Can't help myself today after reading this article, by Pulpit and Pen, which comes really close to presenting legitimate criticisms of Apologia Church, but seems to preferentially spend words misrepresenting Jeff Durbin.

Don't get me wrong, I am the last person on earth who has any right to criticize someone for wasting words on unworthy topics; it's the misrepresentation that bothers me. I don't think we should misrepresent our friends or our enemies if we can help it. The truth is always best, even if it means truthfully divulging the actual content of beliefs with which we disagree.

I went to Apologia Church for a while, and so I hope I don't poison the water when I say I quite like Jeff, and I find his ministry and theology to be generally agreeable. I do disagree with him on a few adiophoral points (about eschatology and politics, mostly), but for the record, I don't personally see a problem with Christians drinking alcohol together as long as it does not lead people to sin. The difference between medicine and poison is the dose, right? You get a little alcohol whenever you use vanilla extract; there's nothing wrong with it. Scripture plainly allows alcohol, but draws the line at drunkenness.

The argument made in the article is that "most consider [alcohol] a vice". I don't know what weight P&P puts on the word "vice", but I think it's fair to say that there's a difference between partaking in something which "most" consider to be a vice, and partaking in sin. Again, scripture draws the line at drunkenness, so any distinctions prior to drunkenness are left to the conscience of each person. The question, then, is, 'has Apologia caused someone to sin by drinking'? P&P gives the example of White's son-in-law. I happen to know a little about that story -- details which I'm fairly certain P&P does not know -- because I was attending the church at the time. I do not believe that White's son-in-law's actions were a result of either Apologia's tattoo-fundraiser or the beer-flights which the article references over-and-over. And I think it's very insensitive of them to use the event as an attack on Pittman; what if White's daughter reads P&P's article? The only legitimate example I see of Apologia potentially causing someone to sin is when P&P heard about Apologia's ministry and then judged it in a way contravening Romans 14:3b.

And to answer their quote from Ryan Denton (who I've never heard of), let me give a quote from Martin Luther: "Whoever drinks beer, he is quick to sleep; whoever sleeps long, does not sin; whoever does not sin, enters Heaven! Thus, let us drink beer!"

But on to the misrepresentations in the article. I don't want to spend much more time picking apart the article, so I'll just give a few. One should be enough, really.

First, they evidence that they haven't really kept up with Jeff's teachings by saying, "Durbin claimed only several years ago to hold to theonomy". I mean.... try several weeks ago! When was the last time these guys listened to any of Jeff's sermons? There're tons of them on youtube!

Second, They say that Apologia is not confessionally reformed. That's a surprising statement, since all the kids in the church are memorizing Piper's Baptist Catechism, and when I was attending, Jeff introduced nearly every sermon and communion by describing the church as one which adheres to the 1689 Baptist confession. I get that they don't mention 1689 on the website, but does that really matter? Really?

Third, they say "Durbin seemed to agree with Robert Jeffress last year that there are many saved Roman Catholics". I mean, wasn't there some context to that statement? Jeff Durbin regularly preaches on why Catholicism is wrong. I used to think Catholics were saved, until I listened to Jeff! Not surprisingly, the link for P&P's reference on this point was to one of their own articles. But even if we only look at what P&P actually did quote from Durbin in their article, how does the clause, "despite the Roman Catholic church", add to the meaning of that sentence? It seems like an important clause to me. I have to give credit where credit is due, though -- they used the word "seemed", which basically means they have no idea what Jeff actually meant, and everything after that word is an extrapolation intended to support their prior points.

In any case, P&P and JD Hall are primary reasons why I intentionally do not categorize my blog as a polemics journal, Christian news outlet, or really anything else if I can help it. What I write here are just my thoughts -- mine alone. I'm sure P&P does plenty of good when they're not skipping the first two steps of Matthew 18:15-17 (which, in a sense, is what I've just done). The world needs more Christians writing good things about Christianity online, so God bless and sanctify us all.

"Durbin again made headlines when..."

This week, I caught myself remembering things I regret from when I was young. I couldn't stop thinking about it, and so I wrote another non-rhyming poem to blow off steam. Since I suppose poems should be named, I'll call this one, 'Slow to Speak'.

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A bat hangs sleepily below the frame of a window, decorated with etchings of false gods. Here, midway up the towering walls of a weathered castle, the bat is gently stirred by a cool wind, alleging a lack of security here.

This structure is haunted by the ghost of a nameless king, who impersonates a thief, taking things which are already his. And, though the walls are here and there preserved by invisible tapestries, depicting a tragic beauty, she is only ever an unseen image on the wall.

If words alone could build shape back into that cloth, then the sound of it might echo against those otherwise flat and colorless threads, but there are no meaningful sounds here; only wind. The bat learns nothing, sees nothing, fails to perceive the safety just beyond these easily surmountable barriers, and prepares to leave.

Black, featherless wings beat chaotically against a wind that ebbs and flows like an oncoming tide. Looking for shelter, it passes a bird, whose eyes search the ground. The bat passes a statue of a dog with a gift in its mouth. The oncoming horizon seems to grow taller, but the bat pushes forward, determined not to ask, "was that place better than this?". It has never wandered far from home, and it never will.

