If you’re an avid reader of Christian blogs, you’ve probably run across Stuff Christians Like more times than you can count in the past few weeks. I happen to like the John Acuff’s oft-witty always insightful observations about the church.

Yesterday he wrote about Christians counting swearing in movies:

I have some friends that are like the Siskel and Ebert of movie profanity. (I know that one of them is dead, but if I said “Siskel and Roper” I’m not sure the opener would have worked the same way.) Whenever I ask them how a movie was, the first thing they say is, “It was pretty good, but it had 14 swears. Couple of S’s, one GD, seven F’s and one MF.”

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Why give other sinful things a free pass? Why just pick on swearing? Shouldn’t we also count things like idolatry? Anytime someone in a movie drives a really nice car or lives in a home bigger than us and we feel a little jealous of their life, that should count as one “idol.” I mean every super hero movie on the planet is written so that men in the audience think, “It would be so cool to be that guy.” Sorry Iron Man. Or stealing, anytime someone steals a car in a movie to chase down a bad guy that should count as stealing.

Such a good point to ponder really. I’ve often wondered about this very thing in relation to violence as well. It seems that depictions of murder are far more acceptable than depictions of sex.

So, is there a hierarchy of acceptability with the depiction of sin in movies? Is there a line that a movie has to cross in order to become unacceptable? Other thoughts?

Just a reminder, Mother’s Day is Sunday! And if you’re tired of your church replacing “Father” with “Mother” as they sing that depressing song, here’s an updated version:

Faith of our mothers, living yet,
after church meetings, house-breaking pets,
Car-pooling Little League, lessons at 2,
None would get done if it weren’t for you.
Faith of our mothers! Holy faith!
We will be true to you always.

Faith of our mothers, living still,
in spite of doc’tring others while ill,
Working long hours and dinner at 5,
Only by God’s grace are they alive!
Faith of our mothers! Holy faith!
We will be true to you always.

Faith of our mothers passed on to each
child and grandchild, nephew and niece,
Sharing their faith, their hope, and their love,
Grant them your strength and peace from above.
Faith of our mothers! Holy faith!
We will be true to you always.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Copyright © 1993 James N. Watkins

If you follow the news at all, you can’t possibly have missed the Barack Obama/Jeremiah Wright controversy that cropped up again a few weeks ago. To sum it up very quickly, Wright is the pastor and spiritual mentor to Obama who caused a stir by publicly stating a lot of, uh, controversial things. Obama has condemned Wright’s more outrageous remarks, but the question has been raised “If Wright was saying crazy things from the pulpit all these years, why didn’t you just leave the church?”

We haven’t really delved into this controversy here at TC, mainly because we’re not a political blog. But putting aside the political angle of this issue, there’s a worthwhile spiritual question in there: would you leave your church if your pastor held views you found erroneous, misguided or even a little bit crazy?

Let’s make the question a little more focused:

Assume for the sake of discussion that you are very happy with your church and have found it to be an excellent place of fellowship and spiritual growth. Your pastor preaches the Gospel and leads worship in a Biblical manner. But on one issue—maybe it’s a particular theological belief, his political opinions, or whatever—you think he’s totally out to lunch. And he has stated this view publicly.

What would you do? Would you leave if you thought your pastor was in error about a non-salvation issue? Would you stay at the church and just try to ignore it, because the pastor is doing such a good job otherwise? Something in between?

That’s our new poll for the week. Vote in the poll off to the right, and please share your thoughts below!

As for the last poll, about whether or not Christians should attend religious services outside of their faith, over 300 of you voted, and the results were surprisingly almost tied. 51% feel that no, Christians should not attend non-Christian services, while 49% don’t see a problem with it.

[HT: Tall Skinny Kiwi]

The Q and A is about 40 minutes into the video.

Any thoughts?

