Category: Culture

I’m sitting here listening to a internet radio interview that is produced by Liberty University with Miss California, Carrie Prejean.

http://www.afr.net/index.php?option=com_sermonspeaker&task=singlesermon&id=11203&Itemid=0

Thus far she has been compared to Eric Liddle and Queen Esther of the Bible. Carrie has been lionized for her bathing suit high heeled stand for Jesus for saying that she was raised to believe that marriage was to be between a man a woman when asked about her thoughts on that subject during the Miss USA contest.

This post is not so much about Miss Prejean. I spoke to that in a previous post. Really, I’m quite pleased that Carrie answered the question the way she did as opposed to saying that she hopes one day herself to marry another woman. Further, I’m even willing to grant that it took admirable character of a sort to answer the question the way she did knowing full well that it would likely cost her the Miss USA contest.

This post is instead about the evangelical / fundamentalist reaction to Miss Prejean. Remember, a scant generation ago fundamentalists, such as those who created Liberty University, were the ones who frowned on card playing, movie watching, and women wearing pants. The fundamentalists have come a long way baby. Now the fundamentalists are talking about how the barely dressed Carrie Prejean is a role model and that they intend to tell their youth groups and Sunday Schools about the parading nearly naked and faithful Carrie Prejean.

Please don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with playing cards, watching movies or women in pants. Indeed, the rapacious side of me has no problem with ogling soft porn models in their underwear. However, the better Angel of my nature still does think that a young lady publicly displaying her under wear and selling herself as a sex object in order to win a beauty prize probably still defies the Scripture’s call for modesty. Just call me old fashioned.

I don’t know what to attribute the Christian community’s exalting of Miss Prejean to. Maybe it is because there is such a desperate need for heroes that the Christian community will glom onto anybody. Maybe everybody else grew up and I’m just being my usual curmudgeon, “why can’t anybody else see this except me” self. However, I think it more likely that what has happened is that even the Fundamentalists have defined deviancy down. In 2009 homosexuality serves as the definitional bar for deviancy, and so today a soft porn model can be seen as a hero for Jesus by Evangelicals and Fundamentalists for taking a mild stand against homosexual marriage. In 2049 it may be that Liberty University will be giving an award to and singing the praises of a transsexual Beauty Queen who took a stand for Jesus by mildly denouncing the push for mainstreaming bestiality.

Obviously the problem here is that the Christian community is allowing the culture to define deviancy, which has the added advantage of allowing Christians to partake in the deviancy of soft-porn, whether by being a soft porn model or by lusting after the soft porn models, while still giving them the ability to be self-righteous about homosexual marriage. This is a deal if there ever was one as Christians can satisfy both their lusts to be a Sex object or to objectify women and their need for feeling superior to other people all at one time.

If your a sinner like me any deal that allows me to be a horndog and sanctimonious at the same time is better than 2 for 1 coupon day at the adult bookstore peep show.

The Christian Reformed Church publication, “The Banner,” continues to push the homosexual agenda with its Editor’s recent Editorial on homosexuality. The Editor professes that he is not pushing homosexuality but merely desires to see all the hurting homosexuals that attend CRC churches receive loving acceptance and pastoral care.

The Editor suggests that the way to get past the current conversational impasse on the issue in the Denomination is for everybody to put aside their certainties on the subject and “do some fresh, serious, Bible study that is also informed by the latest scientific research on the subject.” Speaking only for myself, I would prefer to see some fresh, serious, scientific research that is also informed by wisdom of the Bible.

The problem with consulting “creation revelation” independent of the presuppositions drawn from Scripture is that “creation revelation” is only as good as the presuppositions that we bring to the “creation revelation.” Good and bad, and right and wrong, can not be determined by scientific research, though scientific research can be used and has been used to justify changing good and bad, and right and wrong in order to fit our preferences.

Face it, if Adam and Eve had looked to creation revelation and scientific research in order to determine whether or not they should eat the forbidden fruit they would have concluded that since the tree was good for food, and since the tree was pleasing to the eye, and since the tree was desirable to make one wise therefore scientific research and creation revelation taught that it was good to eat the fruit.

The call for people to put aside their certainties is merely a pretext to get the opponents of homosexuality to lay aside their opposition. It is only the opponents of homosexuality who lose by laying aside their certainties that the Scriptures speak against homosexuality. I mean, nobody really believes that the latest greatest scientific research is going to return a report confirming that homosexuality is deviant and putrid behavior. So, Rev. DeMoor appeals to laying aside our certainties and appeals to “scientific research,” knowing that such a call serves his agenda.

Rev. Bob DeMoor of the Banner, by opening and pursuing this conversation, whether intentionally or unintentionally, is serving the homosexual agenda.

“Neither Christ’s perfect humanity in His people nor Satan’s total depravity in His people are ever manifested totally in History.”

