Doctrine

Minutiae

137 Comments

Fundamentalists are not content to stop at merely straining at a gnats. In fact, they’ll not rest until they’ve preached an entire series of messages on the only true biblical gnat catching techniques, written a textbook for their local Bible college on Gnatology 101, and separated from at least one other organization in a dispute over which gnats are the pure descendants of those used in the early New Testament local church.

Why did the Shunammite woman’s son sneeze seven times?

Why did David pick up five smooth stones?

Why did John outrun Peter to the tomb?

Not only does a fundamentalist have the answer for these, he has the only one true and right answer. Without these correct interpretations of the most obscures details of Scripture you will be doomed to wrongly divide the Word and wander in the darkness outside the camp. Your entire life may come to shipwreck because you guessed the wrong answer to what burden of Dumah was.

No detail is too insignificant to ignore or debate. There is simply no fight that is not worth fighting to the last man.

137 thoughts on “Minutiae”

    1. Or is it because 5 is the number of death? My dad was telling me this past week about an evangelist in my home church who preached a whole sermon on that sort of numerology. Some people will do anything to avoid having to actually apply the text.

    2. While at BJU I heard a sermon in which the preacher (a member of the administration with no formal exegetical training) interpreted the extra digit on the six-fingered siblings of Goliath as “represent[ing] a strong grasp,” that is, greed. Hawh?

    3. Actually, according to “Dr” Bob Wood, those would be the five stones of G-R-A-C-E. Now that actually stands for a solid Sunday morning nap.

      1. Yes, and no doubt David, Goliath, and the authors of the Books of Kings all spoke and wrote in modern English, which is the only way that would make sense.

  2. And in so doing they ignore Jesus’ prayer that His church would be one, John’s message that love should be the defining mark of believers, and Paul’s teaching of Christian liberty in Romans 14: “Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. One man’s faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.”

    But then, if we stopped focusing on minutiae, what would we do with our time? Then we might actually have to go outside the walls of our church and actually help the widows and fatherless, and who wants to do that?

    2. What open the hatch on the bunker and allow fresh air in? When we have been breathing the air in this bunker since the upper room incident? We can’t allow fresh air in it will contaminate us. We can’t go outside the bunker sin will cover us and we will fall. Don’t you know that worldliness is the most poerful force in the universe! If we allow just anyone outside they may bring back ideas that will contaminate the flock! The pracher will have to preach long and hard to reindoctrinate the flock and purge it with fear and guilt.
      No, No,No, No,No, No,No, No,No, No,No, No… to open the hatch on the bunker is not an option! The world must come to us and conform to our doctrines….. every jot and tittle must be kept!
      Yep, that about sums it up. 😯

      @pastor’s wife that was an excellent reply! A-men.

      1. george, you are going to have to quit replying if you don’t start having someone proofread your work! poerful=powerful, and pracher=preacher. now go git right with gid you non-spelling keyboard mauler.

        1. That happens to me a lot when I try to type on my phone’s keyboard. Does that mean an iPhone is the tool of the Devil?

        2. yes in fundy land the iphone is evil, e-v-i-l. And if you use it in church we have examples on here of preachers who will confiscate your phone. These are the some groups who claim they can search student’s cars on campus at anytime they choose to do so, sans warrant or legal authority present.

          As for my typing skills, it is probably all the fresh air I have been getting since leaving the holy-hole-in-the-wall bunkers in which I hid away from the real world lo these many years. How did 10cc put it, “love is like oxygen, too much will make you high, not enough and your gonna die…” Having been in the bunkers of the fundy cult for so long has produced a psychosis… a fundy-psychosis of sorts. The effects are long term and can be quite debilitating. That’s why we enjoy this group therapy so much… don’t we george?
          george not type now, george go home. 😕
          O-key-doe-key… 😉

    3. Thank you. I think that is actually why some people have the form of Christianity that they do. They don’t think that they can actually handle being a real Christian.

  4. Everyone should listen to Ian Paisley for bizarre minutiae. This number means that. This color symbolizes something else. Just on and on.

