Apparently, my blog template is losing its mind. My sidebar has become a down low bar and posts are disappearing.
I don’t have time to fix it in the next couple of weeks as all of my research papers are due and I am running around like a chicken with its head cut off… that or sitting at my desk surrounded by books wondering how the Sheol I am going to get everything done.
Upgrade and fixes coming soon. Before the new year: Scotteriology 4.0.
Shalom Out!
UPDATE: Crisis averted! Blog template back to normal. It was the Prejean post and some bad HTML to go with her behaviour…
Well, Carrie Prejean is back in the news again. You might remember that Prejean was the Miss America contestant that caused a bit of a stir with her response concerning gay marriage at the pageant. When she subsequently lost the contest she played the religious discrimination card. However, conservatives rejoiced as they thought they had found a popular and pretty spokesperson whom they could rally around and her conception of “opposite” marriage.
Then the wheels started to come off a little bit. Organizers of the Miss California pageant revealed that they had paid for Prejean to get breast implants, naked pictures of her surfaced on the internet, she was out partying with Michael Phelps, and ultimately, was fired by the Miss California organization who released a series of emails from her in which she came off quite poorly as a human being.
Things got worse this week.
Prejean filed a million dollar suit against Miss California pageant organizers who countersued to get their money back for her augmented boobies. Then they got cutthroat. In court, with her mother present, pageant lawyers played a video of miss Prejean, allegedly, pleasuring herself in a shocking and graphic manner. Within minutes she withdrew her case. One would hope that after this misfire miss Prejean would disappear into the sunset and we would not have to hear her talk about the Bible anymore. No such luck.
Now I want to make this clear up front: I wish no ill will on Carrie. I don’t want bad things to happen to her. Allegedly she made a bunch of videos working herself and gave them to the wrong guy. If you have a daughter and she was intimate with someone, and she made mistakes, even bad sexual ones, you would hope that the person she was intimate with would respect her privacy. Prejean doesn’t “deserve” for him to take those videos public and be humiliated; however, when you see her response to the situation in an effort to save her career so she can decide what marriage is one can’t help but think that maybe just a little Karma ain’t a bad thing for her…
“It was me by myself. There was no one else with me. I was not having sex,” the controversial beauty queen told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira in New York. “Did I think it would come back now and haunt me? No. But I think that a lot of young people can learn from this. Nothing is private anymore. Nothing is private.”
She wasn’t having sex? Perhaps things have changed in conservative evangelicalism in the States but wouldn’t this sort of thing be considered “sexual” and frowned upon? I only wonder as if you are going to base your opinions on gay marriage by conservative evangelical morals shouldn’t you try and sort of follow those morals just a bit? I’m not asking anyone to be perfect, but how many premarital sexual encounters does one have before they feel comfortable committing auto-erotic acts on video and sending them out? I’m guessing miss Prejean is not a virgin… are multiple sexual partners before marriage frowned in evangelicalism these days? I thought so, but perhaps things have changed.
Next, she suggests that the lesson to learn here is that nothing is private? Really? That’s the lesson? I’m sure that would go over well at the next Christian youth conference, “Girls, you can do whatever you want. Have sex with anyone including yourself, but don’t film it because nothing is private.” No, the real lesson is that whenever you point the finger at someone else you have four pointed back at yourself… in Carrie’s case they were just vigorously engaged.
And I’ve hit a new low…
Scratch that: the real lesson is that if you allow yourself to be an object don’t be surprised if someone treats you that way. C.S. Lewis once wrote something along the lines of, “I hear men tell me all the time they want to go out and get a woman, but a woman is the last thing they want, what they really want is an orgasm, and she just becomes the necessary apparatus.”
Maybe Carrie and her boyfriend had a deeply caring relationship… I don’t know. However, I would suggest to other young girls out there that if you are in a relationship in its early stages and you are allowing yourself to be an object then don’t be surprised if your user doesn’t respect your dignity. At this stage I am not saying what you should or should not do. I’ve been around this rodeo a few times, and I personally know and have talked to many, many girls who can’t find any sort of relationship fulfillment because they allow themselves to become merely a sexual object much too early in the process and never really develop much utility beyond that.
