With the exception of one of our local news stations, which tends to be pretty friendly to the Christian churches in the area, I always dread it when the word “Christian” shows up in a pre-ad bumper for the evening news. It is like a clue that you’re going to experience something excruciatingly stupid that has happened in the name of Christ.
For example (not verbatim):
Next up, what is going on at a Wisconsin elementary school that has Christians up in arms? Join us after the break…
Let me guess:
The school isn’t teaching young-earth creation in science class? No, that would be old news.
Harry Potter added to the approved reading list for Reading Counts? No.
Athiest teacher decides to prostelytize? No.
None of these.
It seems that the school in question, Pineview Elementary in Reedsburg WI, has a school tradition called ‘wacky week’. Last Friday, as part of the WW tradition, students were encouraged to dress up like AARP members or as members of the opposite sex.
Cross-dressing?!? Oh my.
And just to make the story completely, 100% pathetic, the Christians in question were talk-show folks at VCY America. (You can read more here.)
There is certainly something to be said for (to excuse some cliche’s) ‘choosing your battles’ or ’selecting the hill you want to die on’. Sadly, too many Christians are simply attention whores who want to die on every hill available, making a mockery out of the entire church in the process. Certainly the church will never win a popularity contest with the world, but there is a distinct difference between ‘taking up your cross’ and leading with your chin. Jesus called us to do the former rather than the latter.
As I took in this particular news story, I was reminded of a comment Rich Mullins frequently made, paraphrasing J.D. Salinger:
A fool will die nobly for any cause; a wise man will live humbly for one.
Sadly, though, the discernmentalist playbook is pretty thin, and any suggestion that Wacky Week should have been left alone will be met with sharp knives, prattling on about slippery slopes, and self-righteous indignation.
At what point do we allow non-Christians to not have to live as Christians? Sadly, I suspect that answering this question will attract far littler digital ink than will the sanctimonious blether on the use of the phrase ‘attention whore’…
28 Comments(+Add)
I don’t see anything wrong with Wacky-day!! (he says while wearing ladies lingerie)
When will we understand that the best Christian school is our home? I would think that this type of thing could easily be used to train your elementary school child how to be a crusading jerk at an early age! Remember the Bible says, “train up a child to be like yourself and when they are old they’ll be every bit a jerk as are you” (century 3 quatrain 43)
*Note – There is no such thing as “traditional family values”, there is only the gospel of Christ to the world.
“Our station is one that promotes traditional family values. It concerns us when a school district strikes at the heart and core of the Biblical values. To promote this to elementary-school students is a great error.”
This quote made me laugh. Where in the Bible and when in Christian history has cross-dressing as a goofy joke ever been a “core Biblical value”. I thought I had my core Biblical values down, I guess I was mistaken.
But it seems more and more fun and humor are sin according to some people’s “core Bilical values”
Well, there goes all those comedians in the early to mid 20th century that would dress up as women for a joke.
I’m thinking Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby in White Christmas, George Burns, etc. etc. etc.
one word:
paranoid.
Was the school encouraging “fanny shaking” cause then I could see the issue!
Seriously, could you not just keep your child home that day?
BTW – In chapter VII of the manual on “Traditional Family Values” we find the cahpter entitled:
“Keep Your Women Away From the Microphones”
The forward is given by Calvin.
hahahahahaha pathetic…
what’s funny is that this has been going on for years!
in my Christian high school, during “spirit week,” one of the days was ALWAYS “Reverse Day” or some schools call it “Gender-bender day” or whatever they call it…
and what’s funny is that the usual result is all the athletes running around dressed like cheerleaders and vice versa.
I can just picture a VCY staff meeting:
because Jesus never had fun.
puh-leeze. His first miracle involved replenishing an open bar, for goodness sakes…
And, boy, were people ticked when they found out it was non-alcoholic wine.
yes, because grape juice is suuuuuuuch a miracle.
“and for my first trick, i’m going to turn water into something you don’t even want.”
Yeah, well that’s why the turning water into Fresca story didn’t make the cut.
TOO FUNNY!
Yes, Evan. That was classic!
Like Jesus saying,
“Instead of raising Lazarus, I’m going to give life to his left kidney to whoever needs it.”
VCY’s PD (program director) Jim Schneider was quoted on the ABC site. Jim is also the VCY brainiac that on a Crosstalk show some months ago declared that Ford’s financial problems are all due to the fact that they ran an ad in The Advocate.
Never once did he refer to the drop in new car sales due to Americans’ lack of confidence in domestic made cars, and the popularity of imports, or the staggering costs of carrying legacy health care packages to current and retired employees, or the salary structures dicatated by the powerful unions.
Nope…none of that has anything to do with Ford’s current woes. According to Jim, God was so annoyed at Ford for their media buying decisions that He’s punishing them with poor new car sales.
Then how does Jim account for GM’s staggering losses, or Daimler-Chrysler’s struggles. They didn’t put ads in gay magazines. Why are they being punished?
