Rude Christians on the Internet

Jonathan Acuff (whose hilarious and insightful work can be found at the Stuff Christians Like website) has written something useful over at CNN's religion blog that explains why he thinks Christians are so rude in internet discussion.  It's a good article, and I think he's nailed it.  Read it.

Thanks to internet arguments about Creationism and Bono's salvation, THIS is the legacy Christians are leaving in this generation.  Let's do something about this, because I'm tired of explaining to everyone that being a Christian doesn't make me a hateful teenager who protests science and attacks gays.  Surely we can leave a better impression than that.

Missing My Point on Politics

A few weeks ago I published an article about Christians attacking Obama; the main point was that mean and insulting attacks against other people (yes, politicians count) are not acceptable for we who have been asked to love our neighbors.

Some of you loved it.  You linked it to your Facebook page and told me I was right.  I liked that.  It makes a blogger happy to see their work spread around.

Then some of you disappointed me.  A day later some of the same people who praised my work were leveling rude malicious attacks against Republicans in the manner I had decried.  Did you think that I was taking Obama's side in politics?  Or that my website had become a love letter to the Democrats?

So, let me make this even more clear.

"Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 7:12)

A Pharisaic lawyer once asked our Lord, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" Jesus said to him, 'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:36-40)

It is not OK to agree with me when I say, "Don't be hateful to Obama" and then, just like a child, turn around and be hateful to Ann Coulter.  I understand that politics makes our blood boil - I understand this very well - but you have completely missed my point if you agreed with that earlier post but used that same hateful rhetoric against the Republicans.  If you cannot show love to your political enemies by disagreeing with them in a dignified and mature manner, then I recommend you don't discuss politics until you can do so in love.

Some of you are highly critical of the so-called "Christian Right" for trying to appropriate Jesus for their political leanings, but I see many Christian Democrats going down that same path while making those complaints.  They say that a True Christian must vote for Democrats and that Republicans are sinners.  Yes, I do actually see people say that and they have the nerve to criticize the Christian Right movement who gave them the original idea.

This is the sort of thing I shouldn't have to write, and it makes me sad to type it at all.

Someone Found the Holy Grail. Yay.

Once again, the Holy Grail has been found.  As this article tells us:

A retired Royal Navy officer who has spent years studying ancient texts, believes he has at last solved the mystery of the disappearance of the Holy Grail....For millions of believers, the Holy Grail is the most precious object on earth.

OK, let's stop.  The "disappearance" of the Holy Grail is no mystery because it never existed in the first place.  In the late middle ages some stories began to circulate about it, but from a Biblical and historical standpoint it doesn't exist.  No one ever made record of any cup Jesus drank from and no one ever used one of these cups to catch His blood.  Those stories took around 1,300 years to be written and no trace of them exists until then.  I hate to be a killjoy, but it's all fiction.  Let's move on:

The chalice, which Christ drank from at the Last Supper and was later used to collect some of his blood at the Crucifixion, is a priceless Christian relic.

No, it isn't.  But I already said that.  I digress.

Faithful have searched in vain to find it. Finally it has been discovered, overlooked and unrecognized, in the corner of a cathedral in the heart of England.

No, the "faithful" have not been looking for this.  Faithful believers own and read actual Bibles that say nothing of a grail.  The so-called "faithful" are the ones who don't believe in this thing.  Moving on:

Historians and academics will be astonished by the revelation that Christendom’s most prized historical object has been under their noses for decades.

Nope.  I think you'll find that this will be ignored just like every other attempt to stir up interest in the Holy Grail.

In 1889 Lincoln Cathedral was undergoing repair. A group of workmen lifted a large Portland marble slab and revealed the tomb of Bishop Oliver Sutton, who died in 1299.  Inside the grave, archaeologists found a chalice next to the skeleton; it was still standing where it had been placed almost 600 years earlier. It was made of silver, four-and-half inches high and completely without decoration.

In this case, Indiana Jones makes some sense.  Do you really think that a carpenter and his fishing buddies were drinking out of silver goblets?  I don't.

 "You call this archaeology?"

“This was the Holy Grail but no one acknowledged it....In my own mind and in all good faith I am confident that the chalice recovered from Bishop Sutton’s tomb is the Holy Grail.”

Faith?  Look, religion concerns faith, but history doesn't.  You don't dig up the remains of a pachyderm  in France and tell your colleagues that your faith and your "own mind" confirms that it was Charlemagne's pet elephant*.  That's not how historians do things.

The truth is, there was no Grail, and Christians of all people certainly don't believe in one.  Everyone who is NOT a Christian thinks that people who sit in church will find some kind of hope or encouragement in this so-called relic, but that's not the case.  You'll find the biggest skeptics concerning the Holy Grail are sitting in church pews on Sunday morning.  Christians don't believe in the Holy Grail, and neither do real historians.

*By the way, Charlemagne did actually have a pet elephant.

My Unique Conversations - Sneezing

Sometimes I notice that I am the only person who has certain conversations because I am the only person who thinks like I do.  I assume everyone has this experience.  Here's a conversation that only seems to happen to me: 

Me: Achoo!

Person: Bless you.

Me: Why did you say that?

Person: It's what you say when someone sneezes.

