Fireflies In The Garden

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,
And here on earth come emulating flies,
That though they never equal stars in size,
(And they were never really stars at heart)
Achieve at times a very star-like start.
Only, of course, they can’t sustain the part.

– Robert Frost

Muppets

Just for old times sake when we used to do Muppets clips here every week:

Lea

I’ve had an ongoing love affair with Lea Salonga’s voice ever since I first heard the cast recording of Miss Saigon sometime during college.

Just last week I discovered her giving this performance of a song that was dropped from Miss Saigon and was blown away all over again.

As much as I love her roles as Kim and Eponine, my favorite recording of Lea is actually her rendition of Via Dolorosa recorded with the USMA Glee Club and performed here at the West Point Chapel. The audio quality is poor in this video but I highly recommend getting a copy of the USMA CD Stand Ye Steady: Songs of Courage & Inspiration and listening to it. That one track is worth every penny.

FBFI and John Vaughn Stake Out A Position

Below is an excerpt from a letter that Dr. Vaughn sent out to the FBFI Boards that was also forwarded on to the FBFI chaplains.

Gentlemen:

First, please be much in prayer for the staff at Tri-City as the final details of the FBFI annual conference come together this week.  …

Pray for Pastor Senn and the rest of the staff as well. You should have received the reminder from him this morning offering a final invitation. I am so thankful that he attached the ”Official Response to the Accusations” letter.

Second, there could be media attention at our conference, related to any of a number of issues. Our Monday and Tuesday chaplains training sessions involve experts who are accustomed to media scrutiny. We have submitted our requested response to the DoD on the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” so that could be controversial. Feel free to refer any questions you might be asked on any of these matters to Brad Smith or me.

…

Praying for a great week of blessing,

John Vaughn

The letter for which John Vaughn is “thankful” is pasted in the comments section here

So at least now we know which way this is going to be spun. Senn has written the talking points and the wagons have been circled.

Blaming the Victim – BJU Style

Here, in sermon at Bob Jones University, Dr. Rand Hummel Demonstrates How To Blame The Victim and make her apologize to her rapist. Notice that nowhere in his story does he say that he contacted any law enforcement or even spoke to the gir’s parents. Even if he did, he doesn’t consider it important to making his main point that the real problem here is the girl’s attitude.

The real meat of the story begins about 2:30 in

You can view or listen to the the full sermon here.

Destroying the Innocent

Many posts on this site are intended to be humorous and light-hearted. This is not one of those. I will freely admit that I’m am writing this post while angry — not something I typically do. But at this moment there is a white-hot righteous indignation that has kindled in my bones and I either have to write this down or spontaneously combust. You have been warned.

Imagine for a moment that you’re a fundamentalist pastor who has just learned that a 15 year old girl in your congregation has been raped and is pregnant by a 39 year old member of your church. Now try to imagine what kind of thought process might lead you to decide that the proper way to proceed is to bring that teenager before the entire church to apologize for her part in being so thoughtless as to get raped and end up pregnant. Then imagine forcing her to write a letter to the wife of the rapist apologizing for your part in his crime. Of course you then send her away to another state and make sure that the baby is adopted off to another fundamentalist family.

What kind of person would do this? Surely this must be some pastor from the darkest fringes of fundamentalism, someone so far outside the “mainstream” that they are almost unrecognizable as an Independent Baptist. Or perhaps not.

For the pastor in question is none other than Chuck Phelps, who left the scene of this outrage at Trinity Baptist Church to become President of Maranatha Baptist Bible College. To be fair to MBBC, they quickly realized that they were dealing with someone a little too far out for their taste and gave him the boot in the nicest way possible. He also is the chairman of the board of Central African Baptist College and sits as vice-chairman of the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship. Last but not least, as of 2008 he was listed as an adjunct professor at Bob Jones University’s school of religion and a member of their cooperating board(PDF).

Oh, but the story and connections don’t end there. For this paragon of fundy virtue now pastors on a church staff with none other than Bob Taylor, former pastor of the Campus Church at Pensacola Christian College. The ‘crazy fringe’ of fundyland is never as far from the center as it would seem.

Now let’s play another game of let’s pretend. Let’s imagine that you’re the current pastor of a church where all this happened. Let’s further imagine that like your predecessor you’re also a favored son of Bob Jones University and that you were actually there at the church while this travesty was being executed on this victim. What do you do now? Apologize? Issue a statement condemning what was done to the 15 year old girl? Or do you do damage control and cover for your old pastor even going so far as to send e-mail to your church members instructing them not to speak to anybody about the situation?