Finally, Prejean’s fallen humanity is a good example of the gradation of sin in evangelicalism; it’s like a pyramid with homosexuality at the top, and as long as you’re not doing that then you’re OK. The separation of orthodoxy and orthopraxy in some cases becomes nothing more than what I commonly identify as modern evangelical neognosticism: I don’t have to practice anything I believe as a standard that I would demand from others because I believe in the right standard. I can be freak and have all sorts of illicit sex, but as long as it’s not gay sex, and I believe I shouldn’t be having illicit sex… then I’m good. Build my mansion next to Jesus.
Maybe, I’m wrong here and there are many youth groups teaching their parishioners that any sort of sex is OK and Christ centered dating involves filming yourself for the other person; but I doubt it. If you’re going to be a moralizer then at least try and live some sort of life that’s in the area code of those morals. We’re not asking for perfection, but hardcore freak might be a little far off that good ole’ conservative evangelical mark.
Carrie, is also suddenly concerned with what is and isn’t in the Bible. By her logic fake bombs are OK because the Bible says nothing about them. A future in theology or philosophy she obviously doesn’t have, but if the Bible is your standard miss Prejean then maybe you should be more concerned with what’s actually in there then with what’s not
Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Now if I were to engage in the sort of selective interpretive process of miss Prejean I would like to point out that this list includes fornication (that’s consensual sex between two heterosexuals without being married) and drunkenness but nothing about homosexuality…
Paul just didn’t hate the “ghays” enough to be a good Christian I guess.
In our profession you have to be collegial, scholarly, and mostly boring; but seriously, how cool would it be if people could review other person’s works in RBL like this guy’s review for the film Old Dogs? That’s mostly a rhetorical question. The correct answer is: awesome. Way more awesome.
I would never miss an issue
If “Old Dogs” were a person, I would stab it in the face.
Millions of years from now, after Western Civilization has fallen and the Earth has ruptured and cooled and been reborn and a new life form has taken over the planet, if any of them happen to stumble upon a working DVD player and a copy of “Old Dogs,” they will sum up the passing of our culture with two simple words: ”Good riddance.”
If you truly hate your family and you’re all trapped together this weekend, and you reeeeeally want to punish them and show them just how little you value their joy, then by all means, pile into the car and rush out to find a theater playing “Old Dogs.” But if you have any self-respect at all, and if your time and your brain cells mean anything to you, then skip it. It’s not ironically awful. It’s not so bad it’s great. It is a soul-crushing experience, depressing and sad, bad enough to make me retroactively wish away the careers of all involved. [read the whole thing HERE]
I can see my RBL review of Tilling’s first book now if I was allowed to write this way:
“I don’t want to ruin his book for you, but let me give you a little context: it’s horrible. If Tilling’s book was a person I would punch it in the face…”
Tell me you wouldn’t want to read that review. Oh well, I guess that’s why we have our blogs.
In the past you may have seen me, or others in the comments, suggest that a song was characteristic of the “Jesus is my boyfriend” style of worship [here].
Well in case you were left wondering exactly what I meant by such an assertion James McGrath has left me a link to the champion of champions of the Jesus is my boyfriend worship movement (JIMBWM).
And let me tell you this song is a “movement” all right… a bowel movement.
Does anyone really think the Jesus of this song is the apocalyptic Galilean radical that was crucified by the cultural elite and powerful?
I was hung naked on a cross for you baby... mmm, let that visual sink in. You know you love me.
I’m fairly certain that if we could somehow have the historical Jesus travel through time he would detest many of his own modern followers, and he would fashion a whole lot of whips to disturb a whole lot of churches purportedly “following” him. Especially ones singing songs like this.
In this song Jesus loves you. I mean, he really loves you. He loves you so much it gets awkward… and hot. Jesus gets to first base he loves you so much. Who knew the son of God was such a player?
“So we are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes
If grace is an ocean we’re all sinking
So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss and my heart turns violently inside of my chest
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way”
“That he loves us…”
Ugghhh. If what you need to create meaning in your life is an ecstatic worship experience: have at it. But I’m not sure that the point of the Christian experience is to be loved by Jesus in this way. I’m fairly certain that most theologians would agree with me that your boyfriend is supposed to be another human being, and not a 2000 year old Galilean male.