Humble raindrops transform the bat into a heavier creature, which falls slowly toward a small and well-hidden residence. The bat waits hungrily for quiet, its senses battered by loud calls from a great shepherd, driving dark grey sheep with quick strokes of his rod and staff.
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I might come back and edit this, because I don't feel 100% content with it.... but for now, I'm thinking I'll go ahead and post it here just to finalize the process of releasing these thoughts.

So I have three topics I want to touch on today; I don't expect this to be a long blog, but you never know, right?

Here's what I'm listening to right now:

-----1-----
First, the current state of the epistemological argument I've been working on: I drafted a speech, and I was thinking that if I could get that speech past my wife and my pastor, with their blessing, then I would ask the ASU atheist society for an audience to really test it in full by delivering it and then taking questions or challenges. My typical testing grounds for arguments has been YouTube comments, but it's hard to get a full argument out in those comments, because if you say too much then the other person won't read it, and if you say too little then they'll easily forget that the point you're making in this comment is logically tied to the points you made in earlier comments.

Anyhow, I wrote a speech, got it spellchecked by my mom (my mom was a professional English teacher, so she's really good for that.). After having her check version 1, I delivered version 2 to my wife for feedback. She said that it needs a slideshow, and that it comes across as disorganized. She told me to rewrite it so that it is more relatable, and present every point in terms of the relationship between its premises and conclusions. I'm still working on version 3, which will have my wife's advice worked into it.

-----2-----
Up next, I've been listening to the news a lot lately. They've been talking about Chinese re-education camps for Muslims. It's a pretty tragic situation over there. The Chinese government seems to feel threatened by the potential for Muslims to radicalize in their land. In any case, one of the broadcasts had an interview with a man from Kazakhstan who grew up in China with his Muslim family. The man described the re-education camps and the unpleasantness therein, and his life after he got out. (He was released after a suicide attempt). He said that, having been "re-educated", he has not given up Islam, but has become thoroughly, and in some instances which he described from his recent history, senselessly hateful towards all Chinese people. I guess that's a small picture of the imminent future if China doesn't submit to the Prince of Peace. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.

A segment of the interview which I thought was interesting was when they talked about the kinds of things that the Chinese forced the Muslims to chant in the camp. They included some miscellany about how wonderful the communist party is, and a few statements about the role of religion. One such statement stood out to me, a familiar proverb, "religion is the opiate of the masses". I thought about that a lot since I heard it. I can't imagine that the Chinese government really believes that statement, since they're hoping to prevent religious radicalization.

In fact, the more I thought about it, the more ridiculous the statement seemed to me. "Religion is the opiate of the masses". Whoever said that must have been completely ignorant about religious history, religious psychology, the weight of human conviction, and really, psychology in general. I mean, where was the "opiate of the masses" during the Sumerian Wars, or the Jew's conquest of Canaan, or Sennacherib's campaigns, or the Roman persecutions, or Muhammad's conquests, or the Crusades, or the Reformation, or the Inquisition? When will ISIS realize that what they've been taking is actually an opiate? Maybe they're just suffering withdrawals! Maybe ISIS has too many atheist members. We just need to give them their religious fix and then they'll calm down. [/sarcasm] It's a laughable sentiment entirely!

The only time when religious people have ever been settled and relaxed was when they lived in a land whose laws did not conflict with their religious convictions -- for example, if they live in a land whose government was founded on principles which they believed to be fundamentally rooted in consideration for their own religious values. For example, Christians in the west.

Who said that anyway? [Googles it]. It was Karl Marx! Ha! That explains a lot.

-----3-----
Last item on my list, the recent elections in AZ. Well, me and Chowon did some research on the candidates and I voted based on what we thought was best for our ideals, our way of life, and for Arizona as a whole. In the end, I voted for a mix of democrats and republicans. I thought I was weird, because the country seems so polarized. But in the end, the people who won the vote were a mix of democrats and republicans. Hmmmm.... in order for that to happen, a significant group of people in Arizona would have to have voted for a mixture of democrats and republicans! If everybody voted either "all red" or "all blue", then I suppose all the winning candidates would have been from the same party (whichever party had more people voting). But it looks like a significant group of people voted somewhere in the middle.

I'd like to suppose this means that the party binaries, which are the entire context of all discussion on the news, do not actually represent a significant majority of Americans, or that a significant portion of Americans are not being really thought about by the news. That is, the many Americans who think for themselves and don't vote just along one party for the sake of that party's name. Praise God for those people!

But while both parties are throwing mud at each other, it's this group of people in the middle who get hit. At this point, I don't suppose it's profitable to advocate the establishment of a "third political party", necessarily. Rather, I advocate a complete restructuring of the electoral process in light of modern technological advancements. I realize that people are afraid that if computers govern things then the elections will get hacked... but a lot of resources have been put towards hacking bitcoin, for example, and it's still pretty secure. The point I intend to make by that reference to bitcoin is that electronic elections aren't really all that insecure if they're done right.

The way it's done now, I feel like the electoral college is an aristocratic filter through which all our votes are cast and ultimately depreciated. That said, I do not necessarily advocate a pure popular vote for president. Rather, at this point, I advocate more transparency and segmentation at the local level. A more complicated government, maybe, but one which empowers a plethora of tiny local governments, and where land is not the dividing apparatus. I don't have time to go into detail about the government model which I currently advocate here, but I suspect the changes which I advocate are radical enough to be rejected by most Americans.

"Falls like oil down Aaron's beard"