The LA Times pointed to a recent report about how comedians seem to be laying off of Barack Obama while laying into almost anyone else (relatively speaking.)
The report doesn't explain why, however. Interestingly enough when questioned comedians seem to believe they are joking about Senator Obama, but the numbers show that they are laying off of Obama. The perspectives of the jokes are also seemingly different. The article outlines the nature of some of the Obama jokes and to share my opinion, they are almost flattering at best.
In my opinion almost all of the material for humorous fodder has been exhibited by both sides of the presidential run (commedian John Stewart did a report on the changing opinions of John McCain, and while he could have easly done a similar report of equal size on Obama, but chose not to. the closest example of joking about Obama is here and Stewart has to remind the audience that it is OK to laugh. Is that canned laughter then? maybe.) For whatever reason, while there doesn't seem to be a universal lack of material, McCain is being targeted more than Obama.
In asking a friend about his perspective with regard to this, he said, "Well, it's a comedy show." Fair enough. The trouble is that this comedy gets youtubed and travels the web carying remarks like "well, somebody needed to say it." Statistically, someone could "need to" crack the same jokes about Obama (because they are there just as often), but they just aren't getting said. Why are McCain foibles "needing to be said" but Obama foibles are lost to commedians? Listen here to just a sampling of issues that surround Obama's political career. This is the exact kind of goof-ups and affiliation with other shifty politicians that McCain jokes are laced with.
I have a theory and it goes like this: agenda, agenda, agenda.
I am not saying that the jokes aren't funny. I just wish the networks would be more evenhanded on doling out the humor. Everyone should get a chance to laugh, regardless of their political position.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
FactCheck.org
Recently at work a few folks got into some interesting discussion about Obama and McCain and their proposed affect on taxes if they were elected. It was a neat talk and the conversation ended with one person referencing information from FactCheck.org
This is where I digress in general from political conversations and back into blogging about technology and everyday life. I am absolutely interested in the election, absolutely intend on voting and would encourage everyone I know to stay engaged in the issues to the best of their ability. What I really like most about factcheck.org is that it seems very bi-partisan. It isn't about being conservative or liberal. It seems to be pretty well dedicated to just figuring out the truth in a political claim. For example, there are claims in TV ads from both candidates that make some compelling points about each other. Factcheck.org does a good job bring those claims into context. They are dwarfing my ability to analyze the larger landscape of issues and fact research and so rather than continue to pimp my perspective (which blogs are generally good at doing) I will point folks to them on interesting issues. I am not saying I won't blog about stuff I care about. I am just saying that this site handles facts pretty well and I might just point to them rather than write a 9-page blog on a topic.
So if someone makes a compelling (or frustrating) political claim, I completely encourage everyone to review the research on this site. They could have already addressed it!
Final note: The site does a good job of exposing context. If Obama or McCain references some Associated Press article that says "This candidate has successfully solved issue X," factcheck will also show that the same article also says not-so-flattering contextual comments as well. My hope is that it won't become additional fodder for more rhetoric, but just a better overall view of the political landscape with regard to facts that matter when we go to vote soon!
This is where I digress in general from political conversations and back into blogging about technology and everyday life. I am absolutely interested in the election, absolutely intend on voting and would encourage everyone I know to stay engaged in the issues to the best of their ability. What I really like most about factcheck.org is that it seems very bi-partisan. It isn't about being conservative or liberal. It seems to be pretty well dedicated to just figuring out the truth in a political claim. For example, there are claims in TV ads from both candidates that make some compelling points about each other. Factcheck.org does a good job bring those claims into context. They are dwarfing my ability to analyze the larger landscape of issues and fact research and so rather than continue to pimp my perspective (which blogs are generally good at doing) I will point folks to them on interesting issues. I am not saying I won't blog about stuff I care about. I am just saying that this site handles facts pretty well and I might just point to them rather than write a 9-page blog on a topic.
So if someone makes a compelling (or frustrating) political claim, I completely encourage everyone to review the research on this site. They could have already addressed it!
Final note: The site does a good job of exposing context. If Obama or McCain references some Associated Press article that says "This candidate has successfully solved issue X," factcheck will also show that the same article also says not-so-flattering contextual comments as well. My hope is that it won't become additional fodder for more rhetoric, but just a better overall view of the political landscape with regard to facts that matter when we go to vote soon!
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Christians Shouldn’t Legislate Morality (and other myths)
I recently read a blog that named this as a top reason for not caring about abortion issues in the coming election. The argument in greater details goes something like this…
“Christians, since the Garden of Eden, have had the right to choose poorly. We aren’t saying that there is no such thing as choosing poorly. We are simply saying that we do not favor legislating morality via the American political system. We may not all choose wisely, but we should defend the rights and freedoms of people to choose poorly.”
Rather than actually write some apologetics about abortion specifically (though I will use it as an example), let me start some conversation about why this logic has some huge holes in it and as Christians we need to consider examining the validity of dialog that makes us seem a bit naïve with regard to the issue of legislating morals.
Laws do not legislate the right to choose poorly. People always have the freedom to choose things that hurt themselves and others. Laws do not control people. At best, laws influence people. Another good question is, “What exactly do laws intend to do for society?”
There seem to be at least two modes for laws: directly rendering value-based judgments on certain activities and behaviors, and mitigating risk proactively with regard to perceived harm around certain activities and behavior.
Directly rendering value-based judgments on certain activities and behaviors.
Laws that render judgments on stealing, for example, fit into this category. Society is not on the fence about valuing the respect of personal property here in America. If you steal something, then you have broken a social agreement with regard to this moral / value-based legislation.
Mitigating risk proactively with regard to perceived harm around certain activities and behavior.
Laws about speed-limits fit into this category. Speed-limit laws do not pretend that going fast is a bad moral judgment. The law simply mitigates the risk of people creating harm that hurts human life by making a poor choice with regard to the speed of their vehicles within the context of other people, property or traffic. Again, this law isn’t pretending that speeding is morally wrong. It does pass a judgment that the risk is too high at a certain point to allow people the possibility of creating harm (a value judgment.)
So, laws are very much about a social contract on value judgments. Other laws fall into these two modes. Think about it: underage sex, consumption of alcohol as a minor, appropriate licensed driving ages, etc. Some fit into the category of a direct value judgment on the act, and other draw the line sooner to mitigate the risk associated with the possibly harmful outcomes of certain behavior.
