Echoes in Eternity

For your viewing pleasure this morning...

In unrelated news, Chuck Norris just returned from his vacation in Pakistan.

This looks like a promising new show.

Recently, a friend sent me an email urging me to sign this petition against the upcoming "JC" comedy series on Comedy Central. Now, I am certainly sympathetic to the urge to protest/boycott/verbally excoriate this program, particularly considering that it comes on the heals of Comedy Central's cowardly censorship of images of Muhammad on South Park a couple weeks ago. Comedy Central is baldly hypocritical, and everyone now knows it. For a cable station that prides itself in its parodies, it's ironically fallen into self-parody itself. What's worse, it shows them to be the true xenophobes and bigots, since by their cowardice they imply that Muslims are uncontrollably violent. So yeah, Comedy Central is full of a bunch of hypocritical racist lefties... what else is new?

My primary concern, though, is that Christians not respond foolishly (cause let's face it, we have a recent history overflowing with examples of just that... Harry Potter, anyone?) and unwittingly heap even more scorn and shame on the name of Christ than will be thrown on it by the new sitcom. I'm not sure if a petition or boycott is the best way to make God's name great in our culture. Either of those may have their place on occasion, as they can help the petitioned group or company obtain a clearer picture of just how many people aren't pleased with their actions. But other times, boycotts merely act as a promotional tool for whatever is being protested, particularly when it's regarding a medium like books or television shows. After all, what person doesn't want to keep up with the hottest water cooler topics? So there's the utilitarian argument against boycotts; you'll just end up making it more popular than it would have been otherwise.

Another and vastly more important argument against (most) boycotts, petitions, and rabidly-upset Christians in general is this: the Bible seems to call for a different response in the face of persecution (Matt. 5:44-45). And lest we forget, the persecution faced by Christians in the New Testament was a tad tougher than hearing about some irreverent cable show.

So how should a Christian respond? This guy and this guy give some great advice.

Put down the boycott signs. Jesus promised mockery, abuse, and suffering for his name so this ain't no big shocker. Possible responses:

1. Pray for the creators of this show.

2. Ignore it by not watching it. Flag waving and sign-holding protests oftentimes don't accomplish much other than more hype and hype sells.

3. Use it as a conversation starter with your co-workers. Ask them what they think of it. Why Jesus and not other religious figures throughout history?

4. Remember that Christianity grew out of the most abusive and violently oppressive regime known to man (The Roman Empire). If Rome couldn't stop Jesus and his mission, Comedy Central probably doesn't pose much of a threat.

First, some Christians are going to be mad. . . . very mad at Comedy Central. That anger will be fueled by the fact that Comedy Central censored South Park in light of threats of violence from Muslims upset over that series' depiction of Muhammad. But I wonder if we should ultimately be more sad than mad? Should we be angry that the people at Comedy Central are doing this? Or should we be sad over the condition of the hearts from which their actions come?

Second, if the show does make it into the fall lineup, I'm sure it will develop a huge following, particularly among teenaged and young adult males. This is just the kind of irreverent cartoon humor that's been lining them up for years. They've been groomed by South Park and Family Guy. Sadly, this army of followers will include those who proclaim allegiance to the very God who the show grossly misrepresents and blasphemes. It will be another in a long line of examples of how integration of faith into all of life is waning.

Third, God's big enough to take care of Himself. The day after the premiere episode of JC airs, the God who remains the same yesterday, today, and forever will not have changed.

Fourth, that unchanging God is the God we need to proclaim to our kids. I sometimes wonder if our anger might not be sparked by the fact that too many of our Christian kids fall for this kind of stuff. . . . which might actually be an indicator of the fact that we haven't prepared them to filter this kind of stuff with any sense of discernment long before shows like JC are even conceptualized. Without knowing the truth, one has no ability to discern lies.

Finally, I wonder how much we're like the folks at Reveille, the production company that's got JC in the works? They're reinventing God in their image. The Father and Son in JC will bear little resemblence to the Father who revealed Himself to His creation in the written and incarnate Word. Don't we (the church) have a pretty successful track record of doing and still doing the same? I'm wondering if that's the thing that should concern us the most.{emphasis added}

So when this story hits the Christian airwaves in the coming weeks, consider carefully how God would have you respond. Do you want to be a clanging cymbal?

"Don't give me that you snotty-faced heap of parrot droppings!"

Today is the 35th anniversary of the U.S. release of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Dalrymple wrote a great piece for the Wall Street Journal this past Saturday, focusing his attention on the increasingly immense (no pun intended) problem of obesity around the globe.