And then all the slackjawed mouth breathers called in. Many of them almost in tears. Sitting in their driveways are new F-150s, and they’re almost beside themselves in anger. “I ain’t gonna drive no truck made by a company that supports the sodomites. Waddam I suppos’ ta do now”.
Jim, with all his astute marketing and business insight, couldn’t offer up a good answer.
The level of misinformation that comes out of VCY never ceases to amaze me. It brings to mind the saying, “You’re entitled to our own opinions, but you’re not entitled to your own facts”.
Logic and VCY are now, and always will be, mutually exclusive.
instead of raising Lazarus i’m going to make a puppet that LOOKS like Lazarus, and haha, we’ll make him dance and say silly things about people’s moms!
and the disciples said “um…okay?”
also, American companies up until recently were too slow to jump into making reallllly fuel efficient cars, so Toyota and Honda gobbled them up in that market too.
oh, and the other bit of intellectual dishonesty is that gays, given their druthers, aren’t that excited about Tauruses.
notice that even when AFA “won” their boycott, which they didn’t, Ford basically said “um, yeah, we’re going to continue advertising Volvo’s to them, because they buy lots and lots of Volvos.”
the other thing that’s funny to me is that certain Christian groups feel that it’s their right to dictate to whom companies may market and sell their products.
like, if you have a blue Explorer, and the atheist lesbians across the street also have a blue Explorer, then people are going to assume that you’re also an atheist lesbian.
that only works with Subarus, people, only with Subarus.
Capitalism with morals. When did that start? I am thinking the entire automobile industry has moral dilemmas greater than gay mags. How about CEOs that leave with 200 million dollar retirement packages? I might rather have a gay CEO leave with an honest financial package myself.
Homosexuality = a major sin
Greed = God’s way
especially while millions of people are losing their houses due to predatory lending…
the CEO’s never seem to feel any of the pain…
Hmmm, last time I checked, two parties signed a mortgage. “Predatory lending” seems like a very weird term to me, unless were talking about mafia loan sharks. It seems that if someone takes out a loan he can’t afford, that he’s just as much to blame as whoever gave him the money, if not more.
Yeah – bizarreness in a bottle.
I’ve talked a number of friends at work out of ‘balloon payment’ mortgages and other lending stupidity. It seems to me, though, that the ‘predatory lenders’ and their customers are both victims of betting and rolling the dice, and they both come out losers in today’s housing market.
When Joe Sixpack heads to Vegas and comes back with all of his stuff in hock, and the repo man shows up to find that the car isn’t worth what was lent for it, my sympathies are rather strained when they turn to the government to bail them out for rolling the dice when they couldn’t afford it…
part of the problem is the lenders actually lied to people about the terms of their mortgages, and gave them false assurances that they would be able to re-fi before the loans adjusted, without telling them that, surprise, no you won’t, because you’ll be upside down in the loan by then…
yeah, the banks are totally culpable on this one.
that’s why the corporate welfare they’re looking to receive is such a sad joke.
that’s what the banks are asking for…
oh, also, the banks went insane with greed by qualifying people for loans they should never have qualified for in the real world, and then “rolling the dice” again by selling them in bundles to other investors, and so on…
bidness’ always cries foul when the gubmint tries to regulate them, but they’re always the first ones to show up asking for a hand-out from the gubmint when their irresponsibility backfires on them. it’s so myopic, and it just keeps repeating itself.
that’s why it’s called “corporate welfare.”
I still have little sympathy for someone who signs such a thing without completely understanding the terms. Yes, it does seem some banks did try to take advantage of borrowers’ stupidity, but they’re paying the price now, and the government shouldn’t bail them out. Actually one thing I agree with McCain on.
I mean it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that someone making $35,000 a year can’t afford a $250,000 house. It also doesn’t take a whole lot of smarts to figure out that the housing market couldn’t sustain 15% or more increases in housing prices indefinitely. So, yeah, greed and stupidity make for a bad combo.
yep, but they seem to attract each other like moths to flames…
i’m not absolving buyers of all responsibility, understand, but i will say that i’ve noticed where i live that a lot of the foreclosing is happening on very low-valued homes, and it’s interesting that this all happened the same time Bush started pushing for an “ownership” society…so the banks said “light bulb!” and started marketing home loans to first-time buyers who might not have been ready to be first-time buyers and/or people who should have been buying a $100,000 house, but the bank pushed them into believing that with this new wonderful instrument called the “interest-only loan” they could now afford $200,000. yayayayay! American dream!
this is why they should have been regulated in the first place. i’m all for fair competition, but “playing off of peoples’ ignorance/naivete” should not be a viable business model.
I think though that some people aren’t that smart and also fall victim to the false confidence of the bull side of the Kondratiev wave. Banks and the fed say “borrow borrow borrow we’ll never hit a down again!” and poor people believe it when nay-sayers are ridiculed. Interest rate rises are directly the fault of the fed (and RBA here and ultimately the IMF) who encourage fractional reserve banking. Pure evil. lending should be regulated to Deu 23:19 or at least Lev 25:10.
“poor people” as in I feel sorry for them. Not saying people who are poor as suckers.
*The “Economics” guy just shakes head and walks away*
Carry on!