Laws are a social contract based on value judgments that are a reflection of our morals. So, fundamentally laws do in fact come down to morals. Nearly by definition, laws legislate those morals based on our values. So legislating morals and values isn't really a Christian thing, so more specifically it isn't an issue of bad behavior from Christians.
If this is true (I am open to discussing this… please write comments) then it isn’t fair to imagine that one side of a debate (anti-abortion) is legislating morality in an unreasonable manner while the other side (pro-abortion) is morally agnostic. Both sides reflect morals based on our values. I don't see a way around it.
I have known plenty of people that defend their position on pro-abortion and they acknowledge that they want laws that defend their values. I have known people who also feel that they would prefer the laws defend their anti-abortion values. It is relatively new to imagine that one side of the argument is morally agnostic and without certain representative values. I am a little worried that Christians who are shopping this logic around in their conversations are, at best, making Christians seem a little naiive, or at worst, struggling to justify their position in support of abortion in the absense of other convincing arguments surrounding the issue, maybe?
In the up-coming election we can see two candidates that have voiced their desire to enact legislation that defends one side or the other of this particular issue on abortion. Both want to create laws. Neither is morally agnostic. Neither of them is without underlying supported value judgments. Either side requires considerable respectful examination to which your vote draws us into movement toward their social and political end.
End note: I think that the issue is very polar at the moment (the abortion issue) and people typically fall into a number of categories (including not supporting abortion as a means of reversing a pregnancy as an elective surgery, but supporting it as an act of saving a would-be-mothers life) well beyond the pro and anti categories. As a result I think we need to be tollerant of people who don't agree with our perspectives. I am defining tollerance as a willingness to co-exist in a kind and friendly manner with people whos morals or values you don't come into agreement with on this or other issues. I don't define tollerance as thinking that all opinions are equal OR that all opinions are valuable OR that all opinions are right or lack right-ness or wrong-ness. I think that regardless of why we morally feel and value, we shouldn't let our position turn us into people who treat people in detestible ways.
Upsetting the applecart specifically on the political abortion issue: I have heard people saying that the abortion issue is nearly a moot point since the president’s only real power in this area is appointing Supreme Court Judges. This is not true. Like I said, both sides are looking to implement legislation that won’t require any Supreme Court Justice appointments. Anyone who says it comes down to Supreme Court Justices is either ill-informed or deceiving you. My hope is that they are just not thinking this stuff through, rather than trying to deceive you.
“Christians, since the Garden of Eden, have had the right to choose poorly. We aren’t saying that there is no such thing as choosing poorly. We are simply saying that we do not favor legislating morality via the American political system. We may not all choose wisely, but we should defend the rights and freedoms of people to choose poorly.”
Rather than actually write some apologetics about abortion specifically (though I will use it as an example), let me start some conversation about why this logic has some huge holes in it and as Christians we need to consider examining the validity of dialog that makes us seem a bit naïve with regard to the issue of legislating morals.
Laws do not legislate the right to choose poorly. People always have the freedom to choose things that hurt themselves and others. Laws do not control people. At best, laws influence people. Another good question is, “What exactly do laws intend to do for society?”
There seem to be at least two modes for laws: directly rendering value-based judgments on certain activities and behaviors, and mitigating risk proactively with regard to perceived harm around certain activities and behavior.
Directly rendering value-based judgments on certain activities and behaviors.
Laws that render judgments on stealing, for example, fit into this category. Society is not on the fence about valuing the respect of personal property here in America. If you steal something, then you have broken a social agreement with regard to this moral / value-based legislation.
Mitigating risk proactively with regard to perceived harm around certain activities and behavior.
Laws about speed-limits fit into this category. Speed-limit laws do not pretend that going fast is a bad moral judgment. The law simply mitigates the risk of people creating harm that hurts human life by making a poor choice with regard to the speed of their vehicles within the context of other people, property or traffic. Again, this law isn’t pretending that speeding is morally wrong. It does pass a judgment that the risk is too high at a certain point to allow people the possibility of creating harm (a value judgment.)
So, laws are very much about a social contract on value judgments. Other laws fall into these two modes. Think about it: underage sex, consumption of alcohol as a minor, appropriate licensed driving ages, etc. Some fit into the category of a direct value judgment on the act, and other draw the line sooner to mitigate the risk associated with the possibly harmful outcomes of certain behavior.
Laws are a social contract based on value judgments that are a reflection of our morals. So, fundamentally laws do in fact come down to morals. Nearly by definition, laws legislate those morals based on our values. So legislating morals and values isn't really a Christian thing, so more specifically it isn't an issue of bad behavior from Christians.
If this is true (I am open to discussing this… please write comments) then it isn’t fair to imagine that one side of a debate (anti-abortion) is legislating morality in an unreasonable manner while the other side (pro-abortion) is morally agnostic. Both sides reflect morals based on our values. I don't see a way around it.
I have known plenty of people that defend their position on pro-abortion and they acknowledge that they want laws that defend their values. I have known people who also feel that they would prefer the laws defend their anti-abortion values. It is relatively new to imagine that one side of the argument is morally agnostic and without certain representative values. I am a little worried that Christians who are shopping this logic around in their conversations are, at best, making Christians seem a little naiive, or at worst, struggling to justify their position in support of abortion in the absense of other convincing arguments surrounding the issue, maybe?
In the up-coming election we can see two candidates that have voiced their desire to enact legislation that defends one side or the other of this particular issue on abortion. Both want to create laws. Neither is morally agnostic. Neither of them is without underlying supported value judgments. Either side requires considerable respectful examination to which your vote draws us into movement toward their social and political end.
End note: I think that the issue is very polar at the moment (the abortion issue) and people typically fall into a number of categories (including not supporting abortion as a means of reversing a pregnancy as an elective surgery, but supporting it as an act of saving a would-be-mothers life) well beyond the pro and anti categories. As a result I think we need to be tollerant of people who don't agree with our perspectives. I am defining tollerance as a willingness to co-exist in a kind and friendly manner with people whos morals or values you don't come into agreement with on this or other issues. I don't define tollerance as thinking that all opinions are equal OR that all opinions are valuable OR that all opinions are right or lack right-ness or wrong-ness. I think that regardless of why we morally feel and value, we shouldn't let our position turn us into people who treat people in detestible ways.
