Your Christian friend has been staying up late on the internet, listening to Christian short wave and now comes up with a collection of completely bizarre, totally mythological pieces of anti-factual, conspiratorial nonsense—”They drilled a hole to hell,”….”Obama is a Muslim”…..”NASA has proven the sun stands still”….”9-11 was prophesied in Ezekiel”….”Christianity is going to be illegal by the next election.”

What do you do?

Do you correct them?
Do you leave it alone?
Do you write down Snopes.com on a card and give it to them?
Do you laugh? Weep?
Do you top it with a stranger story?

What is the right response to ignorance, factual error and sweeping untruths?

For the sake of this question, I’m going to make an unsafe assumption: that we all have a strong commitment to the application of grace in everyday life.

While all of us who love grace want to apply it to all of our relationships, we have to admit that in some relationships, we have to use law in order to fulfill the responsibilities we have in various roles of authority.

How does a parent, a teacher, an employer, law enforcement officer or a person otherwise charged with the use of authority and law live out and apply a Biblical commitment to grace in relationships?

I want to be gracious to my students, and I’m willing to be abused, but my responsibilities as a teacher require me to use law in order to maintain order and fulfill the requirements of a classroom process.

Is the answer an “either/or” between law and grace or a use of law in such a way that grace is seen even more clearly?

I’m especially interested in the answers of those who must sometimes be the “enforcer” or rules and policies.

My last post has stirred up some, uh….”interesting” commentary and email. To the point: in the view of some people, evangelism of teenagers is abusive and unethical. Since I’m a preacher who preaches the Gospel to teenagers with an appeal for their conversion, I’m engaged in abusive behavior.

This especially seems to to apply, to some, to the cases of those who are stated unbelievers or atheists. If I know that is their position, then to evangelize at all is to be disrespectful and manipulative. These young people should not have to hear Christian appeals for conversion and it is entirely appropriate to see this kind of activity as unethical pressure tactics on those least able to resist.

These claims hit close to home. I’ve devoted most of my life to evangelizing students, and I am not bashful about it. That said, I am just as passionate to reject all unethical methods, pressure tactics and manipulation. Scripture, in fact, commands me to abandon and oppose any underhanded or unethical use of the Gospel. I am told to serve and love others in Jesus’ name, and to proclaim/teach the Gospel with faith and submission to Christ at the center. I am given specific instructions to honor God in evangelism by leaving matters of the heart and conscience to him. My calling is to love, communicate and relate. I am an incarnational proclaimer of the Good News. I can’t manipulate and represent Jesus. I also can’t equivocate and represent Jesus. [Continue reading]

This particular open thread is going to be a bit unusual.

I am limiting participation to only those readers who are either trained in some area of the sciences or currently work in a science related field (either teaching or practice.)

This thread is for this question: How have you resolved the tensions in your own life and thinking between science and your faith? What has been your journey? What was particularly significant in that journey?

I’m especially interested in those who were brought up in conservative Christian environments with typical conservative assumptions about the Bible.

Please keep “sideline comments” out of this thread.

A friend and I were swapping stories about the amazing, crazy, hilarious, rude, embarrassing, you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up bad behavior of some children in church. Also, we tossed in a few stories about the adults who bring them and often make things much worse.

We thought you might have some stories to share. I prefer bad behavior stories that make the entire audience wince, but will take whatever you have.

No cute stories please. I want the dark side. This is oral history. Call the Smithsonian.

You Catholics should win this thread easily. With no nurseries, you already have the table set for excitement.

It appears to me that the most misunderstood of the solas is “sola deo Gloria.” I’m especially interested in the Catholic take that God “shares” his glory with the saints.

Do reformation Christians really believe that “glory” belongs to God alone? Or do we, like our Catholic friends, believe that God shares his glory with those who are “glorified?” What is the relationship between the “sola” glory of God and a “glorious” anything else? (Like the universe, for example?)

Question: What does it mean to say “Glory to God alone?” And how do we practice it?

Prosperity Gospel: Yes or No?

You decide. Here is a collection of statements, products, ministries, etc. Some of them are the Prosperity “Gospel” while some are not.

What do you think? [Continue reading]

IM friend Ragamuffin was recently in a debate with some sisters who claim that Roman Catholics are not Christians, don’t worship Jesus, etc., and the subject of the canon came up. His conversation partner, “pilgrimsdaughter,” covered a lot of topics, such as a kind of Landmark view of the church, and then got around to the canon.

Here’s her statement:

As to whether the RCC gave us the doctrine of the Trinity, the Canon, the understanding of Christ’s nature, etc.: IF the men that finalized those ideas and wrote them formally as church doctrines were RC and not just simply churchmen, that still does not negate the fact that all those things were already understood by the Apostles and early believers and WRITTEN IN SCRIPTURE, where I and any other believer can find them. As to the canon, that was understood well before any council finalized it.

Now I actually agree with pilgrimsdaughter that the Trinity and the natures of Christ are data in scripture, but I believe this data, like any other statement in scripture, isn’t in a confessional form in the original texts and was later put in confessional, doctrinal form to be affirmed as “those things which must be believed.”

