Linkathon!: Updated
Adultery site AshleyMadison hacked, cheaters could be exposed…
Was the early church ruled by elders or a single bishop?
The reinvention of Sovereign Grace Ministries…
Roger Olson asks “did I belong to a cult?”
Two views on the Confederate flag…for and against
Second video of Planned Parenthood haggling for parts….
Is Franklin Graham “intolerant”?
Yet another article on millennials and the church…
Religious diversity around the globe…
A new social media platform coming for politics…
What it means for scripture to be ‘God breathed”…
Not all Lutherans affirm Tullians view of grace…
How the internet has brought us together and the wisdom of trolls…
WTH with a take on plausible deniability and other ways to lie…
How to tell if your Christianity has been Americanized…
GFA still stonewalling, deflecting…
This Linkathon was brought to you by EricL..support his business at the upper right.
Is Franklin Graham intolerant?
Duh.
Side Note: I have applied for a job at Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
I like a man who isn’t afraid to speak his mind, even if he is hated for it. Even if I disagree with the particular views.
Second!
I know people may not like or agree with Formerly Fundie/Benjamin Corey, but his numbers 5-7 on the How to tell if your Christianity has been Americanized…link are…well…ouch!
I think I’ve been very clear about my personal dislike of Franklin Graham.
Having said that, we need to think a bit more clearly about what he’s saying,even if he is not saying it well.
Islam has always conquered and converted by force.
While Christianity has it’s own dark history, we’re dealing with things as they are today.
While I am the most pro immigrant person here, I also see where we have allowed multiculturalism to go to seed…just as we have allowed much of our other social structures to do.
The attraction of a Graham or a Trump (who I loathe) is that they are saying what many have been thinking but the PC climate of the age have prevented them from actually saying.
The same can be said of the exposes of Planned Parenthood…the PC climate disguised the horrors of abortion.
Now, we must deal with reality.
Extremism and extreme reactions will only keep the pendulum swinging wildly and smiting all in its path.
We have an opportunity here to speak all the truth and find reasonable and rational ways to live in this complex world.
In the movie Ali, Ali gets a call from some reporter and makes the infamous “I ain’t got no quarrel with no Vietcongs” line. When he hangs up, one of his publicists is upset and asks, “Do you realize what you’ve just done?”.
Ali sits back and reflects.
“So what? I ain’t afraid to be me, and think what I think and say what I say.”
I like that.
Glad to say the Ashley Madison hack doesn’t concern me in the least.
I don’t see any way that it could be argued that Planned Parenthood is not intentionally harvesting baby parts for the purpose of selling them.
They should be disbanded and prosecuted.
They will be fine, because the prince of this world is a big fan.
Americanized Christianity….
I have the opposite problem at my Russian church. When our priest recently referred to “Our revolution” he wasn’t talking about the American Revolution.
I will admit that sometimes I find all the Russian stuff to be a little tedious, but to be honest, they don’t really over-do it. (For that you need to attend a Greek parish.) It is actually beneficial in that it does prevent me from seeing the Kingdom of God as an American enterprise. (It’s not a Russian enterprise either.)
All to say, Americans aren’t alone in thinking our country is the epicenter of the Christian world.
I agree with f Graham about islam. He’s right as rain on that one.
Well, I just learned that Ashley Madison is a thing. Swell…
no more gatekeepers – so celebrate, dance and run to Jesus she says… seems to me we still have gatekeepers … run to Jesus, yes… but maybe not at my church…
considering the element of cretinism that espouses the cause-so-called of the south by killing black people, i don’t see any justification for flying the confederate flag on any public flag pole… but as someone pointed out, let “them” fly it so we can identify them…
really is time to put the historic flag (with some deserved respect) into the museums and the history books … IMNSHO
just passing time – inanely commenting as i wait for some house guests to arrive – the bathrooms are clean, the sheets are changed and the dishes are done ( we have no dishwasher 😯 )
i’m about to enter my 80th year, so maybe that explains why i couldn’t care less about Bloom County? … now Pogo and the Okefenokee Swamp, that was funny! 🙂
Franklin G’s role as propaganda liaison for the invasion of Iraq disqualified him from serious political discourse. He’s either a liar or woefully ignorant.
“We’re under attack!!!!”
Hi everyone,
hope your day went well and your evening goes even better
((((Hugs)))
I think the Roman Catholic Church can give the muslims a run for their money as far as bloodshed of the Saints, over 16 million perhaps.
I’ve come across a few people over the years who insist there were no bishops or presbyters in the Bible and that was all made up by men wanting control. The initial plurality, however, seems to make sense and seems best attested across the various divides within Christianity.
I was way more into Calvin & Hobbes and The Far Side and Peanuts when I was a kid, though I enjoyed Bloom County. Then it turned into Outland and became prodigiously unfunny. 🙁
Ashley Madison not only promote adultery, they make use of spam and send “Have an affair” emails, which is the reason I have heard of them. I delight in their misfortune.
