UPDATE: See the first comment from April 5. Richard Abanes quotes a response that he got from Steve Blackwell regarding rudeness.  Hats off to you, Mr Blackwell — your statements are the most asinine, convoluted, anti-Biblical, unChrist-like thing that I have ever seen, and make all ideas that “inspired” this post pale greatly in comparison.

This is actually a follow-up to this post. I was originally going to just put it in as an update to that post, but the idea started growing. Run for your lives!

While one silly assertion was enough to show me that Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be) [sic] wasn’t worth my time/money, Dan Kimball waded through it and put up some thoughts here. (I guess a book in which you are one of the topics is somewhat required reading.)

If you haven’t read Dan’s post already, wanna know what the overwhelming theme was? Taking criticism graciously, actually listening to it, seeing if there is truth to be found there, and (if so) applying the truth to your life.

OK, now I’m about to use a very dirty four-letter word. I think it’s necessary to the context, but I just wanted to warn you.

One might actually get the impression from Dan’s post that he was being … (here it is, brace yourself) … NICE.

Of all the criticisms that I hear from the anti-emergents and their ilk, the argument that folks that disagree with them are “too nice” is the one that amazes and disturbs me the most. Sometimes the statement is direct; sometimes a bit oblique, but the underlying message is clear.

Case in point: Recently, I was involved in an online conversation in which an anti-emergent said something very ungracious. I called him on it, and his response was a sarcastic assurance that he heard my “heart-rending plea for unity”. Were we in the same room, I would not have been the least bit surprised if he had patted me on the head.

And therein lies the bigger issue. I chose to illustrate this post with a picture of Mr Rogers quite purposefully. For those in my generation and younger, who grew up watching Mr Rogers’ Neighborhood, the man certainly taught us to be nice. But far too many people have relegated niceness to that show’s demographic, as though that attribute was something that we eventually out-grew.

Yes, we hear your “heart-rending plea for unity”. Now run along, and let the grown-ups talk.

Are there times when we should not be “nice”? Certainly. Look at any one of Jesus’ confrontations with the Pharisees for an example. Or the un-KJV-sanitized version of what Paul was referring to when he said “Galatians 5:11-12" target="_blank">cut themselves off“.

Is it possible to sometimes try to be “too nice”? Certainly. I am reminded of Mark Driscoll’s comment when he was examining some people’s unwillingness to give any kind of input on certain topics (even ones that God made clear) by saying that “someone might get hurt”. Driscoll’s response? “Well, now you’ve just hurt God.”

But somewhere along the way, the thinking has become, “when I argue my point, the other person states that I’m ‘not being nice’, therefore (since I have no need to listen to critical input), ‘being nice’ is something that is to be avoided like the plague.”

By this “logic”:

• Since I sometimes disagree with the political moves that the NAACP makes, I should shoot the next black person that I see.
• Since charges of anti-Semitism among Christians are often specious, I should become a skinhead.
• Since some of the stances of NOW are ridiculous, I should beat my wife.

Ridiculous? Certainly. Is it the logical extension of this thinking? Just as certainly.

Want to do the exact opposite as your “enemy”? Well, I have it under good authority that Brian McLaren never goes to church naked.

… if you’re not contextualizing the way I contextualize then you’re sinning.

We assume he was wearing a suit while he wrote it to show how serious he is about it.

From here:

After reading nearly five thousand blog posts from the Reformed blogosphere, I have no doubt that the Reformed, while stridently unified by Calvinistic theology though and far from being uniform in matters like baptism, can be described and critiqued as a diverse, but recognizable, movement. You might be a Reformed Christian: if you listen to Bob Kauflin, Caedmon’s Call, and Max Mclean’s reading of the ESV Bible (sometimes at work), use sermon illustrations from Pilgrim’s Progress, drink orange juice to the glory of God in the morning and wine highly diluted with water in the evenings, and always use the cheapest PC laptop you can find; if your reading list consists primarily of John Piper, Wayne Grudem, John MacArthur, D.A. Carson, Ligon Duncon, R.C. Sproul, Jerry Bridges, Mark Driscoll, Paul Helm, Rick Phillips, Phillip Ryken and James White (not to mention Mohler, Dever, Mahaney, etc.) and your sparring partners include Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, Brian McLaren, or that guy who wrote The Message Bible; if your idea of quintessential Christian discipleship is John Calvin, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, or just anyone named John; if you don’t like Al Gore or the liberal media or big government or Christians who vote Democrat or “contemplative Christianity”; if your political concerns are gay marriage and abortion and not so much poverty, AIDS, the economy, pre-emptive war policies, racism, and especially global warming; if you are into the Puritans, Van Til, or the Westminster Confession; if you like to talk about how Augustine and Aquinas believed in the “sovereignty of God” but gloss ove their Catholic convictions about justification; if you sleep tight at night assured of your salvation because you KNOW you are one of God’s elect; if you see the Bible as a storehouse of facts and divinely revealed propositions that can systematized into a body of truth that doesn’t have to reckon with reason, experience, or science and never be seen as collection of works written by human authors that share in the story of God’s redemption; if you know the inerrant truth and believe it inerrantly; if you’ve ever been creeped out by a church that appreciates art, architecture, sculpture, icons, and has a crucifix hanging on the wall; if you loathe words like “story”, “narrative”, “relational”, “community”, and “loving” and use words like “Doctrines of Grace”, “heresy”, “glory”, “glorious”, “God-centered”, “God-entranced”, and “supremacy”; if you grew up in a home that appreciated Billy Graham that in retrospect seemed too Arminian, man-centered, and seeker-sensitive; if you subjugate women to men in all levels of ministry, prioritize blogging over evangelism, and like your theology “robust” instead of “feminized”; if you see your conservative theology having no divide from conservative politics; if you want to stop dating the church and start practicing church discipline; if you long for a community that is confessional, historic, and traditional like a rock or an anchor; if you believe love gets in the way of doctrine; if you believe God wants to save everyone but damns a lot of them before they did anything good or bad, that they deserve their punishment for sins that they were prepared for; if you believe God’s love for everyone has a little to do with his Son dying on the Cross and more to do with allowing them to enjoy the benefits of creation; if you believe following Jesus is all about believing the right things but not really about living the right way; if it really bugs you when people talk about “spiritual formation” instead of justification; if you disdain topical preaching; if you use the word “expository” as a code word for “preaching through Romans”—if all or most of this tortuously long sentence describes you, then you might be a Reformed Christian.

