The Two Mars Hills

 

I had barely published my previous blog on the wonders of yoga when I was confronted by this video by Past. Mark Driscoll explaining how yoga is evil and demonic and all who practice it are hellbound.  At times like these I am astounded by the difference between Mars Hill and Mars Hill.

There are two famous churches in the USA which go by the name “Mars Hill”.  One is in Seattle, Washington and is headed by Mark Driscoll.  The other is in Grand Rapids, Michigan and is headed by Rob Bell.  Superficially they seem very similar at first.  Both are very large and both are well known and popular far outside their respective city limits.  Both are thoroughly modern with pastors who are engaging public speakers – not to mention that they both sport interesting hair and non-traditional dress sense.  Yet these two couldn’t be more different from one another*.

If you sat down the leaders of both Mars Hill churches and made the statement that “everything is spiritual” then they would both agree with you but for very different reasons.  For Rob Bell, the statement “everything is spiritual” means that your spirituality involves the entirety of your life.  In other words, you don’t have a “spiritual life” and a “normal life” separate from one another.  Therefore everything you do can be an act of worship and God is involved in everything you do.  I suspect Mark Driscoll on the other hand would agree because he thinks there are demons behind everything.  Yoga?  Demons.  Popular works of fiction?  Demons.  Popular movies?  Demonic.  Mormonism?  Founded by demons.  I’m sure if I looked harder I could find more examples but clearly the man lives in a demon haunted world.

Mark Driscoll

This leads to the two Mars Hills preaching very different versions of Christianity.  Pastor Driscoll’s demon-centric worldview necessitates a tough kind of Christianity.  At his Mars Hill Church, God is tough as nails who tolerates no sin or deviation from doctrine.  He is the Yahweh the Warrior, the God of the predestined, the One who saves only a select few from this world filled with demons and deception.  In this Mars Hill they do not flinch from using strong language or violence.  This is a church that is into MMA and Christian Cage Fighting**.  Here the measure of a man is tied to his prowess in the field of battle.  Because of this you will find no gentle Jesus here.  At Mark’s church Jesus is the ultimate Alpha Male, a tough guy who can beat up your dad (much like Mark himself).  To him, “Jesus is a prize fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.” 

Rob Bell

Rob Bell on the other hand doesn’t strike me as much of an alpha male.  In fact I’m pretty sure your mom could beat him in a cage fight.  His Mars Hill Church is far more geek friendly and you are far more likely to hear a Star Wars reference than an Ultimate Fighting metaphor from his pulpit.  Doubters, heretics, the lost, the weak and the broken are all welcome.  The God of this Mars Hill is far more welcoming and has hope for all mankind.  Rob Bell’s Jesus is more likely to give you a hug than an uppercut.  One quote by Rob has always stuck with me.  In Velvet Elvis he wrote “Why blame the dark for being dark?  It is far more helpful to ask why the light isn't as bright as it could be.”  That pretty much sums up this Mars Hill.  It isn’t focused on sin or demons at all.  Instead there is a constant focus on being a light in a dark world by doing good to others.  I think the closest I’ve heard him come to apologetics was his suggestion to those struggling with their faith to join a program that helps underprivileged children.  That is where their God lives – amongst the poor and the broken.  Like the one in Seattle this Mars Hill is also quite aggressive, only here they are aggressively into charity (both domestic and internationally).

Now if my tone wasn’t a clear enough indication, I’m not a fan of Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill but I am extremely fond of the Mars Hill of Rob Bell.  The funny thing is that when I was half as old as I am now it would have been the other way around.  Back then, I would have agreed with Rob’s detractors that to not preach on sin, hell and the demonic is simply unchristian.  The sheer manliness of Mark’s church would have been far more attractive.  I considered all that peace, love and charity stuff to be uncomfortably close to the antichrist agenda.  Not so much anymore though.  Nowadays the “lets call everything we don’t like/understand demonic” brand of aggressive Christianity that claims to always be right despite all evidence to the contrary drives me toward agnosticism.  It is only Rob Bell’s brand of Christianity that makes me believe that there is something to this faith after all.  I don’t think I would want to worship a God that would like to beat me up.  Violence and aggression is not the same as being tough.  An angry child can swing a fist.  Self-sacrifice, now for that you need to be tough.  Opening yourself up to constant hurt by trying to heal the messiness of humanity, that takes courage.  Cage fighting doesn’t scare me, caring for the helpless does.