And then lastly imagine you’re a fundamentalist type who is observing this situation from the outside? Does your heart break over the injustice and your anger rise to think of the victim in the case? Or do you flee to your favorite fundamentalist message board and question whether the 15 year old girl may have seduced the 39 year old man and is to blame for the whole situation?

I can only assume that these people involved in the humiliation and condemnation of this girl cannot really believe in a righteous God Who’s justice is terrible toward those who hurt the innocent. If I had a scrap of mercy to spare for these miserably failed hirelings, I would be very, very afraid on their behalf. But I don’t. All I have is a small voice to expose their evil to as many as have ears to hear.

Destroyer of Innocents thy name is Fundamentalism.

(updated 29 May at 4:07 pm.)

Everybody Draw Muhammad Day

My entry:

(and if you have no idea what this is all about, here’s the explanation.)

Why I Write

Given some online conversations of late, I feel compelled to jot down a few words about the raison d’être for the Stuff Fundies Like blog that consumes so much of my time and energy anymore.  My inner narcissist loves this kind of navel gazing so here we go…

Since November of 2008, SFL has had over a third of a million visits and 5000 visitor comments logged. I never imagined when I first started writing down some random memories from my childhood that I would find so many other people who had shared experiences and strong emotional ties to the fundamentalist world. There are, of course, many blogs even in fundamentalist circles that make mine seem tiny by comparison but it’s a still intimidating to have that kind of reach.

Along with those who send thank-you notes and kudos for my posts, there are also a chorus of people who ask me why I bother to do this. Why bother to satirize and poke fun at something that I’ve moved on from? Usually this is accompanied by accusations of bitterness on my part and suggestions that I am a hypocrite for judging the judgmental and hating the haters. It is to those latter that I address this post.

SFL is primarily a humor blog. The entire meme is borrowed (read that “stolen”) from sites like Stuff White People Like, Stuff Christians Like, and a dozen other such sites.  SFL is also a niche blog that appeals a very limited audience on a narrow range of topics. The posts tend to fall into one of two categories: 1) a satirical look at fundamentalist belief and practice 2) videos, audio, and websites that demonstrate fundy craziness “in the wild.”

SFL is also blog with serious implications. We may laugh at a comic look at way “The Weaker Brother” or the “Appearance of Evil” are used to manipulate people but it makes the manipulation no less harmful to those who are still in fundamentalism. Humor is a positive way of dealing with pain — and there’s far too much pain in the lives of former fundamentalists.

So why do I write? Primarily I write because I’m a writer. I’ve spilled gallons of virtual ink on this blog, internet forums, and elsewhere. SFL is merely one more outlet. Second, I write because people seem to want to read it. When five-hundred people show up to read your latest offering (even when the grammar is less than stellar and the idea development could use some major work), it’s incentive to keep going.

But more to the point, I also write because like me,  many other people have a crying need for a way to make sense of their experiences in fundamentalism and humor is a great coping mechanism. So I satirize. I poke fun. I mock.

That last bit may make some people uncomfortable. Isn’t mockery always wrong? Doesn’t that make SFL just as bad as the fundamentalists that it derides?

I would suggest that mockery is the proper tool to use when addressing people with whom an intellectually honest dialog is no longer possible. When a person is so emotionally and psychologically invested in an ideal that they can no longer see that they have long since abandoned logic or rationale, then sometimes all that is left to do is use sarcasm and point out their absurdities as a warning to others. The Old Testament prophets used this strategy constantly. It works.

The problems in fundamentalism are legion and millions of words have been hurled into the Internet void by people arguing on every side of every fundamentalist issue. I prefer not to waste words that will never be understood by men who’s eyes are blinded to anything but their own lust for power and certainty of being right.

I would hasten to add that I’ve had many reasonable conversations with reasonable fundamentalists. I respect some of them greatly and know them to be honest and well-intentioned if somewhat (from where I’m standing) mislead. You will not see those individuals or churches being featured on SFL — there’s simply nothing there to satirize.

If you’re a fundamentalist and you have the gift of chuckling at yourself, God bless you. If you’re a former fundy and you’ve been helped in anyway by some silly thing that I’ve said, then I’m glad for it. Otherwise, laugh if it’s funny, complain if it isn’t, and go read something else if you simply can’t stand it.

