Things I Think
1. The Southern Baptist Convention is imploding. The largest Protestant denomination in the country (and the most quintessentially American in the world) survived the inerrancy wars and the Arminian/Calvinist conflicts intact only to fracture over spousal abuseĀ issues and national politics. I’m trying to think of a major church body that isn’t rife with division and shrinking…I’m still thinking…
2. I think God mainly works through people…people who are consciously dying to self for the sake of others…
3.Ā “We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have – for their usefulness.” Thomas Merton quoted by The Project...
4. Might as well get in a bunch of trouble…I think that denying that there are differences between the sexes leads to a denial of some aspects of the Imago Dei…
5. Culling out things people said and did decades ago as proof of who they are now denies the transformative power of the Gospel…we must look at the whole record of a person’s life…
6. The same Christians that scorned President Clinton’s immorality are covering President Trump’s and vice versa…if politics guides your moral compass, your compass is badly broken. It’s far more honest (thus, more moral) to simply admit that personal morality takes a backseat to political convictions in that arena…
7. Suffering of any sort… if intense enough…causes one to focus on the person of Christ rather than doctrines about Christ. Thus, pain becomes a gift from God…
8. The death of cultural Christianity will bring chaos to the culture and clarity to the church…
9. IĀ hated the new Avengers movie…( SPOILERS IN THE COMMENTS!)
10. It’s simply amazing to me that old school power structures in the church still don’t understand the power of social media for good or ill…nothing can be covered anymore…
1. Imploding is an over-reach. Convention is coming up, and this is our version of the new “TMZ” style politics. It will die down in a few weeks, and this particular mess won’t make much difference to the SBC as a whole. Sure, it’s ugly and embarrasing to the body of Christ, but hey, we are the SBC. That’s just what we do.
2. Taught 2 Corinthians 4 this week. That’s the exact message. Dying to self is very uncomfortable.
5. See #1. (However, in this case, the sayer of those things is pretty much the same guy)
9. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the movie…until the end. Made me very angry. That’s not how I want to leave a movie.
Josh,
How many more fractures can the group handle and still remain one group?
A hearty amen to your comment on the movie…
“How many more fractures can the group handle and still remain one group?”
A million. At least. Non-SBCers don’t understand how much we aren’t “one group”. We are literally 45,000 autonomous bodies. Whether Paige Patterson is president of a seminary or not doesn’t change that. At worst, some of those churches could designate that none of their gift goes to SWBTS, the same a few big churches did with ERLC over Russell Moore’s problems with Trump. We are dying a slow, comfy death. Nothing as cool as big implosion.
Did you hate the Avengers movie for its ending or something else? (I smell a sequel)
I read a post over the weekend by Beth Moore, who rips the SBC a new one over her consistent and considerable mistreatment due to her being female. In my opinion, course correction is long overdue within the church over issues related to gender.
The sooner Christians abandon political affiliation as part of their spirituality, the better of both the church will be. Political involvement doesn’t require religious sanction.
Pain = gift from God. Yup…dang it.
correction–“both they and the church will be”
fil,
I attend movies rarely and only if I am assured of a “happy ending”.
I have enough misery in my life without spending that much money for more…
I took 60 junior high kids to the movie on a rewards field trip and they were outraged at the ending–especially Spiderman’s demise…until I reminded them the stage was set for a sequel…
movie popcorn is my solace.
The sequel has already been filmed and comes out next May, I think. Still an awful way to end movie 1.
Black Panther was great though.
Pink Panther was better. š
notnowKatofil.
š
Also fil, very cool of you taking the 60 kids. I know it’s your job, but what a divine calling. You are providing something that many of those kids aren’t getting elsewhere.
Not everyone has seen the movie. STOP THE SPOILERS!
Save your money. It’s stinks. š
At this rate, I’ll be saving my money because I already know the end cause people are posting spoilers. grrrrrrr
SPOILER ALERT – Poison Ivy isn’t in this movie.
