5 Reasons Christians Need to “Stifle It” (and #6 Will Change Your Life)

I’ve come to the point that I no longer care about what happens in cultural evangelicalism. I walked away from evangelicalism years ago, frustrated with the direction of the movement. I guess this is the natural end point of that walking away.

My leaving, however, is not even a blip on the radar. No one cares. And why should they?

Since I’m pushing rapidly toward geezerdom, I remember the ’70s-era TV show All in the Family. Opinionated loudmouth Archie Bunker would shoot down wife Edith’s insights by telling her to “stifle it.” And people would laugh.

But as I look around the Internet, I see plenty of indicators that evangelicals need to take Archie’s advice and stifle it lest they become Archie Bunkers themselves. The Internet has become a gossip-fest, where too many Christians feel compelled to blather on about the latest scandal in the Christian community, whether it’s a real scandal or not. We must let others know just how a mature Christian views such goings on. We must.

I’ve been casually noticing the neo-Calvs cannibalize each other this past summer, culminating in one of their most famous members torn to pieces recently by former friends and supporters. The talk and speculation are crazed. It’s a nonstop train wreck, all of it, and we’re fooling ourselves if we think it makes us stronger.

We’ve become obsessed with celebrity Christians on the national stage, especially pastors, and their rightness or wrongness. We jump into cultural and racial conversations to inject supposedly Christian ideals, only they’re not all that Christian, and their lack of winsomeness makes us look horrible. We comment without facts. We talk without sense. We go on and on spouting myths. half-truths, and outright stupidity. We spew words about situations we know absolutely nothing about, and yet we think we’re worthy of enshrining on a panel for Meet the Press, Christian Edition, because we are so “wise.”

It’s foolishness writ large and in public. And nearly all of it does nothing but dishonor the Lord.

More than at any time in recent memory, I think we American Christians need a real self-check about how opinionated we’ve become. I know that’s an opinion in itself, but nonetheless, I think we would all be better off if we pulled out of all the online discourse and took a couple months off from making sure everyone knows what we think about _______.

One of the reasons that Cerulean Sanctum has been quiet goes beyond just my change in work. A good chunk of it is because I’m disgusted by online discourse. Everyone talks past everyone else, and there is little reasoned discussion. Worse, we seem to be investing huge amounts of emotional energy into conversations that have no Kingdom benefit—none. It’s just windbagdom, and it’s cruel, without love, and pompous to the nth degree.

Did you catch the title of this post? It’s SEO gold—at least the theory of it is. We’re sucked into this kind of thing on the Web, and it doesn’t help the situation. We feel we must comment. If a celebrity Christian’s name is attached, all the better.

Can we stifle it? Please? Does anyone else see how pathetic our discourse has become? Is my expressing my golden words the reason Jesus died? Is it critical to for everyone to know what you or I think about Pastor ________? Or about our government? Or about race relations in some town we’ve never visited? Or who is liberal and who is not? Or our thoughts on the sex lives of celebrities? Or why some actor killed himself? Or? Or? Or…?

Really?

Honestly, I’m at a point where I’ve stopped caring. We’re becoming blowhards talking our own smack. Time for all of us to wake up and get a life.

Attack of the Online “Prophets”

Ad hominem abusive.

If you don’t know what that means, here’s the ever-convenient Wikipedia with the answer:

An ad hominem (Latin for “to the man” or “to the person”), short for argumentum ad hominem, is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Fallacious ad hominem reasoning is normally categorized as an informal fallacy, more precisely as a genetic fallacy, a subcategory of fallacies of irrelevance. Ad hominem reasoning is not always fallacious, for example, when it relates to the credibility of statements of fact.
—Wikipedia entry for ad hominem

I’ve been on the Internet from before it was the Internet. Back in my earlier days at Carnegie Mellon University, I would send emails to a friend at MIT using the old ARPANET defense network, which evolved into the modern Internet. How long ago was this? Well, the smiley emoticon was “invented” at CMU during my tenure as a student.

So, I’ve watched the Internet grow up.

Sad to say, but I think that as the Internet grew up, the people who used it didn’t. And this brings us back to that Latin phrase above and its definition.

I don’t know what has happened in recent years, but I’m seeing an increase in ad hominem attacks online. The worst part of this is the attacks often come from Christians.

A fictional, but true to form, example:

Scourge Person A : “Yes, you need to love people in Jesus’ name, but you can’t excuse their sin. Love them, but call them to repentance too.”

Person B : “Clearly, you are a legalistic fool who doesn’t know the Lord. Jesus is love. Love is all that matters—and you would know that if you truly know Him. But you don’t. I bet a Pharisee like you has never loved anyone except yourself.”

That’s what passes for discourse and an engagement of ideas, and I’m seeing it more and more on Christian websites.

Beyond the fact of ad hominem‘s status as a logical fallacy unworthy of use in debates and discussions, it’s the faux prophetic attitude of people that bothers me greatly. Too many Christians are presuming to know the spiritual condition of another person with whom they converse online, but without having met that person or read anything else that person may have written. Instead, ad hominem attacks often come out at the first interaction.

