I have finished Dan Kimball’s latest – They Like Jesus, but Not the Church. It was an easy read that I found interesting, somewhat insightful, but to which I would not fully agree.

One of the lesser quoted (here that is) ODM’s – Lighthouse Trails has reviewed They Like Jesus, but not the Church and unfortunately they miss the point, twist the point, so to reject the point.

In the second sentence of the reviewer says:

Kimball interviews several young people (one is a lesbian) who tell him…

Since none of the people Kimball offers as examples are Believers, I wonder why the reviewer feels the need to point out that one is a lesbian. Well, OK, we all know why… But it reflects poorly on the reviewer when he/she immediately illustrates Kimball’s thesis. In the book Kimball clearly lays out his belief that homosexuality is a sin, so the watchblog can’t attack him there… but Kimball does concede:

Quite honestly, and some people might get mad at me for saying this, I sometimes wish this weren’t a sin issue, because I have met gay people who are the most kind, loving, solid, and supportive people I have ever met. As I talk to them and hear their stories and get to know them, I come to understand that their sexual orientation isn’t something they can just turn off. Homosexual attraction is not something people simply choose to have, as is quite often erroneously taught from many pulpits. (p. 138)

What is truly mind-blowing is how this is twisted. Lighthouse does this by saying:

This is alarming that Kimball is saying this. Substitute the sin for pedophilia and hear how it sounds: “I sometimes wish molesting children wasn’t a sin issue, because I have met pedophiles who are the most kind, loving, solid, and supportive people I have ever met.”

Well of course it sounds terrible. It’s also completely irrelevant and disingenuous. They could have inserted “over-eating” as another sin– but that would not have played into their hand. This retort is so logically strained, so ethically challenged (yes, it is an unethical tact) that I’m not sure it fits into any known logical fallacy category. In twisting this point they miss Kimball’s point: “…it matters how we treat fellow sinners. We all are sinners (Rom. 3:23), but the church has subtly, and sometimes not too subtly, treated some sins differently from others” (p. 138).

In another classic example of missing the point they say:

Kimball says “Christians are now the foreigners in a post-Christian culture, and we have got to wake up to this reality if we haven’t” (p. 30). He is desperate for this realization to happen saying “we aren’t respected” by those outside the church nor are we sought after for advice by unbelievers (p. 30). But Christians have always been foreigners in the world, and they have suffered terribly for it.

On the one hand the reviewer is right; Christians have always been foreigners in the world. But that is not what Kimball is talking about – and I suspect they know it. What Kimball is talking about is the recent shift in Western Culture, a shift from Christendom to post-Christendom. In this sense the contemporary Christian is undeniably more a foreigner than those from previous generations. Point missed, or ignored – either way the result is the same.

As the review goes on the condemnation becomes more sophisticated as they twist what Kimball said, then attack the twist. They write:

Kimball masterfully condemns Christians who are pro-Israel, take the Bible literally, study Bible end time prophecy and talk about hell, and likens them to negative, arrogant, unloving and vengeful people.

Problem is, Kimball does no such thing… he does not liken people who hold these beliefs as negative, arrogant, unloving and vengeful. He does not attack these beliefs or those who hold them; what he does is “attack” those who hold them negatively, arrogantly, unlovingly, and with vengeance. In this case I would say “When ya throw a stone the dog that yelps is the one that got hit.”The reviewer takes a statement on “how not” to do something and twists it into a statement that says something “should not be done.” Reminds me of: “Has God really said you cannot eat from any tree…?”

Bottom line, regardless what you think of Kimball or his recent work, the review at Lighthouse Trails misses the point, or twists the point, to the degree that they cannot be taken seriously.