Inappropriate Conversations

What Would Jan Brewer Do?

In Inappropriate Conversations #129 (on “Biblical Literacy”), I said that the parable of The Good Samaritan might be the best known New Testament reference. Although no one wrote me to disagree, I'll paste Luke 10: 25-37 here in case I was wrong.

A lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?” And he answered, “YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.” And He said to him, “You have answered correctly; DO THIS AND YOU WILL LIVE.” But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Jesus replied and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return I will repay you.’ Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?” And he said, “The one who showed mercy toward him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.” [NASB]

This week, the governor of Arizona is facing a choice about signing pro-discrimination legislation into state law or sitting idly by and allowing it to happen. A veto is required to stop this.

Some Christians, not even all of the religious right, have called for this “right” as a response to gay marriage – which is not currently legal at the state level in Arizona. The suggestion is that florists and bakeries should have state blessing to use a Jim Crow approach to their customers based on sexual orientation.

I started this post with the words of Jesus for a reason. It is where all Christians should go for wisdom, example, and guidance. So, where do we find this faction of Arizona Christians in the parable of The Good Samaritan?

Are they asking for legal protection to pass on the other side of the road rather than interact with marginalized members of society? Perhaps they are the Levite selectively refusing to help or serve. I reject the notion that they may be the priest because those professions are not inherently religious. I will defend pastors and priests who refuse to lead any couple into holy matrimony for any reason. Their “conscience” is a completely different matter from a company that rents tables and chairs.

I’m sure we can agree that these Christians are failing to follow Jesus’ advice and emulate the Good Samaritan. Not even close. Some have suggested the comparison is closer to the robbers. Certainly the equivalent groups in Russia fit the description perfectly. The images of beatings are on camera for any to see.

Perhaps the best comparison is the innkeeper, but not the person Jesus described. Jesus told of a merchant happy to run his business and meet the needs of his customers. So-called “conservatives” in Arizona (anti-business conservatives, I suppose) would tell the Samaritan to get his filth out of his inn and take any scum that would hang out with him, too.

I wonder what Jesus would have said about this Arizona innkeeper. It certainly would have ruined his parable. Clearly, though, Jesus is a better storyteller than anyone speaking up for this legislation in Arizona.

So, Governor Jan Brewer faces an interesting challenge. It isn’t her job as an elected official to save Christianity from these types of Christians. It is, nevertheless, her opportunity.

Rejecting this law is what Jesus would have us do. So, Governor Brewer, what kind of leader are you? What kind of person are you? What kind of Christian are you? Are you, in fact, a Christ Follower at all … or merely a PAC (politically active Christian), content to leverage Jesus for the marketing clout his name too-often provides?

College Football's 2013 Non-Championship

My feelings haven't changed from a year ago, so I won't repeat much here. A 16-team playoff is easy to achieve, including every champion from FBS conferences and 6 at-large teams based on BCS calculations.

Here are the college football games we should be watching this December and January. It is madness (the wrong kind) that we aren't getting what fans have always wanted, and what fans enjoy every March.

Link to Sex Nerd Sandra

Since holidays and other things have kept me away from the microphone for awhile, here is something to consider in the meantime. Sandra Daugherty has a "sex positive" educational program on The Nerdist network. This week she discussed Christianity and sexuality with the Rev. Beverly Dale. It is provocative and insightful, and it's an inappropriate conversation in the best ways.

Sex Nerd Sandra: Sex & Jesus

Next on Inappropriate Conversations: I'm adding a tie-in between Walk The Earth and Inappropriate Conversations on gender and the church. Both shows will look at the same topic.

It's a Hard Road

(Only occasionally, Inappropriate Conversations will look at sports. This is one of those occasions.)

When Baylor visits Oklahoma State in Top 12 football game this weekend, it will be the Bears third road game of the year. All of their non-conference games were played in Waco. Last night’s game against Texas Tech was played at a largely neutral venue in Dallas.

