Busting Myths About Christianity
December 28, 2006
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Cerulean Sanctum Series, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Counterculture Feedback : 16 comments
This year's Christmas Day was about the slowest day I can remember in a long time. We spent time away at the in-laws. All the usual Christmas activity happened on Christmas Eve, then Monday anti-climaxed. I spent most of Christmas Day in a comfy chair watching TV.
Well, just one show—about six hours of it. 
We get the local stations at our house, and that's it. (I think I currently 
watch less than an hour of TV a week.) So shows that I did make time for when we had a couple hundred channels a few years ago (like Alton Brown's Good Eats and Mythbusters) now become a treat if I get to see them elsewhere. Just my luck, the Discovery Channel ran a Mythbusters marathon all day Christmas Day.
My Dad taught me no manly skills. I look in bafflement upon internal combustion engines. The idea of welding something sends images of burn trauma units and seared retinas racing through my mind. Science I love, but don't ask me to make or fix anything. That I can change the fluids and filters on my tractor is enough for me.
So a show like Mythbusters appeals to me because not only does it have a great science angle, but the sheer audacity of making all those crazy testing contraptions from scratch helps me appreciate those skills all the more.
If you've never seen Mythbusters, the two hosts (special effects experts Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage) attempt to prove the veracity of "old wives tales," Internet memes, and urban legends. A duck's quack will not echo. A helicopter's rotors are so precisely balanced that a postage stamp affixed to one blade will cause the copter to crash. Adding Viagra to your Christmas tree's water will help it keep its needles. Driving over a bumpy road is smoother at a higher speed. You get less wet walking through a rain storm than running through it. The team tests each and assigns a value of "Busted," "Plausible," or "Confirmed."
After a marathon of watching the show, I asked myself, What are some myths that plague Christianity?
I've thought about this a bit, choosing to think like a non-Christian. Here are ten possible myths I came up with:
- Christians are more judgmental than non-Christians.
- Christians are stingier than non-Christians.
- Christians are more intolerant of other people than non-Christians.
- Christians are more short-sighted than non-Christians.
- Christians don't know how to have fun.
- Christians despise intellectuals more than non-Christians do.
- Christians prefer kitsch over important art.
- Christian subculture mimics the world rather than creating anything lasting.
- Companies run by Christians are as unethical as secular companies, and perhaps more so.
- Christianity causes more problems in the world than any other religion.
Busted, Plausible, or Confirmed? Readers, what's your take? And how might you devise experiments to test those conclusions?
Entries in this series:
- Busting Myths About Christianity
- Busting Myths About Christianity: Assessing Myths 1-3
- Busting Myths About Christianity: Assessing Myths 4-6
- Busting Myths About Christianity: Assessing Myths 7-8
- Busting Myths About Christianity: Assessing Myths 9-10
{Image: The Discovery Channel's Mythbusters, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman}
Tags: Cerulean Sanctum Series, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Counterculture, Mythbusters
Merry Christmas 2006
December 25, 2006
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Announcements Feedback : 1 comment so far
May the Spirit of God that indwelt His Only Begotten Son dwell in and among you in transforming power this Christmas.
Blessings on you and yours this wondrous day.
For the Kingdom,
Dan
Tags: Announcements, Christmas
Staples of Christmastime: Peace
December 21, 2006
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Counterculture, Faith, Godly Character, Joy, Simplicity Feedback : 22 comments
Thou dost keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee because he trusts in Thee. —Isaiah 26:3 (RSV)
I don't do a lot of personal revelation here at Cerulean Sanctum. For the benefit of those people who grapple with the whole idea of "Peace on Earth," I thought I'd share a few things. 
Last year, I wrote on peace, but wanted to revisit the issue since I struggle with inner peace more than most people, I suspect. In trying to nail all the things down that I must do before Christmas, deal with the fallout from last week, and just get my head right in this season of the Coming King, peace fled away faster than a rocket-powered sleigh.
I start by noting this is the second time I've written this post. It started out paired with the post on Prosperity, then I realized I needed to split it. So I duplicated the tab in Firefox, giving me two copies of the post. I deleted the Peace from the Prosperity and the Prosperity from the Peace and saved both. the Peace section first. Sadly, in doing so, Wordpress could not distinguish the post IDs from each other, so in saving the Prosperity second, I said goodbye to the Peace post. Evidently, duplicating the tab was clever, but stupid at the same time. Lesson learned. A perfect metaphor for peace—or the lack of it—we find at Christmastime. Say goodbye to all that work and do it again.
