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What Christians should learn from Rob Bell and the psychologists…

5352592011_fff4a2dce4_z.jpgHow Stories Deceive is a worthwhile read. It tells the story of a con artist who claims to be a sexually exploited underage teenager. But what the article is really about is the power of stories. Of course, it would have to be in story form to prove the point, and it does a good job. First, some excerpts, then I’ll make a few comments:

“Stories bring us together. We can talk about them and bond over them. They are shared knowledge, shared legend, and shared history; often, they shape our shared future. Stories are so natural that we don’t notice how much they permeate our lives. And stories are on our side: they are meant to delight us, not deceive us—an ever-present form of entertainment.

“That’s precisely why they can be such a powerful tool of deception. When we’re immersed in a story, we let down our guard. We focus in a way we wouldn’t if someone were just trying to catch us with a random phrase or picture or interaction. (“He has a secret” makes for a far more intriguing proposition than “He has a bicycle.”) In those moments of fully immersed attention, we may absorb things, under the radar, that would normally pass us by or put us on high alert. Later, we may find ourselves thinking that some idea or concept is coming from our own brilliant, fertile minds, when, in reality, it was planted there by the story we just heard or read.

“Give me a good story, and I can no longer quite put my finger on what, if anything, should set off my alarm bells. When the psychologists Melanie Green and Timothy Brock decided to test the persuasive power of narrative, they found that the more a story transported us into its world, the more we were likely to believe it—even if some details didn’t quite mesh. The personal narrative is much more persuasive than any other form of appeal. And if a story is especially emotionally jarring—How amazing! How awful! I can’t believe that happened to her!—its perceived truthfulness increases.”

This is what allows scam artists to make a healthy living, whether they are small-time or in the big leagues. Psychologists and others have studied this, and Rob Bell seemed to grasp it intuitively. Why do we fall for lies, whether theological or otherwise, when there’s a good story?


Feeding on ashes...

In one twenty-four hour period, recently, two celebrities died.

Both starred in a bunch of films.

Both had stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Both amassed fortunes.

Both had been married three times...


Because I'm a comedy writer...

I realized some time back that the comedians we love and watch are perfectly described in Scripture as "scoffers" and "mockers". I was browsing the internet this evening when the point really hit me in the gut in a passage from the Wikipedia entry on Seth MacFarlane. For those who don't know, Mr. MacFarlane is an "actor, animator, comedian, writer, producer, director, and singer," and he's responsible for shows such as Family Guy and American Dad. Here's what Wikipedia had to say about his September 11, 2001 brush with death:


Aimee Semple McPherson: conflicted celebrity evangelist...

Itinerant evangelists have proclaimed the good news in crusades and tent revivals, in fields and stadiums, in tabernacles and classrooms. Over the last 150 years, Dwight L. Moody (1837-1899), Billy Sunday (1862-1935), Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944) and Billy Graham (1918-present) have been household names in their eras. Each used different methods and had vastly different personalities, and was able to tap into deep undercurrents of American piety. My intent in this post is not to compare these four, but to consider a recent (1993) and major biography (400+ pages), Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody's Sister by Edith Blumhofer .

For much of the 1920s and 1930s, Aimee was front-page news. She was a relentless evangelist, a missionary to China, a megachurch pastor, the founder of a denomination, and a leader in helping to provide for the physical needs of those who fell on hard times during the Great Depression.

Yet her life was full of contradictions. Adored by thousands … 


"I just don't want him to suffer anymore..."

Almost always when I walk into a patient’s hospital room, the first thing I do is turn off the TV. Sometimes, I'll turn off the roommate’s TV, too. (Every room has two, you know.) Have you ever tried to maintain interest in someone’s diarrhea when right behind your head there’s a John Wayne marathon on AMC ?

Well, for whatever reason, today I left it on as I walked up to the bed in critical care. And sure enough, like the TV-zombie child of the 70’s that I am, I was soon fighting desperately to concentrate on my patient’s kidney failure instead of the breaking news on the Today Show: “NYC studio offers naked yoga.” That’s right, naked yoga. Fig leaves? Shame? Those are so Garden-of-Eden. Here in America, we gonna let it all hang out.

Suddenly, it became clearer than ever before that all a man needs to understand America is Isaiah 5...


Messiahless Jews...

And they also, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. (Romans 11:23)

Yes yes, I know speaking in generalities about Jews today leads to the "anti-Semitic" smear. But hey, life is short and there are all kinds of truths just waiting to be let out of the closet...

USA Today ran a profile of James Levine and Roman Polanski's fellow traveller, Woody Allen, last week, and I noted this:

Does he worry that his films won't be remembered? "I don't care about my work lasting. I would like to last. They can turn my movies into guitar picks. Nothing lasts. Nothing at all. Not even the sun."

