The strange thing about the hymn "I Love to Tell the Story" is that it never actually tells the story. Rayford never actually tells that story either. Like the hymn, he insists that the telling of it is very important, but no one listening to his alleged explanation of "the way of salvation" will wind up any closer to understanding that than before he started. Read more
Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven." Read more
This is not, technically speaking, a recipe for pie. But a good apple crisp is pie-like, and usually liked by those who like pie. And who doesn't like pie? Read more
Failing the clearest moral test of your time and culture is only a problem so long as that moral test is what people are talking about and thinking about. So talk about something else. If you've made yourself a moral pariah because you've spent the past three decades fighting a rear-guard battle in defense of systemic, violent, oppressive injustice, then you need to find some other subject on which you can cast yourself as the Good Guy -- as the heroic champion of morality. Read more
For LaHaye and Jenkins, and for Rayford and Buck, the main -- and only -- duty of Christians is to ensure the salvation of their own immortal souls, everyone else be damned. But it doesn't matter what you pray -- or in whose name you pray it, or how fervently -- if the whole motivation for your prayer is "All right then, screw Jim, I'll go to Heaven!" Read more
That ploy never really fools anybody, but it provides a thin buffer of semi-plausible deniability. We all know it wasn't the dog, but when you loudly say, "Good Lord, pooch, what did you just do?" and direct everyone's attention to the innocent creature, the dog will respond in some doggy fashion, doing something with its eyes, ears and tail that might be interpreted as indicating guilt, or relief, or shameless pleasure. Read more
The land beneath 69 manufactured homes in Santa Barbara is being sold to a developer who wants to build condos. Those homeowners could lose everything. But it doesn't have to work that way. Plus: The audacious dishonesty of anti-abortion amicus briefs; more on the Driscoll-Trump parallels; and white evangelicals embracing the herb. Read more
C.S. Lewis said that a determination to cling to the idea that our enemies are as bad as possible is "the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils." That process always leads, inexorably, to pretending, then wishing, then enslaving ourselves to, the lie that our enemies are the worst-possible thing we can imagine: Satanic baby-killers. Read more
Enthusiasm for a national ID card shows that fear of the Mark of the Beast is no longer the factor that it used to be in American politics. That's a shame, because I was hoping to channel that fear to rally public opposition to credit-scoring. Using the creative exegesis favored by "Bible prophecy" scholars, credit scoring seems to be exactly what Revelation 13 was talking about. Read more
Evangelical churches are good at many things, but funerals are not our forté. The improvisational approach of most evangelical services doesn't serve us well when it comes to funerals. So we fall back on what we know best -- proclaiming the gospel of individual salvation. That's why Rayford's eulogy here segues into an evangelistic altar call. Read more
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