Tag Archives: Church

News

Car bomb kills 21 Christians in Egypt

1 Comment

Mary tipped me to this story.

Excerpt:

A bomb killed at least 17 people outside a church in the Egyptian city of Alexandria early on New Year’s Day and the Interior Ministry said a foreign-backed suicide bomber may have been responsible.

Dozens of people were wounded by the blast, which scattered body parts, destroyed cars and smashed windows. The attack prompted Christians to protest on the streets, and some Christians and Muslims hurled stones at each other.

Egypt has stepped up security around churches, banning cars from parking outside them, since an al-Qaeda-linked group in Iraq issued a threat against the Church in Egypt in November.

[…]A statement on an Islamist website posted about two weeks before the blast called for attacks on Egypt’s churches, listing among them the one hit. No group was named in the statement.

Gateway Pundit had a later report of the bombing from AFP. (H/T Robert Stacy McCain)

Excerpt:

A suspected suicide bomber blew himself up outside the Coptic church on Saturday, killing 21 people and wounding 79 others in an attack President Hosni Mubarak said was the work of “foreign hands.”

The strange thing that Gateway Pundit found was that the White House (Barack Obama) was emphasizing that a terrorist attack on a Coptic Christian church injured and killed Muslims, as well as Christians. This is the kind of moral equivalence you find so often on the left. If a bunch of Christians are blown up by a bunch of Muslims, then no one is to blame, because everyone is a victim, including the Muslims who committed the crime. People on the left just can’t bring themselves to say that violence against innocent people is wrong, and that the people who do it are wrong. They just can’t name evil or blame evil. They don’t want evil people to feel bad about being evil.

UPDATE: Gates of Vienna links to this AINA article which claims that the Egyptian church guards left the church an hour before the bomb went off.

Excerpt:

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but officials hastily blamed either Al-Qaida or the Israeli Mousad of being behind the blast, but none of them mentioned the Egyptian state security which is viewed by Copts as the real culprit.

To clear his security forces of negligence, the Minister of Interior said that the blast was an “individual” case, caused by a single suicide terrorist detonating his vest, and has nothing to do with an exploding car. The governor of Alexandria claimed the attack as being aimed at Muslims and Christians alike.

After the blast, traumatized Copts were angered by chants of “Allah Akbar” from Muslims and began hurling stones at the mosque. Immediately security forces which were absent during the car blast and the ensuing events, appeared and starting shooting tear gas at the Copts, and they in turn hurled stones at them, said an eyewitness. Fifteen Copts were rounded up from their homes by the authorities.

[…]Eyewitnesses confirmed that security forces guarding the church withdrew nearly one hour before the blast, leaving only four policemen and an officer to guard such a big church and nearly 2000 people attending the midnight mass. “Normally they would have waited until the mass was over,” said el-Gezeiry. He also commented on the Muslim’s schadenfreude at the massacre at the church, who were heard chanting “Allah Akbar.”

Read the whole thing.

Commentary

Why do so many people oppose debating about religion?

9 Comments

Consider this article by Barbara Johnson in the Dallas Morning News. Her title is “Don’t bother debating faith”.

Full article:

Recently Prestonwood Baptist Church invited Christopher Hitchens, a renowned atheist, to debate his views with William Dembski of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. While I applaud Prestonwood for having the courage to expose their young students to views which are so unlike those taught in their very conservative school, I question the idea of debating religious views at all. Debate or argument, while exposing us to the beliefs and convictions of others, can breed animosity, partisanship and an “us against them” mentality, as each side fights to defend a predetermined stance.

Because religious or spiritual views and experiences are deeply personal, I don’t believe they belong in the debate arena at all.

The spectacle of religious thinkers arguing and cutting down one another’s beliefs, practices and spiritual experiences makes little sense and is a detriment to what religion should stand for. Each individual must be allowed to walk his or her spiritual journey without outside pressure and condemnation. When one is pressured to “believe” a certain set of doctrines, or operate within a pre-set paradigm, true expression is suppressed.

Psychologist Carl Jung notes that “many of our institutions throw obstacles in the way of the individual’s self-discovery” and that through the institution of the church “people are effectively defended and shielded against immediate religious experience,” an experience I feel cannot be imposed upon anyone through argument or even reasoning.

The vast majority of the world’s population understandably practices the religious traditions of their own childhood. Having grown up Christian in the largest Muslim country in the world, surrounded by its good people, I have the privilege of a broad world view. Consequently, I feel that the all-too-prevalent idea that one entire group is misguided and needs to be enlightened with the ideas and dogmas of another group possessing a monopoly on truth is off the mark.