Given such disturbing insights, it is hard to know whether all those years Allen spent in therapy paid off--or just made his existential despair into fodder for future features. (USA Today; June 19, 2012)

Make no mistake: the existential despair of Christless Jews is the fodder of our entertainment...


Reformed blings invite heretic to wax eloquent...

Jesus said, "...whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many. - Matthew 20:27, 28

One of Baylyblog's themes is the necessity of avoiding all the Evangelical and Reformed bling. There's gold in them thar hills and that's the point, dear brothers and sisters. Jim MacDonald and Mark Driscoll are out having Elephant Room conversations and want you to come pay them money to see how bright they are.

Except check out the man they've invited to join them and wax elephant for their customers.

He's a pastor who claims he's a Christian, but he's not...


Redeemer's bondage to cosmopolitan conceit...

“Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name..." - Genesis 11:4

...if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter; and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds), then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment... - 2 Peter 2:6-9

We make it a habit to say less than we know when we oppose ministries and their leaders here on Baylyblog. We don't want to overreach. This has been true of our criticisms of Redeemer Presbyterian Church and her pastor, especially.

Back in the early nineties we first started recommending Redeemer to souls moving to New York City, and by now we have close to two decades of listening to those men and women who have become a part of Redeemer's congregations.

Our second thoughts about Redeemer started seventeen years ago...


Canned preacher, live musicians...

Driscoll is a popular pastor in the Pacific Northwest. He heads a group of multisite churches that regularly draw 10,000 parishioners a week across 10 locations. He preaches live at one location, and his sermons are sent out by video to the other locations the following week, when the services are held with live music...

Driscoll said the sermon this week will be pre-taped, in part so he can attend a baseball tournament his son is playing in. The message, he said, comes from the Gospel of Luke and is about Zacchaeus, a crooked tax collector who found redemption...

If the preacher's a digital image, why "live music?"

A year ago, Taylor and I were at a large church in Evansville, Indiana, where the preacher only showed up for the later services and used video to feed the early service flock. During the sermon, the large digital image hanging from the ceiling in front of us asked those present to raise their hands if...


So this hip-hop star walks into our art gallery and he's like...

Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD. He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse. (Malachi 4:5, 6)

(NOTE: helpful obscenities ahead) Almost always, an absent father, father-hunger, and hatred define The New Yorker profiles of the purveyors of our Godless culture. Here we have a profile of the hip-hop group, Odd Future, and its best rapper, Thebe Neruda Kgositsile (alias Earl Sweatshirt) who at the time of the song's release was sixteen years old. From The New Yorker's profile, "Earl Sweatshirt begins one track by sneaking some autobiography into...


Welcome to the machine...

JustinTaylor'sAdforTimKellerNo doubt readers have noticed I've been trying to take Doug's advice and "stop throwing rocks at the moon." He's so wise.

But occasionally I howl, and tonight you may hear me after some idiot sent me to JT's blog and I saw this ad. Twenty percent off? How can a man resist? Talk about preaching to my heart! And you pomos aren't scandalized!

Preaching has become a commodity and we consume it as if it were yogurt or socks.

Money, it's a hit...

(TB)


Rob Bell's Department of Silly Talks...

(Tim) Our brothers out in Moscow, Idaho, just released a short spoof of Rob Bell's Department of Silly Talks. Check it out.

Robbed Hell - C.A.S.T. Pearls Presents from Canon Wired on Vimeo.


"Important fantasies we can escape to..."

(Tim) With sincere apologies to all the wee ones and their mothers, I think Disneyworld is too similar to hip preachers with full-service video venues to take the children for a visit. Really, do you want Disney's moral and spiritual authority to accrue to our Evangelical/Emergent theme parks?

Taryn Simon is a photographer...


You know you're a hipster...

(Tim, w/thanks to Ben) Here's to all the Presbyterian couples who would rather die than have their daughter marry before she finishes college.


Wasted days and wasted nights...

(Tim, w/thanks to Scott) Some of Church of the Good Shepherd's work is a Saturday men's class called David's Mighty Men. Stephen Baker and I teach, then the men meet in smaller groups for accountability and recitation of their Scripture memory. It's a two-year course of study and as practical as true godliness will always be. We teach male and female, courting, marriage, childbearing, work, authority and submission, fatherhood, church, doctrine...

Right from the beginning, we tell the men that we're out to kill "guyland." What's guyland?

Particularly for young men, guyland's almost always pornography, sports, or video games. Do you know how many men in your church are flunking out of life because...