Jonah Goldberg, a conservative Jewish writer, posted an interesting article today, commenting on the release of the Dutch film, ‘Fitna‘, an expose on Muslim immigration to Europe.

Released on the Internet on Thursday, “Fitna” juxtaposes verses from the Koran with images and speeches from the world of jihad. Heads cut off, bodies blown apart, gays executed, toddlers taught to denounce Jews as “apes and pigs,” imams calling for global domination, protesters holding up signs reading “God Bless Hitler” and “Freedom go to Hell” — these are just some of the powerful images from “Fitna,” an Arabic word that means “ordeal.”

Predictably, various Muslim governments have condemned the film. Half the Jordanian parliament voted to sever ties with the Netherlands. Egypt’s grand imam threatened “severe” consequences if the Dutch government didn’t ban the film.

Where the article gets interesting, though, is when Goldberg relays a story of a man he met in Turkey several years ago:

one of the men came up to me and gave me a worn-out business card. On the back, he’d scribbled an image. It was little more than a curlicue, but he seemed intent on showing it to me (and nobody else). It was, I realized, a Jesus fish.

It was an eye-opening moment for me, though obviously trivial compared with the experiences of others. Here in this cosmopolitan and self-styled European city, this fellow felt the need to surreptitiously clue me in that he was a Christian just like me (or so he thought).

He goes on to compare this to the recent fad of “Darwin Fish” in America:

But the most annoying aspect of the Darwin fish is the false bravado it represents. It’s a courageous pose without consequence. Like so much other Christian-baiting in American popular culture, sporting your Darwin fish is a way to speak truth to power on the cheap.

Whatever the faults of “Fitna,” it ain’t no Darwin fish.

Geert Wilders’ film could very, very easily get him killed. (He’s already guarded around the clock.) It essentially picks up the work of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was murdered in 2004 by a jihadi for criticizing Islam.

He then finishes up with a comparison of criticizing Christianity and Islam, and the cowardice of taking easy pot-shots in the former, while strenuously avoiding the latter:

It’s not that secular progressives support Muslim religious fanatics, but they reserve their passion and scorn for religious Christians who are neither fanatical nor inclined to use violence.

The Darwin fish ostensibly symbolizes the superiority of progressive-minded science over backward-looking faith. I think this is a false juxtaposition, but I would have a lot more respect for the folks who believe it if they aimed their brave contempt for religion at those who might behead them for it.

All in all, a good read, and (I’m sure) fodder for calm, reasonable discussion…

I have a confession to make: I’m not sure what I think of Bonhoeffer. Some stuff he says really makes me scratch my head. Take this for instance:

“To everyone God is the kind of God he believes in.”
~The Cost of Discipleship p185

Um, what?

But then on the same page he comes back with this:

Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are. But in the love of Christ we know all about every conceivable sin and guilt; for we know how Jesus suffered, and how all men have been forgiven at the foot of the cross. Christian love sees the fellow-man at the foot of the cross and therefore sees with clarity. If when we judged others, our real motive was to destroy evil we should look for evil where it is certain to be found, and that is in our own hearts. But if we are on the look-out for evil in others, our real motive is obviously to justify ourselves, for we are seeking to escape punishment for our own sins by passing judgment on others, are assuming by implication that the Word of God applies to ourselves in one way, and to others in another. All this is highly dangerous and misleading. We are trying to claim for ourselves a special privilege which we deny to others. But Christ’s disciples have no rights fo their own… .

I have a sad announcement to make. Due to an unfortunate oversight the registration of this site was accidentally not renewed in the required one month advance notice, when that happened the domain registrar was allowed to re-sell CRN.info to the first willing buyer willing to pay the $35 administrative fee. As a result as of April 21st CRN.info will transfer to its new owner who we’ve learned is none other than Ken Silva.

We thank you for your past participation and support.

Edit:
April fools! Obviously.