I don’t have the answer to the mystery and purpose of life, and I am convinced that no one else on earth does either. I like to heed Václav Havel’s advice: “Keep the company of those who seek the truth – run from those who have found it.” All people of the world must be free to practice their culture and religion as they please or to define their own individual spirituality through the wisdom they accumulate with life experience. Too much time, energy and focus is spent by many “religious” folks trying to figure out who is right and who is wrong; who is saved and who is doomed; who should be included and who should be excluded from their institutions.

If they are honestly seeking a personal relationship with the divine, they are wrestling with the wrong angel. True spirituality will never be achieved this way. More time should be spent searching for and recognizing the glimpses of God that are available each and every day in such things as expressions of love, acts of kindness and beautiful moments in nature.

As Henri Nouwen so perfectly puts it, “My highest vocation is to be a witness to the glimpses of God I have been allowed to catch.” I so admire the Zen Buddhists who don’t expend energy defending dogmas or condemning those with varying practices or beliefs. They concentrate on inclusiveness, peaceful meditation, private introspection, acceptance, and respect for people and environment. They see glimpses of the divine in the simple miracles around them every day. How can anyone argue with that?

Here’s a short bio of the woman who wrote the article:

Barbara B. Johnson is a life coach living and working in Dallas. She is also a Community Voices volunteer columnist.

I think that people with expertise in philosophy, a science, history or even engineering are more likely to disagree with her. But I think that her view is shared by many leaders in the church, and by many parents of children who attend church (H/T Tory Ninja).

Refuting her view is simple, it takes only one line. If she is saying that debating with people to persuade them of your view is wrong, then she should not be debating with we narrow-minded believers in truth to persuade us that she is right and we are wrong, that her view is… true, and that our view is… false. But maybe being good at recognizing self-refuting statements is not a prerequisite for being a “life coach”. Certainly a developed ability to reason logically is not a prerequisite for being published in the Dallas Morning News. One the one hand, she is telling us to accept her view, and on the other hand, she claims not to know anything.

And the worst thing is that it is people like this who protest apologetic debates, lectures and book studies who have marginalized the church from the public square. It is because the church is populated by people like Barbara, and because the pastors cater to the Barbaras in the church, that I struggle enormously with church attendance. I see her attitude everywhere in the church. In fact there is an entire movement called the emergent church, which is dedicated to reinventing Christianity based on Barbara’s view of religion.

Instead of reading books like “The Case for Christ”, “The Case for a Creator” and “The Case for Faith”, we have a generation of church people reading “The Shack”, “Conversations With God”, “Blue Like Jazz”, “Left Behind”, “The Da Vinci Code”, “Twilight” and other nonsense.

By the way, if you want to here someone like Barbara in a debate with a Christian Philosopher, check out this debate.

Commentary

Youth pastor Tory Ninja writes about the importance of parents

12 Comments

This was a comment to one of the posts on tithing and the church. I had argued that pastors should only be paid when they produce.

Tory Ninja wrote this:

I’m a youth and children pastor. I include “apologetic” minded material in everything I do. Even when the topic isn’t apologetic I bring out some apologetics (for example, if I am teaching Christ dying for our sins, I spend some time talking about objections to that idea). We are currently going through the Hitchens/Wilson debate documentary.

Sometimes we have good dialogs. We even go out into the community sometimes and do social justice. But the sad thing is is the Christian faith isn’t taking hold. As soon as they graduate, they’re gone. No one reads their Bible. People don’t remember what was talked about 5 hours after class, even if they participated! People are texting all the time, playing games on their phones/ipods, and just aren’t very engaged. Parents buy them the most messed up video games, let them watch the most messed up movies uncritically, and pay for their life sucking WoW [World of Warcraft] accounts. Last week a 9 year old boy, the son of an elder, told me his favourite type of movies were horror movies and he loved Saw.

To be honest, I feel kind of like a failure. I feel a little guilty taking money from the church. I’m giving it my all and trusting the Lord, and that’s what keeps me going, but the youth and children of today just have so many distractions. Also, not to mention the fact that parents do almost nothing to disciple their kids. I can’t do everything!

Anyway, I agree with you. A pastor shouldn’t demand his wages. But the church shouldn’t put him into indentured servanthood. I think a church should pay a pastor enough for him to do his ministry properly without having to worry about putting food on the table and clothes on his children. I’m happy that the church treats me well.

This comment was all over the place. I guess I just wanted to say that the future doesn’t look bright.

I think his point that parents have to work together with the pastors is a good one.

UPDATE: More from Tory Ninja. And I changed the title to make more sense! My fault.

So I thought I would add some more context to this comment.