But maybe this is just the Twilight saga syncretistically influencing the church? The girl from Twilight has immortal vampires and werewolves, but we have immortal Jesus as a boyfriend. The thought of a 40 year old divorced mother of two having her boyfriend relationship needs met while singing this song makes my brain hurt.
“So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss and my heart turns violently inside of my chest
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets…”
I realize that the bar keeps getting dropped here for bad lyrics in songs, but that might be the worst, most inappropriate line ever composed and sung in a “worship” song.
But ultimately, the point is that this is not a worship song it’s a romance song, so really what we have here is generic confusion. Romance songs express a certain kind of love, and worship songs express a certain kind of love. This is where Greek is useful as it has more than one word for love. Romance songs express eros love: it’s where we get the word erotic from. It’s sexual. Worship songs should express agape love. Big hint: it’s non-sexual!
This song really confuses eros and agape. And just because eros love is over-prevalent in our culture it doesn’t make it appropriate to incorporate into “worship” songs.
And just in case you are still wondering at this point what I think about this: Jesus is not your boyfriend.
Now I have to plan a way to psychologically get McGrath back for making me watch this. Vengeance will be mine. Oh yes. Vengeance… will… be… mine.
It is hard for me to adequately describe the travesty of this video.
At first I thought it was a joke. OK, ha ha, whatever… but then it slowly dawned on me that no they might not be joking. Then I started paying attention to the wonderful lyrics
“Gimme that Christian Side Hug, Gimme That Christian Side Hug, I’m a Rough Rider filled up with Christ’s Love, Gimme that Christian Hug…”
I have been hard in the past on the lyrics of other songs, but it is difficult for me to imagine a worse line in any song ever written than: I’m a Rough Rider filled up with Christ’s Love.
It actually hurts my brain.
“…When I hug people I leave room for the Holy Spirit.”
If you say that line five times in a row you will retard your own theological IQ by fifteen points. OK: now this is the worst line ever written in a Christian song.
Who am I kidding? They’re both horrible. It’s like trying to choose between herpes and syphilis.
According to Amanda Hess of the Washington City Paper,
The Christian Side-Hug rap comes courtesy of the Encounter Generation Conference, an annual Christian youth gathering which hopes to “bring the power, authenticity, and relevance of Jesus Christ to their culture.” I’m afraid that this potent combination of absurd chastity and mock hip-hop will be more likely to bring the power of a school-yard beat-down to these kids’ faces.
The Christian Side-Hug strikes me as almost skeezily chaste—I’d much rather have a brief normal embrace with a stranger than a hip-tap from a person who I know sexualizes even the most mundane forms of human contact. But the Side-Hug itself is slightly less offensive than the medium being used to promote it: An appropriated version of “rap music” performed by a bunch of white youth pastors who think that mixing in some gang-ish hand signals, tying on a bandana, and securing some fake bling will bring the youth to God.
While these “gangstas” are up their making a Balaam’s ass of themselves I would bet that the majority of kids in that audience have very little familiarity with the Bible, and the context for the Bible as a whole they do have is worrisome on several levels. They will know some of the major stories, but that’s pretty much it (even that’s questionable sometimes). Even the simplest of questions, e.g., how many books in the Bible, will stump the majority of them.
I know. I get to interact with first year students coming out of church backgrounds all of the time, and mark their papers that mention how Joseph and Abraham went to Canaan, but there was a famine, so they had to go to Egypt; or something about King Isaiah or King Jeremiah. I’m not kidding students actually wrote that in papers.
I died a little inside…
On the other hand the metanarrative that they have been given in which to fit the stories they do know is usually some form of dressed up moralism: something that can be made to sound holy by insisting that what is being inculcated is “biblical values.” However, I am becoming more convinced as I interact with people that are coming out of these youth groups–or leaving the church because of these sort of groups–that a moralistic context for the whole for ancient narratives transformed into Greek hero stories as manipulative prooftexts creates a generation of moralists that have little to no theological awareness.