But the statement on scripture is a puzzler. Did the early Christians have a sense of inspired writings? Absolutely. Did they call these writings scripture? Yes, but was there complete agreement on the canon? No. Was there a process of canonical formation that debated, included and excluded? What part did the church as a whole play in canonization?

What happens when individual conservative evangelicals declare themselves to be their own authority on the issue of the canon of scripture? How does a Protestant who deems church councils to be the instruments of an apostate church defend their own idea of canon? Where was the canon of the New Testament when it “existed” before any church council? Where was it hiding and how do we find it if we ignore Catholicism?

So if you reject the finalization of the canon as the actions of an apostate church, what do you tell a Mormon about his canon? “That’s not in my Bible?”

After spending the day learning that my Alan Creech ad has deprived me and thousands of others of their salvation (thanks a lot Alan), I’m rather overwhelmed with the ironies of evangelicals in general and the neo-Reformed in particular. (Yes, Virginia, there are neo-reformed.)

So here today’s somewhat sophisticated open mic question:

What are some of the ironies you see in evangelical life, belief and practice? (If you have to look up irony, that’s OK. Go ahead. We’ll wait.)

We’ve been so busy with all this political rhetoric (which I am totally tired of and won’t be revisiting anytime soon. Ugh) that we haven’t had our regular “Open Mic” post. So here’s our “open mic” question for this week:

Have you ever just “lost it” (i.e. found something unbearably funny) in church? Gotten so “tickled” that you had to leave? Found something so funny that it was all you could do to contain yourself from exploding with laughter? Well, what was it? We want in on the story.

What happened in church that was so funny you “lost it?”

Matt Stokes responds like a reasonable person. Good blogger, Matt. Good.

It’s all over Facebook. All over email forwards. All over Christian discussion sites and blogs. All over evangelicalism and elsewhere.

It’s Red Envelope Day:

Hey everyone, I just was invited to a group on Facebook that I thought would be good to give you the heads up on. It is an event where on March 31 everyone who opposes abortion and wants to let President Obama know about it will send a Red envelope addressed to:

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington , D.C. 20500

On the back you should write:

“This envelope represents one child who died because of an abortion.
It is empty because the life that was taken is now unable to be a part of our world.”

This would be a great way for all your pro-life people out there to let Pres. Obama know that you don’t approve of killing innocent babies.

So, Internet Monk audience….especially those of you who have been around a while…Why does “Red Envelope Day” bother me? (And why does it bother, or not bother, you….if you like.)

I hesitate to open movies as a topic for discussion when a chunk of my audience is of the generation that thinks Pineapple Express is great cinema, but here’s the question.

What are some films “For and About Hard Times” that the IM audience should check out?

Economic hardship has been a theme for a lot of good stories, books, films and music. Just looking at our Netflix ques for now, what movies have depictions of or lessons about hard economic times?

I especially would like to hear about older movies with America’s Great Depression as the backdrop. Older movies are real treasures, and a lot of us just don’t know about them.

(Facing the Giants does not qualify. Thank you.)

UPDATE: Jared Wilson takes off on this topic.

I’m not dogging any churches here. I love my brothers and sisters in the suburbs. But this is a question that needs to be discussed. No blame, but thoughtful consideration. If you want to rant, go away.

I drove around Lexington yesterday, looking at suburban church after suburban church after suburban church after suburban church…..

I know Lexington pretty well. It has a major downtown/inner city area. Universities. Lots of businesses. Lots of housing of different kinds. Plenty of ethnics (Hispanics, especially) and minorities down there. Plenty of young people in the city. Lots of poverty and the resulting problems.

There are some churches in the inner city, but they are mostly Catholics, older, endowed, old money mainline congregations and Pentecostals who are happy to reach out to non-white, non-suburban people. [Continue reading]

I’m not trying to promote a pile-on here, but this story effectively points out something I’ve experienced many times.

It’s a story about Christians justifying rudeness with religion. Here’s the short version, but you’ll want to read all of what the original poster had to say. [Continue reading]

The following comment appeared in the Losing God comment thread. Please read it, with special consideration of what is said, not the person saying it (whom I don’t know and neither do you.)

I do not struggle with “Is Christianity true?” vs atheism, Islam, Hinduism etc.

My “spiritual depression” is caused by the continual dueling (in my mind) of the various theologies within Christianity: Reformed, Wesleyan, Lutheran, Catholic, Orthodox, and on and on.

How can I know which, if any, are truly true? All have scads of brilliant and holy adherents. Is it all subjective? Just close my eyes and pin the tail on the donkey? As Lewis said, we cannot live in the hallway (mere Christianity.) We must choose a room.

To continue to study systematic theologies only seems to drive me further into “depression.” Yet it is like an unbreakable addiction.

Since my wife’s move to the RCC was related to her own healing from depression, I’m quite interested in this topic.

I’d like to invite the comments of those who have a thoughtful response to make to this person. I will not post anything other than serious and mature comments. I realize that most commenters will have made a denominational choice, but this is not the post on which to sell your church as the winner.

What I want to know is….

1) Why does this search matter so much? Is there some question of the availability of Jesus?

2) Why is this related to depression?

3) Why, for some people, is this search so compulsive and addictive?