In the West, the march (or waddle) of obesity is in step with other social (or antisocial) developments. Obesity in Britain, for example, has increased pari passu with the splintering of families: and now it is never too early to teach children lack of self-control.

The connection between the fragmentation of the family and obesity is easy to understand. Of course, there is no one-to-one correspondence between the two phenomena—in human affairs there never is such a close fit—but there is nevertheless a strong and comprehensible correspondence.

For much of the population, family meals are a ritual of the past: Thirty-six percent of British children never eat a meal at a table with another member of their family or household (we have now passed the milestone long desired by radical social reformers, more children being born illegitimate than legitimate). In the homes of the poor, the unemployed and the single parents that I used to visit as a doctor, I would find no evidence of cooking ever having been done there. Fatty take-away meals and ready-prepared foods heated in the microwave were the diet, together with almost constant snacks. There was not even a table to eat at: an absence that was not the consequence of raw poverty, since the flat-screen television would have been large enough, turned horizontal, to serve as a dining table.

In these circumstances, children graze or forage; but unlike previous hunter gatherers, they do not come up against a scarcity of food, but rather a surfeit of it. Nothing is easier for them than to overindulge, and the appetite grows with the feeding. Their tastes never develop beyond the most instantly gratifying types of food, sugary and fatty, and they eat like children for the rest of their lives; they never learn the discipline of subordinating their appetite to the exigencies of family life and social convention. They are like Pooh Bear, for whom it is always time for a little something. It is hardly surprising if, like Pooh Bear's, their waistlines expand until they can't fit into a normal seat.

Family and social meals are among the most powerful teachers of self-control in the human repertoire. They teach that the appetite of the moment is not, or rather ought not to be, the sole determinant of one's behavior. The pattern of grazing or foraging independently of everyone else teaches precisely the opposite lesson. It is hardly surprising that those who do not experience family or social meals early in life exhibit the lack of self-control that underlies so much modern social pathology in the midst of plenty.

On a lighter, related note, here is a classic discussion of family mealtime.

Interest in your bold rejection of social norms as evidenced by your dyed hair.

This is the most ingenious video ever. It reminded me of the smartest song ever.

"One day, kids, you too will be able to eloquently read someone else's tendentious speeches off teleprompter screens."

Here is a really sad article about C&E (Christmas and Easter) Christians.

In case you've had your head in the sand recently, our venerable Commander in Chief Barry Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize last Monday. The timing of the announcement came about 36 hours after Saturday Night Live had eviscerated the president in its opening skit (see here for the hilarity). As if imbued with an incredible sense of comedic timing itself, CNN quickly FACT-CHECKED the SNL routine. Oh, for the days when they would just laugh along when SNL ripped Bush. Now they're stuck defending their messiah to their own liberal brethren.

Mark Steyn had this to say about this new turn of events.

The most popular headline at the Real Clear Politics website the other day was: “Is Obama Becoming A Joke?” With brilliant comedic timing, the very next morning the Norwegians gave him the Nobel Peace Prize.

Up next: His stunning victory in this year’s Miss World contest. December 12th, Johannesburg. You read it here first.
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Given the [CNN's] ever more exhaustive absence of viewers among the non-flight-delayed demographic, perhaps Wolf could make it a regular series.
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Reflecting the new harmony of US-world relations since the administration hit the “reset” button, The Times of London declared the award “preposterous” and Svenska Freds (the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society) called it “shameful.”

There’s something almost quaintly vieux chapeau [old hat] about the Nobel decision, as if the hopeychangey bumper stickers were shipped surface mail to Oslo and only arrived last week. Everywhere else, they’re peeling off: The venerable lefties at Britain’s New Statesman currently have a cover story on “Barack W Bush”.
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In a recent speech to the Manhattan Institute, Charles Krauthammer pointed out that, in diminishing American power abroad to advance statism at home, Obama and the American people will be choosing decline.

There are legitimate questions about our war aims in Afghanistan, and about the strategy necessary to achieve them. But eight years after being toppled, the Taliban will see their return to power as a great victory over the Great Satan, and so will the angry young men from Toronto to Yorkshire to Chechnya to Indonesia who graduated from Afghanistan’s Camp Jihad during the 1990s.

And so will the rest of the world: They will understand that the modern era’s ordnungsmacht (the “order maker”) has chosen decline.

Barack Obama will have history’s most crowded trophy room, but his presidency is shaping up as a tragedy — for America and the world.

This video is spreading like wildfire on the internet, so you may have already seen it. Needless to say, this wedding from here in the Twin Cities is... AWESOME!