Upsetting the applecart specifically on the political abortion issue: I have heard people saying that the abortion issue is nearly a moot point since the president’s only real power in this area is appointing Supreme Court Judges. This is not true. Like I said, both sides are looking to implement legislation that won’t require any Supreme Court Justice appointments. Anyone who says it comes down to Supreme Court Justices is either ill-informed or deceiving you. My hope is that they are just not thinking this stuff through, rather than trying to deceive you.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Experience: Palin vs. Obama
Recently there has been a lot of buzz about Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin, Republican Vice Presidential candidate. Specifically, there have been questions about her experience level and more specifically her lack. Then the talk, somehow, on the web and in conversations turns to explaining how Obama clearly has more experience. The conversations go something like this:
(This is a fictional account compiled by a number of conversations both with friends and in my head! I will leave you to figure out which is which!)
Conservative:
Well, experience matters.
Liberal:
Yep. Obama has more. 7 years in the state government, as a senator, 3.5 years in the federal government, as a senator, and seven years of prior legal experience, for a total of 10.5 years of government experience and seven years of dealing with the law.
Conservative:
Well, Palin has 10 years in local government, as a managing major and committee membership, 1.5 years as a state governor. That is 11.5 years, which is actually more government experience, but not as a senator, but a person with daily responsibilities over the administration of a states government.
Liberal:
Yeah but we are talking about ALASKA here. A Huge barren state with less people than Chicago!
Conservative:
True. Alaska is large mostly barren state. In fact, it is larger than 18 sovereign nations on the planet. There is a lot of responsibility there. Mind you, SENATOR Obama never GOVERNED Illinois.
Liberal:
Well, all Alaska is, is just large, that is all. Large doesn’t mean complicated! The other day Obama said that the town Palin was mayor over, Wassilla, had only 50 government employees in it. Obamas campaign has 2,500 EMPLOYEES in it! He said Wassilla had a budget of maybe 12 million dollars and Obamas campaign goes through THREE TIMES THAT in just one month!! Obama said, “Our ability to manage large systems and to execute, I think, has been made clear over the past couple of years and certainly in terms of the legislation I’ve passed in the past couple of years, post-Katrina.”
Conservative:
Well, a lot of people, Republicans and Democrats, we in favor of that legislation, for example, to make it a priority to get elderly and disabled people out of the path of a Hurricane. I think claiming that as his personal success is a little bit reaching.
And while all of that is true about Wassilla, she was NOT only a major in Alaska. She was the GOVERNOR. Being a governor of a state is like a microcosm of being a President of a country. Yes Chicago has more people, and Alaska has only a bit over 600,000 people in it. But the state manages a lot of natural resources and that works out to being a state with a 12 billion dollar budget (the size of a small country.) Even so, when she began the governor she kept her promise and sold the state jet saving the state tax payers millions of dollars. As well, as GOVERNOR she cut her own paycheck, as she promised she would.
Obama may have 2,500 employed in his campaign, but Palin heads a state government with 25,000 EMPLOYEES. In fact, to add a little perspective, Alaska has the SEVENTH LARGEST STATE ECONOMY IN THE US!
Obama was hand picking statistic that don’t seem to encapsulate the reality of her experience.
Liberal:
OK, ok, ok. BUT with McCain getting up in years, would you really want someone with only 11.5 years of government experience and who has only managed a budget of 12 billion dollars ...when the US federal budget is 3 trillion dollars... running the country!?
Conservative:
Well, Sarah Palin is running for Vice President… VICE PRESIDENT, not President.
And while she has as much of a chance to “take over” as any other Vice President if the President dies… mind you, she would have VP experience by then as well… you are talking about voting for Obama for PRESIDENT, and he ONLY has 10.5 years of government experience.
The closest he has ever come to looking at a billion dollars is when after seven years in the senate he has tried to pork-barrel over a billion dollars of federal money back into HIS states economy by amending unrelated spending to bills that didn’t get passed!
(silence)
Liberal:
Hey, why are we comparing Obama, a Presidential candidate, to Palin, a Vice Presidential candidate anyway!? Apples to oranges man, apples to oranges!
Conservative:
That would likely be because Obama has a better chance, if not a failing one, to try and say that he is more qualified than SOMEONE on the Republican ticket. Basically, if we were to agree at this point that he has more experience than Palin, all we would be saying is that he would make a slightly more qualified Vice President. But it seems that the raw numbers hold Palin as more experienced here. The Republican VP candidate is more experienced than the Democrat Presidential candidate.
Liberal:
You are right. I never took the time to run the numbers. Even so, there is a good chance I will continue to keep saying stuff like “ALASKA is a big barren state!” and “There are more people in Chicago” rather that consider her years of experience, the budget she manages, or the economy of her state, even if those numbers are larger than anything Obama has personally managed. Don’t confuse me with the facts. Obama still has a social and health care program I am excited about and so I will vote for him because that is important to me!!!
Conservative:
Well, McCain and Palin have a plan too! If that's what you want, you should read about that before you assume Obama has cornered the market on caring for Americans. Go to his website and read about it. But... remind me again... how was Obama going to pay for his social programs and healthcare plan?
Liberal:
OBAMA RULES!
Conservative:
That’s what I thought.
(This is a fictional account compiled by a number of conversations both with friends and in my head! I will leave you to figure out which is which!)
Conservative:
Well, experience matters.
Liberal:
Yep. Obama has more. 7 years in the state government, as a senator, 3.5 years in the federal government, as a senator, and seven years of prior legal experience, for a total of 10.5 years of government experience and seven years of dealing with the law.
Conservative:
Well, Palin has 10 years in local government, as a managing major and committee membership, 1.5 years as a state governor. That is 11.5 years, which is actually more government experience, but not as a senator, but a person with daily responsibilities over the administration of a states government.
Liberal:
Yeah but we are talking about ALASKA here. A Huge barren state with less people than Chicago!
Conservative:
True. Alaska is large mostly barren state. In fact, it is larger than 18 sovereign nations on the planet. There is a lot of responsibility there. Mind you, SENATOR Obama never GOVERNED Illinois.
Liberal:
Well, all Alaska is, is just large, that is all. Large doesn’t mean complicated! The other day Obama said that the town Palin was mayor over, Wassilla, had only 50 government employees in it. Obamas campaign has 2,500 EMPLOYEES in it! He said Wassilla had a budget of maybe 12 million dollars and Obamas campaign goes through THREE TIMES THAT in just one month!! Obama said, “Our ability to manage large systems and to execute, I think, has been made clear over the past couple of years and certainly in terms of the legislation I’ve passed in the past couple of years, post-Katrina.”
Conservative:
Well, a lot of people, Republicans and Democrats, we in favor of that legislation, for example, to make it a priority to get elderly and disabled people out of the path of a Hurricane. I think claiming that as his personal success is a little bit reaching.
