In a previous post, I talked about a pretty standard issue Portland resident who was against religion, particularly Christianity.
I agree with the guy who said that the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is utter indifference. So along the lines of "Me thinks thou doth protest too much", on one angle, the amount of anger against religion makes me wonder. Why so much offense? Why so much threat? Why not ignore and walk away?
Edit: In talking with J about this, he made a good point: alot of the the really aggressive proselytizing has come from the generation before ours when there was alot of pressure to convert people. There is still mission, but with today's young folk, many have distanced themselves from this aggressive approach. That being said, the aggressive are still there. Still, I have run across enough people who wanted me to convert to this or that, and I primarily just ignore them and wish them well. Maybe it's the hellfire and damnation that turned them off? Ya think?
So today on Think Out Loud, they talked about faith in the Northwest. You can listen to the show online or read the thread. In the thread there were:
People who did not have a favorable opinion of religion/faith or Christianity
Baha'i talking up the Baha' faith
Some people who worshiped with trees and nature
Some people who felt Christians were pushy, judgmental and resented organized religion
Some intrepid Christians (very few)
And the only reason to post this is because I think that it nicely portrays the religious climate here in Portland from a secular point of view. From a biblical point of view, that climate fits well with what the Bible says about the offense of the word and the incomprehension of the Message.
I appreciate this conversation immensely. I appreciate it when people even talk about this, because it is such a touchy subject, no one wants to go near it. It's like talking about abortion. So here the door is open, what will the church say back? Are they listening? What response is there? Can we keep this conversation going?
Some pertinent links from the guests. The Rebelution: a site for teens about being Christian, what that looks like.
Showing posts with label response. Show all posts
Showing posts with label response. Show all posts
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Dear Mr. Spurlock
Dear Morgan,
I take your name attached to a movie as an identifier that it will be well-reasoned, above average for what TV offers and sometimes reaching and achieving excellency, and sometimes goofy. I also think you are the only host I have ever watched that knows how to do the job correctly. I like the fact that your angle is off beat but fair, your investigation is typically relentless and balanced. You see, I am in your corner.
However, with this second season of 30 days, I feel like 2 of the 3 episodes on this disk, the cards were stacked. You wanted the viewers to come away with a certain feeling, more so than you wanted to be balanced and fair.
For example, the guy who was against immigration, the one who volunteered for the Minutemen, I felt the whole episode was designed to change his mind, rather than to ever give the Mexican family a sense of empathy as to why illegal immigration can be actually a very bad thing. He was dogmatic, a gun toter, and rather than painting a coherent picture of the victims of illegal immigration, who are lower middle class Americans as well as illegal immigrants and their families, the episode seemed designed to enlighten him. I would like to think that at least a few people against illegal immigration are so out of compassion, rather than being dogmatic self appointed policers of the border, whose anti-immigrant sentiment at times sounds like an allowed version of neo-nazism.
Additionally, I didn't feel the atheist and the Christian family were a fair matchup.
The Christians by and large looked like rich, white people who were barely barely able to scratch the surface of their beliefs before their brains tilted, where the "atheist" clearly had give alot of thought about her decision.
There are alot of not very smart or informed atheists, and there are also many critical thinking Christians out there. A more fair matchup might have had a Christian family that didn't merely typify the churchgoers who try to convert everything in sight.
I thought it must have been really hard for the atheist too.
A better version of this show, whose premise was to elicit mutual understanding between atheist/agnostic people and Christians, was to put them both at a level of wrestling with spiritual issues. Were they both thinkers who were mature enough to not resort to fiery emotion at the first incongruence of beliefs, there could have been some very thought-provoking conversations. As it was, the father of the Christian family was thick with incomprehension of how anyone could not believe the way he does. His approach left the atheist woman feeling threatened and scared to talk, less able to articulate her beliefs.
Anyway, will continue to watch and show your stuff in my classrooms, but your fairness is really crucial to what you do. If it seems unbalanced, alot of credibility is lost...
I won't even go in here on how abyssmal Chalk was. Meh, please. Don't insult our intelligence!
I take your name attached to a movie as an identifier that it will be well-reasoned, above average for what TV offers and sometimes reaching and achieving excellency, and sometimes goofy. I also think you are the only host I have ever watched that knows how to do the job correctly. I like the fact that your angle is off beat but fair, your investigation is typically relentless and balanced. You see, I am in your corner.
