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The unwritten unfinished pt 2
I’ll admit, my last post took a bit of a different direction than I originally intended, I meant to take an overview of the letter and go from there. After reading over it a few times I think I got so incensed that I felt like I wanted to tear it apart.
Bit
by bit
by bit
by
bit.
Alas, as Andrew pointed out, I think I the reaction I had was entirely more than the letter deserved. So for that I will apologize.
I think I’m tired of this election.
Actually… I am tired of this election. I’m tired of the smears (on both sides), I’m tired of the 24 hour news cycle, I’m tired of my beloved John Stewart and Colbert Report (and I would think they’re tired of the election as well). It’s too much.
Thus, I think I am done with politics for now. I’ll say the only thing that will bring me back anytime soon is if the GA senate race goes into a runoff (highly likely) thus placing Georgia center stage in this whole crazy election. I’ll probably speak up then.
For now… look forward to my next far less political post.
Letters from the future (pt-1)
Hey Matt, have you read this new letter from Focus on the Family? It’s a fictionalized letter from a Christian in the year 2012. Normally when one thinks of 2012 they remember all the talk of the end of the world, with the way this letter is written one might think that the world did indeed end, or at least for one portion of the population of the US.
You see, right now there’s a race going on, a race in which many evangelicals are becoming disheartened with the political party that has held their sway for decades. This sway is certainly scaring those in charge of both the party, and those with whom the party has place “in charge” of the evangelicals. With little over a week left until the election, both the party and the evangelical leaders are fearful losing this election.
These evangelical “leaders” decided that the best way to win an election was to continue the fear mongering that the party they are aligned with has begun. This letter is a “fictionalized” account of what may come should the Muslim Obama win the election.
What do you think, Matt?
the truth project
So I’ve made it no secret that I’m not a big fan of certain things that the college group I’m a part of does. From the “apologetics” to the attempt to mimic the now defunct 7:22, some of the things just don’t sit right with me.
A couple weeks ago I was told that I would really want to attend the summer series that the group is putting on, and then I checked out the video trailer for the DVD series they’re doing. While I wasn’t entirely paying attention, I did see that Ravi Zacharias was one of the speakers, which piqued my curiosity. The last recollection I had of Ravi was in a video where he quips, about Emergent, “Did they get bored with God?” I didn’t really give it all much thought at the time, I think I was working on another project, so it just kind of fell to the back of my mind.
Well, we played the trailer for the college group on Thursday night, and I’m the video guy, so I watched the thing through a couple hours before the service. That’s when I really started to notice things. The video seemed to be set up as a highly (literal six day) Creationistic account of things, which I guess shouldn’t have surprised me. But something else bothered me, their whole “Worldviews” thing, I just hadn’t heard it used and sound like that before. Well, that’s when I saw the biggest key, the big old “Focus on the Family Ministries” blurb right at the end of the video. Oh boy, it’s on.
That’s when I started doing a bit of research into the whole deal. Unfortunately there was not but one “critical” view of the DVD’s, so I had to use other sites, but here’s the essence of what I discovered.
It can be summed up with this blurb, from christianpost.com
Some 700 believers sat in the pews of First Baptist Church Friday night to learn of the “great battle” they are waging in at Focus on the Family’s The Truth Project training session. The cosmos battle: Truth vs. Lies; Christian worldview vs. Postmodern worldview; God is vs. God isn’t.
That’s right ladies and gentlemen; Postmodernists are liars who don’t believe in God. The Truth Project’s own website states that the series was created because of a Barna study that says that only 5% of adults surveyed have a Biblical Worldview. What the hell? Who are they to define Biblical worldview? Barna, by the way, defines biblical worldview thusly;
For the purposes of the research, a biblical worldview was defined as believing that absolute moral truths exist; that such truth is defined by the Bible; and firm belief in six specific religious views. Those views were that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life; God is the all-powerful and all-knowing Creator of the universe and He stills rules it today; salvation is a gift from God and cannot be earned; Satan is real; a Christian has a responsibility to share their faith in Christ with other people; and the Bible is accurate in all of its teachings.
Really? Those are the requirements? And they wonder why only 5% actually hold to them.
So, I’m deciding whether or not to attend at all during this “series” or if I want to boycott it out right, not that boycotting it would make any difference to anyone who propagates this DVD series within the church. We’ll see.
This by the way, all gives me fodder for my next post… stay tuned, there should be some interesting conversation that shoots for that one.
By the way, have you checked out the Indian Taxi Fund?