Just a reminder

I'm blogging over at exurbanleague.com now.

One more at-bat

A surprisingly symapthetic tale of Billy Graham, coming out of retirement for one last message.

I've made it known far and wide I respect the heck out of Billy. He's got his priorities right on the battle between culture and religion.

Ahhhhh! Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!

Hollywoodjesus.com.

That's right: Hollywood. Jesus.

Sigh.
Somehow, this doesn't doesn't jibe with

"Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not."

Via Crunchy Con.

Rated PG for Christian Content

Ok, while I'll admit that parts of the Old Testament are at best a "Hard R", rating "Facing the Giants" as a PG film because "... the movie was heavily laden with messages from one religion and that this might offend people from other religion" seems more than a bit off.

Is Little Bhudda a PG movie for this reason, too?

Sooner or later,

it all comes down to C.S. Lewis.

And in Mere Christianity, there's a passage that speaks directly to the controversy around The DaVinci Code's claims that Christ was human and not divine.

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

Full commitment

Via the Crunchy Con blog is this wonderful refutation of those who would claim the DaVinci Code has revealed some ancient truth that overturns the Gospel of Christ.

"From the very beginnings of the Church the faithful were tortured and put to death because they believed the Gospel was true and because they refused to deny this truth, and the same witness has been given throughout the history of the Church up to and including the present day. Gnosticism, by contrast, never produced martyrs, and was somewhat embarrassed by its collaborationist tendency already in the time of Valerian. Today's Gnostics are no different. When someone assures you he thinks the The Da Vinci Code tells the real story of Jesus, ask him: 'Would you go to your death for the belief that Dan Brown has it right?' If he says no, the conclusion is obvious: 'Ah, I see. You weren't talking about truth. You meant to say that life would easier for you if the Catholic Church were wrong.'"

Reminds me of the story of a pig and chicken discussing what faith in action really meant. They passed by a restaurant offering a special on bacon eggs. "Look", said the pig, "this is what I'm talking about. Your contribution to that breakfast is a sacrifice. To me, it means total commitment!"

Sigh.

In the old days, the Church gave out salvation based on the amount of money they donated.

Now, we give out iPods to get them to come to church.

I give you: The Reverse Indulgence.