However, with this second season of 30 days, I feel like 2 of the 3 episodes on this disk, the cards were stacked. You wanted the viewers to come away with a certain feeling, more so than you wanted to be balanced and fair.
For example, the guy who was against immigration, the one who volunteered for the Minutemen, I felt the whole episode was designed to change his mind, rather than to ever give the Mexican family a sense of empathy as to why illegal immigration can be actually a very bad thing. He was dogmatic, a gun toter, and rather than painting a coherent picture of the victims of illegal immigration, who are lower middle class Americans as well as illegal immigrants and their families, the episode seemed designed to enlighten him. I would like to think that at least a few people against illegal immigration are so out of compassion, rather than being dogmatic self appointed policers of the border, whose anti-immigrant sentiment at times sounds like an allowed version of neo-nazism.
Additionally, I didn't feel the atheist and the Christian family were a fair matchup.
The Christians by and large looked like rich, white people who were barely barely able to scratch the surface of their beliefs before their brains tilted, where the "atheist" clearly had give alot of thought about her decision.
There are alot of not very smart or informed atheists, and there are also many critical thinking Christians out there. A more fair matchup might have had a Christian family that didn't merely typify the churchgoers who try to convert everything in sight.
I thought it must have been really hard for the atheist too.
A better version of this show, whose premise was to elicit mutual understanding between atheist/agnostic people and Christians, was to put them both at a level of wrestling with spiritual issues. Were they both thinkers who were mature enough to not resort to fiery emotion at the first incongruence of beliefs, there could have been some very thought-provoking conversations. As it was, the father of the Christian family was thick with incomprehension of how anyone could not believe the way he does. His approach left the atheist woman feeling threatened and scared to talk, less able to articulate her beliefs.
Anyway, will continue to watch and show your stuff in my classrooms, but your fairness is really crucial to what you do. If it seems unbalanced, alot of credibility is lost...
I won't even go in here on how abyssmal Chalk was. Meh, please. Don't insult our intelligence!
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Culture wars and Religion wars in Portland Oregon
I have always liked more to live in an environment that is relatively liberal. Such as Portland, Oregon. But sometimes, Portland and me, see, we don't always agree. There is a sort of tension I see/hear/read/experience living as a follower of Christ in the wildly liberal PacNW.
Recently I met a friend up at Mississippi Pizza and Pub and had the sort of experience that kind of illustrates this "culture war". While I was reading Willamette Week, I sat next to a young lady who was telling a friend first about a college class she was disappointed with (the forestry service was sexist because they gave the ladies daintier, smaller patches to wear--the outrage!), but then about her wildly religious brother. They had disagreed I guess.
It sounded like he was talking to her about his faith and she was getting offended, saying things like "Just because I have a tattoo, doesn't mean I am going to hell,". It's hard not to smirk at these types of comments, and if her brother was suggesting that she was going to hell for her tattoo, than I would be agreeing more with her.
Later she said something like she believes that she would be judged based on how she lived her life as to whether she would go to heaven. As a Christian, I am wondering, she rejects the faith, why would she want heaven?
Her tone was hard but pretty much common. At one point she mentioned how he might be going to hell because he was wearing socks that had mixed fibers in them. She seemed to feel she had bested him in this comment, said that he was confused. Probably because he was so ignorant about the bible? Apparently he did try to explain to her that Christians didn't live under that law anymore, but this was more than she wanted to go into...
While I am trying to not hear this annoying conversation, I am reading WW which is panning a short film made by a Lake Oswego man called "Jesus save me from your followers" or something like this. The reviewer lambasted the film's producer as a "milk toasty emergent church type." How sad I thought, here this guy is trying to address the weird malice that exists between the world and the church here in the PacNW, and this fellow can do nothing but be critical. Sometimes it seems that Portland, like others I know, are so offended, annoyed and "evolved past" religion in their post modernism, that any acknowledgment of religion smells like caveman to them, and is thus retrograde.
