Re: James Dobson…Again

I know it probably seems that I am more than a little bit obsessed, but James Dobson is to a blogger what a fat pitch is to a softball player. He serves em’ up and i hit them out. I can’t help it the man is just constantly doing something wacky, or saying something wacky at least.

This time it is the environment and global warming and it happened in a major mainstream magazine (that means it’s not a Christan magazine for you Christian schools kids in the crowd) The magazine is Fast Company and it’s website is here. Now personally I don’t care which side of this issue you come down on (I would hope that you might share my conviction that we as God’s steward should protect the earth and be it’s steward in a faithful way, but how you integrate that into your faith life is not a major issue to me.) What is an issue to me is that the Dobber through his publicity flak, says that if you care deeply about the environment, that is a political issue not a religious one. His mouthpiece tells us that “there are certain issues that define us as evangelicals and this is not one of them.” What I truly find humorous however is that Jimmy and his boys are reacting to what they view as political issue masquerading as a religious one, and they are here to rescue us from all that political mumbo-jumbo. Does anyone else find this ironic? Is there anyone more politically motivated they J. Dob. We are talking about a man who lead the charge to have the President of the Gospel Broadcasters association fired because he dared suggest that the gospel broadcast association should focus on communicating the gospel. The Jim took this to mean that he could not speak out about abortion (which by the way is a dubious conclusion to draw) and launched into a tear laced emotion wracked witch hunt to rid the GBA of it’s evil president. So keeping that in mind is it not very interesting the JD is now taking it upon himself to tell the rest of the Christian world what is important to us. Thanks. I would hate to have to think for myself.

What is even more annoying to me is this, it seems that James Dobson has once again missed the basic concept of spreading the good-news and instead opted for politics. It is not the content of the politics that bother me. What drives me crazy is that in my opinion this is further proof that Dobson views the culture as an enemy and not a mission field.

Are we not decedents of Adam. Is it not we as Christ followers who should love the earth on a level that those who do not know Christ never could, after all we have met its maker. Beyond that I wonder if D. ever stops to think what effect his wrangling over the trivial will have on people’s response to the gospel. You see the majority of post-Christian culture has great respect for the creation but does not know its creator. Is it not possible then that we as missionaries in this culture seeking to communicate the goodness of our God over theirs (for lack of a better way to express it) might have found common ground in our protection of creation and from that common ground we might have discovered a beginning place in introducing them to a God with whom they are completely unfamiliar? Is it not possible that in standing up for the earth we might be given a platform to stand up for Jesus, the reason we love the earth? Am i making sense here or am I just taking crazy pills?

Re: James Dobson

So the other day I hyperboleously remarked to a friends that I view James Dobson as just as big of an embarrassment to Christians as Pat Robertson. After thinking that through, I realized it was over the top, and yet there is something about the resident Mob Boss of Christianity that makes me very uncomfortable. After meditating on it (not like in a yoga position or anything…I’m not Doug Paggit) it comes down to this: Worldview. I realize that worldview is a way over used term. As in, hey we need to have a “Christian” worldview…But i guess that is my problem because the Dobber and I have different worldviews…And if we are both claiming they are Christian worldviews it would follow (sorry all you emergents who are comfortable with contradiction) that one of us must be wrong.

To Wit:

Dob WV: The Family is the most important institution
MY Wv: The Church is the most important institution (and strong families flow from the church)

Dob WV: We must protect our families at all cost
MY WV: We must train our families to pursue the kingdom at all cost

Dob WV: We must protect ourselves from culture and outside assaults
MY WV: We must advance the Kingdom by every righteous means and be missionaries who redeem the culture

Dob WV: “The shocking thing is that this threat to kids is much, much broader than the homosexual movement. It doesn’t stop there. It is aimed at the very core of the Judeo-Christian system of values, the very core of scriptural values. I’m telling you that is not an overstatement.” (Advocating taking kids out of public schools)

MY WV: Yep. That is how a world absent Jesus behaves. Dobson is so lost in modernist thinking that he can not bear the idea of Christianity not being the dominate cultural power. However that is now the case in America, as it has been in most of history. It is not our job to escape culture because it acts like culture. Non-believers do not act like believers. They can’t, they do not have the Holy Spirit. It is not shocking to me that the world is behaving this way, it is shocking to me that a Christian would not understand that this is why Christ calls us his ambassadors.