And while all of that is true about Wassilla, she was NOT only a major in Alaska. She was the GOVERNOR. Being a governor of a state is like a microcosm of being a President of a country. Yes Chicago has more people, and Alaska has only a bit over 600,000 people in it. But the state manages a lot of natural resources and that works out to being a state with a 12 billion dollar budget (the size of a small country.) Even so, when she began the governor she kept her promise and sold the state jet saving the state tax payers millions of dollars. As well, as GOVERNOR she cut her own paycheck, as she promised she would.
Obama may have 2,500 employed in his campaign, but Palin heads a state government with 25,000 EMPLOYEES. In fact, to add a little perspective, Alaska has the SEVENTH LARGEST STATE ECONOMY IN THE US!
Obama was hand picking statistic that don’t seem to encapsulate the reality of her experience.
Liberal:
OK, ok, ok. BUT with McCain getting up in years, would you really want someone with only 11.5 years of government experience and who has only managed a budget of 12 billion dollars ...when the US federal budget is 3 trillion dollars... running the country!?
Conservative:
Well, Sarah Palin is running for Vice President… VICE PRESIDENT, not President.
And while she has as much of a chance to “take over” as any other Vice President if the President dies… mind you, she would have VP experience by then as well… you are talking about voting for Obama for PRESIDENT, and he ONLY has 10.5 years of government experience.
The closest he has ever come to looking at a billion dollars is when after seven years in the senate he has tried to pork-barrel over a billion dollars of federal money back into HIS states economy by amending unrelated spending to bills that didn’t get passed!
(silence)
Liberal:
Hey, why are we comparing Obama, a Presidential candidate, to Palin, a Vice Presidential candidate anyway!? Apples to oranges man, apples to oranges!
Conservative:
That would likely be because Obama has a better chance, if not a failing one, to try and say that he is more qualified than SOMEONE on the Republican ticket. Basically, if we were to agree at this point that he has more experience than Palin, all we would be saying is that he would make a slightly more qualified Vice President. But it seems that the raw numbers hold Palin as more experienced here. The Republican VP candidate is more experienced than the Democrat Presidential candidate.
Liberal:
You are right. I never took the time to run the numbers. Even so, there is a good chance I will continue to keep saying stuff like “ALASKA is a big barren state!” and “There are more people in Chicago” rather that consider her years of experience, the budget she manages, or the economy of her state, even if those numbers are larger than anything Obama has personally managed. Don’t confuse me with the facts. Obama still has a social and health care program I am excited about and so I will vote for him because that is important to me!!!
Conservative:
Well, McCain and Palin have a plan too! If that's what you want, you should read about that before you assume Obama has cornered the market on caring for Americans. Go to his website and read about it. But... remind me again... how was Obama going to pay for his social programs and healthcare plan?
Liberal:
OBAMA RULES!
Conservative:
That’s what I thought.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Conservatives Do Care
I really do get the democrat mindset. I really do believe that Democrats honestly want to help people, and I really think that they are exhausted watching people not "get" or share their values. While I come from a family that was predominantly conservative, but poor (couldn't put me through college... I had to pay for it myself), I've definitely had friends who were worse and better off than me. But you might be surprised to find out that you share the same values, more than you think, but you just don't share the same road to those shared goals. Let me explain.
Conservatives do care and want to help. Check out the following link and read the article to understand why the author wrote the book a couple short years ago:
http://philanthropy.com/free/articles/v19/i04/04001101.htm
Mind you, this site is not politically alffiliated (that is a good thing!) It is all about people being philanthropic (mostly financially philanthropic) and the article says that conservatives are statistically more generous with their money than democrats. So why all the fighting!? Why do Republicans/ conservatives always get a bad rep in this area?
Ideology means everything in this situation. I am going to leave behind the ridiculous fighting comments and just write what I hear people say in this discussion.)
The Democrat mindset:
- We care about people.
- We value good social programs with an agenda that cares for people.
- We need people to give and I don’t think they will unless something bigger than us, like the government, facilitates it.
- God tells us to help our neighbors, and since conservatives talk about God a lot they should be cool with good programs that care for their neighbors.
Let’s take it from the top!
We care about people. I totally believe that. I believe that it is easy to get behind any conversation where we are talking about helping people. The funny thing is that the average person doesn’t want take a phone call from people asking them to give, doesn’t stop to help out someone on the street, doesn’t want to answer a similar solicitation from someone walking up to their house door, or doesn’t want to give at the office (even when the United Way shows up!) but they might use that as an excuse to why they aren’t giving (i.e. “Hey I gave at the office.”)
So how do we all tend to give? Well, we help out our friends or our friend’s friends. If it is personal, then we tend to “show up” and “help out.”
We value good social programs. I can see that and believe this to be true. Surely nobody wants to get behind the opposite: a bad social program. Right? Here is where Republicans and Democrats start to take different roads.
Everyone has to admit that “philanthropy through taxation” makes giving a little easier. (At least) once a year everyone “gives” to those “good social (government-driven) programs” so being philanthropic is dead simple. That is the upside. What is the downside?
The government requires that all non-governmental groups that receive public funds disclose how they spend the money. If they are raising money for a specific purpose, they have to spend it on that specific purpose (no illegal conversion-of-funds please.) They regularly report as to their effectiveness. If they receive money from the government (grant or otherwise) the rules get even more strict! This is a good thing. Let’s compare giving to a non-governmental group to giving to the government through taxation.
The downside: government social programs don’t report effectiveness. Since they run on tax money, they don’t have the same conversion-of-funds issues.
So while the government has these programs, we have no way of knowing (1) if they help, (2) how they help other than providing services (do they help people in such a way as to help people up from needing the services going forward, to being more self sufficient – which many struggling family, if not all of them, would love to be able to do), and (3) if they are effective enough to keep investing in. An government program can tell you, “We gave away (X) services in the last 12 months,” but we don’t know if that is a little or a lot, if it is solving a problem or a stop-gap. As tax-payers, we have to give anyway… it is taxation.
So what about private charities? Private groups still have some of the same problems. Go visit a non-government-driven food reserve / pantry in your town and they will tell you how many families they help each week / month / year. They can tell you if that number is going up or down. They can’t tell you if they are helping people out from needing their services or if they are simply a stop-gap service with a larger problem that isn’t being addressed (unemployment in a town with a poor economy, such that it isn’t the fault of the family needing food.) But here is the difference. Maybe you want to care for people who need a stop-gap service, but you REALLY want to give into a situation that is helping people out of a bad situation and into a better one! In a non-taxation philanthropic situation, then YOU DECIDE! You aren’t being taxed! It’s your money and your desire to help.