    1. As a non calvinist and ex fundy, I’ve found Ian Paisley to be quite a good preacher, at least in preaching the Gospel.

      1. I found him to be head and shoulders better than most of the other people they brought in for BC. But, he does assign all kinds of meanings to things that are, well, interesting. Not necessarily Biblical, but interesting.

    1. The pastor at my ex-church WAS a star wars freak. (As in, owning every story that featured the original characters from the movie in hardback with pristine dust-jackets) His gnatology was extremely unique. 😯

    3. I once had a pastor scream at me because I made the mistake of telling him my husband and I would be a little late for choir practice because we were going to see “Revenge of the Sith.” Later on he apologized to my HUSBAND, not to me. Fat old hypocritical bastard . . .

    1. From the Conference site: “Our labels, though important, have not been fully reliable guides in navigating one’s way through the current ecclesiastical waters.”
      This is quite a confession! Our labels are not fully reliable guides! Maybe that’s why Scripture discourages us from using them….There is neither Jew nor Greek…

  7. I have a friend who would deny to her dying day that she’s not a fundy. But she is. Just an odd variation on one.

    And she’s taken to what amounts to reading tea leaves in her biblical hermeneutics from this guy:

    http://www.livingwordpictures.com/

    It amounts to reading the Hebrew words/letters as pictures and attributing some grand metanarrative to them. It’s the minutiae of minutiae. The dust on the gnat’s legs. . . .

      1. Didn’t Frank Garlock have some sort of system where he managed to mistake Hebrew vowel points for musical notation, which just so happened to sound like western classical music?

        1. Funny you mention it. You can actually listen to “God’s music” at the link below:

          http://www.heritagebaptistchurch.info/godsinspiredmusic.htm

          Garlock didn’t come up with this, but he endorses it in this video series:

          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6j3yThfxxk

          (I’m not sure which video that particular reference is, so you’ll have to watch all of them to find it. Ha ha! 😈 )

          And yes, it’s amazing how much “God’s music” sounds like western European music from a couple hundred years ago.

        2. Interesting, especially when you consider that vowel points were not in the original manuscripts, and were added at a later date.

  9. Just as an aside, when you say “Your entire life may come to shipwreck” it just blows me away because my former pastor used to use that word – “shipwreck” – of course I didn’t travel in fundy circles as widely as some so back in the day I thought it was a great turn of phrase that I attributed to him. It makes me wonder why I used to revere such a “MOG” who apparently was just another fundy copycat without an original thought to his name. Really casts a light on the whole thing. 🙂

    1. It’s a Bible word

      I Timothy 1:19: Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck:

  10. I was 14 and had started oil painting. I did a landscape scene of a red barn with autumn trees and chickens in the barnyard. It wasn’t bad for a 14 year old. I wanted to give it to my pastor. He wouldn’t accept it and said it was because the chickens were birds and birds represent evil in scripture.

    2. I’ll bet he doesn’t consider the birds as evil when he is on his 3rd helping of fried chicken at the church dinners. 😀

    3. Birds represent evil in scripture? Huh?
      You’ve got to wonder if some of these Fundies have even read the Bible.

      … But of course, it’s a long and complex enough book that you can surely find something to comfirm your own phobias or obsessions, whatever they may be. The 18th-Century poet Christopher Smart, while institutionalized for religious mania, wrote a poem about his cat, including a commentary on cats in the Old Testament. (Cats are not mentioned in the Bible.)

      I wonder what that pastor would make of the story in the Quran where Jesus makes a bird out of clay and breathes life into it, and the bird flies away.

      1. Oh wow, you just reminded me of Ruckman’s “Black is Beautiful” (nothing to do with black people). Apparently, Catholics are Cataholics because they are addicted to black cats or worshipping them or something about egypt. It was really hard to follow. I own it. It’s entertaining, at least, it is for me, because I love Science Fiction.