*To be fair, I have never attended either one of these churches.  I have heard sermons from both and I have seen plenty of video from both so I’m fairly certain I can offer my opinion fairly here.
** A term that had a completely different meaning in the Coliseum in 1 AD methinks…

Would you like poop with that?

For my birthday last year, I gave myself the gift of yoga.  Now I admit I was skeptical at first but, after getting my thyroid removed, I needed something to help keep my weight from ballooning and after seeing what it did for that yoga granny I was willing to give it a shot.

I mean look at her!   She's 83!  I couldn't do that at 23!

Of course being the manly man that I am I wasn't keen on the incense and sitar music type of yoga so I got myself something far more manly - Yoga for Regular Guys by the pro wrestler Diamond Dallas Page.  This book was all about manly exercise* and didn't try to impart any New Age spirituality.  Instead it had a foreword by none other than Rob Zombie and the book had tons of hot yoga babes demonstrating the poses.  The book really lived up to its promise of less "Namaste" and more "T&A".

I'm not sure exactly what I expected to get out of it but I have to admit, yoga turned out to be shockingly good exercise.  The first time I tried it I couldn't believe how worn out I got just from stretching and breathing!    Now I'm no yoga expert, I still can't do all the poses and I definitely can't twist myself into a pretzel.  However I am definitely stronger and more flexible than when I started, the regular neck and lower back pain I've had for years is gone so my painkiller use went from "alarmingly regular" to "almost never".  Best of all, the mysterious** leg injury that had me functionally crippled for over a year and that simply would not heal was gone for good within two months.

Here's the thing though, I never actually read all the way to the back of the book.  I stopped at the exercise descriptions, but there is a long chapter in the back that forced me to rethink my original judgement that this book contained no New Age Woo.  There is all kinds of questionable diet and health advice, most of it pretty much harmless*** but others - like suggesting that the right juice diet can cure cancer - maybe not so harmless.

One strange thing really stood out amid all the strange dietary advice though.  Way at the end there is an endorsement for something called "Ezekiel 4:9 Bread" which immediately caught my eye. I looked it up and found arguably the best demonstration of why you shouldn't treat the Bible like a book of magic spells (or in this case recipes).  Now if you look at the verse in Scripture you certainly do find a recipe for the 100% flourless bread promised by the Ezekiel bread people:

""Take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them in a storage jar and use them to make bread for yourself." (Eze 4:9)

However, that is not all it said.  When you see something advertised like this it creates the impression that you are dealing with a magic recipe straight from God so surely it must be meant to provide great health benefits.  When you actually read the entire chapter 4 in Ezekiel you will however get an entirely different impression really quick.  See Ezekiel had to eat this - and apparently only this - for 390 days while lying on his left side.  (He then had to do 40 days on his right side.)  He only got to eat 8 ounces (about 0.2 kilogram) of this per day with 2/3 quart (about 0.6 liter) of water.  This was all part of a prophetic display of the horrible times about to befall the nation of Israel.  Verse 16 makes it pretty clear:

"He then said to me: "Son of man, I will cut off the supply of food in Jerusalem. The people will eat rationed food in anxiety and drink rationed water in despair, for food and water will be scarce. They will be appalled at the sight of each other and will waste away because of their sin."

See?  This wasn't about eating a healthy diet, this was about suffering with small amounts of terrible food.  The bread wasn't made without flour because flour is a bad dietary choice but rather because Ezekiel was telling the nation that things would be so bad for them that there would be no flour for bread!

Doesn't seem like such a magic health recipe now, does it?  I bet you the people who sell this product didn't even do the recipe correctly!  Pretty sure they left out an important ingredient:

Eat the food as you would a barley cake; bake it in the sight of the people, using human excrement for fuel." The LORD said, "In this way the people of Israel will eat defiled food among the nations where I will drive them." (Exe 4:12-13)

Yeah I'm pretty sure they left out the poop vapors...  Way to half ass a Biblical recipe guys!

And that, dear friends, is why you shouldn't use the Bible like a spell book.  You may just end up eating poo flavoured bread!

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* It even renamed some of the poses to give it more manly sounding names.
** I still don't know what happened.  It was fine before I went in for surgery and then I woke up feeling like something was torn!
*** Or not, its pro Atkins and I've heard that it may be bad for you but since I'm not knowledgeable on the subject I'm letting that one slide.  I don't care how much you try testosteroning it up though, there is no way you can make eating a hamburger wrapped in lettuce leaves in lieu of a bun sound manly!

