Bookmarks: Completely wrong • Another white monster
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The big graphic at the very top of the article is a photo of Joel Osteen, and author John Ellis names him as the #1 “wolf;” so I’ll respond to what Ellis has to say about Osteen first.
As to Joel Osteen
I know very little about Osteen. I know a lot about what they say who condemn him. And like all the rest of them, Ellis never quotes anything he says verbatim. The condemners condemn what they say he says, but never actually say what it is he says. Compare Free Speech Handbook Guideline #11, “Deal with exactly what the person says.”
What Ellis does say deserves to be alarming: that the indication that God wants folk to prosper, runs directly contrary to what Ellis calls a focal teaching of the Gospel, namely “that Christ [sic] followers are called to suffer.”
Suffer what?
Poverty? Cancer? Alcoholism? Dementia?
If disability and chronic pain are what Jesus calls us to, then one puzzles that Jesus engaged in so much healing. See, for example, Luke 13:10-16.
As to Jim Wallis
The other “wolf” with whom I am familiar is Jim Wallis. As Ellis mentions, Wallis isn’t a household name among evangelicals. Nonetheless, in Ellis’s view, he is really, really bad.
“Further, as a prominent figure in the Red Letter Christian movement, Wallis explicitly denies the inerrancy of the entire Bible. Briefly, Red Letter Christians run roughshod over the Bible’s clear teaching that the entire book is the word of God (Jesus).”
Except to the extent that so-called Red Letter Christians have a political agenda, I am probably a Red Letter Christian, too, focusing on the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels. The Bible itself has no such “clear teaching that the entire book is the word of God,” unless, via circular reasoning, one begins with the premise that it’s so.
For example, Chaplain Sam, who for a few months preached to us one night a month in chapel at the shelter where I stay, once began his presentation this way: he held up a Bible and said, “Let’s pretend that every word in this book is historical fact.” And he proceeded with his discourse from there. Problem: as with every other preacher who presents to us in chapel, it is a big game of “let’s pretend.” Never is there any consideration of how the world might look apart from such pretense. Accordingly, all the non-believers among us simply go on non-believing; and I, for one, can’t blame them.
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Here again, I would say to the mother:
If you don’t want the child enough to get married, you don’t want the child enough.
Reblogged 09/26/24.
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