so marked up, I can’t read some of the verses!
Dee, I love that you loved the Barbie Movie. My daughter invited me to see it with her when it first came out. Yes, lots of LOL moments and we had fun discussing our favorite scenes on the way home.
I’ve never heard the Sproul and JE quotes mentioned in the article about the movie, but that does shed light on the title of the article. When I was around admirers of these theologians, along with Piper, these quotes were never mentioned.
I had many scenes that were favs, from the movie, but one that stands out when I think of church topics is the expression on Barbie’s face while turning critical thinking on and off in the Mattel boardroom. Impressive acting, IMO.
seneca,
What a relief to know that the Book of Revelation was signed by John Piper.
One of the ways Augustine had been misled by his forebears (followers of Plotinus) was in hypostatising eucharist elements and ordination. None of that is supported by Paul, Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit or the meaning of the Old and the rest of the New Testament. The Griggite sect may be out of their depth here, sadly.
“He talks way more about nudity, the male body, being naked in spas in Europe, being naked in general than God, or his Baptist background,” the aide wrote before announcing his resignation.
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/12/29/southern-baptist-convention-sexual-abuse-lawsuit-settlement/
That’s “theology of the body”.
And (whilst I know nothing about Donne) that (I hope) means something so different from Sproul, Piper, Macarthur et al (whom I don’t find ravishing, and Macarthur so virtue signalling about bad church).
Even if one went with the Thompson “hound of heaven” it obviously (at one time) wasn’t a recipe for stalking.
Personally I thought from my infancy upwards that my God was rather companionable. I thought it perfectly natural that I mostly wouldn’t understand what His method was. Though a slow child in my constitution, I was fortunate to receive hugely sophisticated beliefs from those – mainly secular agnostics – around me – the gift of a head start.
As for ravishing: attraction was of many kinds not mainly dirty ones, and I’ve returned to that perspective since I shuffled off body / gender theology.
The Sprouls, Pipers, Macarthurs, Falwells (especially senior) hypostatise the alluding content of words, violating (as per necrotising minds) the divinely imparted gift to humanity of language altogether.
As for the Calvin fetish: as a ruler the one thing he detested was all thinking (which is individual by my God’s definition). He couldn’t bear that much of the populace may have been left already halfway christianised by prior RC culture. He also leveraged against them the chaos that had already disadvantaged them due to misreactions by other authorities to the Luther thing. Therefore, the real gifts of God were evidence for his grist-mill that Jesus had left them permanently depraved. Make no mistake, “neocals” already rule the world through dominionism (and ineffectual adversaries as proxies) – their kingdom come.
I can picture my real God going: Sproul who? Calvin who?
Is “neocal” about praying?
seneca,
What a relief to know God’s publisher obtained an “endorsement” from the eminent Rev Piper (who hadn’t read it).
I did that in my last gasp of trying to understand the religion I was raised in.
Got into the old testament, there’s some really trippy stuff that I completely forgot about, giants walking the earth and offspring of women and Titans, 800 year old people, eradication by flood, incest, and reams of seemingly innocuous ‘abominations’, , I was Christian for years and I can tell you there’s a lot of undiscussed things.
I became a biblical literalist.
Most Christians make their peace with it. I could not.
I came away with a deep appreciation for the constitutional monarchy – the secular society- that I live in.
While talking animals are really cool on tv, I don’t want to live in a biblical society.
So yeah, bible reading…. your mileage may vary.
Michael in UK,
(defamation proofing disclaimer: I mean of course as well all do, “read” in the postmodern sense)
I don’t think you would find any Wartburgers disagreeing with that. It’s the theological interpretation of Paul’s writings (e.g., New Calvinism) that isn’t “spirit breathed.”
Indeed. That’s what is so disturbing about the New Calvinist movement. They promote Paul over Jesus! They twist what Paul had to say to support their theology, rather than saying anything about the Truth of the words in red.
He had to erase Hal Lindsay’s signature and substitute his own.
When I was in-country in the Seventies, it was the Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible, AKA Baaad Craziness.
Blast from the past (as in the mid-Eighties):
“Have you heard of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ metal band? Twisted Scrpture?”
To paraphrase Chesterton:
“Myths are written by the 99 people in the village who are sane. Theology is written by the one man in the village who is insane.”
Headless Unicorn Guy,
And speaking of myths, here is an artist’s interpretation of the mythic imagery in the Book of Revelation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=infyJGl_N0o
Seems you’d lose something when turning THAT into helicopter gunships or 16-22 volumes of author self-insert fanfic technothriller. (It’s called the Power of Myth.)
“The final words of the Bible.
Come. Drink. Live. It’s free.”
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I so love that insight. I don’t care who wrote it but John Piper did.
… “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you ALL. Amen.” (Revelation 22:21)
It’s strange and largely alarming how I’ve seen the fashion change.
Titans were probably adherents of some religion that was supposed to be out of fashion since whichever “Reformation” loomed largest in their rear view mirror at any time that is being described (or the one before).
Or they might have been inbreeders like the Hapsburgs and some of the Egyptian royalty.
Ava Aaronson,
Didn’t Jesus tell the tale of a steward (on commission, not salary) who cut his “friends'” losses to look good with them?
While much the same sort of people (at heart) turn down His gifts?
NOT the Curses and Anathemas against all who add to or take away from this Book?
(Which during the Dispensation of Hal Lindsay applied only to the Book of Revelation and its “plain reading”…)
FLESH-EATING ANAEROBIC BACTERIAL INFECTION STARTING AT THE GENITALIA AND DEVOURING OUTWARDS FROM THERE.
Between 8 and 40% fatal even with 21st Century med-tech, probably 100% fatal before the 20th.
And I thought Stage 4 Aggressive Cancer was bad.