Ashley Madison….. Looks like a great time to be a divorce lawyer. 37 million cheaters getting called on the carpet…
Ashley Madison has 30 million members. Oh my!
Would be great if the hacker turned out to be christian……as they are releasing all the peoples info if the site isn’t taken down. Breaking the law for the greater good, may be.
BTW, anybody catch PBS’ Frontline special on El Chappo tonight. I only caught the tail end.
Blood in the streets ……Frontline usually does a good job. The drop and duck drills in Mexico schools are for bullets not earthquakes,
“The troll can often be a deep thinking and independent-minded person—a less elevated version of Socrates’ gadfly—who likes to incite people. The humour of the troll typically rests upon an ironic distance dependent upon the naivety and lack of self-awareness of the troll’s victims and upon the troll’s ability to read and exploit the dynamics of a community in a way that it cannot read itself. This is why trolls prey upon communities that tend to operate with herd dynamics, rather than upon self-aware communities. Their wry appreciation of triggering herd dynamics is often a coping mechanism for or a means of venting their deep frustration with the prevalence of such dynamics more generally and the ways that these dynamics impinge upon their lives.
People’s particularly strong reaction to unwelcome truths is also an important weapon in the troll’s arsenal. That certain facts and truths aren’t voiced because people find them offensive or uncomfortable is one of the characteristics of the reactive and non-differentiated community that most encourages the troll to antagonize them. Trolls tend to have an exceedingly high tolerance for other people’s discomfort, but they also often have a very low tolerance for society’s resistance to truths that make people feel uncomfortable. They will use these truths to antagonize society, not chiefly in order to hurt genuinely vulnerable individuals who are supposedly being protected from the truth, but rather to attack the social resistance to truth and the overly thin skins that are being created by this. To put it crudely, trolls can sometimes be the a**holes that societies need to expel the s**t that they otherwise can become full of. As trolls are particularly attuned and attentive to the unhealthy patterns of societies’ reaction and communication, and to the naivety of groupthink, trolls can be especially well-equipped and driven to expose the falsehoods and misconceptions that thrive in such contexts. It is not surprising, for instance, that the founder of the famous myth-busting site, Snopes.com, David Mikkelson, started off as a troll on Usenet forums. The disruption and incitement of trolls is not uncommonly motivated by an instinctive antipathy towards the lies, the bull, the misconceptions, and the half-truths that reactive and non-differentiated societies often run on.
Trolling is also often a guerrilla tactic used by those with a natural affinity to something closer to the more anarchic culture of the earlier Internet against the groupthink that often arises in the mass corporate culture of the contemporary Internet. These sorts of trolls are often intelligent, self-aware, independent, long-term Internet users, intensely well-versed in Internet culture, who dislike the way that online culture is being reshaped to make it a friendly and ‘safe’ place for entitled and hyper-sensitive passive online consumers, curated and controlled by corporations, squeezing out the diversity, unpredictability, confrontation, vigorousness, independence, creativity, and agency that they highly value in the Internet culture that was once more accommodating to, because it was largely formed by, people not unlike themselves. As this post observes, the troll represents a threat to and disruption of the corporate vision of the Internet, where everyone is clearly and neatly defined, where all keep in line, and interact in a predictable fashion.”
Yup, someone understands me LOL.
“If we are to encourage a healthier Internet culture of discourse, I submit that we may need to make a half-turn towards the trolls, away from the non-differentiated culture of the reactive masses in the social Internet the corporations and the massification of the Internet have formed for us. We need contexts that are less ‘safe’ and which demand more from us. We need to push towards the creation of more differentiated environments of discourse. We need to recognize that healthy conversation may require a greater degree of exclusivity and even exclusion, something which existed more organically in the earlier Internet. Most people are not equipped for such conversation, not without considerably more formation. Vigorous and fruitful exchange of diverse ideas is only possible where a certain culture exists and this culture requires particular types of persons and contexts to sustain it, people who regard themselves as self-defined collaborative architects of a conversation and contexts that are more capable of sustaining confrontational and more differentiated interactions.”
AMEN, preach it brotha!
11 so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs. 2 Co 2:11. ESV
We suddenly act as if there is no deceitfulness in the enemies work. We suddenly cannot taste the gall in the cup we drink. The wanton woman rides the beast and we bow. Oh God make us wise in something other than our own eyes. Isaiah is as true today as ever “your ways are not my ways” says the Lord. Yes, his footsteps are in the sea and we cannot trace them out. Oh Lord we trust your heart even when we cannot see your hand.
Like I’ve acknowledged many times…my mind ticks differently. That article describes the dynamic to a “t” as well as the motivation. Great link!
23-amen
A Friend,
I couldn’t disagree more.