Further, in the car listening to a podcast from Speaking of Faith, Shane Claiborne (a new Monastic and Christian activist) discusses with Chuck Colson (born again Christian indicted for scandal for Watergate crimes, now prominent Christian author) and Greg Boyd (mega church pastor who preached about the church not endorsing politics and lost a bunch of people from his church) are on a panel talking about the best way to represent Christ in the voting booth--basically a whole lot of conversation and fresh air on the subject of the religious citizen, not left right or otherwise. This wonderful podcast found here.
And it is played out in my life too. I was baptized and in alot of ways mentored by folks who were very Christian/Republican--and I never quite felt like I fit in with them. We don't talk about politics because it gets too hot too fast. My husband as well comes from a conservative background, and we find ourself not allying with with either a left or right viewpoint.
My eternal questions are "When can we stop talking about political parties in religion? When can we just get to the point that we realize that if political parties are dividing a faith, they need to be eschewed as a bad thing? When can we stop singing patriotic songs in church and when can we quit mixing up religion and nationalism? Hasn't Islam showed us how these things don't mix?"
As for the girl I overheard, I know that there are alot of people out there who have been utterly turned off by the religion due to the sheer humanity that represents it. At one time I was among her ranks. No one told me to dislike Christians, I effectively absorbed it from the culture. Christians were weak, sad, brainwashed, suffered from mystery maladies, told strange stories, spoke in tongues, were doggedly right wing and incapable of thinking outside that---a whole slew of negative connotations that in my younger years I attributed to Christians.
So what happened? Well, I got changed around, and yes, it was the best thing that could have happened. And miraculously I didn't also turn into a republican, stop thinking, become sad, weak or brainwashed or begin suffering mystery maladies.
In fact, I began thinking more about bigger questions...I struggled and wrestled with the stuff in the bible (and still do) to make sense of it and sometimes to put it on the shelf until it becomes clearer. I know that if I could understand every aspect of why God is how he is, he wouldn't be worth pursuing. I wonder about how this faith will work out in my every day life, and that is where the excitement it, really. I learn more, in general, about many of the bigger questions-- stuff I never thought of before I became a Christian 18 years ago. I have to reconcile things. All in all, being a Christian has been much more exciting, thought provoking, lead to interesting conversations, joyful and challenging than I ever thought it could be when I was on the outside looking in.
My brain didn't switch off, actually, it was more like it switched on. I thought for myself rather than absorbing what my surrounding "culture" (my friends, my media, my education) told me about "religious types".
And so Imago Dei prays for Portland. And I do too. I hope Portland will also start thinking, listening and the church will be there with something worth listening to.
Actually, that part worries me the most. To be continued.
Recently I met a friend up at Mississippi Pizza and Pub and had the sort of experience that kind of illustrates this "culture war". While I was reading Willamette Week, I sat next to a young lady who was telling a friend first about a college class she was disappointed with (the forestry service was sexist because they gave the ladies daintier, smaller patches to wear--the outrage!), but then about her wildly religious brother. They had disagreed I guess.
It sounded like he was talking to her about his faith and she was getting offended, saying things like "Just because I have a tattoo, doesn't mean I am going to hell,". It's hard not to smirk at these types of comments, and if her brother was suggesting that she was going to hell for her tattoo, than I would be agreeing more with her.
Later she said something like she believes that she would be judged based on how she lived her life as to whether she would go to heaven. As a Christian, I am wondering, she rejects the faith, why would she want heaven?
Her tone was hard but pretty much common. At one point she mentioned how he might be going to hell because he was wearing socks that had mixed fibers in them. She seemed to feel she had bested him in this comment, said that he was confused. Probably because he was so ignorant about the bible? Apparently he did try to explain to her that Christians didn't live under that law anymore, but this was more than she wanted to go into...
While I am trying to not hear this annoying conversation, I am reading WW which is panning a short film made by a Lake Oswego man called "Jesus save me from your followers" or something like this. The reviewer lambasted the film's producer as a "milk toasty emergent church type." How sad I thought, here this guy is trying to address the weird malice that exists between the world and the church here in the PacNW, and this fellow can do nothing but be critical. Sometimes it seems that Portland, like others I know, are so offended, annoyed and "evolved past" religion in their post modernism, that any acknowledgment of religion smells like caveman to them, and is thus retrograde.