It gets worse unfortunately. The moralistic metanarrative that young persons are given by ill equipped youth pastors–in fact many times the very worst persons to be teaching youth–ends up as a deductive shield around the Bible itself. What often becomes important is not really anything in the text (unless it will make for some good sermonizing about what it really means to be a good Christian, i.e., don’t have sex) but the shield itself, and ultimately, what usually becomes the most important to these amateur pastors and their unaware victims is defending the shield regardless of anything that may or may not be in the Bible (because they’re not reading it: they already know what it’s about). When this happens the Bible in all of its glorious complexity is never really dealt with, rather, the Bible becomes just some prooftexted verses to moralize on what’s really important: the deductive shield.
When youth are trained and raised up as moralists under the guise of relevance, or fun, or values, or any other catch word it is a mistake that I might characterize with the adjective “un-Christian,” because the conclusions that are reached theologically are so watered down as to be something else. Not that these things are wrong or bad in and of themselves or do not have a place somewhere in the process, but they are very bad frameworks on which to hang the books of the Bible and the many things those books actually do have to say. I find that young people programmed in this context don’t have a theology, or even a philosophy (while they do they’re just really, really bad ones), mostly what they have is an ideology, and that my friends is what leads to the very ugliest parts of religion that most of us do, or should, despise.
I don’t have the time to share all of my thoughts–as a book could be written on this subject–but I tend towards the thought that this is an area of ministry that has missed it big time in the last few years. But hey, at least the kids had “fun” while learning an ideological system that is antithetical to the Gospel.
Now of course the questions that needs to be answered are: how should we be teaching the Bible to our youths? How should we teach them theology? What if it’s not fun? What if we don’t beg them not to have sex for six years? (Like that’s working anyways!)
As always, I may or may not post something on that in the future!
Really, I don’t think it’s even a competition. Every other creation narrative I know of is preferable in comparison to the “Hymn to Atum,” an Egyptian creation myth whose roots are in the Old Kingdom (2575-2134 BCE).
When I first began to create
When I alone was planning and designing many creatures,
I had not sneezed Shu the wind,
I had not spat Tefnut the rain,
There was not a single living creature.
I planned many living creatures;
All were in my heart, and their children and their grandchildren.
OK. We’re good at this point. There’s nothing, and Atum is planning stuff. Fair enough.
But then comes column 27:
Then I copulated with my own fist.
I masturbated with my own hand.
I ejaculated into my own mouth.
Ummmm…
Errrrrrr…
I sneezed to create Shu the wind,
I spat to create Tefnut the rain.
Old Man Nun reared them;
So Atum masturbates into his own mouth and spits out other gods? Hmmmmm…
I’ll leave inappropriate commentary on such a creation text up to the readership. Jokes a’ plenty to be had. Brian, Jake: this is the post you guys have been waiting for.
——————————————————————————————
Can you imagine trying to raise a teenage boy in that religious world?
Mom: (walking into room) Oh Ramshes, what are you doing? Stop!
Son: (not stopping) WWAD Mom? What would Atum Do?
——————————————————————————————
How about the poor Egyptian who has to debate the Hebrew?
Egyptian: So how to you believe the world began?
Hebrew: Our God YHWH spoke everything into creation and created man in his image to have a loving relationship with him. What do you believe?
Egyptian: You know… it’s not really important to argue over differences
Hebrew: No really, I’m interested
Egyptian: Ha ha, ah, um. You know you have your beliefs and I have mine, and that’s OK…
Hebrew: C’mon. Don’t be shy. Seriously, how do you think the world was created?
Egyptian: Promise not to laugh?
Hebrew: Of course!
Egyptian: OK… Atum masturbated into his own mouth and spit out his semen creating the other gods
——————————-
…awkward silence
——————————-
Hebrew: And we are now mortal enemies
Huldrych Zwingli published his Eine kurze christliche Aqualung in the year 1523 on the 17th of November.
It was written as a sort of short theological handbook for the Zurich clergy who, like most Catholic clerics of the era, were dreadfully ill-informed and terribly ignorant. It sets out in brief form theological “truths” so that those clerics can have some sort of reliable guidebook to the niceties of theological inquiry.
Unfortunately, Zwingli was even more ill-informed and ignorant than the average laity. There are so many gross theological errors it’s an interesting read even now. Indeed, many modern theologians and pastors would do well to read it so that they can know more about heresy and how to recognize it.
