Liam Kinnon

I noticed that John Piper asked if the Church can grow when it has a bad name. He quoted the book of Acts “everywhere this sect is spoken against.” (28:22)  For those who don’t know, Acts recounts the story of Christianity’s explosion after the death, and resurrection of Christ.

I thought this was an overly simplistic description, à la twitter; and perhaps a dangerous justification for the Western Church as it currently stands.  The first century church was a group of the powerless doing powerful things.  They loved the outcasts.  They healed the sick.  They got right in with the poor, inviting them into their homes, and selling what they had to help those who had nothing. They were despised because they associated with the despised.  We are despised because we are despicable.

I remember watching the lead singer of Pedro the Lion talking about the modern church, and saying how people have this illusion that we are living in the book of acts. I would agree in as much as I’m sick of people taking statements like “they numbered around 5000″ in Jerusalem and using this as a justification for a church that barely functions as a place of learning, let alone of place of community. Every time we use scripture to justify ourselves, instead of having it convict us, we are in a dangerous position.

We have to become powerless, making ourselves as nothing, and become despised because of our living out Christ’s difficult call before we can claim the context of Acts 28:22.  Otherwise we are hopelessly out of context, yet again.

For an example of people who are living it out please watch Shane Claibourne and Oscar Muriu on the Day Four video at the Urbana website.

In the wake of Adam Giambrone’s recent scandal in a teapot I’ve been reflecting on the deeper problem surrounding his actions. He never grew up. How else do you explain his immature actions?

It isn’t just him. I would put myself in the same category. I believe we’ll see a whole generation of men who are not wholly grown up. We have forgotten the rites of passage, the conversations with our children about what adulthood, and manhood is all about.

Mark Driscoll talks about how culture feminizes men. I would humbly beg to differ. Both Christian and secular culture have forgotten how to train children, especially boys, into adulthood. There is no education in self-control, responsibility, or faith that is strong enough to make men out of boys. I would argue that Mark Driscoll’s machismo is as much a product of a failed full entry into adulthood as my weaknesses in being a responsible young man.

I’m not sure what the solution is. I can only say that we are failing to produce men. We are making adult-shaped children.

Too much to do today, so I’ll leave Buechner’s memoirs to a later date.  Instead I give you my most recent graph.

The twitter hashtag is #patrobertsondoesntspeakforme.

There are two things that need to be addressed.

1. Those outside of Christianity who want to dismiss us all because of Pat Robertson are a close second to him in terms of ignorance.  If you ignore the work being done in Haiti, primarily by Christian organizations*, in favor of blasting us because Pat Robertson is an idiot (yes, I went there) you are as ignorant of Christianity as Pat Robertson is of Haiti.

Just because not all Christian organizations sink their money into PR, television broadcasting, etc. does not mean you get to choose the ones who are easy to find as representatives for us.  Thanks to free speech, we don’t get to stop him, and I can honestly say that outspending him on PR and TV time would make me worse of a Christian.  So dig a little deeper, learn a little more, don’t choose to be ignorant. The best place to start would be the New Testament, I recommend the book of Mark, or maybe one of Paul’s letters, heck there is even James. Those are representatives of Christianity.

2. Stop giving Pat Robertson money.  I don’t care what your leanings are in terms of politics, he gets to do what he does because of the donations he gets from Christians, so please, stop giving him your money. Here is the tool on TV.

After my colonial Latin America class I really wouldn’t blame the Haitians for making a deal with the devil**, because he would have been better than the French.

*Ed Stetzer has linked to the Baptish Global Response, World Vision informed me earlier today, when I called, that their disaster team is already on the ground.

** I’m not saying they did, I’m just saying I would not have blamed them if they did.

Today in my History of Psychology class we were discussing (or perhaps being discussed to) Neitzsche.  I’m fascinated by his view of the consequences of atheism on ethics.  So far as I can tell from Beyond Good and Evil Neitzsche* believed that when ethics meets relativism right is decided by the most powerful.   So where does this fit in with Science?  Wired published an article on the trouble of the terminology surrounding Obama’s lifting of Bush’s restrictions on stem cell research.  Phrases like Bush’s decision being a “really, really unwelcome intrusion of politics into science” proliferated in the wake of Obama’s decision.  In a democracy though, laws are ostensibly the tools of the citizens to ensure distasteful actions do not occur.

What Wired missed though was a much deeper issue.  In the penultimate paragraph Brandon Keim says this,

But there will be plenty of cases in the future when the aims of science — or, to be more precise, certain scientists — conflict with widely held values. And if the legacy of the stem cell debate is to label all conscientious objection as anti-science bias, it will be a toxic legacy indeed.

