As I was waiting to get a haircut today, I scanned the magazines in the rack, looking for something to read. There was a copy of Rolling Stone magazine there, and the cover promised an article inside by Matt Taibbi. I thought, "hey, the guy from NBC News," so I picked it up. I was wrong, however: Matt is the political commentator for RS; his father, Mike Taibbi, is a political contributor to NBC News.
Anyways, the article was titled "Jesus Made Me Puke," and was an excerpt from Matt's soon-to-be-published book The Great Derangement. In that excerpt, Matt, who is a non-believer, tells a story about attending a weekend long spiritual retreat conducted by a well-know mega-church in Texas (I won't tell you which one; you need to read the article). Matt poses as a new believer, and experiences both touchy-feely integrationist pop psychology sessions and a deliverance ceremony to cast out the demons of various sins. What he doesn't experience in any form is anything approaching discipleship.
I interact with non-believers about Biblical issues on a regular basis, and Matt's article highlights items #2 & #3 of the 4 items on my list of Typical Accusations Made Against Christians, which are #2 Christians are Gullible and #3 Christians Do Not Know The Tenets of Their Faith (items #1 & #4 are Christians Are Hypocrites). For the most part, they seem to be fair assessments of American Christianity. The two highlighted in the article I believe are closely linked. Understandably, the claims made in Scripture are fantastic, even to someone that subscribes to a historical-grammatical hermeneutic. But the vast majority of Christians are not well versed (I love puns!) in doctrine, and so have not been able to integrate the truth contained in Scripture into their thinking. They cannot formulate a rational, logical defense of their faith, because they know little of their faith. And the little they do know is typically misapplied within their lives. No wonder non-believers look at us like we have some sort of mental defect.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
You're nicer than me Keith. This article could have been less than half its length if the author would've settled for less than one jab per sentence at the physical appearances of his company for the "retreat." The writing was only good when he spoke of his own struggle, and that was because that paragraph lacked the smarmy mocking of the subject.
Yes, his weekend was a joke, and certainly not typical of evangelical Christianity. Yet, this author is supposedly Mr. Objective thinker while entertaining the thought that Chuck Colson, Jimmy Carter, and perhaps any other evangelical really believes in this crap. That sounds pretty gullible to me.
Maybe the evangelical manifesto is more needed than we think. Maybe they should've included a section about how evangelicals don't really root for middle east wars in hopes of Jesus' return. They also don't focus on wounds, generational sins, vomiting into bags, etc., etc.
I won't be reading his book either simply because the writing style is beyond tepid. Besides, didn't Richard Dawkins just publish the God Delusion recently?
I have no delusion that this fellow is a gifted or objective writer. I'd lump in in with the class of "journalists" who still have dreams of being the next Bob Woodward or Hunter S. Thompson.
That said, the one thing that sticks out in my mind is how evangelicals as a whole are judged based on the extreme examples, which I suppose is really nothing new. It's the extreme positions that I am questioned about when talking to non-believers, probably because they have the most visibility.
Keep up the good work! Sorry, I couldn't read the entire article, I got to the part about John being a Christian Zionist and decided that since I'm on vacation I didn't want to read dung like that. I hate that so many of our critics are not really our critics, i.e., they go to Cornerstone Church, instead of a solid evangelical or Reformed church.
Sadly, many well meaning Christians take Mr. Hagee seriously. I'm not sure how to correct this other than trying to display correct hermeneutics and proper focuses on eschatology and telling people that I hate prophetic timelines.
Post a Comment