So much for clearing the To-Do list.
A couple weeks ago, I went to bed at 2:45 AM after a day of frenzy. A half hour later, my head still buzzed with things to do. Over the next hour after that, I would get up four times because I'd forgotten to
- Take out the trash
- Feed the rabbit
- Start the dishwasher
- Close the garage door.
If I don't attend to those little activities, who will? Let them slip and the next thing you know, Junior's weeping because Fluffy Bunny won't "wake up." So sleep becomes a precious commodity.
Someone should have informed the world at my birth that I'm not one for frantic activity. I have a tendency amid busyness to stand in the center of a room and wonder why I'm there. I know I came in for something, but what? The older I get, the less I seem capable of handling the fast-paced American lifestyle we're each called to live. I don't think God intends us to live like headless chickens, but what's a headless chicken to do?
Knowing Christ dealt with my sin certainly gives peace. I think that's the peace the Bible speaks of when it talks about peace. The passage that begins this post is from the RSV because it's the version I memorized long ago. Despite knowing that verse backwards and forwards, peace still seems elusive in an age when machines scream at you to attend them. A couple weeks ago, my Palm PDA, the phone, and the beep of an incoming e-mail on my computer all went off in a fury of audible technical alerts at precisely the same moment. My scalp still hurts from ramming my head through the tiny plaster points of our textured ceiling, such was the altitude I achieved.
Peace. What is peace?
It's not just busyness that kills peace. I'm not a good one for the type of decision-making peace my wife comes by so easily. When an enormous, forever-life-altering decision must be reached, she determines the correct direction by peace. You may have heard it before, that "I felt peace about it" thing that so many utter when assured that God's delivered unto them the one perfect choice. Hours spent searching the Scriptures for some evidence that the saints of old justified their choices by the amount of peace they felt in making a decision came to naught for me. To this day, I don't think I've ever felt that kind of peace when making any of the major decisions I've confronted in life. That nagging feeling I wasn't doing the right thing never left.
I've seen a lot of people who made a decision at eighteen and decades later were still wilting like some sun-starved petunia under the shadow of that choice. Good people. Christian people. People who wrestle every day with a lack of peace because they don't want to add shadow upon shadow. It's one thing to quote them Romans 8:28 and something altogether different to stand by them until the shadow flees in the bright light of the Son. The latter reflects the heart of God, but how rare it is to find among people beset by too many e-mails, crying babies, and a Charles Schwab account manager on line one begging you to sell now or kiss your retirement goodbye.
Someone's got to take the blame when a decision goes awry, right? Not being one of those "get mad at God" types who likes to shake his fist at the heavens (where I come from, that's called "rebellion"), I tend to fall back on blaming myself for not scrying God's Master Plan for the Universe more thoroughly. I keep hoping that one day someone tries to hawk the Urim and Thummim on eBay. THOSE I'd bid on. You can keep the rest.
And so, dear reader, I ask: what is peace? And how does one find real rest for one's soul in the middle of lives kicked into overdrive?
In this season of peace, when you can still get away with sending a Christmas card festooned with an olive-branch-bearing white dove and not be blamed for offending someone else's beliefs (or lack of them), the answer to that question may be the best gift we can hope for under our trees.
Tags: Bustle, Busyness, Christmas, Counterculture, Dove, Faith, Frenzy, Godly Character, Joy, Peace, Peace-on-Earth, Rest, Simplicity
Staples of Christmastime: Prosperity
December 20, 2006
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Benevolence, Boldness, Faith, Godly Character, Grace, Simplicity Feedback : 19 comments
I don't throw a lot of bones to those hardcore 5-Pointers over at Fide-O, but they bring up another issue that troubles me: whether or not we receive payback for tithing.
If you've been around here long enough, you know that I don't support a ten percent New Testament tithe. I believe the Lord asks us to put everything we have and are into a real NT tithe. Ten percent is easy. 
Dying to self is another thing altogether, and that "all in" kind of tithe better represents the truth that we've been bought with a price and are not even our own.
So when I read the Fide-O article about a church that's promising blessings out of tithing "or your money back," I squirm a little. (The snarky comments at Fide-O, don't help, either.)