DD

Why Nice Guys Finish Last

The Canary and the Crow
Together were two cages hung,
For Music and for show;
In one a fine canary sung,
In t’other screech’d a crow.
On charm’d the household with his song,
The other vex’d it with his cries;
Forever cawing all day long,
He call’d for bread and cakes and pies.

And people fed him to his fill,
As the best way to keep him still.
Loud rang the sweet canary’s strain,
He ask’d for naught, and sung in vain.
For none supplied his pressing needs,
Or gave him water, or his seeds.

Those most delighted by his chants
Were quite oblivious of his wants.
They liked him well enough, ’twas true
But never gave him what was due.
At last one day they found him dead,
Merely for want of being fed.
“Alas!” folks cried, “How can we spare
A songster so beyond compare!
How could he die? — A bird so rare!”

But while they thus expressed surprise
The crow keeps up his stunning cries,
And still is fed on cakes and pies.

From Florian’s Fables

Certain Uncertainty

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” — Benjamin Franklin

One of the most common complaints that I hear about Christianity is that Christians disagree amongst themselves on so many things. It does seem to make a sort of sense that if so many of us are at odds about things like man’s free will, how the earth was created, how the world will end, and what exactly the Eucharist means, that the Christian faith is far from precise.

One possibility put forward by skeptics is that that the Bible just isn’t a very good source. It’s extremely old, after all, and written in another language by people who were very different from us. If it was meant to be taken seriously, what’s with all the poetic language and vagaries of translation? We’re looking for a textbook on Christianity and instead we’re handed a mishmash of writings that could mean just about anything.

Another way to explain the disparity between good Christians is that people just aren’t very good at interpreting what’s written. Even well-intentioned, highly-educated, open-minded people come to wildly different conclusions on the meaning of a passage even when the writing isn’t that flowery. A few minutes spent looking at various commentaries on Romans is enough to make the average layperson despair that anybody really knows anything about the Bible at all.

If what I’ve written so far describes your plight, then take heart. It’s really not as bad as all that.

The fact is that Christians really do agree more than we disagree on things that really matter.  What are these things, you ask? Well it goes something like this:

I believe in one God the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth,
And of all things visible and invisible:

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God,
Begotten of his Father before all worlds,
God of God, Light of Light,
Very God of very God,
Begotten, not made,
Being of one substance with the Father,
By whom all things were made;
Who for us men, and for our salvation came down from heaven,
And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary,
And was made man,
And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.
He suffered and was buried,
And the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures,
And ascended into heaven,
And sitteth on the right hand of the Father.
And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead:
Whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost,
The Lord and giver of life,
Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son,
Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified,
Who spake by the Prophets.
And I believe one Catholick and Apostolick Church.
I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins.
And I look for the Resurrection of the dead,
And the life of the world to come.
Amen.
[Nicean Creed, Book of Common Prayer version (1662)]

That’s the stuff that all orthodox Christians agree on.  I won’t address here how we came up with them as that is an entire study in itself.

So what about the other things that aren’t in that creed? What about Calvinism vs. Arminianism? What about modes of baptism? What about various and sundry standards of personal separation?

Well…what about them? We read the Scripture. We seek out the wisdom of others in the faith. We do our best to understand Scriptural principles and we build a structure of our understanding based on those things. And we do it all while acknowledging that even in good structures not everything makes sense 100% of the time.

It is a fallacy of fundamentalism to claim that every jot and tiddle of every possible doctrinal nuance is explicitly spelled out in the Bible. God is bigger than the Bible. He created a world of amazing complexity and didn’t include manuals for most of it in the Scripture. He works in space and time and physical reality but then does miracles to break His own rules and doesn’t bother telling us how most of that works either. The Bible comes from what John Calvin describes as a God who lisps to reveal himself to us. He speaks as an adult would to a small child to make Himself understood.

The never-ending arguments that plague Christianity about the interpretation of unclear Scriptural things are for the most part born of an inability to see the infinite picture of God through our finite minds. We are the blind men with the infinitely complex elephant before us yelling at each other that our bit of knowledge far exceeds everyone else’s.

I beg you, do not make the mistake of thinking because we admit to our own finite understanding that Christians disagree on everything or that they know nothing of reality. We do have clear revelation as to God’s purpose, our need, and His character. The places where our minds cease to comprehend as we reach out and touch the infinite should only serve to make us thankful for His grace and awed by his wisdom in creation.

It is a child who demands to know every detail and cannot tolerate ambiguity. The mature adult realizes that some things are and will remain a mystery and focuses instead on what he can actually see in front of him.  Of that, I’m absolutely certain.