Me: No, it's not.  I never say that.

Person: *sigh* I mean, it's what normal people say when someone sneezes.

Me: Why would someone say that?

Person:  I thought you were a historian?  Don't you know that people once believed that you would lose your soul or something if someone didn't say 'bless you' after a sneeze?

Me:  Yes, I've heard that.  So, do you think I was in danger of losing my soul?

Person: No, that's stupid.

Me: So...why did you say it, at all?  Do you just say things without thinking about they mean?  Are all of your sentences just random synapsis firing with knee-jerk reactions to external stimuli?

 Person: Never mind!

They call me weird, but they are the ones quoting antiquated religious rituals that they don't even believe in.  I find THAT weird.  Then they say something clever, like, "Fine then, I won't say 'bless you' when you sneeze anymore, you jerk!"  Which is funny, because I really didn't care if they did in the first place.  (I would rather see them freed from the shackles of medieval superstition, but I fear I set my sights too high.)

 "Bless you!  Oh, and don't forget to rub garlic on your neck in case of vampires."

The Man Who Saved 160 From Suicide - and What We Can Learn From Him

 88-year old Don Ritchie's house is on a high plateau in Australia with a great view.  It might seem like a dream retirement home to some, but there's a catch - right outside his door is a popular suicide spot where people show often to throw themselves off of a cliff.

It probably doesn't sound like a dream house anymore.  But Don doesn't mind because he's found his calling - he talks people out of suicide.

When someone is standing at the ledge getting ready to jump, Don can be found catching up to them and hoping it's not too late.  When he arrives, he simply smiles and asks if they would like to come in and have a cup of tea.

Rather than pretend to be something he's not (in this case, a therapist), Don just listens to people's problems and lets them know that he cares, and he's saved approximately 160 lives this way.  I've known many people who help depressed people to become even more depressed by trying to fix their problems citing homespun wisdom and tired clichés - Don Ritchie just listens.   He is not always successful, but the lives he has saved make him a very happy person despite the ones who still jump (sometimes right in front of him).  There's more to this wonderful story, and I recommend you read it here.

For our purposes, we should consider how truly awful it is that one cannot find a nice face or an understanding ear sometimes until it is almost too late.  This chilling paragraph from the same article says it all:

Mental health professionals tell the story of a note left behind by a man who jumped off San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way to the bridge, the man wrote, I will not jump.

Not one person.  (Of course, San Fransisco, like L.A., is well known for its morose citizens.)  It's fantastic that Don Ritchie does what he does, but he shouldn't have to.  What if you were the person who listened to someone's problem before they got to the ledge?  Perhaps I should try to be the Don Ritchie that people around me need before they get to that point.  Of course, none of us will be so famous as Don for our efforts - in fact, we can never know if we are helping people or not - but we should remember to do our best for those around us because we simply don't know what they are going through.

many years ago I met a young man when I was in a grumpy mood and I didn't take the time to talk with him - he shot himself soon after.  I'm sure I probably wouldn't have made a difference if I had chatted with him, but I might have.  I've changed how I deal with people ever since that happened.

(Story via Instapundit)

The Place of Apologetics in the Church

In the eleventh century, a brilliant man named Anselm of Canterbury published a book called the Proslogion that proved the existence of God.  It's an interesting book that I recommend to be people (it's not nearly as long as most medieval theological works), but I brought it up because his efforts remind me of modern day apologetics in the church and their rightful place.

Anselm did not prove God to the unbelieving.  In his opening narration, Anselm insists that he  wrote the book because other Christian monks found the ideas uplifting.  He certainly did not bring the Proslogion to athiests or people of other religions in order to convert them.

However, he was followed by a group known as the Scholastic Theologians (depending on who you ask, Anselm was one of them or he was a precursor - I like to place him outside of that trend) who began to abuse this method.  It was believed by the scholastics that every part of Catholic traditions (transubstantiation, the last rites, etc.) were things that could be proved by simple speculation (meaning that any perdon of any background would have to follow Roman Catholicism if they just thought about it a little while).  This was not a good development for the church because speculative "proofs" of theology really only make sense to people who already adhere to that theology - Anselm knew this and kept his teachings within monasteries.

Medievalists like to say that "everyone believed in God until the scholastics proved Him."  Trying to force a person to believe in something is a fool's errand, and trying to prove Christianity as true through logic has never been a successful model for spreading the Gospel.

 All that's left is to tell Trevor about Pascal's Wager and then he will have to be a Christian.  (Never mind personal conviction - you know apologetics!)

The father of modern apologetics is probably the kind and intelligent Josh McDowell who (almost literally) wrote the book on it.  However, in his lectures and his books he's always made it a point to tell people about his personal testimony and not to use apologetics as a club to beat people into submission.  (Christianity Today thinks that this is a recent trend with McDowell, but they are wrong - his agenda has always been thus.)  McDowell has shown remarkable wisdom in this.

I don't know anyone who says that they became a Christian after a Creationist showed them supposed flaws in the evolutionary model, or because an apologist threw ontological arguments in their face; the believers I know are led to believe by personal conviction which cannot be orchestrated by people.  We can't force someone's mentality into accepting a Christian worldview by violence or arguments, but we can show them Christ's love through our actions.