Last week, I wrote what's turned out to be an incredibly popular post, "We Need a Gospel That Speaks to Failure." In that post, I discussed the widow Jesus lauded for giving God her last two coins.
While I wrote that the Bible gives us no assurance that the widow went home and on the way somehow got more in return than what she put in, I really want to believe she did. I REALLY want to believe that because it speaks to the character of God to give out of His abundance to those who hold on loosely to the things of this world. Shouldn't generosity be rewarded?
The two schools of thought on this starkly contrast, and the Bible isn't definitively in one corner or the other:
Pro-Prosperity:
Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days.
—Ecclesiastes 11:1 ESVBring the full tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.
—Malachi 3:10 ESV"Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you."
—Luke 6:38 ESV
Anti-Prosperity:
"But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry."
—Luke 6:24-25a ESVTo the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.
—1 Corinthians 4:11-13 ESVBut as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.
—2 Corinthians 6:4-10 ESV
Back in March, I asked readers to respond to a set of employment and tithing survey questions. One of those questions was…
Have you personally seen that giving more money in tithing resulted in more coming back?
No question I asked got a more negative response than that one. Probably 9:1 against.
What then to make of those people who do give away ridiculous amounts of money, yet see even more ridiculous amounts coming back? Going to a Pentecostal church, as I do, it's practically carved into stone that the more you give the more you'll receive in return. And I'll be the first to admit that for some people, it sure appears that's true.
But what explains the many readers who don't see that work in their lives, even when they're being more than generous in their giving?
Some good Christians give and receive even more in return. Some good Christians give and give and give, but don't see that return–at least not this side of heaven.
So, readers, which is God's way? And what explains the disparity?
Tags: Benevolence, Boldness, Faith, Godly Character, Grace, Prosperity, Simplicity
December Miscellany
December 19, 2006
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Announcements, In the News, Miscellany Feedback : 9 comments
Sometimes ya just got nothin'. My poor brain is clogged with a million things to do by January 1. That means a post filled with miscellaneous, uncoordinated thoughts.
Here we go…
Postmodern Sense: Kristie at Martha's Distraction gets a hat tip for noting a staggeringly good message by Tim Keller regarding evangelism in a postmodern world. If you haven't heard this one, you're not equipped to deal with the times. Though Keller thumbs his nose at us quasi-agrarians (Hey, Tim, Jonah didn't build a house in Nineveh, did he?), everything else is square on target. I plan on listening to this about ten times to soak it all in.
They Blinded Me with Science, Eh?: Researchers in Canada may have discovered a simple cure for diabetes.
Yes, Love DID Break Through: Keith Green fans will enjoy a 7-part documentary covering the prophetic musician's life (that I hope isn't lifted from a copyrighted source. You never know with YouTube.)
Happy Holidays!—NOT: Blog Rodent Rich Tatum gets a pink slip, then someone steals his laptop. Pray he gets it back or someone with an extra dose of holiday cheer buys him a new one.
Happy Holidays!—NOT, The Sequel: An addled Santa confuses his Nice list with his Naughty one and leaves nice guy Milton Stanley of Transforming Sermons a massive chunk of coal for Christmas. Let's all be praying the Lord turns it into a diamond.
Happy Holidays!—NOT…er, well Maybe: John Piper releases a new book dealing with Christians and depression, When the Darkness Will Not Lift.
And a Merry Cookiemas to You: Rebecca dishes up the dishiest desserts over at Rebecca Writes.
Regrets, I've Had a Few: I'd planned on doing a series on Christians and the Arts, but the series kept getting larger and more broad. I'd called for folks to respond to a survey I would e-mail them, but for now the series is on ice. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I wasn't up to the enormity of the task. Doing the 13-part business series I attempted summer 2005 was enough to dissuade me from crafting any more massive series, and this art series grew to leviathan-size the more I thought about it. Maybe one day, but now now. My deepest apologies to the folks who took the time to reply to my call for survey respondents.
ZZZZzzzz…:Posts will be sporadic over the next two weeks. Yes, I know I took a six-week break a few months ago, but it's a busy time of the year. And yes, I know Tim Challies blogs every single day. I spend restless nights trying to figure out how he does it in a way that doesn't involve cloning, but what can I say.
So while there may not be a plethora of posts in the next few days, I'll still drop in from time to time—with more than miscellany, I hope.
Blessings!
Tags: Announcements, In the News, Miscellany
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