What trolls do is take the work that somebody else has poured into a site and seize it for themselves.
They don’t pay for the site, provide content for the site, take any responsibility for the success of the site, they simply seize other peoples work for themselves.
It is the internet equivalent of being a squatter.
I usd to frequent a sports site that has been taken over by one of these heroes….and I’ve watched it blow up and basically die because one guy thought his opinions and delivery were more important than anyone else in the fan base.
He could have started his own site and ranted to his hearts content…but he wanted to steal someone else’s readers and basically go into someone else’s home and rearrange the furniture, tell them what to eat, and drive their car.
How this is heroic is beyond me.
I had something to say many years ago, so I started a site.
I pay for it.
I provide the content for it.
I can do what I damn well please with it.
The internet is a big place and trolls are able to start their own sites and say whatever they want and if people want to hear it they will read it.
People still have a right to free association in this country, as well as the rights to either be informed or stay ignorant.
Well, we’ll have to agree to disagree.
I think you miss the greater point of that article…which only supports the thesis.
No worries. Most humans tick the way you do…that’s what the Big Corps, Big Religion, Big Govt. count on.
There are different flavors as with everything…I’m commenting on the type/form/personality of that the linked article broaches….not the idiots that just name call and are disagreeable while having no argument, no thesis, no intellect and no point other than to provoke.
Deconstruction is of great value to a point.
But, I am reminded that there must be a balance to everything or you can lose all construction.
At some point you have to pick some boxes and hold to some basic truths and pick a Culture, pick a Group and pick some leaders….warts and all.
As such, I think I still prefer the conservative evangelicals’ warts to the warts of the liberals or the warts of Islam or the warts of secular humanism, etc.
Anyways, good set of links as usual. Love the info.
I continue to read Rachel Held Evans from time to time…
She is just making it up as she goes now.
It is clear that she does not believe in a revealed faith that has any real authority or fidelity to a text.
There is little left to undergird any sort of historic faith… the small push to pluralism and universalism would be easy.
Oh and by the way… nice is not the issue. She is at least as intolerant of those she opposes as what she accuses. And I realize that I am often intolerant. Whoever asserts a matter as true is by definition asserting there is a lie to oppose.
I think perhaps our numbers will lower significantly … it will be good.
BD,
I disagree with your assessment of the current struggle.
I believe that if we were diligent about cleaning our own house and keeping it clean, the church would be more attractive than it’s ever been.
The majority of people do not really believe that a man wearing a dress becomes a woman and while they will be tolerant of homosexuals, they do not believe it is a preferred norm.
The horror of late term abortion has been put in the cultures face and the culture is recoiling from the grisly truth.
Now is not the time to grieve and whine about persecution.
Now is the time to be what we are called to be…honestly confess our own sins and failures , clean up our messes, and proclaim the risen Christ at the top of our lungs.
We have a huge opportunity here.
Agree with Michael…I’ve pivoted for nearly exactly those reasons.
A Friend,
Working on a whole article about this now…
If integrity and honesty and not-getting-rich-from-selling-Jesus makes a comeback in “ministry”…the timing will be good to empower the Anti-Socially-Liberal Cultural agenda and message that is now dominating US and Western Culture.
Folks are finally getting sick of the direction the US has moved in…and there will be a backlash. The “church” only helps its own cause if it finds Accountability and Integrity Jesus.
Good Michael, looking forward to your expanded thoughts on that…we are on the same page on that one…which should give you confidence or great concern LOL
Now, that was funny… 🙂
The closest way I can tie this is in, would be on the link to Americanized Christianity, but a question occured to me today. How do Christians who live in nations where there is extreme persecution toward them deal with marriage? Essentially, how do Christians deal with marriage in places where they are treated the way that the church in America views homosexuals, or frankly worse?
Michael,
Why do you bring up the charge of whining about persecution when you address me? I do not believe I have asserted as much. I very much believe that this is the lever that could pull that gate open but as of yet not so much. Vendors for services have a legitimate cry, but please do not paste me as the whiner of persecution.
My post above was a direct challenge over what I see as an apostate bride. That is not persecution that is people of faith undermining the basis of the faith they purport
The cleaning up of our own house is valid and would matter a great deal, divorce, violence against children, pornography, all forms of immorality fill our churches and mute our voice.
BD,
I was speaking generally and not specifically about you.
I’ve been mulling this for a bit.
The apostate bride is another thing I will have inflammatory things to say about soon. 🙂
My apologies, my friend.
My misreading Michael, I know you and I are for one another…
I also know that I have obsessively mulled this matter and am deeply disturbed.
I have taken heart by your insistence that a backlash is afoot… and I pray for it.
I do not mean to be testy
BD,
We are indeed for each other.
Period.
I will always forgive testy as it is the sin I enjoy keeping above all others, so I will need forgiveness myself on that day.