Dr. Gary North
Dominion & Common Grace — pg. 61

The antithesis remains real but the absolute fullness of it is only in principle. The fact that Christians still remain in need of much sanctification combined with the fact that pagans can not be perfectly wicked (apart from killing themselves) means that Christians and pagan interests can overlap to the degree that Christians are not yet perfectly sanctified and that pagans have not yet become perfectly conformed to their liege lord.

Now when an overlap of interests occur there will be vast tensions in the mutual agreement, for they are not in agreement in principle, but only in as much as they have not yet each worked out the implications of their Master’s wishes and nature. The agreement occurs in the context where the pagan is seeking (consciously or unconsciously) to build up his master’s Kingdom, while the Christian is seeking to build up his master’s kingdom.

Two examples that the homosexualization of our culture continues apace.

1.) The Miss America contest was determined because one of the contestants insisted that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

2.) The government schools just recently held their “day of silence” event. This is an yearly event that uses the masquerade of homosexuals being harassed to recognize the legitimacy of homosexuality. If you doubt that ask yourself if students would be encouraged to have a day where it is emphasized that they shouldn’t harass students who are into necrophilia or bestiality.

Obviously, no such days would ever yet be established. Homosexuals get a day of silence in order to create compassion for them and their movement and in order to convince students that homosexuality should be treated as “normal.”

Pluralization is the process by which the number of options in the private sphere of modern society gives the appearance of rapid multipication at all levels, especially at the level of Worldviews, faiths and ideologies.

Now apart from considering pluralization as it pertains to Worldviews, faiths and ideologies no one can doubt for a second the vast plethora of choices that we are confronted with daily. A trip down any grocery store aisle will give you so many types of toothpastes or deodorants to choose from that there can be no doubt that pluralization succeeds at the most fundamental of levels.

Or to extend the illustration one can look at the Television set. When I grew up there was ABC, CBS, NBC and that was it. Now the stations and programming runs into the hundreds if not thousands. We have pluralization in entertainment.

But what is exciting at the level of the kind of soap you put in your mouth or the kind of chemical you put under your arms becomes dangerous when applied to Worldviews, faiths or religions.

Nothing dangerous is going to happen to you if you use Colgate one week and Aquafresh the next week and Crest the next week and the Amway brand the following week. But when this approach to what we believe ends up being applied to Worldviews or faith systems it becomes a little dicier.

The fact that has indeed happened to some degree can be seen in the way that people do Church in various seasons or phases of their lives. I have met many people who tell me they grew up Reformed and now they are Wesleyan or Church of Christ or something else and when they vacation in Florida they attend a Lutheran Church. When I ask them what happened that they would have such a change they look at me with what I call the ‘dumb cow’ look.

The question doesn’t even make sense to them because all of these different Churches are just like so many different tubes of toothpaste to them. They, and the Churches they attend, have been smitten by the idea of pluralization. In the thinking of those I have spoken with who have made what I would have considered drastic changes in their Church homes all they have done is to switch brand names. They have gone from using Crest to using Colgate.

The Churches they attend are part of this equation also because the Churches they attend, in order to compete for a shrinking number of consumers have standardized so that even though you have different brand names out there all of them are pretty much the same.

Here we find the irony of pluralization as it pertains to the realm of Worldviews, faiths or religions. Because pluralization in a consumer setting must respond to consumer desire what ends up happening is that the real differences that you would expect to find among different worldviews gets washed out so that the competing Worldviews, and distinctives can be competitive. The differences that exist are reduced to the way the Church markets itself.

Let’s take for example the issue of denominations. In Charlotte alone we have 23 different Churches last time I counted.

That is quite a choice for such a little city. Indeed we would contend that pluralization is alive and well in Charlotte.

But is it really?

If it was real pluralization then you could go to each of those 23 Churches and it wouldn’t take you long to realize what the distinctives were. You would learn that Nazarenes have a doctrine of perfect love or entire sanctification that teaches a person can reach a point where they never sin. You would learn that the Church of Christ doesn’t think you’re saved unless you were baptized as an adult. You would learn that the Assembly of God Church believes that unless you speak in tongues you are not saved, you would learn that in a Reformed Church we teach a kind of thing called predestination and on and on it would go.

Real pluralization in the area of Worldviews, faiths and ideologies would bring these matters to the forefront just as the differences of food are brought to the forefront when one goes to various ethnic restaurants.

The fact that doesn’t happen and that the real distinctives among these putatively competing faith systems is not accentuated is perhaps indicative that pluralization in the area of Worldviews, Faiths, and beliefs systems is just a smokescreen created to hide the reality that pluralization itself is our monolithic belief system.

Pluralization thus is the sacred canopy or global umbrella for Americans. Pluralization is our common faith that unites us into one whole. Ironically, our unity is provided by the myth of diversity.

It is the kind of unity of ancient Rome where all the gods were welcomed into the pantheon.