The Pope is calling the kettle black

Just the other day Pope Palpatine thought it would be a good idea to point his finger at others.  Maybe his mom never told him that when you point at someone else, three fingers point back at you.  During a speech in England, he made the following statement:

Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime's attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a "reductive vision of the person and his destiny".

Now I finally understand why the Pope has to wear a dress - it's to hide his massive balls!!  It takes of an incredible amount of chutzpah to blame Nazi Germany on Atheism!  Best of all, he managed to make it sound as if dehumanizing and persecuting Jews was something other people did.  That is simply... astounding.  If it was anyone else I would have been willing to entertain the notion that maybe he was just ignorant on the matter but not with Ratzinger.  FFS, the man was in the Hitler Youth*, there is no way he made those statements out of ignorance!

OK, obligatory disclaimer time.  Unlike Jack Chick, I do not believe the Holocaust was a Jesuit orchestrated Inquisition against the Jews.  The Pope isn't all wrong, there were plenty of Christians who stood up to the Nazis and many of them were Catholics.  Furthermore I would certainly agree that Hitler was in no way a Real True Christian and the Nazis certainly didn't act in a way Jesus would approve of.  Nevertheless it is utterly dishonest to claim that they were Atheists.  Hitler hated atheism.  Any survey of his speeches and writings quickly show that his rhetoric was incredibly religious, not secular.  As much as the Pope would like to rewrite history to show the Vatican in a more flattering light, it is a historical fact that the Catholic leadership  and the Nazis got along like a house on fire (for a time at least).  To illustrate just how well, I've included some of the pictures I found online in this post.  To now try and blame it all on Atheism is a cheap shot.  Hitler banned Atheist and Freethought groups in Nazi Germany but signed treaties with the Vatican (who chose to remain neutral for most of the war).  You do the math.

However blaming the Holocaust on atheism, doesn't even come close to pretending that persecuting the Jews is something that nasty old nonbelievers did.  No Pope Ratzinger, you don't get to do that.  Not when you are the head of an organization that has been dehumanizing, persecuting and executing Jews for centuries!  Putting Jews in Ghettos, forcing them to wear a mark, murdering them in mass - Hitler didn't invent these things, the Catholic Church had been doing all that and more for over a thousand years by the time Hitler came to power.  For crying out loud, the official Catholic charge of Deicide (the teaching that the Jewish people were collectively accountable for the death of Jesus) was only repealed in the 1960's!

So nice try but no cigar.  Point the finger anywhere you want old man, we weren't born yesterday.  You don't get to just wash your hands of your entire past and you don't get to make a scapegoat of anyone else.

"God With Us"

*To be clear, I'm only pointing this out to make it clear that his remarks were dishonest, not ignorant.  I'm not trying to imply that he was actually pro-Nazi and pro-Holocaust.  I'm satisfied by the research that showed that he was forced to join and that he didn't take part in any atrocities.  He was right there though, he knows the truth and he's choosing to not tell it.

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EDIT 19 Sep 2010:

OK, I've calmed down a little bit since writing this and here is the moral I was getting at which may have gotten lost in the general rant.

The Pope's statements were more than just dishonest, it destroyed the most important lesson of the Holocaust. This horrible thing happened and it was perpetrated by people just like us. They weren't aliens, they didn't belong to another species. The Nazis went to church, had pets, loved their kids, enjoyed chocolate, loved good music and beer - just like anyone else. The moment you start thinking that this is only something that some alien, "other" people can do you lose sight that it can happen again at any time, right where you are.

Whenever a religious leader starts blaming all these atrocities on "Atheists" or "Darwinists", they conveniently lose sight of the fact that the vast number of Nazis were church going Christians.  Yes, they acted in a way completely in opposition to the teachings of the New Testament.  That is exactly why Christian leaders should not pretend the Holocaust was the act of "others".  It was the act of people who went to the same churches you do, who read the same Bible you do and prayed to the same Jesus you do who nevertheless did all these things because a charismatic leader using religious language convinced them it was good and right - even though their actual doctrine should have convinced them that it was an abomination.  If you are a Christian leader you need to realize that and allow it to scare the living crap out of you on a regular basis.  That is one of the best ways to prevent history from repeating itself.