London,
I’ll put a spoiler alert up…the internet is chock full of them so I didn’t think anyone could miss them…
I had ?
The Penguin dies.
The SBC has been imploding for at least 25 years and probably almost 30. Declining membership. a split that did result in a splinter denomination, reducing the mission force, and many defections including yours truly were signs long before the present drama.
Trump is a reprobate, so was Kennedy but Clinton took advantage of a young woman in the White House and women did not come to her defense. Women are not taking responsibility for their own political hypocrisy on that one. Still you are correct people choose presidents for political not moral reasons.
#8 is the Things I Think post of the day, month, year. Let it be so.
Can you expound on #8?
JTK,
The stripping from the culture of “Christian” mores and ethics will result in the glue being dissolved from society.
In particular, I believe the destruction of the family leads to moral anarchy and is already the pain we’re desperately trying to self medicate away.
As the visible church appears to shrink, that which is left will have the Gospel clarity that only marginalization and persecution brings.
Keep in mind that I’m not a well man and my thinking may reflect that… š
Michael
Your #8 made me think of this quote by T.S. Eliot –
āBut the Church cannot be, in any political sense, either conservative or liberal, or revolutionary. Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent things.ā
Duane,
That was perfect!
Michael,
Then, of course, Eliot also had insights into feline psychology…
#21 was absolutely on target… We look for all kinds of scapegoats, but turn a blind eye, or worse yet blame, the respect for Christian mores and ethics that centered the western world for centuries…. For the record i am not declaring that all were Christians or even the ones of us that were always behaved
Denial and rationalizing are man’s achilles’ heel. IMO
I’m glad that Eliot broke free of Unitarianism. That may have helped clear his thinking/writing .. Dunno. ?
Iām here. Thatās all Iāve got today.
My thoughts on #2 come from one of my favorite quotes by Oswald Chambers and may well apply to all of us (including, especially, and most certainly myself) regarding one another and two friends of recent topic:
āWhat Is That to You?āByĀ Oswald Chambers
Peterā¦said to Jesus, “But Lord, what about this man?” Jesus said to him, “ā¦what is that to you? You follow Me.” āJohn 21:21-22
One of the hardest lessons to learn comes from our stubborn refusal to refrain from interfering in other peopleās lives. It takes a long time to realize the danger of being an amateur providence, that is, interfering with Godās plan for others. You see someone suffering and say, āHe will not suffer, and I will make sure that he doesnāt.ā You put your hand right in front of Godās permissive will to stop it, and then God says, āWhat is that to you?ā Is there stagnation in your spiritual life? Donāt allow it to continue, but get into Godās presence and find out the reason for it. You will possibly find it is because you have been interfering in the life of anotherā proposing things you had no right to propose, or advising when you had no right to advise. When you do have to give advice to another person, God will advise through you with the direct understanding of His Spirit. Your part is to maintain the right relationship with God so that His discernment can come through you continually for the purpose of blessing someone else.
Most of us live only within the level of consciousnessā consciously serving and consciously devoted to God. This shows immaturity and the fact that weāre not yet living the real Christian life. Maturity is produced in the life of a child of God on the unconscious level, until we become so totally surrendered to God that we are not even aware of being used by Him. When we are consciously aware of being used as broken bread and poured-out wine, we have yet another level to reachā a level where all awareness of ourselves and of what God is doing through us is completely eliminated. A saint is never consciously a saintā a saint is consciously dependent on God.
Hope that was worth the effort to copy and paste. God bless everybody.
#5. Absolutely! Good luck in getting the masses to actually stop their witch hunts for even tidbits of political, moral, or social incorrectness.
#9. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Knowing that there is a sequel next year (and the. MS Marvel movie a month before it)made the ending not tragic.
#9.5. Iām convinced that Peter Quill has a dependency issue (mental illness)when it comes to women in his life.