This could be a judgment, but that’s a different topic for another day. After all, Oklahoma State has completed its four road games this year, and Baylor will reach their fourth by the final week. (The majority of OSU’s non-conference games were played on neutral fields, and two of them were located much closer to their opponents’ campuses.) No, the conventional wisdom is that “everybody does this.” Alabama has played two of their four road games so far, plus one neutral site. Florida State and Ohio State are, in some ways, bucking the trend by having five road games on their schedule, and four are behind them now.

That other thought for another time might be the relationship between how much we esteem the power of certain teams and the frequency of their televised performances being in front of a home crowd.

I raise the point that Baylor is about to face its biggest road test, merely to call out the difference in home versus road results. This is not just true in the Big 12 Conference but in college football across the board. All sports, really. Teams perform better at home, meaning that they struggle to maintain the same standard of performance in front of a hostile crowd.

What makes the Big 12 more interesting to me is how “road game” might be differentiated. It is one thing to visit Los Angeles or San Francisco. I’d suggest that the road to places like Ames (Iowa) or Manhattan (Kansas) or Stillwater (Oklahoma) feel a bit longer. I wouldn’t call those “university towns” remote, but they are more than an hour from an international airport.

Through yesterday’s results, Baylor is beating opponents by a margin of 61-17 (truncating). That is undeniably impressive. They have played two road games, both against Big 12 teams in Kansas. The results in those games are 23.2% worse on offense and 11.8% worse on defense. We know, it’s a hard road.

The other thing to note is that Kansas State is the best of those road opponents for the Bears, coming into the game at Stillwater against OSU. The score in that game was only 35-25 for undefeated Baylor. Kansas State led 25-21 going into the fourth quarter.

Just to make the appropriate comparisons, OSU is beating opponents by a margin of 40-19 (truncating). More to the point, though, the Cowboys at home are undefeated, winning on average by 39.5 to 12.0.

If you only take the home results on both offense and defense from OSU against the road results from Baylor, a case could be made that the Cowboys should be favored to knock the Bears from the conversation about unbeaten teams. It looks like OSU by 5 on paper, or virtually a pick’em game.

Call it Oklahoma State 34, Baylor 28 – as unlikely as that may seem.

Hell, Bell, and Reading Well

I am strongly considering putting a “Christianity 301” podcast into the schedule in the near future. It would be a follow up to the article at the top of the website, http://www.inappropriateconversations.org/christianity-201-time-for-solid-food/.
That article deferred some challenging questions to a 301-level of thinking, no longer being an undergraduate approach. Rob Bell seems like the appropriate Different Drummer for an episode like that.

One of the things slowing me down from just opening my Bible, sitting down, and making the recording is advice I received about Bell’s book Love Wins. Valued Christian contacts, including at least one Different Drummer, have called it a book filled with aberrant views, perhaps heresy. It’s been called out as a book that no Christian should read.

The alleged problem: Bell denies there is such a thing as hell. He certainly challenged traditional mainstream Christian views on heaven and hell. Ironically, though, he does so Biblically.

The actual problem, I suspect: Bell shares the perspective of C.S. Lewis and others on the meaning of Jesus’ words in John 14:6. It’s an obvious conclusion. Most people in the religious right cherish this verse above all others, regardless what they say about John 3:16 or any other passage. In fact, they embrace the phrase “no one comes to the Father but through me” almost to the exclusion of “I am the way, the truth, the life” – meaning, their devotion is really to just the latter half of John 14:6.

Perhaps I’ll dive deeper into ideas I’ve discussed before related to that concept.
For now, though, I’d like to challenge some of the mistaken information I was given about Bell. Does the author have a problem understanding “hell” Biblically? Or have many of his critics missed the mark on reading comprehension?

Page number references will refer to the HarperOne 2011 hardback edition, and I’ll drop chapter titles as well.

Does Bell deny that there is such a thing as hell?
Yes, he denies the images in Dante’s Inferno. So does Jesus, or at least the Lord fails to validate them.
No, Bell does not say there is no such thing as hell, or we don’t need a term or a concept like that.