As any Pentecostal can tell you

I freely admit to forgetting a lot of the things I've learned in Bible study over the years but one of the things that stuck with me was when someone described the Pharisees as the Pentecostals of their day.  That description still makes me snicker because Pentecostals tend to really dislike the Pharisees - about as much as the Catholics and for pretty much the same reasons.  Firstly there is the whole "they believe in works based salvation" thing.  Secondly - and this is the part that really makes us feel superior - there is their reliance on oral law and the traditions of the elders.  Que headshakes, smiles and faux exasperated sighs.  Why couldn't they simply listen to The Bible without adding all this extra stuff?  You know, the way we do it!

Now on the first matter, Pentecostals are entirely consistent - for better or worse they certainly never preach about the necessity of good works.  However on the second matter the difference is entirely imaginary.  We might like to think that all we believe comes with a solid foundation in Scripture but that is simply not the case.  I can't speak for all denominations but Pentecostal Churches as I know them have plenty of teachings and doctrine based almost entirely on "oral law" and "the traditions of the elders". 

For instance, if you've spend enough time in a Pentecostal Church you are bound to have heard human beings described as "being a spirit, having a soul and living in a body".  You would probably also be familiar with the notion that your soul contains your "intellect, will and emotions" as well as some other teachings about the role of your "spirit man".  None of that is in the Bible.  Seriously.  Go do a word study, the Bible uses the words "soul" and "spirit" interchangeably - everything attributed to the soul in one verse is attributed to the spirit in another.  Doesn't mean that the church is wrong about humans being tripartite beings of course, just that most of the details assigned to said parts have no actual basis in Scripture.

Then of course there is the matter of Satan, demons and Spiritual warfare.  Based on many Pentecostal sermons you would be forgiven for thinking these were some of the most prominent themes of the Bible.  If you actually read the Bible though, it is another matter.  You would be hard pressed to find 2 consecutive chapters dealing with the matter!  The extrabiblical ideas in the church regarding the devil and evil spirits is a blog post all on it's own.  Suffice it to say for now that for most "Deliverance Ministries" the nonscriptural source material vastly outnumbers the Scriptural.

All other oral traditions pale against the mack daddy tradition of the elders - The Rapture!  Now I know, I know, all supporters of the Rapture and the whole premillenial dispensationalist shebang are shocked, no shocked AND hurt that I would even suggest that!  After all, they frequently claim that what they believe is based on nothing but a straightforward and literal interpretation of the book of Revelation.  To which I say, bollocks!  I'm willing to bet all my worldly treasures that if you gave the Book of Daniel, the Book of Revelation as well as every other book in the Bible containing a hint of prophecy to someone who has never heard of the Bible or Premillenial Dispensationalist teachings they would not reach the same interpretation in a 100 years.  Yes, the Bible does say that Christ will return.  It does not however say that there will be a Second Coming: Beta Release where Jesus only comes half way down to scoop up believers followed by a Second Coming: Premium Edition where He actually touches down.  While the Rapture may be a central belief to millions of Christians, the fact remains that the Bible doesn't mention it even once.

If you are interested in an excellent discussion on the Rapture and the End Times and the contents of Revelation I strongly recommend The Rapture Exposed:  The message of hope in the Book of Revelation by Barbara R. Rossing.  If you read only one book on the subject, read this one.  Alternatively if you've read all the Left Behind books and/or the many other works on "End Times Prophecy" then you owe it to yourself to hear the counter argument.  The book traces the history of the Rapture idea from its start 200 years ago in the visions of a 15 year old Scottish girl, right through to its present day incarnation.  It also provides an alternate interpretation for the Apocalypse of John, which quite frankly makes a lot more sense than the commonly accepted Pentecostal one.

Now for the most part, these oral traditions in the Church don't matter much to me.  Most of them, to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, do not pick my pocket or break my legs so I don't really feel too strongly about them.  However, Jesus spoke out against some of these traditions for a reason:

Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, "Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don't wash their hands before they eat!" 

Jesus replied, "And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, 'Honor your father and mother' and 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.' But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, 'Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,' he is not to 'honor his father' with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.


Today, just like in the time of Jesus, people are still using their passed down traditions to overrule the basic good and decent things Jesus commanded them to do.  In this way the completely unbiblical ideas of many Christians regarding the "end times" are a very real obstacle.  Jesus said "Blessed are the peacemakers" but because of their eschatology, many Pentecostals are anti-peace and for bloodshed and war in the Middle East.  That to me is a clear case of nullifying the word of God for the sake of your tradition. 

Guess the Pharisees and the Pentecostals aren't so different after all...

