Farrago Line

Samaritan Question

Question: What would the Good Samaritan have done had he come across his charge while the marauders were beating him?

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Friends of God

Rebecca Cusey reviews Alexandra Pelosi's (yes, her daughter) documentary: Friends of God: A Roadtrip with Alexandra Pelosi.

"Pelosi makes a genuine effort to understand what motivates these God-minded fellow countrymen and, in the process, gives Evangelicals the chance to see themselves as others see them."

Cusey says Pelosi doesn't, ultimately, get it. And offers this reason:

To those who have never been a part of evangelicalism, the lingo, the constant referrals to the Bible, the personal lifestyles defined mainly by their biblically imposed limits, religious passion, even the pure power of thousands of people at a rally, can be terrifying. Evangelicals would do well to understand this, not to conform to the broader culture, but to speak a language those outside the church can understand.

Amen?

In a skit I saw several years ago in church,  the main character is a Christian who's out evangelizing by interupting people on the street and asking them: "Have you been washed in the blood of the lamb?"

Appropriately, his victims recoil in horror.

Last night at Bible study (Romans), the following question was asked of the group: (paraphrase) how can Christians help lead Jews to faith? All the responses had to do with fashioning a better argument. One guy noted how strenuously the Jewish man he sought to engage in discussion of the Christ avoided the topic altogether. Another seemed to say that Reformed and atheistic Jews were easier to approach and convert than the Orthodox variety.  Or vice versa. I couldn't tell for certain. The rest of the discussion had to do with framing the pitch. Nobody offered a less verbal alternative: shut up and act like Jesus.

What would turn more heads: laying out our theology, or laying down our lives.

Why is it in my Bible study, nobody said: "Be his friend"?

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Belief Gap

Brian Caplan at Econlog proffers a theory about the religious gender gap.

Last week I stumbled upon a little gem outside of Larry Iannaccone's office: a chapter by Rodney Stark and Alan Miller on the religious gender gap. Long story short: Women are more religious than men by virtually every measure in virtually every culture.

But the fun doesn't stop there. Once people admit that this gender gap exists, the most popular explanation is that women are "socialized" to be more religious. Stark and Miller put this theory to the test. If the socialization hypothesis is true, they reason, then the gender gap should be larger in more traditional societies where socialization pressure is more intense. Make sense to me.

But no!

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Perfect Example

This "what if" ditty about Jesus having a son is a perfect example of something.

I can't decide what.

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Creed and deed

From a story by Liz Kay in the Baltimore Sun quoting a rabbi:

"Unlike Christianity, Judaism is not a dogmatic spiritual tradition. You don't have to believe anything to be a Jew," Kushner said in an interview before the talk.

Rather, actions are more important. "Christianity is a tradition of creed," he said. "Judaism is a tradition of deed."
-Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, the San Francisco-based author of books about Jewish spirituality

Is that -- any of that -- true?

New atheists

Sam Schulman writes about atheism's contemporary proselytizers, in this Wall Street Journal piece.

From Schulman's article:

For the new atheists, believing in God is a form of stupidity, which sets off their own intelligence. They write as if they were the first to discover that biblical miracles are improbable, that Parson Weems was a fabulist, that religion is full of superstition. They write as if great minds had never before wrestled with the big questions of creation, moral law and the contending versions of revealed truth. They argue as if these questions are easily answered by their own blunt materialism. Most of all, they assume that no intelligent, reflective person could ever defend religion rather than dismiss it. The reviewer of Dr. Dawkins's volume in a recent New York Review of Books noted his unwillingness to take theology seriously, a starting point for any considered debate over religion.

The article is worth a read. It brought to mind several questions. None of them new. One is, Why do atheists care what others believe? And if those of us who believe in God do so because we are stupid, wouldn't we be stupid atheists? I mean, do intelligent atheists really want to hang out with me, gullible as I am?

What God are these new proselytizers talking about? Have they defined God? Or is it religion they have a problem with? It seems, from Schulman's article, that the atheists' problem is with religion, not God. But that doesn't make much sense. On the other hand, I suppose it's much easier (and takes less intellectual energy) to argue against religion and religious practices than it does to argue against God. All religious practice is pointless (I guess) if there is no God.

Schulman describes atheists as intellectual bullies. In effect, they don't argue against God or religion so much as call believers stupid.

Where have we heard that before?

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Pulling the theological plug

In Wired, a story about the death of poet Piergiorgio Welby, who, being terminally ill sought relief from the machines that kept him alive.

Wired author Tony Long asks:

What's "natural" about keeping someone hooked up to life support when, without extraordinary technical intervention, he would simply die?

Then he avers the following: (parenthetical remark mine; italic emphasis mine)

Not that it really matters (what the Church thinks or says on the issue). This is an ethical question, not a theological one, and the underlying issue is technology. Because of what's possible, knowing when to "pull the plug" on a terminally ill patient isn't as clear as it used to be. Doctors can go to some pretty extreme lengths to keep patients alive these days.

Why is this not a question for theology? Certainly "it" has ethical and technological aspects, also medical ones, also journalistic ones. How does the fact of those aspects exclude a theological consideration?

More on this question later.

(note: I am not, at this point, arging with Mr. Long, or anyone, over the right or wrong of the case of pulling the plug on Mr. Piergiorgio. I am only asking: why is this not a consideration of theology?)

Enunciation

What I want to know is, how'd I spend my whole life slurring my speech and generally practicing a poorer enunciation of my beloved language than I was amply taught not to do and then wind up in the heavily audio medium of podcasts?

Smacks of irony.

Coming up on Blography, by the way: Ronni Bennett of Time Goes By, and Doc Searls of Doc Searls Weblog.

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Look at him

Darren, of Look at me I'm so important that I have a blog, does a great Blography pod.

He may, in fact, be the first person to use the term "poo-poo" in a podcast.

Darren's a great daily read, good writer all around. Well worth going through his past posts. And one more thing: Chipotle has no idea what a PR champion it has in this guy.

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More Derb on God

More Derb on God, here.

More on this later. It's election day. I feel like I should maybe spend more time praying to God than talking about him.

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