Chapter 3 (Hell), page 93:

To summarize, then, we need a loaded, volatile, adequately violent, dramatic, serious word to describe the very real consequences we experience when we reject the good and true and beautiful life that God has for us. … And for that, the word “hell” works quite well. Let’s keep it.

Chapter 4 (Does God Get What God Wants?), pages 116-7:

“Do we get what we want?” And the answer to that question is a resounding, affirming, sure, and positive yes. Yes, we get what we want. God is that loving. If we want isolation, despair, and the right to be our own god, God graciously grants us that option. … The more we want nothing to do with all God is, the more distance and space are created. If we want nothing to do with love, we are given a reality free from love.

Chapter 7 (The Good News Is Better Than That), page 182:

What is God like? Many have heard the gospel framed in terms of rescue. God has to punish sinners, because God is holy, but Jesus has paid the price for our sin, and so we can have eternal life. However true or untrue that is technically or theologically, what it can do is subtly teach people that Jesus rescues us from God. Let’s be very clear, then: we do not need to be rescued from God. God is the one who rescues us from death, sin, and destruction. God is the rescuer.

So, where has Bell “gone wrong” from the perspective of some Christians?

• Has he taught that we don’t need to understand hell? Quite the opposite. He says there is one and describes it in some detail.
• Has he taught that people won’t end up in hell? Quite the opposite. He just takes it out of a courtroom image and puts the burden of that choice on the person rather than the Lord.
• Does he challenge the arguably polytheistic notion that Jesus is one god who saves us from the wrath of another god by sneaking past “the Father” by conspiring with the Holy Spirit (who, depending on your level of heresy, may be yet another god)? Yes! He absolutely challenges that heretical construct. Believing theistically that there is only one God forces us to think more deeply than the plot structure of a TV courtroom drama, taking the concept of Trinity more seriously at the same time.
  

I have no problem with that.
I do have a problem with Christians who refuse to think deeply about heaven, hell, and the fate of every person who ever lived – whether it challenges beliefs handed down from church fathers and Italian poets or not.

Wait, There Is More

In addition to starting Walk The Earth, a podcast I'll be releasing here along with Inappropriate Conversations, I've actually been pretty busy lately. Consider this a "what I did on my summer vacation" post.

First, welcome if you have found this page for the first time through Christians Tired Of Being Misrepresented. I have referred to that website often, especially through Facebook and Twitter. In fact, they first re-posted my article on "Christianity 201: Time For Solid Food" a few years ago. I have named Janet, their founder, a Different Drummer and could have done so long ago. I finally reached the appropriate topic.

I have appeared on three Geek Fights this summer as that show prepares to pod-fade. Earlier, I joined them for "Christopher Walken v. Christopher Walken" (159) and "Best Friends Episode" (162). More recently, I joined the Geek Fight for "Herzog v. Kinski" (169). I will be sad to see this show end. Among other things, it's a link between me and a friend I've met online, also named Janet.

Out of the blue, a long-time podcasting friend sent me a Facebook message to appear -- immediately if possible -- on one of his many online broadcasting ventures. I met Art Eddy through Masters Of None. The show we recorded together with Ryan Hamilton was The Life Of Dad After Show (episode 6).

Finally, the Tech Support Rich show released today is an interview with Richard Smith of Simply Syndicated. For any Inappropriate Conversations listeners who don't also listen to Simply Syndicated -- well, for one thing, why not?! -- you have heard Rich's voice before on #IC 100. I named him a Different Drummer on that episode a year ago.

The TSR interview is not free, but you can download just the interview for less than a pound or under $2. By far the better idea would be to subscribe to all of the shows available streaming and otherwise via Simply Everything. Most of the content is less serious than Inappropriate Conversations, which is probably a good thing. Hosts of most shows give themselves permission to speak freely, so explicit language abounds. For me, the quality of the content runs much deeper than just the frankness of its presentation. And this interview, as I recall from a week ago, doesn't need any warning stickers.

And that's what I did on my summer vacation!

Quotebox: Dr. Roger Lee Ray

If your church says you have to be male to preach, then that church has a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of genitalia in the writing and delivery of sermons.