Dob Wv: “What we said yesterday and what we are saying today will be very frustrating to them because they will feel attacked and ridiculed. And the implication would be there, I’m afraid, that we don’t respect them or don’t stand with them. It’s not because of them, it’s in spite of them that we are saying there is a problem here, and our children might even take priority — and in my view, must take priority — even over our desire to stay and influence the schools.” (advocating Christian teachers leaving Public schools)

MY WV: I do not think that anything takes priority over trying to influence the world for Christ. Imagine trying to make the same argument to a missionary to Lebanon for example: “Well I think you should quit…that Hezbollah might influence your kids… “I would invite him to make a Biblical case that we are doing more for our children by “protecting them” than we are by training then to be kingdom minded.

Dob WV: The best thing we can do for our children is to protect them from outside influence
MY WV: The best thing we can do for our children is to abandon them to the sometimes dangerous hand of God…for he who holds them holds them much better than we could dream.

At the heart of the issue is the fact hat James Dobson is a hardcore dualist, he separates the sacred from the secular and deigns to call anything or anybody not paid by a mission board a missionary, he also fails to see culture as a mission field instead of an enemy. When you do this you ultimately denigrate God because you have declared that some of his creation which he designed is not worthy redemption, only those things which you yourself have decided to be sacred or spiritual enough. That my friends is a shaky position to be in, because if you have the power to decide what is sacred and what is secular then it is you who acts as God, and have thus become an idolater. Much better to understand that God is the creator of all things and all things are his. Much better to understand that the call of a believer is not to shun that which has been marked by the fall (and everything has), but the believer is a missionary from the Redeemer to the fallen.

I agree with Dobson that we must love our children with unequaled passion, my children are number three in my life God, Wife, Children and honestly sometimes I have trouble keeping it in that order. Where Dobson and I disagree is about how I can most lovingly raise my children, he seeks protection and I would opt for a more Barbarian way (to quote McManus)…I must seek first the kingdom and train my children to do the same, if I do not, then any protection is no protection, only a hollow fortress built to protect them from those I should have taught them to love. And the path I will have lead them down may be the most dangerous of all, as it leads away from their most loving Father. Sola Deo Gloria.

I Am Now Afraid…

I have been planning to deal with John Elderidge and the wacky things he says in his Wild at Whatever books…(I know that its not emergent stuff but hey it would be fun) I was going to point out how the “El” version of manly Christianity excludes those of us who are just not manly enough or white enough or into Kayaking while belching and drinking non-alcoholic beer enough to enjoy the stuff he says in manly…I was going to point out how even though we don’t feel emasculated we must all be and we should immediately sell our houses, move to the country put up Karl Malone posters, shoot squirrels and hug other dudes way too much if we ever want to know Jesus. It seems that apparently the ultimate Jesus lover is a white dude on a horse who gives up church for a year. This makes me sad because I love church and I don’t have a horse.

Anyway I was going to expound on that but now that T. (I can call him that we are friends) responded to my post below I am afraid because I now realize that the “El” might see this. And I suspect he is not near as nice as T…the dude hangs out with James Dobson (the Dobber for freaking goodness sake) He and the Dobber might try and crush me. I suspect that rather than extending friendship the “El” might show up at my house on his big ole’ horse, perhaps with a sword, or with maybe a medieval spike flail. I can just picture him and James and a band of roving California home school parents descending upon my home and “rattling my cage” if you know what I mean. I am afraid the “El” will see my post and I will wake up with a horses head in my bed…Well not a horses head he loves horses, but maybe the head of some emasculated girly pony or something. So I will not post about the “El”, after all Superman wears John Elderidge pajamas.