From the “sobering and upsetting” file: there’s a new book out by investigative reporter Benjamin Skinner that lays out the horrifying prevalence of human slavery today. (In addition to the NPR story, read the excellent reaction and further commentary at On the Square.)

The book (a short excerpt of which you can read at the NPR link above) sets out to smash any lingering hope you might have that slavery is a thing of the past. Skinner didn’t just compile other people’s research, either; he marched right into the pit of modern-day slavery to find out how widespread the problem really is:

Southeast of Port-au-Prince, Skinner quickly finds a slave broker, and in this “banal” conversation—he told NPR it was “as if I was negotiating on the street for a used stereo”—Skinner asks for a nine- to twelve-year-old to cook and clean for him.

[He proceeds to negotiate the price down to $50.] “Here, 600 miles from the United States, and five hours from the desk of the UN Secretary-General,” summarizes Skinner, “you have successfully bargained a human being down to the price of the cab fare to JFK.” Benavil even offered fake adoption papers to transport the girl to the United States. This took place not in the remote past but in October 2005.

The On the Square post also talks at length about what Skinner learned of the state of prostitution around the world. I doubt most of you have any sort of romantic Pretty Woman ideas about prostitution, but if you do, Skinner’s findings dash those as well. Surprise, prostitution in most of the world is pretty much the same thing as slavery:

A majority of the prostitutes in a 2003 study had severe post-traumatic stress disorder. Most were clinically depressed. As John Miller often pointed out, 90 percent wanted to leave prostitution. And among trafficking victims, 95 percent of whom were physically or sexually abused, the situation was even graver.

The United States is not free of the problem, as was lately shown in the case of 52 Indian workers forced to live and work at an Oklahoma factory in conditions you could reasonably call slavery.

A bit of googling turned up an extensive list of organizations that are fighting slavery, sex trafficking, and related abuses. It’s good to know that there are people and organizations fighting modern-day slavery, and that Christians are actively involved in the pursuit of justice. But even so… come quickly, Lord Jesus!

The BBC is reporting that 22,000 have died and 41,000 are missing from Cyclone Nargis which hit the coast of Burma a few days ago.

I found this video of the storm via youtube.com:

Andy posted about this over at the blog on Gospel.com. Read his whole article by clicking here:

It’s difficult to fathom that much death and destruction. And it’s all too easy to chalk it up as another “other side of the world” crisis that doesn’t affect us, and move on to the next headline. But when disasters like this strike, there is tremendous opportunity and need for a Christlike response. Among the many ministries and organizations already responding to the crisis are two from the Gospel.com community:

• Gospel for Asia, which has converted its Bible college in Rangoon into a makeshift shelter for refugees and survivors. They set up the shelter after the local police station was destroyed; it’s currently providing shelter to over 80 people, plus 70 children from a nearby orphanage that was destroyed.

International Aid, which has a lot of experience responding to crises like this, is calling for financial help in organizing a large-scale relief effort.

In addition to these ministries, organizations such as the Red Cross are already reacting to the situation. Consider whether you can help out by supporting one of these relief efforts—and be sure to put the entire situation at the top of your prayer list.

In the coming few days I’m sure there will be more video and information emerging.

Are you planning on helping out in any way? How do you respond to something of this magnitude?

For those working as a pastor or biblical teacher, some advice from the Jesus Creed blog written by Kent Anderson:

I have dealt with everything from murder to suicide to sexual abuse to goofy boards to cranky members to bats in the church to you name it. Knowing this – the one thing I would make sure of if I was starting over again is this – read the Bible.

Oh I read the Bible regularly with some systematic method, but what I mean is to read through the Bible repeatedly every year. Make it a high priority practice. About 12 years ago I began to read the Bible from front to back three times a year. I read it in 20 chapter segments and this takes about an hour a day. I do this 4 – 5 time a week. I change version each time read through it, NIV, NRSV, KJV, NASB, Jerusalem, the Message, whatever. I mark the Bible up and have cheap notebook to jot down my thoughts and questions. There are times when I take a break for a month and do something else but this has been my foundational practice for years.