The Tyranny of Evidence

In the wake of Prop 8 being overturned a lot of footage flooded the airwaves and internet featuring word battles between the proponents and the opponents of gay marriage.  One piece featuring Tony Perkins and David Boies however managed to transcend the issue:




In case you didn't feel like watching the video, the bit I'm referring to was the following statement by David Boies:

"It's easy to sit around and debate and throw around opinions -- appeal to people's fear and prejudice, cite studies that either don't exist or don't say what you say they do. In a court of law you've got to come in and you've got to support those opinions. You've got to stand up under oath and cross-examination. And what we saw at trial is that it's very easy for the people who want to deprive gay and lesbian citizens the right to vote, to make all sorts of statements in campaign literature or in debates where they can't be cross-examined.

But when they come into court and they have to support those opinions and they have to defend those opinions under oath and cross-examination, those opinions just melt away. And that's what happened here. There simply wasn't any evidence. There weren't any of those studies. There weren't any empirical studies. That's just made up. That's junk science.

... A witness stand is a lonely place to lie. And when you come into court, you can't do that. And that's what we proved."

 What he said here is true for so much more than just the issue of gay marriage.  Creationists, Conspiracy theorists, Holocaust deniers, Climate Change "skeptics", Anti-Vaxers - they all claim that the facts and evidence support their position.  On their websites, literature and in debates they confidently proclaim that the truth is on their side.  Yet every time they actually land in court and they are forced to tell the "truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth" it all seems to collapse like a house of cards.  For a fantastic example, see the Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District.  The Intelligent Design community finally got their day in court and they fell apart spectacularly.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts.  Sure, it's easy enough to claim to have facts but the funny thing about facts is that they can be tested and verified.  That is why proponents of many "alternative" viewpoints prefer to spend their time yapping about how "the mainstream" is suppressing the truth instead of actually backing their claims with facts.  That is why (I think) the Discovery Institute prefers to spend their funds on literature, lectures and debates instead of any lab work.  The lab, like the court is a place where evidence trumps all.  And when the evidence is not on your side you tend to stay as far away from it as possible.

Life under the tyranny of evidence is not always a kind and cozy affair but I would take it over the alternative any day!

The end is never as nigh as you think it is

A while back my blogging buddy Gumby brought up Harold Camping.  For those who do not know, Harold is a Christian preacher (and I'm using the term extremely loosely here) currently famous for 2 things:

1 - Telling Christians they need to get out of church (personal Bible study and his radio show is all you need)

2 - That The Rapture is going down on 21 May 2011 (with the whole world ending later that year)

He knows this the same way every wannabe prophet throughout history has known it - Biblical numerology.  Sure, that very same method failed when he made the exact same prediction for 6 September 1994, but I don't think any Rapture predictor in the history of forever has ever let silly things like being proven completely and utterly wrong slow them down.  It certainly never seems to give their loyal followers any pause.  They all just stick around for the next prediction like the previous fiasco never happened.

Now I guess I could blog about why using a pseudo-method to calculate a non-existent event is stupid, but honestly what is the point?  It would be like trying to explain why using a drowsing rod to find the Loch Ness Monster won't work.  Even attempting to debunk it is giving it more credit than it deserves.  So instead I decided to blog about how pointless it is to even try to argue with such people.

If history has taught us anything it's that ideology can be incredibly resilient in the face of disappointment and reality.  When someone believes in something deeply enough it doesn't help one bit to prove them wrong time and time again.  It doesn't matter if the idea they cling to is obviously and demonstrably wrong in a lets-dry-the-puppy-in-the-microwave kind of way, some people will just stubbornly refuse to let go of it.  Somehow, when it comes to the end of the world and the rapture, otherwise intelligent people can act pants-on-head retarded.  Case in point, The Millerites:

William Miller (1782 - 1849) was one of the pioneers in the field of being wrong about the date for Christ's return.  Like most in the field he was fascinated by the apocalyptic books of Daniel and Revelation.  He (like so many since) believed that if he fitted all the verses together in the right way and interpreted/decoded them correctly, it would reveal God's planned timeline for the world - including of course the Second Coming of Jesus.  To wit he had charts, illustrations and timelines that laid it all out.  He was a charismatic speaker and soon his movement grew out of obscurity and gained thousands of followers - as these messages are wont to do for some reason.

Now to his credit I must add that Mr Miller never gave an exact date for the return of Jesus (or the Advent as he called it) but he did teach that it would occur sometime between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. When those dates came and went with no Jesus in sight the date was revised to April 3 and then again to April 18. Again no Jesus, just thousands of disappointed faithful.  Now you may think that this would be enough disappointment for the Millerites but you would be wrong.