Further, in the car listening to a podcast from Speaking of Faith, Shane Claiborne (a new Monastic and Christian activist) discusses with Chuck Colson (born again Christian indicted for scandal for Watergate crimes, now prominent Christian author) and Greg Boyd (mega church pastor who preached about the church not endorsing politics and lost a bunch of people from his church) are on a panel talking about the best way to represent Christ in the voting booth--basically a whole lot of conversation and fresh air on the subject of the religious citizen, not left right or otherwise. This wonderful podcast found here.
And it is played out in my life too. I was baptized and in alot of ways mentored by folks who were very Christian/Republican--and I never quite felt like I fit in with them. We don't talk about politics because it gets too hot too fast. My husband as well comes from a conservative background, and we find ourself not allying with with either a left or right viewpoint.
My eternal questions are "When can we stop talking about political parties in religion? When can we just get to the point that we realize that if political parties are dividing a faith, they need to be eschewed as a bad thing? When can we stop singing patriotic songs in church and when can we quit mixing up religion and nationalism? Hasn't Islam showed us how these things don't mix?"
As for the girl I overheard, I know that there are alot of people out there who have been utterly turned off by the religion due to the sheer humanity that represents it. At one time I was among her ranks. No one told me to dislike Christians, I effectively absorbed it from the culture. Christians were weak, sad, brainwashed, suffered from mystery maladies, told strange stories, spoke in tongues, were doggedly right wing and incapable of thinking outside that---a whole slew of negative connotations that in my younger years I attributed to Christians.
So what happened? Well, I got changed around, and yes, it was the best thing that could have happened. And miraculously I didn't also turn into a republican, stop thinking, become sad, weak or brainwashed or begin suffering mystery maladies.
In fact, I began thinking more about bigger questions...I struggled and wrestled with the stuff in the bible (and still do) to make sense of it and sometimes to put it on the shelf until it becomes clearer. I know that if I could understand every aspect of why God is how he is, he wouldn't be worth pursuing. I wonder about how this faith will work out in my every day life, and that is where the excitement it, really. I learn more, in general, about many of the bigger questions-- stuff I never thought of before I became a Christian 18 years ago. I have to reconcile things. All in all, being a Christian has been much more exciting, thought provoking, lead to interesting conversations, joyful and challenging than I ever thought it could be when I was on the outside looking in.
My brain didn't switch off, actually, it was more like it switched on. I thought for myself rather than absorbing what my surrounding "culture" (my friends, my media, my education) told me about "religious types".
And so Imago Dei prays for Portland. And I do too. I hope Portland will also start thinking, listening and the church will be there with something worth listening to.
Actually, that part worries me the most. To be continued.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
An about faith
My friend L and I, once when we were talking about faith told me that she envies me for being able to believe in God. She said she just never could. My thought was "That's too bad," because nothing in life would make any sense or having any meaning without Jesus.
I left here comment at that. But whenever one runs in evangelical circles, there is always this question about unsaved friends. People have plenty to say about our unsaved friends.
One person though talked about having a friend just like my friend L. This person's friend also said that they were envious of people who had faith, they wish they also had that faith.
And then this person said that if we follow the logic, that this friend was saying "only crazy people would believe in this nonexistent supernatural entity" and then was saying that they could suspend disbelief long enough to be able to have the comfort that would come from believing in this nonexistent supernatural entity.
So this person concluded, that when a friend tells you that they wish they could believe in God, but were unable to, they are really saying that they wish they could be crazy, like you are, because it must be easier.
I laughed and thought this was pretty harsh, but as I think about it, I can't really see where it is untrue. Even if I don't choose to see my friends this way.
I left here comment at that. But whenever one runs in evangelical circles, there is always this question about unsaved friends. People have plenty to say about our unsaved friends.
One person though talked about having a friend just like my friend L. This person's friend also said that they were envious of people who had faith, they wish they also had that faith.
And then this person said that if we follow the logic, that this friend was saying "only crazy people would believe in this nonexistent supernatural entity" and then was saying that they could suspend disbelief long enough to be able to have the comfort that would come from believing in this nonexistent supernatural entity.
So this person concluded, that when a friend tells you that they wish they could believe in God, but were unable to, they are really saying that they wish they could be crazy, like you are, because it must be easier.
I laughed and thought this was pretty harsh, but as I think about it, I can't really see where it is untrue. Even if I don't choose to see my friends this way.
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