Why do this? In every other element of my position I know that there are people in the church who know more about leadership and vision casting, finances, building construction and maintenance, pedagogy and the care and feeding of copiers. But I need to know the Bible. I need to know it intimately, its themes (large and small) the people who populate it and its flow. I need to know it personally to be able to carefully use it professionally. The more I read it the more I am drawn to it. And I discover more about myself in reading the Bible. I love Leviticus and its lessons. Judges is the most contemporary book for our land. David is always in trouble in Psalms. The personalities of the gospels are amazing, and Revelation can be breathtaking.

My regret is that I started this practice after 15 years of ministry. But if I were starting over again among all the choices I would have to make, reading the Bible through would be #1.

Despite growing up in bible touting churches, the first time I got all the way through the bible was in college, which is a shame. What are your experiences with setting aside large amounts of time to read the bible every day? Is this advice only for pastors or for everybody? Any other thoughts?

Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments. And if you ever run across a great webcomic we should be reading, let us know. Click on the pictures for larger versions on the respective sites.

This first one is from a site called Cectic. Please keep in mind that Cectic is unabashedly anti-religion, but I do think their comic merits some thought:

ASBO Jesus chimes in on giving:

And here’s one from nakedpastor:

The Thin Edge has a reflection on how much our church services rely on technology:

This past Sunday in Wales, a group of elders gathered at their church building to pray. The ancient stone chapel had been without heating since a group of construction workers shut off the gas supply to the building earlier in the week, then forgot to turn it back on for the weekend. It was judged to be too cold for the morning worship service—scheduled two hours later—so the local telephone lines began blazing with elders contacting members of the church leadership team, who contacted small group leaders, who contacted everyone within their house group. It was decided to meet at an older (and smaller, but warmer) chapel building nearby. I’m not sure if the elders got to pray or not.

Unfortunately, this change of venue caught a lot of people by surprise: especially the church’s musicians, sound engineers, computer operators and the preacher. His entire message was developed as a laptop-based, visually-oriented PowerPoint presentation. Upon arrival at the old building, it was abuzz with people frantically running wires and junction boxes and speakers and a massive sound board so that the keyboard, instruments, singers, and the preacher could be heard in a room that only measured eighteen hundred square feet.

Some of the greatest movements of God happened long before the discovery of electricity, much less the arrival of computer geniuses like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. While I certainly don’t advocate wearing camel’s hair and eating wild locusts and honey, I have to wonder how many worship gatherings this coming Sunday would fall flat if some natural disaster shut down the national grids of electric power in megawatt-hungry church buildings around the globe.

Personally, I kind of like it when things go wrong during worship services. It thrusts our fallibility to the forefront, which is always humbling.

Do you have any great “technological failures in church” stories you’d like to share? What do you think of our reliance on technology? And probably most importantly is this question from The Thin Edge: “Are we more sensitive to the loss of electricity than the presence of the Holy Spirit in our meetings?”

Other thoughts?

So, today is the National Day of Prayer in the U.S. Are you doing anything to mark the day? The NDP Task Force site has a page where you can locate NDP events near you if you want to get involved in a public service of some sort. (Note that the NDP Task Force site, as far as I can tell, is the website that coordinates specifically Christian prayer activities on the day; the NDP includes all faiths.)

Looking through the NDP event search page, I see a lot of local prayer services. But I must confess, one of the most interesting NDP event ideas I’ve seen comes from, of all places, an atheist group. The Center for Atheism in New York is encouraging atheists to go out and donate blood on the National Day of Prayer, rather than praying. It’s obviously intended partly as a political stunt, but it’s a great idea that Christians could certainly go along with: to demonstrate our faith not just by prayer, but also by concrete actions that benefit our neighbors.

Why not do both? By all means, set aside some time today to pray—but consider if you can also go a step further and match your prayer with a charitable action.