Some Chapters From the Book
- Revelations: Just Put My Mansion Next To Jesus
- Tithing: Pressed Down, Shaken Together 100 Fold Return
- Tithing: It’s a Biblical Principle!
- Hit It and Quit It
- Eck: Genius or Super-Genius?
- Name It and Claim It
- Communion: Is Four Times a Year Too Much?
- Manna was probably Really Sausage: Yummy!
- Can a Sword Really Hurt Someone In The Army of God?
- Musings on the Spirit and Worship
Plus many, many more! (trans. Scott Bailey)
A sample from Ch. 10:
“Thou shalt throw thy hands in the air
And worship as thou does not care.
Thy heart, thy heart
Thy heart shalt be on fire.
The Holy Spirit doth care
So let thine heart burn.”
Look’s like a good laugh. I’ll have to pick up a copy after this semester for a little light reading.
“Dr.” Rexella Van Impe
Seriously, how the [expletive deleted] can they advertise this woman as a doctor every week? For meshiach sake the friggin’ announcer is a Dr. now. Why the sheol am I in grad school if I can declare myself a Dr. and make scads of money? Scotteriology may be changing in the near future starting with many requests for money based on my doctoral (sort of) credits! I would love to see Rexella’s PhD thesis… I can imagine it now “Oh Jack: Theories in BS and Even Worse Dispensationalism.”
Dr. Jack
If you had been wrong as many times as Jack you would look this crazy too!
Or maybe he’s just remembering the last time he walked into the room and Rexella was uncovered… yep, you would be intrigued too!
Did I say intrigued? I meant horrified…
Soo intrigued…
I mean: definitely horrified.
So moving on.
Finally, our last separated at birth couple:
Dr. J & Dr. K
I can’t tell you how hard it was to get these two to stop chest-bumping, high-fiving, and finishing each other’s sentences at their horn-hat party for literalists… and yet somehow get individual pictures.
Here is the photographic proof of two lost souls who found each other and fell in love with the ideological mindset of the other soul they had been searching for. Can we even tell their religious positions apart?
There is only one question: How long until we have Dr. Jim’s Thinking Answers In Genesis?
I have a couple of favorite worship maneuvers. One, like the video instructs, when someone adopts a pained expression to show everyone else just how serious they are about the song at hand. Though, often I think that it may be more appropriate to describe the person as on the verge of an orgasm: this is creepy when a worship leader does it while they moan into a phallus like object.
Second, the person that raises one hand, adopts painful or sexual expression, and moves that one hand back and forth as if they are high-fiving an angel. Equally creepy and distracting if done from the stage.
In total, the more you look like a dog trying to crap out a peach pit sideways the more you love Jesus.
Which is why I always do interpretive dances during worship in my tongues-of-fire-unitard with a pained expression and both hands raised moving back and forth high-fiving two angels.
Let that roll around in the old brain imaging area for awhile.
Sorry to be a stumbling block.
HT for the video: LovingYourDominatrix
Sometimes the only thing more total than some people’s depravity is their stupidity. Case in point: this Christian book store worker
A 28-year-old clerk at the “Family Christian Book Store” was arrested Sunday after authorities found a hidden camera in the store’s restroom.
Joseph David Ramon Moreaux of Lancaster was arrested on charges of peeping with a recording device and issued a citation. He was later released.
Investigators say a female patron of the bookstore contacted the Simi Valley Police Department after she noticed what appeared to be a camera in the woman’s bathroom.
Officers found a camera hidden in between boxes in the corner of the restroom, which was used by both men and women, police said.
OK. So he’s a perv who likes to watch people to their bidness. Definitely not my thing, and hopefully not yours. Unfortunately, the story takes a turn that makes me wonder: can someone really be that stupid?
When the police took the camera
They also found video on the recorder that showed Moreaux hiding the device.
He inadvertently recorded himself positioning the device, police said.
It is hard to imagine doing something more inept during a criminal act. He wasn’t caught by a hidden camera or a security camera.
He videotaped himself!
When you videotape yourself committing a crime by accident you have officially become one of the most inept, useless criminals ever.
Full story HERE