The idea that “widely held values” is enough to define morality runs into trouble not just with science (imagining how people from a hundred years ago would have viewed embryonic stem cell research might cast light on this), but also with much larger issues.  The atrocities in Rwanda were perpetrated by the majority.  We have in a situation like Rwanada a clear demonstration of the poverty of “widely held values.”

So here is my question.  Knowing that Hitler’s policies enjoyed support so wide it even surprised him.  His reaction to Krystalnacht is one demosntration of this.  Also while keeping in mind that most in Europe and the wider world did not go to war because of Hitler’s racial ideology but because of his aggressive militarism.  What would have been the case to intervene in Germany assuming they never invaded another country?

*I’ve yet to read much of it, although I’ve tried.

Gun control, gun control, gun control.

It is an issue that just won’t go away.  I usually find myself of the mindset that says, sure, we should make people prove both their ability to use a gun without “accidents” before we let them buy one.  However George Jonas makes an interesting point about gun control and the Indian terror attacks.  Essentially, he says that the law abiding citizens in India, with the strictest gun control on earth, were victims largely because the gun wielding terrorists didn’t follow the law and the gun wielding policemen did not do anything until it was too late.  By keeping guns out of the hands of ordinary citizens the Indian government gave the terrorists a leg up.  Jonas says,

“Guns don’t kill, people do.” The gun lobby’s old slogan is true enough, but it’s also true that guns make people more efficient killers. That’s why gun control would be such a splendid idea if someone could find a way to make criminals and lunatics obey it. Since only law-abiding citizens obey it, it’s not such a hot idea. It’s more like trying to control stray dogs by neutering veterinarians.

He goes on to say,

There are Second Amendment absolutists in America, and libertarians elsewhere, who regard a person’s birthright to own/carry a firearm beyond the state’s power to regulate. I’m not one of them. I think it’s reasonable for communities to set thresholds of age, proficiency, legal status, etc., for the possession of lethal weapons, just as they set standards for the operation of motor vehicles, airplanes and ham radios. But it seems to me that, within common sense perimeters, you’d want to enhance, not diminish, the defensive capacity of the good guys, and increase rather than decrease the number of auxiliary crime-fighters who are available to be deputized when the bad guys start climbing over the fence.

Exactly.

Update: License is one of those words that always gets me.  Post retitled accordingly.

And by that I mean you can stop yelling at men. I know it seems that the world is unfairly skewed our way. It actually is. However this has ceased to be mens fault. Either start yelling at the women who decide to dress like sluts. Or stop dressing like one yourself.

Every time I hear about girls going to a pimps and hoes party, or some such thing that involves guys remaining modestly, if garishly, dressed while the girls dress like they stopped buying clothes after hitting kindergarden, I get mad. Every time I see a girl walking around in public wearing less than she probably should, I stare, then I get mad.

Why am I mad? it could be because that these pimps and hoes parties normally take place at university or at the earliest late high school. These institutions are the bastions of liberal thought, yet girls are taught the paradoxical idea that somehow a liberal view of sexuality and using the fact that men find women more attractive than women find men can somehow be balanced with women being mens equals. If you are willing to dress the way men want you to dress and fall into the stereotype that other women have fought and are fighting against you have lost your right to criticize the unbalanced nature of the world as it stands right now.

Or maybe it is because it is false to say that men are pigs for staring at you, and than to dress yourself provocatively. There is a constant fight for the idea of a “woman”. A woman can complain as often as she wants that men have over-sexualized their view of women. However until women start to take responsibility for how they dress and how they present their image en masse you can’t fault men. “But men design and sell the clothes”, Don’t buy them. “But that means not buying any clothes, they’re all designed that way”, not necessarily, maybe look a little harder. I know a number of women who manage to dress attractively without overly emphasizing their womanly features for lack of a better term. How hard do they have to look to do that, I don’t know, I don’t shop for women, I rarely shop for myself.

I can see some of you saying that this is an unfair comment, how can we judge people based on what they wear. However I think it is fair to say that we judge people if they dress like a punk, or a skater, or have an eyebrow piercing. Are these judgments fair? Maybe not, but you know what you are getting yourself into when you decide to make these things a part of your appearance. There are still enough women dressing in an inappropriate fashion that I feel these comments are merited.

There is a certain irony that the women’s lib thing really took off in the sixties right about the same time that this overtly sexualized image started becoming popular. It is almost as if there has been a fight over what woman means and what her place in the world is since then. I think the best thing for feminists to do is to shift their sights off the evils of men and start closely analyzing their role in equality. At least the role image plays in mens perception of women.

UPDATE: This should be read in conjunction with Men and Feminism; an improvement in tone.