@1
considering becoming a cooperating church. Patterson needs to step down. Why is it that much of evangelicalism has such a truncated understanding of ethics?
Just curious…what’s a cooperating church?
bob1
http://www.sbc.net/BecomingSouthernBaptist/BenefitsOfCooperating.asp
I have to admit that the SBC is in rapid decline, and so are most of the churches involved. Itās been going down hill for a long time. I think for years they lied about the numbers and money. There has been terrible leadership for years. Itās all about arrogance and pride.
Infinity War was … okay … for a first half of a movie that clearly had to be cut in half.
The Dark Knight had a comparably grim ending, though, in the sense that the hero failed and some of his allies ended up dead and/or also disfigured. It obviously wasn’t half of the sentient beings in the universe being wiped out, though.
But then again Nolan pretty well set up stories in which we knew Gotham was such a bad city that, as Alfred put it, things were going to get worse before they got better.
Infinity War was a Macguffin scavenger hunt that would only make sense to people who have already seen the other films and were willing to invest in the overlapping and cumulative character arcs.
Marvel’s got a penchant for big events that get undone, though. There’s a gloriously cynical joke that’s been made about how in Marvel nobody ever stays dead … except for maybe Uncle Ben. š
and technically I did not provide any spoilers for who does and doesn’t die.
Although it’s not a spoiler to say that film reviewers who observe that Thanos has a Malthusian approach to life in the universe are the kind that would observe that there must be a Red Baron in Snoopy and the Red Baron from reading the title.
Duh
Thanos is Ra’s al Ghul but for the entire Marvel Universe … only not as interesting. It’s not Brolin’s fault, though. The more cosmic the villains in the MCU the lamer and dumber they get. Loki’s entertaining and some of the “street” level Marvel TV villains like Kingpin and Kilgrave are VERY memorable but the average MCU movie villain is a one and done bumbler. That’s why I was very pleasantly surprised that Michael Keaton got me to like the Vulture. I’ve been a Spiderman fan since I was a kid and Vulture was never near the top of my list of favorite characters.
Maybe Marvel is digging up old plot lines from Days Of Our Lives or The Young and the Restless.
given how many Marvel comics actually predate DoOL it’s arguably been the other way around.
General Hospital then?
Let’s put it this way, Kirby co-created Captain America with Joe Simon in 1940. General Hospital is decades too late. Even if you try to go for something like the iconic Stan Lee/Jack Kirby stuff that kicked off in 1961, a couple of years before General Hospital.
All the “Victor”s are derivatives of Red Skull then.
#3…ahh…the utilitarian gospel…I realized a number of years ago that my evangelical past was filled with too much “to do”. No time to just be.
#5…I can no longer comment/complain…I realized that no matter how much you point out the blatant hypocrisy, someone will shoot back with “but Hillary”…ok that was a complaint.
#8…Couldn’t agree more.
#9…just watched “The Last Jedi”…didn’t think it was a terrible movie, just had a “few” problems. Few meaning many. Never really got into superhero movies, but sounds like “Infinity War” made a boatload of $$$ really quick.
#10…Mark Driscoll discovered this the hard way. Others are discovering it too.
I was one of the few who liked The Last Jedi. It broke away from the formulas of the previous movies. Wipe the slate, begin again.
The New Victor…Yes, I actually enjoyed it also, despite some flaws. Hey, can’t please everyone.
Note: my comment for #9 in post number 40 above was written under the influence.
Of a very hostile Amazon.com 1-star review.
Heck, I know this person has issues with the movie, but I liked the movie, and that’s all that matters, so I greatly temper my tepid, lukewarm comment above.
What it boils down to is this…if I am craving a Star Wars fix, there are some Episodes I gravitate to, and some I turn my back on (I’m looking at you Phantom Menace). I think The Last Jedi, with some odd turns and plots, will be one I gravitate to, along with Rogue One, Empire, Force Awakens, and Revenge of the Sith.