For starters, I am in Canada. I’m not sure how different the church culture is from Canada to the United State so everything I say may not be representative of what you experience in the States. I am again a little over the place. Also, I apologize if the tone seems negative. There are of course positives in today’s youth and children ministry but that is not the topic of this comment.

Their are two major things that I have noticed a change in over the ten years I have been doing youth ministry. The first is that everyone is connected. When I started doing youth ministry texting wasn’t quite in yet. But now it is like there is a symbiotic relationship between teens and their texting. I have contemplated doing a no texting and gaming policy but I hesitate as it is such big part of their life and also because sometimes the texts are important and I rather them take a text then a phone call. Also, many people have their Bibles on their phones now. I know during sermons I will often check the greek on my iPhone, look up commentaries, and various other things based on what the pastor is preaching. So I know they’re legitimate ways for people to be using their phones.

Usually though, when I see someone doing something on their phone, that is when I will ask them a question about what is being taught at the moment. This strategy has kept texting down to a certain degree since I started doing it but it is still there.

Also, as soon as I am done teaching, or their is a break in teaching, bang! Out comes the video games. PSP, DS, iTouch/iPhone. Of course, these are all jail broken or hacked so they all have 100s of illegal games on them.

No one is ever where they are. They always need to be connected elsewhere. The sad part is is that when they aren’t at church they are never at church if you know what I mean.

The second thing is that parents are even less engaged with their children now then they were ten years ago. The reason for this is technology. Parents haven’t kept up. Kids get away with so much stuff because they know their parents don’t have an inkling of how to keep tabs on them. Even if you put draconian measures on them they still find a way to outsmart the parents. For example, Facebook. I am still surprised at what youth and my youth leaders will put on their Facebook pages. It seems like they forget that I can see them. Even the people who seem most devout and engaged at church will have Facebook profiles of nearly naked women, constant swearing, positions on issues that are noticeably non-Christian, etc. They will create a separate Facebook page for their families and parents and have one for their friends. Parents often aren’t engaged in their children’s life enough to find these “secret” pages.

Youth are also up late at night playing video games, talking online, or texting. Some parents are able to stop these things by removing the computer and cell phones from the room, but not all. One reason youth are barely engaged in church is because they are up till 2-3 on a Saturday night playing Starcraft 2 or Call of Duty.

Now I realize that most of these problems existed before technology. I stayed up late playing games and talking on the phone when I was in high school. Especially Saturday night. But it was more challenging and less “church” people did it. We also had a more reasonable schedule during the week and thus weren’t as dead tired on Sunday. But social media type technology has totally changed the game.

Christianity has always been on the cutting edge of technology and social movement. The codex, equal rights, social justice, the printing press, music, etc. But we have totally lost that edge in this new age. It’s been on the decline for the last century but we have totally lost it now. The way we promote issues aren’t engaging. I’m not talking about numbers. It’s easy to get numbers to a certain degree. Bring live camels with tigers jumping through flaming hoops to your Christmas pageant and you’re likely to get numbers. I’m talking about creating disciples of Jesus Christ that are engaged and want to grow Christ’s kingdom. We just don’t know how to do that yet.

We even do apologetics wrong. I’ve shown kids William Lane Craig debates and they almost always think he loses. They usually think he had better arguments, but they always find what the non-Christian says to be more convincing. Non-Christians know how to engage the audience with the issues that are close to them. While the Kalam cosmological argument may be great, we need to figure out how to present it in a way that engages the heart.

Youth will even acknowledge that what I say or the Bible says is right but they just don’t care. They don’t want to follow it. Not that they don’t want to be Christians or not that they won’t tell others they are Christians, but rather on issues they disagree with they will just not follow it. Oh yes pastor, I know getting totally wasted is wrong but I just don’t think you understand my context. Oh yes pastor, I know piracy is wrong, but I just don’t care.

Anyway, I apologize if this seems overtly negative. Also, not every single youth is like this. There are good apples. There are parents who are discipling their kids. I’m also not saying that I am free from blame here. As a pastor I have a responsibility to disciple those entrusted to me and I have definitely made mistakes in this process. I’m not saying this to shift blame off of me. I’m saying these have been my observations over ten years.

The earliest Christians knew how to engage their culture. No one was really lukewarm about the Christians. Strong emotions, either pro or con, were caused by these Christians. They knew how fight the good fight. I think we are losing that fire. I think apologetics is key, but I think we need a new way of framing the material. What the way is however, I’m not so sure. Maybe someone here can paint some insight or point me to people/books who do!

If anyone else has experiences like this, send them to me. But you have to have a good alias like “Tory Ninja” or “Wintery Knight” or I can’t print it. Kidding.