Whole Reason

You either love or hate ‘Chick Tracts’ — this doc­u­men­tary is inter­est­ing.  Imag­ine this — over 1 Bil­lion of these have been printed, in over 100 lan­guages.  Jack Chick may be the most suc­cess­ful car­toon­ist, in num­bers of items sold, ever.  And yet, he is not that well known. 

The Chris­t­ian Mus­lim Forum, an inter­faith group, has released what it calls Eth­i­cal Guide­lines for Chris­t­ian and Mus­lim Wit­ness in Britain (PDF).   Inter­est­ingly, some more con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians don’t like a cou­ple of the pro­vi­sions because they fear that it could be used to sti­fle crit­i­cism or even moral con­dem­na­tion of spir­i­tu­al­ity that con­tra­dicts what some would call basic human rights.

If you’d like to hear a spir­ited debate about the guide­lines between a mod­er­ate Chris­t­ian, a mod­er­ate Mus­lim, a Hindu, a Bud­dhist, and a con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian, check out the excel­lent debate at Mus­lim, Chris­t­ian, Hindu debate on evan­ge­lism.

What some are call­ing Ten Com­mand­ments of Mis­sion? are after the jump, with my high­lights and brief commentary.

Read more…

I found this really com­pas­sion­ate up to the part where they say Plas­tic Jesus.  But maybe they didn’t mean to talk down.  Oth­er­wise, very meaningful.

As Amer­ica is fol­low­ing Europe down the grad­ual path of sec­u­lar­iza­tion, Chris­tian­ity is not slow­ing down but merely shift­ing where it is cen­tered. The next great “Chris­t­ian nation” will be China.

Read more…

• Satan and Rock and Roll
  – CrossTV has posted a free ver­sion of their hour-long evan­ge­lis­tic
  doc­u­men­tary link­ing rock and roll with artists who have sold their soul
  to Satan for fame, or have admit­ted that they feel pos­sessed when
  play­ing.  Com­mon old timers are doc­u­mented here, like Robert John­son,
  Black Sab­bath, AC/DC, Led Zep­pelin, and the Grate­ful Dead, but also
  cov­ers  more mod­ern groups like Oasis, Gods­mack, as well as many mod­ern
  rap artists such as Ez-E, Snoop Dog, Method Man, Mas­ter P, DMX.  It’s
  also inter­est­ing how they view Bill Haley’s “Rock around the clock” the
  “tro­jan horse of rock,” which slipped rock by par­ents because of
  Haley’s “inno­cent, uncle-like look.”  I must admit, hav­ing seen the
  sim­i­lar Hell’s Bells
  videos by Eric Holm­berg, I am a lit­tle skep­ti­cal of such scare-tactic
  approaches, but on a purely intel­lec­tual level, these types of
  evan­ge­lis­tic doc­u­men­taries are fas­ci­nat­ing for both their alarmism, their expo­si­tion of artist inter­views and lyrics, and their tie-in with sex­u­al­iz­ing our chil­dren through sex­u­al­ized music by pop­u­lar artists.

Read more…

Since 1998, a young man nick­named “Bike” has rid­den his bicy­cle over 10,500 miles to tell oth­ers about Jesus. He has riden trains for sev­eral days sim­ply so that he can share with other pas­sen­gers about his faith. He hands out busi­ness cards which list his pro­fes­sion as “evan­ge­list.” Bike also has a Bible study that meets in his home.

What makes any of this sig­nif­i­cant? Bike’s home is in Bei­jing, China.

Read more…

The more I ready about inci­dents like that of the Niger­ian teacher whose home was burned to the ground for dis­ci­plin­ing a Mus­lim stu­dent, or any of the other ways that “rad­i­cal” Islam is try­ing to intim­i­date the free world, the more I keep ask­ing myself, what would I do if they were com­ing for me?

I’ll tell you what I would not do — I would not let myself be slaugh­tered like a sheep.  I keep think­ing of the movie The Mis­sion, where Jeremy Irons and Robert Deniro play two Jesuits who have to choose to fight or pas­sively resist — tough choice — it shows the value of both posi­tions (and I think both are valu­able and “right.”)

Read more…

There is an apho­rism which I agree with, which goes like this:

In every crit­i­cism, even from your most hate­ful detrac­tors, there is often a grain of truth. 

This, of course, means that if we are crit­i­cally reflec­tive, we should pay atten­tion to our crit­ics, and deter­mine if there is any­thing that we can improve upon.  How­ever, I’ve found a new use for the Reli­gious left and neo-fundie sites, that often spew crit­i­cism — find­ing cool stuff that I like!  For instance, a bunch of con­ser­v­a­tive sites and new Chris­t­ian House Music.

I haven’t done open-air preach­ing for years, but I remem­ber how much fun it was.  Today at The Reformed Evan­ge­list, Jeff talks about whiny Chris­tians, has a link to a HILARIOUS par­ody of Foxe’s Book of Mar­tyrs (Amer­i­can Edi­tion), and a truly great story of one preacher’s recent expe­ri­ence open-air preach­ing.  Don’t miss it.