Theologian and international speaker, Carolyn Custis James, helps John Piper explain complementarianism to Religious Newswriters...

(Tim, w/thanks to Jesse) I never read which books are making which Christians how much money, nowadays. Growing up in the epicenter of Wheaton's giggling excitement over academic and publishing fashions, it's been almost twenty years since I made the commitment to stop subscribing to Christianity Today and Leadership, and to keep away from any and all news sources reporting on the latest product being offered by the Temple's moneychangers.

But I get links. Boy do I get links. And every now and then, against my better judgment, I take a peek. Shouldn't, but do. So here's a video of a self-promotional spiel given by Ms. Custis James to the Religious Newswriters Association. They say the topic was "The New Calvinists," but after the first half, Ms. Custis James' talk inevitably turns back to the one string she perpetually plucks to the exclusion of her harp's other ten thousand strings...


This is the church, this is the steeple, register now to see all the preachers...

(Tim) Lane Bowman, a recent graduate of ClearNote Pastors College, writes: "I've been holding on to this for months because of the Subject, and thought I should pass it along for evidence that images of men are central to the personality cults of the evangelical world... You would think they would have "thought" through the implication of using the word 'see' instead of 'hear.'"

A word says a thousand pictures. Here's the brochure...


The gospel of art...

(Tim) From ClearNote Blog: The notable disciple of Spurgeon, Archibald Brown, warns: 

The devil has seldom done a more clever thing, than hinting to the Church that part of their mission is to provide entertainment for the people, with a view to winning them. From speaking out the gospel, the Church has gradually toned down her testimony, then winked at and excused the frivolities of the day. Then she tolerated them in her borders. Now she has adopted them under the plea of reaching the masses!

...In vain will the epistles be searched to find any trace of the 'gospel of amusement'. Their message is, "Therefore, come out from them and separate yourselves from them... Don't touch their filthy things..." Anything approaching amusement is conspicuous by its absence. They had boundless confidence in the gospel and employed no other weapon. (Read more.)


Grazing in Augustine...

(Tim) From Augustine's City of God, let's sample a few notes rarely struck by pastors marketing their church as "in the city" and "for the city;" but really, rarely struck by almost any shepherd working in the pastorate today in North America.

Take, for instance, the matter of food: how would we compare our declaration of the Order of Creation and the meaning of the Sixth Commandment to the vegans and vegetarians in our own congregations--of which there are as many now as back in the time of Augustine and the Apostle Paul (1Timothy 4:1-4)--to Augustine's own declaration, here?

...some attempt to extend "Thou shalt not kill" even to beasts and cattle, as if it forbade us to take life from any creature. But if so, why not extend it also to the plants, and all that is rooted in and nourished by the earth? For though this class of creatures have no sensation, yet they also are said to live, and consequently they can die; and therefore, if violence be done them, can be killed. So, too, the apostle, when speaking of the seeds of such things as these, says, “That which thou sowest is not quickened except it die;” and in the Psalm it is said, “He killed their vines with hail.”

Must we therefore reckon it a breaking of this commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” to pull a flower? Are we thus insanely to countenance the foolish error of the Manichæans?

Putting aside, then, these ravings, ...when we say, "Thou shalt not kill," we do not understand this of the plants, since they have no sensation, nor of the irrational animals that fly, swim, walk, or creep, since they are dissociated from us by their want of reason, and are therefore by the just appointment of the Creator subjected to us to kill or keep alive for our own uses... (I:20)

Are we similar to Augustine in his work magnifying, making the most of the distinction between the city of God and the city of man? What a contrast he provides here to our effeminate attempts to blur all distinctions--particularly that essential distinction on which eternity hangs, drawing the line of God's election between the slaves of God and the slaves of Satan. In his comments, Pastor Beatty has illustrated typical attempts today to market the Church as not other or peculiar or God-fearing or holy, but "we're just like you, really; and you're just like us." Contrast this...


When in New York...

(Tim) What must a preacher in New York know in order to appeal to his listeners? How should he contextualize his worship services and sermons so they're on-pitch for Gothamites?

A recent article in The New York Times featured an interview with Sting. Knighting him their "Renaissance man," the Times caught up with him in his "sumptuous Central Park West duplex" where he was taking a break from his "Symphonicities" tour.

Referring to his nineteenth century aluminum double bass over by the piano, Sting indicated he plays it regularly: "one little piece of Purcell every day and that's it." Referring to a pair of chess sets on a coffee table, Sting reported he'd played grandmaster Gary Kasporov: "Of course he beat me every time. But you know, he can't sing."

The article concluded with Sting giving this sketch of New Yorkers...