See while William Miller refused to set an exact date, one of the more ambitious members of his movement had no such qualms.  Samuel S Snow taught at a Millerite meeting that the true date for Christ's return would be October 22, 1844.  For reasons I can't grasp the Millerites grabbed hold of this date despite all the previous disappointments.  In fact, if anything they seemed even more convinced of this date than the previous ones!  When the date came near "fields were left unharvested, shops were closed, people quit their jobs, paid their debts, and freely gave away their possessions with no thought of repayment".  Thousands of Millerites gathered across the United States in churches or on hilltops, fully expecting Jesus to arrive before their eyes.  You can guess what happened next right?  Yep, nothing. This time their despair and dissillusionment matched their previous levels of excited expectation - there were reports of uncontrolled weeping and deep depression and despair.  This final, crushing blow became known as the "Great Disappointment". The Millerites became a joke amongst the rest of the populace and members were roundly mocked and even assaulted.  Several members gave up on the Christian faith completely as a result.  William Miller however continued to expect the immanent return of Jesus right up to his death.

I bet you think that is where the story ends, right?  After all, who would use such a definitively debunked doctrine as a foundational belief?  Turns out people will never fail to surprise you.  See, while a fair number of Millerites realised that they were obviously mistaken, some decided that they were in fact right all along.  A number of strange theories started cropping up to make sense of what happened, the most popular of which taught that instead of the expected physical return the day actually marked a spiritual event.  Jesus didn't return to Earth that day, He instead entered the "heavenly sanctuary".  1844 therefore was the beginning of a still-ongoing process of "investigative judgment" of the souls of believers with the physical return due any day now.  A couple of fragmented Millerite groups reformed under this teaching.  You may have heard of the most successful of these - The Seventh Day Adventists.  They have - rather prudently - decided to not dabble in date setting again however.

Interestingly enough,  two other infamous groups with a strong apocalyptic focus can also trace their linage to William Miller.  One former Adventist - Charles Taze Russel - founded the Watchtower Society, better known today as the Jehovah's Witnesses.  Another Adventist splinter group in Waco, Texas would later rename themselves "Branch Davidian" in 1934 and would later become world famous (for all the wrong reasons) thanks to a charismatic leader by the name of David Koresh.

And that, cats and kittens, is why I don't see any point in addressing the claims of self appointed prophets claiming to have the inside scoop on Christ's return and the end of the world.  These guys have been with us for centuries and I'm willing to wager that they will continue to be with us for centuries more.  Their predictions will consistently come to nothing as they always have and yet their followers will never stop supporting them.  It's just one of those things.

Who wants to be a Christian?

It seems that everybody hates Christianity.  Weirdly enough, this includes a whole lot of Christians.  I was just struck by that again after reading Anne Rice’s resignation from Christianity:

Gandhi famously said: "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." When does a word (Christian) become unusable? When does it become so burdened with history and horror that it cannot be evoked without destructive controversy?

For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten ...years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.

As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I'm out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.

Now I know that her words gave a sizable number of believers a bad case of the vapours, I thought it was really Christian of her to renounce Christianity.  I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve come across who insist on being called “King’s Kids”, “Christ Followers” or “Disciples of Jesus” rather than “Christian”.  See, whether you agree with her or not, it’s hard to deny that she was spot on regarding the baggage attached to the name “Christian”.

Of course you are far more likely to hear Christians simply claim that all the Christians who do bad things are not real true Christians.  Now this approach is not without merit.  It is after all very easy for anyone to belong to a Church and to call themselves Christian without actually believing (or practicing) any of it.  However, this does not mean that all Christians who say and/or do horrible things are fakes.  It is entirely possible to be passionately and sincerely wrong.  People have being doing bad things with good intentions for as long as there have been people after all.  You can be so convinced that you are in the right that you don’t even realize how wrong you are.

I think this is worse than simply refusing the label of "Christian".  Redefining “Christian” to be “someone who is always at all times perfectly like Christ” is an impossible standard.  You may as well renounce the label then because if that is how you define “Christian” then you are pretty much admitting that there are no Christians on this earth. Maybe that’s why no one wants to be one!


Honestly, is it that hard to simply own up to our mistakes?  Is it that important to always be rigth and perfect?  I prefer honesty and repentance over whitewash and faked perfection.  Why not just own your baggage and that of your group?  It can be therapeutic!  It may even make the whole group seem a bit more hospitable