Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition

I agree that eliminating unplanned and unwanted pregnancies is the crux of the matter. I recently read that more than 200 million women in the world would like to have access to contraceptives but do not. I do not recall any details about how they collected the data or why the women could not get contraceptives. I assume a lot of it has to do with where the women live, availability of contraceptives, and poverty. Obviously having contraceptives available is a good place to start for those who do not walk a Christian walk. Perhaps taxing the profits made by the abortion industry or redirecting tax dollars earmarked for abortion could help finance an initiative that provides contraceptives to those who need it.

For Christians, specifically the body of Christ (i.e., those who have received Christ as Lord and Savior and believe He is the Son of God), God has a better way. Nevertheless, as Christians we really can't expect the world to live like God expects us to live or embrace what we embrace. So if the world is willing to discourage abortion by other means, I am all for it. The fact that the acceptance of abortion is slowly creeping into the church and it is being viewed as morally justifiable is the problem I feel most inclined to address as one called to uphold the truth of Christ.

On whether or not government health care is another avenue to help eliminate abortion I have no opinion at the moment. I tend to think it would not lower abortions significantly in the U.S. I also find it odd that you think health care in Canada and Europe is free. People may have access to it at no cost to them, but someone is paying for it.

To avoid abortion, health care professionals advocate educating children and teens about sexuality and development with an age-appropriate program. This includes contraception and disease prevention and has been proven in high schools to delay onset of sexual activity compared to "abstinence education" type courses. For adult women, free or low-cost contraceptives and regular well-woman check-ups are provided on a sliding scale fee by many clinics, including Planned Parenthood. In Canada and Europe, health care is free and fewer abortions are performed, partly because of the above measures. These discourage abortion by eliminating unplanned pregnancies.

Perhaps Paige is preparing to celebrate the 90th anniversary of fundamentalist pastor J. Frank Norris's (First Baptist - Fort Worth) shooting that man in his office. In self defense, of course.

I agree that eliminating unplanned and unwanted pregnancies is the crux of the matter. I recently read that more than 200 million women in the world would like to have access to contraceptives but do not. I do not recall any details about how they collected the data or why the women could not get contraceptives. I assume a lot of it has to do with where the women live, availability of contraceptives, and poverty. Obviously having contraceptives available is a good place to start for those who do not walk a Christian walk. Perhaps taxing the profits made by the abortion industry or redirecting tax dollars earmarked for abortion could help finance an initiative that provides contraceptives to those who need it.

For Christians, specifically the body of Christ (i.e., those who have received Christ as Lord and Savior and believe He is the Son of God), God has a better way. Nevertheless, as Christians we really can't expect the world to live like God expects us to live or embrace what we embrace. So if the world is willing to discourage abortion by other means, I am all for it. The fact that the acceptance of abortion is slowly creeping into the church and it is being viewed as morally justifiable is the problem I feel most inclined to address as one called to uphold the truth of Christ.

On whether or not government health care is another avenue to help eliminate abortion I have no opinion at the moment. I tend to think it would not lower abortions significantly in the U.S. I also find it odd that you think health care in Canada and Europe is free. People may have access to it at no cost to them, but someone is paying for it.

Diane, I respect that you are uncomfortable with using military vehicles and weapons as a metaphor for spreading the gospel. I have often questioned motivations or methods when others are witnessing in a way that is uncomfortable for me. However when I read Philippians 1:15-18 I hear Paul being incredibly optimistic. The text reads: It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. The latter do so in love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice. It seems that the Gospel is bigger than any one method or ministry, and if it can even rise above selfishness, competition and envy it certainly can rise above military metaphors. After reading Paul I cannot stand back and judge their methods and motives. I must simply pray that all of Christ is being preached.

Much as I support second amendment rights, and a strong defense, I have to admit this is just a wee bit over-the-top.

LV

This is not even funny and all Christians should be appalled.

At first I was appalled. And I mostly agree with the sentiments expressed by the author and the responders.