At the risk of being accused of an ad hominem attack myself, I must say that this borders on divination. Really. Because the ad hominem user is not only NOT being loving toward a fellow believer, he or she is claiming to scry out the spiritual condition of the other person, as if doing a fortune teller’s “cold reading.”

Folks, we can’t do this. Ever.

Online discourse is in a race to the lowest common denominator. When people who claim to be Christians drop words like unbeliever or heretic almost as a reflex in reference to others online, they run a great risk of sin—and in a public space for lost people to note. We’re the light of the world. If our discourse is filled with negative “prophetic” statements about other people we engage in cyberspace, then that light becomes darkness. Then we scratch our heads when other people say, “No, I don’t want anything to do with your Jesus or your Christian religion.”

If we’re going to be online and discussing difficult topics, engage ideas. Challenge concepts. Dismantle erroneous thinking.

But don’t dismantle people. And for the sake of your own soul, don’t attempt to play diviner into someone else’s spiritual state, especially when that perceived foe states nothing online that would serve as fodder for such pronouncements.

The Church, Tech, Ethics, Jaron Lanier, and the Destruction of the Middle Class

After reading my recent post “‘Free’ and the Destruction of Worth,” reader Brian Auten sent notice of a compelling Salon interview with tech futurist Jaron Lanier—“The Internet Destroyed the Middle Class”—in which the polymath suggests he and other prognosticators underestimated the negative impact the Internet would have on our lives.

As a musician, Lanier thought the personal freedom offered by the Internet would enable music makers to take greater control of their careers and enhance their freedom to create the kind of music they wanted to make, free from corporate interference. Sadly, the Internet has instead reduced the net worth of musicians and created a career wasteland for many of them.

In a bold confession, Lanier admits he was shortsighted concerning the negative impact, saying his naiveté helped fuel the downturn.

Lanier goes on to note that rather than freeing people to do what they want, the Internet has destroyed aspirations—especially those related to jobs. The promise that the Internet will let us pursue the job we want to create for ourself has instead been replaced with the reality that it and other tech tools are allowing fewer and fewer people to do the work that once employed thousands, leaving no options for the displaced.

While many will just nod their heads and say We told you so, Lanier brings up an ethical issue raised by the destruction of middle class jobs that few are discussing:

Do corporations have an ethical responsibility to society to create jobs simply to employ people, even if technology has rendered those jobs less essential?

This is a question that has bothered me since the economic meltdown of 2008. Because it seemed that at one time companies DID stay loyal to employees whose jobs were less essential. There was a long view that a working middle class was universally better than a nonworking middle class that would slide gradually into poverty. And it may very well be that attitude of support for the less essential employee made America great.

Globalization and the race to the cost bottom may have put pressure on companies to abandon this ethic, but the 2008 meltdown pretty much sealed the deal in their collective minds.

Which brings me, as it always does, to the Church.

In the fin de siècle period (around 1900), the American Church was actively addressing many changes in American business. As more women entered the workplace, the Church was concerned for their welfare, especially in what could have become a predatory environment for young, inexperienced women moving from farms to the burgeoning big cities. And this was only one area of concern and active involvement. Speaking to the business world was a huge concern for the Church.

Today, the Church seems more concerned with how to start a workplace Bible study than any greater vision related to social change and the general welfare of employees.

This paradigm shift has worked against the Church in the long run. American Christians no longer prioritize general human welfare. In the case of the typical workplace, the Church’s concerns are not the ethics and operation of that workplace and how Christ can impact it, but the Church thinks solely of how to preserve some aspect of institutional church operation within that sphere.

I contend this is a wrong, selfish mentality. We Christians should be less concerned with preserving traditional church functions and more with the general welfare of people. It’s as if we have no more confidence that the Church can survive because we are afraid of the world’s successes against traditional Christian bastions. So we operate from a position of desperation instead of from our position of strength in which all the riches of heaven are on our side.

What is today’s Church saying about the ethics of hiring people simply so those people can have a job? And how can this NOT have an impact on the Church itself? The starving man is more concerned with food than with the Gospel, but give him that food in the name of Jesus and his ears will suddenly open to the message of Christ. We see this demonstrated again and again in the Gospels and the Book of Acts.

What is the need? Meet the need. Then speak about Jesus. It could not be more simple.

In addition, the Church has decided in the last century that it has nothing to say to corporate leaders about other aspects of employee welfare. And where is the boldness, in the midst of the ongoing ethical meltdown in big business, from a Church that should be able to promise those businesses that if they give them their people, the Church can return a more ethical employee?

Instead, the primary Church goal is relegated to fighting the corporation to ensure that a handful of employees can enjoy a lunch break Bible study in a back room someplace. Yes, that may be needful, but God help us, the vision is so vanishingly small!

What tech has done to the workplace and general employment MUST be something the Church, like it once did 100 years ago, speaks to.

Tech is increasingly outpacing the ethical answers the Church once provided to society. In other news, it is now possible to print guns with 3D printers, those printers available to the average consumer. What does this or any other tech-driven issue mean for the Church?

Are we Christians asking these questions? If so, where are the answers?

Is the Church simply in survival mode—or are we Christians actively working toward addressing the most intractable issues of our day, issues that, in the end, affect every person on the planet?

If the Church can’t answer these questions, who will?