The book referenced in the article above challenges Democrats (from someone who looks to Democrats as kindred spirits) to put their money where their mouth is. It is one thing to “give” to tax-based social programming without the kind of accountability demanded of non-government-driven charities, and another thing to give into situations that care and where you can ensure your giving makes a difference.
How many people (Democrats or Republicans) volunteer their time in government-driven social programs? How many volunteer in non-governmental helps services? In government programs, most people are relegated to giving fanancially (through taxation) and not more personally. With non-government-driven charities, you can give financially and of yourself, personally. I hope that you can see why Republicans consider themselves caring and philanthropic. I am willing to extend the same attitude toward Democrats that feel they are caring by investing through taxation for government-driven programs. I hope you can see that it comes down to mostly a philosophy on giving and specifically ideas about how to achieve those goals.
We need people to give and I don’t think they will unless something bigger than us, like the government, facilitates it. Again Republicans tend to like the idea that as individuals… we decide. And statistics bare that out. Republicans do decide how to give, and give big (or bigger than their Democrat counterparts.) It is worth remembering that Republicans are still paying taxes along side their Democrat friends. But they are giving beyond that as well. I can only imagine that as a demographic group, Democrats are waiting for the government to ask for more money in order for them to give more. The upside is that they don’t have to wait for the government to tax them more, for them to be more generous. There are plenty of good social non-government-driven groups that are accountable to report their effectiveness and are waiting for Democrats and Republicans to give more in a spirit of caring.
God tells us to help our neighbors, and since conservatives talk about God a lot they should be cool with good programs that care for their neighbors. As you can see, if what you give is any measure of how well you are hearing the call to care for your neighbor, then conservatives are heeding the call. Again these are only statistics and you might well know Republicans as well as Democrats that are quick to say, “Bah, humbug!” to the philanthropic call. But it is about averages, and the average conservative seems to hear and heed a call to care. What you won’t necessarily see from the Bible is a New Testament call for the God-fearing to give to the government, so it can give to people FOR you. In the New Testament, it is a lot more personal than that. But here is where I would side with Democrats as well as Republicans and say, “Hey, it was meant to be personal!” I don’t think it was God’s plan to have us give all of our philanthropic funds to a large government or a large non-government-driven Charity. I think the God of the Bible would have us save some back to be ready to give to the people who are around us everyday: the down-and-out, the single mom, the struggling family.
In conclusion, I think that I can see that even though Democrats mostly want to give through government-driven programs (mostly, compared to conservatives), that they do really want to give and care for and help people. As well, I believe that just because Republicans are not in favor of government-sanctioned philanthropy, that because they are proven to give privately, they do in fact give, and care and want to help as well.
A final Test in acknowledging the differences in philosophy:
Last year I was discussing the fact that it seemed potentially good that George W. Bush had made it possible for non-government-driven charitable organizations to receive federal funds. I was told that the program was a bit of a flop due to the fact that it was too complicated for non-government-driven charitable organizations to get access to those funds.
Here is the response to that reality from both sides of the political fence.
Democrat:
Well, that demonstrates that the blurring of the philanthropic line is mostly ineffective. Where is that money today? It didn’t seem to benefit those charities out there? It would have been better if those funds had simply remained available to the good social programs that are government-driven, rather than weaken those programs by spreading out those funds in such a complicated and unsuccessful manner.
Republican:
This is a great example of why the money is better off when it is simply not in the hands of the government. Rather than have that money be taxed away from individuals, if those people could have selected responsible charities and given directly, then we could have done away with any government overhead, as well as the red-tape that seems prevalent in the government (at so many levels.) I like it that the government saw that everyday people running charities were a good social philanthropic investment, enough to take taxed money and turn it over to those charities. I just wish that they would see the people they are taxing in the same light and just trust them to be generous with charities directly rather than tax them and then pay themselves to be generous FOR us (and then mess it up.)
Special Director's Cut of "The Earwig Adventure"
Here, for the first time anywhere!!!!
Actually, every couple of years Kate and Eli would ask me to find this video so we could watch it. Last night I was watching the movie "Son of Rambow" (if you haven't seen it, go rent it) which got me wanting to dig up the earwig adventure. Funny enough, youtube didn't exist when this movie was made (I don't think) so there is something kind of fun about taking a movie made many years ago and you now get to see "The Earwig Adventure" on youtube.
A little backstory: If you don't know what an earwig is, it is a lot like a millipede, but the rumor is that it climbs into your ear and lays eggs. Well, the kids are certain they saw earwigs in the basement, if I am remembering correctly, which had them a little freaked out to go down there. Sadly, a Wisconsin winter can get a little long be pretty crappy and so it is best if kids have plenty of room to play and have fun indoors. So reclaiming the basement via a playful movie that undid the fears around earwigs seemed like a good idea at the time.
Anyway, after years of being lost in a box, here it is!
Actually, every couple of years Kate and Eli would ask me to find this video so we could watch it. Last night I was watching the movie "Son of Rambow" (if you haven't seen it, go rent it) which got me wanting to dig up the earwig adventure. Funny enough, youtube didn't exist when this movie was made (I don't think) so there is something kind of fun about taking a movie made many years ago and you now get to see "The Earwig Adventure" on youtube.
A little backstory: If you don't know what an earwig is, it is a lot like a millipede, but the rumor is that it climbs into your ear and lays eggs. Well, the kids are certain they saw earwigs in the basement, if I am remembering correctly, which had them a little freaked out to go down there. Sadly, a Wisconsin winter can get a little long be pretty crappy and so it is best if kids have plenty of room to play and have fun indoors. So reclaiming the basement via a playful movie that undid the fears around earwigs seemed like a good idea at the time.
Anyway, after years of being lost in a box, here it is!
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Emerging or Emergent: Which one will emerge?