But then it occurred to me that this is metaphor. I have often criticized Biblical interpretations for being taken literally when they have been intended as metaphor. Now the shoe is on the other foot--perhaps I don't like the metaphor, but it would be a mistake to think this church means to literally convert people at the point of a gun. They are talking not about physical battle, but spiritual battle.

That said, do I think this was a wise use of metaphor? Not at all. Especially within a culture that is filled with guns and violence, and especially when people often don't understand metaphor and might take this literally. That, and the metaphor itself, especially in the way it was presented, glorifies violence and warfare, and appeals to the baser aspects of our humanity.

It is ironic that such metaphor is used to promote Christ's Gospel of peace. Even more ironic is that such metaphor is found in Scripture, (eg Ephesians, or the Word of God being referred to as a Sword).

While I'm disturbed by the military metaphors, especially, as Squeaky indicates, in the face of a culture that finds violence entertaining and that is full of guns, what is equally bothersome to me is the apparent borrowing from our culture's pervasive immersion in advertising and marketing. When you boil this whole thing down, after all, what we're looking at here is a marketing gimmick.

This notion of "marketing" the Gospel and evangelizing through advertising, of course, is nothing new in our culture. I've seen it before. It almost never works, and it frequently backfires.

I wonder what the residents of Seminary Hill, Christian or non-Christian alike, will think when they realize they have become the target of an intense evangelism campaign. How, I wonder, will they feel about their academic neighbor as these "soldiers" start going out and knocking on doors. The sentence attributed to Francis of Assisi comes to mind: "Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words." I wonder if the seminary dedicated themselves to serving their neighbors in love--whatever that might be: delivering hot meals, home repairs, weeding, car repairs, babysitting, whatever--rather than going door to door with an evangelistic sales pitch, would be far more effective as an evangelism tool.

Perhaps Paige is preparing to celebrate the 90th anniversary of fundamentalist pastor J. Frank Norris's (First Baptist - Fort Worth) shooting that man in his office. In self defense, of course.

Canucklehead, I think you may be onto something there. Life would be so much simpler if we were to follow Brother Pat's advice. Sometimes it might require human intervention to "take out" the object of our intent; at other times (as in the case of the Dover school board), we may have to depend on divine intervention. If only Moses had some automatic rifles, he and the Israelites could have faced those Egyptians down at the Red Sea.

If some Muslim group had pulled a stunt like this, your American media would be all over them and you know it. This was a foolish publicity pitch and Paige should be ashamed of himself.

Diane, I respect that you are uncomfortable with using military vehicles and weapons as a metaphor for spreading the gospel. I have often questioned motivations or methods when others are witnessing in a way that is uncomfortable for me. However when I read Philippians 1:15-18 I hear Paul being incredibly optimistic. The text reads: It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. The latter do so in love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice. It seems that the Gospel is bigger than any one method or ministry, and if it can even rise above selfishness, competition and envy it certainly can rise above military metaphors. After reading Paul I cannot stand back and judge their methods and motives. I must simply pray that all of Christ is being preached.

Well, Paige is the gentleman who was head of the Southern Baptist Conference a decade ago, spearheading the successful effort to remove the example of Jesus' life and words being central to living life and understanding scripture from the Southern Baptist Statement of Faith.

This was done in the interest of the supremacy of scripture, according to Paige's allies, emphasizing Christ's central but ceremonial role in salvation while thereby de-emphasizing any of his words or personal example as no more than equal, say, to those of King David or any other part of the Word of God.

This was seen as controversial, since this was something entirely new, to de-emphasize Jesus' own teachings, interpreation and personal example offering definitive interpretation of the rest of scripture.

Despite the Southern Baptist checkered past of the denomination having come into existence as a cultural defense of Southern slavery, this was an abandonment of a long previously held position, so it did cause considerable friction within the denomination.

I can't help but think essentially denigrating Jesus' core teachings of Matthew 5, 6 and 7 and Jesus' own personal character as the highest aspiration for ourselves, contributed to recent Southern Baptist leadership's moral ambivalence about such issues as torture and terror bombing of enemy civilian populations, as well as other issues.

