Pride

Our current emporer seems to think it's his prerogative to crown our next one. News sites are quoting The Obama saying, "Mr. Trump is not succeeding me."

Would someone who knows the man personally kindly inform him it's still "We, the people" who choose our president? Also, that many of us would consider The Donald a massive upgrade over the violations of the rule of law emanating from His Imperial Highness these past eight years? But he should not think this is because we are positive about The Donald. Rather, it's because we are repulsed by him and his fellow Harvard snobsters casting their supercilious glances down on working men who loved Merle Haggard.

Joe Sobran used to say if voting did anything it would be illegal. I wouldn't put it past President Obama to sign the legislation outlawing it, while assuring himself he was only doing what was best for his fellow countrymen. After all, they might abuse their electoral privilege as badly this November as they did eight years ago.

I'm so ready for this man to vacate the White House. So very, very ready. I'll take a loudmouth huckster over a supercilious drone any day.

Everyone was sick of the drama. Now it's over and it's a real shocker. To see a man loyal to his roots despite the intense acrimony surrounding his departure four years ago makes me think better of Lebron James. 

What hurdles did he face as he considered returning to Cleveland?

His wife and mother. James told Sports Illustrated:

To make the move I needed the support of my wife and my mom, who can be very tough.

To the left, readers will find a link where they can buy a DVD of The Gospel Blimp. The movie was directed by Shorty Yeaworth who also directed Steve McQueen in the cult classic, The Blob. Yeaworth did a perfect job on The Gospel Blimp. The acting is good and the style is retro to the max--cars with mega-fins, perfect crewcuts, and of course, the blimp.

I mention the movie now because, if they watch it, readers will understand why the bling of famous Christians holds no appeal to David or me. We grew up under a father who made Christian bling utterly repulsive to us. The rejection of personality cults and self-promotion was foundational to our upbringing.

Dad wrote The Gospel Blimp after years helping to found and leading the work of the parachurch campus ministry, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. And since it was a satire on Evangelicalism's pride and self-promotion, no one was willing to publish it. So Dad did the manly faithful thing and...

It's glorious how God leads intellectuals to shout their blindness. Things the simplest plowboy sees clearly are obscured by the intellectual's highly nuanced mists and vapors, so the plowboy is left to his centuries-old occupation of making fun of them. He's not anti-intellectual--he's anti-intellectuals.

Plowboys aren't envious of the intellectual's degrees or salary or light teaching load or clean soft hands and time alone with books. And it's certainly not that the plowboy is careless with reason, logic, history, and right and wrong. He's as careful with his tax forms as any making-of-books man, and much more sophisticated.

No, it's not that the plowboy is stupid and thinks stupid is good. Rather, it's that he's got his feet planted squarely on the ground while the intellectual is up in the mists and vapors forgetting that he's made of dust and to dust he will return. The intellectual speaks from on high while the plowboy speaks from soil and manure. The Christian sizing both up may be able to grasp that the plowboy's perspective makes all the difference for his grasp of truth and his growth in righteousness.

Applications of these fundamental truths are everywhere.

R2K intellectuals are a special interest group hounding the nation's citizenry about their pet policy issue. They're a PAC whose primary work is not on K Street and in the halls of congress, but out across the land. They publish and yell and chivy and curdle and yap at and hector and dog their fellow citizens with their political dogma, and they do it in the Name of God citing His Word and Church as their authorities...

Atop Campus Crusade's Jesus Film web site are several paragraphs of boiler-plate Evangelical Jesus-marketing shtick:

Every eight seconds, somewhere in the world, another person indicates a decision to follow Christ after watching the "JESUS" film.

Every eight seconds... that's 10,800 people per day, 324,000 per month and more than 3.8 million per year! That’s like the population of the entire city of Pittsburgh, PA coming to Christ every 28 ¼ days. And yet, if you are like many people, you may have never even heard of it.

Called by some “one of the best-kept secrets in Christian missions,” a number of mission experts have acclaimed the film as one of the greatest evangelistic tools of all time. Since 1979 the “JESUS” film has been viewed by several billon people all across the globe, and has resulted in more than 200 million men, women and children indicating decisions to follow Jesus. In addition, through hundreds of partners an estimated 10+ million decisions have been made as the film "JESUS" is used extensively by the Body of Christ worldwide. (emphasis in the original)

A few points of arithmetic regarding these bodacious claims before reflecting on what such claims reveal....

In Exodus 20:23-25 God tells Moses to warn the people of Israel that they are not to fashion gods of silver or gold for themselves. He then immediately goes on to say that altars to Him should be made of earth, or if of stone, uncut stone because by wielding their tools on His altar they will profane it.

Can we miss the relevance of this passage for our church houses today--and for our methods of preaching the Word? The danger of mistaking human craft and opulence with the glory of God is no smaller today than in the days of Moses. And lest we forget, God commanded that the place of His worship be a tabernacle rather than a cathedral, a house rather than a palace.

Consider God's response in 1 Chronicles 17:1-15 after Nathan prematurely assured David that God was pleased with his desire to build Him a house:

A blog calling itself "Thinking Christian" with a commendation by Josh McDowell featured prominently doesn't bode well for the state of critical thinking in the church today. Josh has done fine work but he's far from state of the art in the discipline Harry Blamires outlines in his little classic, The Christian Mind (which if you haven't read, you certainly should).

So my hopes weren't high when I started reading the post by blog-owner Tom Gilson titled "Is Campus Crusade Falling Away from Christ?" Gilson works as a "strategic planner" for Campus Crusade for Christ International, so this is an institutional voice speaking, here.

The piece demonstrates the depth of thought and BIblical discernment that, in my observation, has always characterized Cru. Their men seem incapable of receiving substantive criticism or instruction without responding superficially, always telling us their intentions are perfect and God is blessing them with trillions of souls "trusting Jesus."

The superficiality makes sense, though, if you consider that, over the course of years, a man comes to resemble his dog...