I have been doing a full-scale hort-load of reading lately on the topic of Emergent / Emerging as a church movement and while it seems to have been a hot topic about six months ago (more importantly a few years ago when it was born in the Anglican church in England) I still find it intriguing as a topic. Mostly because I consider myself “enlightened” by a world view that combines (1) a need for Biblical understanding in the context in which it was written, as well as (2) challenged to hear how that affects my life today in a planet that exists more than 7,000 years since the first history recorded in the Bible (not including creation stories.) This doesn’t make me emergent, by all means, but it does mean, I think, that I am interested in many of the same Christian issues (I will call them) that are currently being discussed. There are a few issues, though, within the Emergent movement that are of particular concern to me. But before I get into that, I would like to quote a person from within the Emergent “conversation” (a term the emergent movement likes to use to describe theological discussions) Dr. John Piper, describing the difference between Emergent and Emerging:
“The single greatest concern for me is their attitude towards doctrine… I've talked with some emergent types and tried to understand even their concept of truth, and you can't get your hand around it… Now let me clarify one other thing. I said earlier that emergent and emerging aren't necessarily the same… Emerging might be used by some people—like Mark Driscoll—to describe a proper reaction that is taking place against some of the negative things going on in the church, but a reaction that doesn't throw away the doctrines… The Mark Driscoll "emerging" type would put a very high premium on biblical faithfulness, truth, doctrine and propositions. But the emergent types would not put premium on that, but would explicitly say on their websites that they regard that kind of emphasis as harmful.”
Now, I have struggled to understand this difference for some time now. I have read authors who seem to use the terms interchangeably. For a while at least, one of those authors was Brian McLaren. But it seems that, not completely unlike the rift that historically separated the Catholics from the Protestants, or the Calvinists from the Wesleyans, or the splitting of the Pentecostal movement, there seems to be a segmentation brewing between Emerging believers who value doctrinal proposition, Biblical faithfulness and truth, and those Emergent folks who, to borrow a phrase, think the “evangelical world is majoring too much on clarity.” So how does this change the price of beer (how does this really matter?) Read on to read a few of my concerns.
Emerging believers seem to carry the same general reactions to “church as usual” that Emergent folks tend to battle with, but their conclusions still seek to be in harmony with the Bible as a foundational instrument in Christianity. This is a funny thing to say if you imagine a version of Christianity could exist without a foundational relationship to the Bible. But the fact is that the nature of that relationship is a core “topic of conversation” within the greater Emergent movement. For example, an employee / leader of Emergent Village (the group that is currently leading the movement from an organizational perspective) recently blogged a frustration in that a secular news group defined Emergent’s relationship to doctrine as “unorthodox” (meaning not based on the authority of Biblical scriptures.) This kind of made the employee angry seeing as he has written books on behalf of the movement and feels that he is backing up his “conversations” with scripture. You can see here that it is a clear struggling point in the movement. So, when you are thinking Emerging, you might want to be thinking about a group of folks that want to get away from “church as usual” (I am oversimplifying here… as they itemize this list of frustrations far better than simply “church as usual”) but that also value Biblical faithfulness. Said another way, they are cool with doctrine and while we may not agree with all of the conclusions or their interpretations, they may come to some valid views that pass the litmus test of being in agreement with the whole of scripture but are not necessarily the commonly accepted traditional view (mind you not all views are really “new” and more importantly not all Emerging or Emergent views are in agreement with scripture, but we will get to that.)
To me, Emergent is the slightly scary brother to the more acceptable (but still nebulously defined) Emerging believer. Why so scary? Let’s take a look at my concerns:
The claims are overstated, hyperbolic, (unfair) generalizations, lacking in scholarly objectivity and evenhandedness that renders much of its early writings full of egregious errors.
Wow, what a claim! Someone punch me now for being so arrogant as to say this! If it were true, who would read such ridiculous Emergent commentary, which must be to say that I am crazy for saying it!? Or maybe I am just quoting Brian McLaren’s preface to his generally accepted Emergent book “A Generous Orthodoxy.” Yep. In an effort to sound humble, I am sure, he started off his book by saying that his book was laced with this kind of writing. Wow, huh? Some are quick to respond, “Well, at least he is keeping it real,” or “Now, that is genuine and approachable.” The trouble is, even if I start a sentence saying, “I really hope this doesn’t totally come off as painful, but I am about to punch you in the face,” does it forgive me for punching you, or more importantly does it make it less painful?
Emergent authors tend to promote the idea that humility means unloading concepts like certainty, proof, argument, and trading them in for dialogue, conversation, intrigue and search (to paraphrase McLaren from his book “Adventures in Missing the Point”.) The problem with this statement is that McLaren is building a straw man here. At first glance things like dialogue, conversation, intrigue and search feel like good things. Why wouldn’t they be? The trouble is that you don’t have to throw out certainty, proof and argument (apologetics is a slightly more acceptable term without a negative connotation that makes defending or discussing your faith sound like a battle) to embrace them. It is, honestly, an author’s linguistic grammatical trick to pit two things against each other and use positive versus negative terms to subjectively make your point. Like the authors of “Why we are not Emergent”, I firmly agree that we ought to have an “AND” where McLaren puts and “OR” to simply make his point. Oddly enough McLaren seems to not believe his own writing. A while later in his book “The Secret Message of Jesus” he recalls for the reader his writing that we should unload concepts like “certainty”, but in this book he says, “In one of my previous books I said that clarity is overrated… but here, I want to say, clearly, that…” So it seems that in the Emergent movement you can reject clarity on points you disagree with, but when you are ready to make a point yourself, it is time to embrace clarity. It is my opinion that whether intentionally or unintentionally McLaren, a person who was an English Major in college, is fully in command of his writing skills and so, at best, if he doesn’t know what he is doing to mess with people, we should just be most careful to notice these contradictions and guard our minds if we read what he writes, OR at worst he knows what he is doing, and other Emergent folks should call him to task for what seems to be cheap manipulative language. Not to single out McLaren (though I believe we need to tread lightly into his writing for these and other reasons), but even authors like Rob Bell like to trade in clarity for ambiguity at opportunistic times. Rob Bell in Velvet Elvis wrote that the “Bible is open-ended.” But the fact is that I have listened to an uncountable number of his sermons on MP3 and he asserts on a regular basis contextual statements about the history behind a set of scriptures. So, in those cases, Rob on one hands wants us to believe the Bible is open-ended, and in his teaching he wants us to embrace his less-than-open-ended perspectives (I reference Rob Bell because he and his wife reference Brian McLaren as having shaped their developing theology by reading his book “A New Kind of Christian.”) As a final example in this category, McLaren wrote on a Christianity Today blog, “I am no doubt wrong on many things. I am very likely wrong about my personal opinions on homosexuality.” This sort of attitude is confounding. Admittedly I prefer the attitude that simply says, “I don’t know” or “I am looking into this,” over the perspective, “I am likely wrong.” It makes no sense to cling to something you believe you are likely wrong about. But it seems that McLaren knows this about himself and continues to bring a skeptical confusion into the “conversation” anyway when he writes in his book A Generous Orthodoxy, “They’ll say I am being evasive, cowardly, afraid to take a stand and (that I) write smoke. No one can blame them.”