A side effect of this canard of honoring the supremacy of scripture by giving all of scripture equal weight, whether or not intended (but I think it is) is to Constantinize the denomination even further than during its regional founding into a tribal, nationalistic "War Jesus" religion of idolatry, domination and violence, quite contrary to Jesus' example and clear commands to us.

Thus Paige's zealotry remains nothing if not consistent - but you can see how in reality, far from being conservative, Paige and his allies are radicals, for this is quite a revolutionary change to understanding traditional Baptist theology.

I'm surprised that Rev. Patterson did not lift that 50 cal machine gun while quoting Charlton Heston's famous "from my cold dead hands" speech.

May God protect us from ministers like this.

There are, of course, Baptists in Texas who aren't on board with this. They are the traditional Baptists, or, as many of them would prefer to say, the "real" Baptists. Just sayin'.

By all means. And while we're at it, Let's clean up all those smutty references in Song of Songs. We can't trust people to recognize metaphors, and who knows, some of those seminary students may get confused and start killing their neighbors, rather than knocking on doors and handing out religious tracts.

This is the kind of simplistic character assassination disguised as "analysis" I expect from the MSNBC crowd, not from Sojourners.

Is there seriously anyone in America over the age of consent who hasn't heard some gospel? Who doesn't know about Jesus? Who can't find a church if they want to do so?

It seems evangelism is less about bringing people to Christ and more about bringing people to the evangelizer's church.

While I'm disturbed by the military metaphors, especially, as Squeaky indicates, in the face of a culture that finds violence entertaining and that is full of guns, what is equally bothersome to me is the apparent borrowing from our culture's pervasive immersion in advertising and marketing. When you boil this whole thing down, after all, what we're looking at here is a marketing gimmick.

This notion of "marketing" the Gospel and evangelizing through advertising, of course, is nothing new in our culture. I've seen it before. It almost never works, and it frequently backfires.

I wonder what the residents of Seminary Hill, Christian or non-Christian alike, will think when they realize they have become the target of an intense evangelism campaign. How, I wonder, will they feel about their academic neighbor as these "soldiers" start going out and knocking on doors. The sentence attributed to Francis of Assisi comes to mind: "Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words." I wonder if the seminary dedicated themselves to serving their neighbors in love--whatever that might be: delivering hot meals, home repairs, weeding, car repairs, babysitting, whatever--rather than going door to door with an evangelistic sales pitch, would be far more effective as an evangelism tool.

e_I

I agree. It's called competition and it's as American as mom and apple pie. But you see, it's easier to pick the low-hanging fruit by featuring the latest gospel hit from the Billboards or highlighting some spiritual phenomena (like holy laughter). Maybe Barnum and Bailey were on to something?

Quote:"

If some Muslim group had pulled a stunt like this, your American media would be all over them and you know it. This was a foolish publicity pitch and Paige should be ashamed of himself.

I'm surprised that Rev. Patterson did not lift that 50 cal machine gun while quoting Charlton Heston's famous "from my cold dead hands" speech.

May God protect us from ministers like this.

Thanks for the link Diane. I can't wait to send "Taking the Hill." to my pastor and hopefully get my own church involved. How often have I read on Sojo that you must take things in "context"??? And now when there is something that is obviously a metaphor, you rip the guy.

The apostle Paul used the same metaphor when talking about spiritual WARFARE. Praise God for a church that is so concerned with reaching the lost. Consumed with those around them who are dying and going to hell. And ready to battle Satan who hates them and wants to devour them. It IS warfare. And it's not about guns and violence. Its about prayer, fasting, the word and the Gospel.

How can someone who calls themself a Christian focus on the metaphor and not the fact that this group is on fire to spread the Gospel???

Setting aside the politics of this blog...left or right...heathcare or not. Can those who name the name of Jesus not agree that the spreading of the GOSPEL is THE calling of all of us???

Ephesians 6:
* 10.
* Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.

* 11.
* Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.

* 12.
* For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

* 13.
* Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.

* 14.
* Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place,

* 15.
* and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.

* 16.
* In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

* 17.
* Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

* 18.
* And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

* 19.
* Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel,

* 20.
* for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.