Tag Archives: Christianity

Duck Dynasty vs. Real Persecution

For those of you who don’t already know, I grew up in a very Christian community. And I had an amazing experience. For any of those people who may be reading this, thank you for helping create such a safe and loving environment for me to grow up it. I still look up to so many people in that community because they are kind and loving people who live their lives striving to serve God and love others.

That being said, it’s really frustrating to see a lot of really amazing people re-posting memes like this.

Because I’m pretty sure when any homosexual person reads this meme, what they are going to immediately understand is that you care more about the reality show of a multimillionaire than you care about actual abuse happening to members of the LGBT community around the world. Continue reading

Teaching Your Children About Santa, Noah, and Other Bearded Mythical Men

I’m not a dad. I probably won’t be a dad for a good number of years, seeing as the last “serious” relationship I was in was the latter end of high school. Even still, I find myself thinking about how I’m going to raise people who are 50% me, and one particular area is in imparting my personal beliefs.

Yes, I’m a Christian, and yes, I do believe that Christ is the son of God sent to die for our sins and that scripture is inerrant and so on and so forth, but regardless of how true all of that is for me I still struggle with how I ought to impart, at bare minimum, the knowledge of those beliefs to the kids I don’t have yet. Continue reading

Steve Taylor (Is Coming Back)

Since joining the blog in June of 2012 (yes, it’s been over a year now and yes, the romance is dead), I’ve often made reference to a mysterious musical figure by the name of “Steve Taylor”.

With the end of Year 2 fast approaching, I figure it’s about time I actually explain who this guy was.

Other than a man with impeccable taste in clothing…

Continue reading

The Religion Re-Cap

I’ll admit, going into this all, I hadn’t intended to write more than that first post on the exodus we’re currently seeing in Western Christian churches. That done, I guess I felt that there were some more questions to be asked and issues to be pointed to with Western Christianity as a whole, notably the treatment of theology and “pietism”, which shapes so much of Western Christian culture, as well as the question of biblical inerrancy, which I wrote today.

It strikes me that we really ever only take one of two routes when dealing with religion- we’re either unquestioning or we’re dismissive. I don’t think Christianity is so unimpeachable that it can’t be indicted and I don’t think it’s so unimportant that it can be ignored. Whatever your stance on it, these beliefs, traditions, and values have shaped and continue to shape culture and history in this nation and around the world. It deserves the courtesy of us grappling with it on its own turf- no matter where you’re coming from, I’m hopeful this will have at least offer a venue for some more sincere discussion than we typically enjoy. This series may have ended, the conversation, I’m hoping, is just about to begin.

The three posts in this series are listed below:

I. The End Of The Church As We Know It

II. The Problem With Pietism

III. Biblical Inerrancy

Biblical Inerrancy

As you’ve already heard from Evan, the post I had initially created was taken down. Quite honestly, it was pretty dang sub-par, and really just a sad attempt on my part to push off the inevitable day when I’d have to conclude my little series on Western Christianity (i.e., Protestantism) with some pretty hefty accusations.

This is going to be a big one.

My past couple of posts on religion (well, general Western Christianity) have dealt largely with complaints regarding the nature of “organized” religion, and can be generally dismissed with a statement like “Well, those people are clearly just distorting the message.” We’re going to be heading a bit deeper today, with some questions about the message itself.

Let’s talk about the idea of “Biblical Inerrancy.”

Continue reading

The Problem With Pietism

I had said before that I’d be taking up the subject of religion again, and as I promised, here’s another segment in my litany of criticisms.

Two down, 93 more to go…

Despite Las Vegas’s image as a wretched hive of scum and villainy, it’s actually a relatively quiet town. In fact, ol’ Sin City is cited by a few sources as having the most churches per capita of any city in the US. My family once visited one church (we’ll leave out the full name) called “Grace ———-,” in what was perhaps the single greatest piece of religious sarcasm since Saul was told to go to a street called “straight.”

It’s not very straight…

At “Grace ——-” I had the pleasure of sitting on a butt-numbing pew and listening to an hour of the pastor passionately decry something called “Arminianism.” It was vitally important, it turned out, that we understand that these people were fundamentally wrong regarding predestination. Now I’ll freely admit that I’ve forgotten a lot the the pastor’s exact admonitions- just why it’s so essential to believe one over the other. That was about six or seven years ago- if there’s some awful, soul-rending disaster about to happen to me, I’m still waiting for it.

And that brings us to the topic for the day:

Theological “correctness.” Continue reading