Saturday, August 04, 2007

Still More God is not...

Joe Carter links to John Mark Reynolds satirical pieces Ten Commandments for Evangelical Leaders in Politic and L.O.S.E. (Lovingly Opposed to Sin and Evil) Position Paper 1.
The statement “God is not a Republican or a Democrat” can be understood one of two ways.

More fundamentalist readers of this statement within L.O.S.E. take it literally and believe we should do nothing God would not do. God pays no taxes. We should not pay taxes. God does not obey speeding laws. We should not obey speeding laws. In fact, God is not an American so we should not be Americans.

This causes our members that take their bumper stickers less literally (and more poetically) some difficulties. They point out that God also has no gender or single location. It has proven hard for some L.O.S.E. members to be metrosexual and omnipresent.

As a result these more “liberal” L.O.S.E. members understand the holy bumper sticker to imply that Christians can be in a political party, but cannot believe that God favors one party over any other or that one party is more godly than another.

As much as I love to read everything Joe Carter writes, I find some of the comments and commenter’s at his site to be very hateful towards anything and everything Christian. John Mark Reynolds himself makes an appearance in the comments to Joe’s piece and he cuts through the nastiness with some of the best comments about slavery and Christianity I have read anywhere. It’s well worth a peak.

7 comments:

Kevin said...

I enjoyed the few comments. The battle for history and definition is fascinating. I think there is a lure to being unshackled from the obligation of defending terms or groups or history.

There may be some underlying hate, and certainly some confusion and condescension sprinkled throughout the comments, but I've developed an appreciation for a certain kind of troll who elicits knowledgeable responses and sometimes even exchanges.

I'm interested to see if the discussion will continue. Thanks.

David M. Smith said...

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment.

How have you been?

Why no new posts in a while?

Kevin said...

Hey David,

I've been generally well; thanks for your concern.

It has just been a busy summer for me and my blogmates, I guess. I'm thinking of doing a brief post on this topic of politics and religion to see if it sparks any discussion over there.

In the meantime, I've enjoyed reading your posts. I was particularly informed by your ethanol post. Thanks.

Buz said...

Well maybe I'm being a bit of a curmudgeon, but the first thing that popped into my mind when I read Joe's piece and the comments related to John's article was "Mars Hill" (Acts 17:21-2)

David M. Smith said...

Hi Buz,

I’m not sure what you mean. Comments at most blogs tend to go in a lot of weird directions, but I thought John Mark Reynolds did an excellent job of explaining Christianity and slavery from a historical perspective as well as directly confronting the hateful comments.

Count Grecula said...

Dang, that was funny. And informative.

Reminds me of the endless bickering over at Rob Asghar's blog. This parody nails his mindset exactly. Thanks for sharing.

Buz said...

Well, when Paul got to Mars Hill, he found a lot of people who didn't do anything but stand around all day and argue ... excuse me, discuss ... religion. No one every changed anyone else's opinion about anything, but they all had a good time explaining their own opinions.

I think the original piece had some merit, poking holes in the "I call myself a 'Christian' but I don't really let it influence the way I live" mindset, but after that, everyone just went on into endless explanations and diatribes. There was nothing there that really would change anyone's view of the world, only everyone either attacking someone else's beliefs or defending their own.

I know that there were mentions made of other references ... but those mostly struck me as the acedemic equivalent of name-dropping.

From what I read, it was mostly the same six or eight people espousing the same two or three thoughts. And not always very politely.

Buz