In the worst case of all, there seems to be theology running around the Emergent camp that definitely fails the litmus test of compatibility with scripture. Again, not to pick on McLaren but he seems to find his way into the middle of a lot of controversy, McLaren writes the forward to Spencer Burkes book “Heretic’s Guide” where he says of its contents “any honest reader can find much truth worth seeking.” The book outlines the oddest if not fully heretical attempt at reinventing doctrine that doesn’t seem to jive with the rest of scripture:
“Could it be- beyond religion, reason and conventional wisdom- grace is something to be opted out of rather than opted in to? It is not something you get but something you already have?”
Burke also writes…
“When I say I am a Universalist, what I really mean is that I don’t think you have to convert to any particular religion to find God. As I see it, God finds us, and it has nothing to do with subscribing to any particular religious view.”
In defense of McLaren, we have no idea if he finds these particular statements to be “truth worth seeking.” But endorsing the book with such a message contained within it seems a bit pluralistic or Unitarian at best, to me. But this seems to go along with the being the norm for McLaren. My best guess is that he simply doesn’t want to alienate anyone by taking or expressing his opinion on stuff. But that reality seems to put McLaren squarely in the middle of the Emergent (rather than Emerging) group.
Finally (for this blog entry) I would like to say that in the Emerging believer realm, there are good things going on. Albeit, I don’t believe they are truly new by all means (comfortable living room furniture in the church experience is not a postmodern thing, but a first century church thing, since the church primarily met in home for the first few hundred years of the Christian faith.) As well, I believe that the distinction will grow between what is Emerging and what is Emergent. To quote John Piper…
“I just kinda kept going back on my heels, like, I don’t understand the way these guys think, and so there are profound epistemological differences - ways of processing reality - that make the conversation almost impossible; just kind of going by each other. My question sort of is, how profitable would it be to press on with that when your worldviews seem to be so different and your ways of knowing seem to be different, the function of knowledge in transformation, what the goals of transformation are - all those are so different that I’m not sure we would get anywhere.”
In the mean time, my prayer is that apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, and those in eldership will continue to watch the gate on this stuff, not swallowing these ideas whole, but examining them for congruence with the Bible as their foundation.
Like it says in James 3:1, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.”
My prayer is that any coming judgments will render itself as a grace-filled corrective guiding by the Lord through his church, rather than a hard discipline for having led people away from the Lord by focusing on Biblically incompatible doctrines simply because they asked provocative questions.
Post-thoughts: It is worth mentionging that there seem to be plenty of people that really love Jesus, are tired of "church as usual" and that consider themselves "emerging." I think because emerging beliefs are still "unsettled" categorically, there is room for people to call themselves emerging and still not fall into agreement with the more unorthodox doctrines coming from that movement. The jury being out on emerging doctrine is a valid reason to remain associated with the "emergent conversation" as an active participant or even as observer. Equally so, there seems to be an element of the movement who are not as much unsettled and in persuit, but rather choose their words carefully so as to keep things intentionally nebulous. These folks appear "generous" in their orthodoxy, but in reality simply come from the camp of eternally skeptical, unconvinced by people as well as scripture. They are wandering around a smorgasbord of world religious views, chews, but never swallowing, and surely never sitting down, calling their commentary and questions "a conversation" but not truly getting conversant. (More on that in the next blog.)
“The single greatest concern for me is their attitude towards doctrine… I've talked with some emergent types and tried to understand even their concept of truth, and you can't get your hand around it… Now let me clarify one other thing. I said earlier that emergent and emerging aren't necessarily the same… Emerging might be used by some people—like Mark Driscoll—to describe a proper reaction that is taking place against some of the negative things going on in the church, but a reaction that doesn't throw away the doctrines… The Mark Driscoll "emerging" type would put a very high premium on biblical faithfulness, truth, doctrine and propositions. But the emergent types would not put premium on that, but would explicitly say on their websites that they regard that kind of emphasis as harmful.”
Now, I have struggled to understand this difference for some time now. I have read authors who seem to use the terms interchangeably. For a while at least, one of those authors was Brian McLaren. But it seems that, not completely unlike the rift that historically separated the Catholics from the Protestants, or the Calvinists from the Wesleyans, or the splitting of the Pentecostal movement, there seems to be a segmentation brewing between Emerging believers who value doctrinal proposition, Biblical faithfulness and truth, and those Emergent folks who, to borrow a phrase, think the “evangelical world is majoring too much on clarity.” So how does this change the price of beer (how does this really matter?) Read on to read a few of my concerns.
Emerging believers seem to carry the same general reactions to “church as usual” that Emergent folks tend to battle with, but their conclusions still seek to be in harmony with the Bible as a foundational instrument in Christianity. This is a funny thing to say if you imagine a version of Christianity could exist without a foundational relationship to the Bible. But the fact is that the nature of that relationship is a core “topic of conversation” within the greater Emergent movement. For example, an employee / leader of Emergent Village (the group that is currently leading the movement from an organizational perspective) recently blogged a frustration in that a secular news group defined Emergent’s relationship to doctrine as “unorthodox” (meaning not based on the authority of Biblical scriptures.) This kind of made the employee angry seeing as he has written books on behalf of the movement and feels that he is backing up his “conversations” with scripture. You can see here that it is a clear struggling point in the movement. So, when you are thinking Emerging, you might want to be thinking about a group of folks that want to get away from “church as usual” (I am oversimplifying here… as they itemize this list of frustrations far better than simply “church as usual”) but that also value Biblical faithfulness. Said another way, they are cool with doctrine and while we may not agree with all of the conclusions or their interpretations, they may come to some valid views that pass the litmus test of being in agreement with the whole of scripture but are not necessarily the commonly accepted traditional view (mind you not all views are really “new” and more importantly not all Emerging or Emergent views are in agreement with scripture, but we will get to that.)
To me, Emergent is the slightly scary brother to the more acceptable (but still nebulously defined) Emerging believer. Why so scary? Let’s take a look at my concerns:
The claims are overstated, hyperbolic, (unfair) generalizations, lacking in scholarly objectivity and evenhandedness that renders much of its early writings full of egregious errors.
Wow, what a claim! Someone punch me now for being so arrogant as to say this! If it were true, who would read such ridiculous Emergent commentary, which must be to say that I am crazy for saying it!? Or maybe I am just quoting Brian McLaren’s preface to his generally accepted Emergent book “A Generous Orthodoxy.” Yep. In an effort to sound humble, I am sure, he started off his book by saying that his book was laced with this kind of writing. Wow, huh? Some are quick to respond, “Well, at least he is keeping it real,” or “Now, that is genuine and approachable.” The trouble is, even if I start a sentence saying, “I really hope this doesn’t totally come off as painful, but I am about to punch you in the face,” does it forgive me for punching you, or more importantly does it make it less painful?
Emergent authors tend to promote the idea that humility means unloading concepts like certainty, proof, argument, and trading them in for dialogue, conversation, intrigue and search (to paraphrase McLaren from his book “Adventures in Missing the Point”.) The problem with this statement is that McLaren is building a straw man here. At first glance things like dialogue, conversation, intrigue and search feel like good things. Why wouldn’t they be? The trouble is that you don’t have to throw out certainty, proof and argument (apologetics is a slightly more acceptable term without a negative connotation that makes defending or discussing your faith sound like a battle) to embrace them. It is, honestly, an author’s linguistic grammatical trick to pit two things against each other and use positive versus negative terms to subjectively make your point. Like the authors of “Why we are not Emergent”, I firmly agree that we ought to have an “AND” where McLaren puts and “OR” to simply make his point. Oddly enough McLaren seems to not believe his own writing. A while later in his book “The Secret Message of Jesus” he recalls for the reader his writing that we should unload concepts like “certainty”, but in this book he says, “In one of my previous books I said that clarity is overrated… but here, I want to say, clearly, that…” So it seems that in the Emergent movement you can reject clarity on points you disagree with, but when you are ready to make a point yourself, it is time to embrace clarity. It is my opinion that whether intentionally or unintentionally McLaren, a person who was an English Major in college, is fully in command of his writing skills and so, at best, if he doesn’t know what he is doing to mess with people, we should just be most careful to notice these contradictions and guard our minds if we read what he writes, OR at worst he knows what he is doing, and other Emergent folks should call him to task for what seems to be cheap manipulative language. Not to single out McLaren (though I believe we need to tread lightly into his writing for these and other reasons), but even authors like Rob Bell like to trade in clarity for ambiguity at opportunistic times. Rob Bell in Velvet Elvis wrote that the “Bible is open-ended.” But the fact is that I have listened to an uncountable number of his sermons on MP3 and he asserts on a regular basis contextual statements about the history behind a set of scriptures. So, in those cases, Rob on one hands wants us to believe the Bible is open-ended, and in his teaching he wants us to embrace his less-than-open-ended perspectives (I reference Rob Bell because he and his wife reference Brian McLaren as having shaped their developing theology by reading his book “A New Kind of Christian.”) As a final example in this category, McLaren wrote on a Christianity Today blog, “I am no doubt wrong on many things. I am very likely wrong about my personal opinions on homosexuality.” This sort of attitude is confounding. Admittedly I prefer the attitude that simply says, “I don’t know” or “I am looking into this,” over the perspective, “I am likely wrong.” It makes no sense to cling to something you believe you are likely wrong about. But it seems that McLaren knows this about himself and continues to bring a skeptical confusion into the “conversation” anyway when he writes in his book A Generous Orthodoxy, “They’ll say I am being evasive, cowardly, afraid to take a stand and (that I) write smoke. No one can blame them.”
In the worst case of all, there seems to be theology running around the Emergent camp that definitely fails the litmus test of compatibility with scripture. Again, not to pick on McLaren but he seems to find his way into the middle of a lot of controversy, McLaren writes the forward to Spencer Burkes book “Heretic’s Guide” where he says of its contents “any honest reader can find much truth worth seeking.” The book outlines the oddest if not fully heretical attempt at reinventing doctrine that doesn’t seem to jive with the rest of scripture:
“Could it be- beyond religion, reason and conventional wisdom- grace is something to be opted out of rather than opted in to? It is not something you get but something you already have?”
Burke also writes…
“When I say I am a Universalist, what I really mean is that I don’t think you have to convert to any particular religion to find God. As I see it, God finds us, and it has nothing to do with subscribing to any particular religious view.”
In defense of McLaren, we have no idea if he finds these particular statements to be “truth worth seeking.” But endorsing the book with such a message contained within it seems a bit pluralistic or Unitarian at best, to me. But this seems to go along with the being the norm for McLaren. My best guess is that he simply doesn’t want to alienate anyone by taking or expressing his opinion on stuff. But that reality seems to put McLaren squarely in the middle of the Emergent (rather than Emerging) group.
Finally (for this blog entry) I would like to say that in the Emerging believer realm, there are good things going on. Albeit, I don’t believe they are truly new by all means (comfortable living room furniture in the church experience is not a postmodern thing, but a first century church thing, since the church primarily met in home for the first few hundred years of the Christian faith.) As well, I believe that the distinction will grow between what is Emerging and what is Emergent. To quote John Piper…
“I just kinda kept going back on my heels, like, I don’t understand the way these guys think, and so there are profound epistemological differences - ways of processing reality - that make the conversation almost impossible; just kind of going by each other. My question sort of is, how profitable would it be to press on with that when your worldviews seem to be so different and your ways of knowing seem to be different, the function of knowledge in transformation, what the goals of transformation are - all those are so different that I’m not sure we would get anywhere.”
In the mean time, my prayer is that apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, and those in eldership will continue to watch the gate on this stuff, not swallowing these ideas whole, but examining them for congruence with the Bible as their foundation.
Like it says in James 3:1, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.”
My prayer is that any coming judgments will render itself as a grace-filled corrective guiding by the Lord through his church, rather than a hard discipline for having led people away from the Lord by focusing on Biblically incompatible doctrines simply because they asked provocative questions.
Post-thoughts: It is worth mentionging that there seem to be plenty of people that really love Jesus, are tired of "church as usual" and that consider themselves "emerging." I think because emerging beliefs are still "unsettled" categorically, there is room for people to call themselves emerging and still not fall into agreement with the more unorthodox doctrines coming from that movement. The jury being out on emerging doctrine is a valid reason to remain associated with the "emergent conversation" as an active participant or even as observer. Equally so, there seems to be an element of the movement who are not as much unsettled and in persuit, but rather choose their words carefully so as to keep things intentionally nebulous. These folks appear "generous" in their orthodoxy, but in reality simply come from the camp of eternally skeptical, unconvinced by people as well as scripture. They are wandering around a smorgasbord of world religious views, chews, but never swallowing, and surely never sitting down, calling their commentary and questions "a conversation" but not truly getting conversant. (More on that in the next blog.)
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