        Also, getting this jacket for Christmas

        http://www.abbyshot.com/products/ps-tenth-doctor-who-coat.php

    4. Maybe he was just a closet Hitchcock fan. 😉 Seriously though, that’s nuts, not to mention potentially hurtful to a 14-year-old.

      1. New pastor… sigh. The air force moved us to another state. So, new pastor, new church. It probably wasn’t more than a year until this guy felt “called” to start a church in the same state about 20 miles from us, and felt it was God’s will that we help them. My dad was song leader and I played the piano. He wanted to serve the Lord even though he had some misgivings about Pastor B enticing our family away from another church. To this day, some 40 years later, my dad still regrets that move. Long story, but in a couple of years we hit the road and left those bozos behind. They did get a rather fine 4’x8′ bapistry painting for the new church building out of me before we left. I was careful to put no birds in it. I should have hid one in a tree!!

        2. “Time to get a new Pastor”
          Pastors are like diapers. Both should be changed regularly,and for the same reason

    7. Birds are evil? Didn’t the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove descend on Jesus after His baptism? Isn’t a dove a bird? I must be missing something……

    8. Wait a minute! Isn’t a dove a bird? And doesn’t the Bible tell us to be as harmless as doves? So does this mean evil is harmless?

    9. For the record, Jesus literally compared himself to a hen and the nation of Israel to chickens needing to be nestled in Matthew 23.

    10. Someone should have reminded the Holy Spirit to not show up on the scene as a dove, then.

      Just sayin’.

  11. LOL! I’ve heard more than one message on the significance of the woman’s son sneezing seven times.

  12. Don’t forget, Jonah was swallowed by a big fish, NOT a whale, and believing Jesus was crucified with three nails will land you in hell,amen?

    1. What? It was a whale, and he was crucified with 3 nails? Not that it matters, but I either missed the sarcasm, or I missed something 😛

      1. Haha, ok. I ran across both of those a few years back on one of our FWOTW sites. I’m pretty sure it was av1611.com (then Dial-the-truth), or at least somewhere along those lines. I was new to the whole IFB notion at the time and nearly died when I read it.

    2. I hadn’t heard the three nails thing…in fact, I’ve head sermons on the significance of the three nails (namely, that the three nails represent the three persons of Trinity)

    3. Yeah, Eastern Sunday was spent going through a serious anatomy lesson concerning the bones of the wrist. You see, that nail was put into his wrist NOT his palms, like those demonic Catholics would have you believe in their seductively lush paintings of yore. No, you see the weight of Christ would have had that nail sliding right through the fleshy webbing of his fingers and toes and he would have fallen off the cross within minutes.
      Now, lets close and go have us some Easter Ham and biscuts, Amen?

      2. Oh yes, I remember that. I also remember sermons describing how Christ was beaten in detail that would excite any torture-porn addict. I also remember Christmas shows (not “cantatas” since that was a Catholic word and therefore evil) with men dressed as Roman soldiers slinging bloody baby dolls around. Of course when I complained I was shut down because “It’s Biblical!” Sorry. I was worried about the little seven-year-old girl in front of me who almost threw up. How silly of me.

      3. It won’t surprise any SFL readers, but this business about where the nails were inserted has been hotly debated for centuries. People have done experiments (on cadavers, I believe) to see which way works better (palms or wrists), examined skeletons of what appeared to be crucifixion victims (not Jesus; other crucified people), etc. The wrist faction and the palm faction were about tied the last I heard. What none of them have explained, though, is why this makes any difference to Christians.

    4. I thought the Bible said it was a whale and a big fish.

      Would someone seriously argue that it was not a whale?
      “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” KJB

      1. That verse is Matthew 12:40. The KJV translates it “whale”, while the NIV, NLT, and ESV translate it “huge fish” or “great fish” (the NASB says, “sea monster”). In the book of Jonah itself, the KJV uses the words “great fish”.

        I think the issue is that some unbelievers have claimed that whales cannot (perhaps due to the baleen) swallow large creatures like a man, thus saying that Jonah is only a legend not a true story. Those who believe it is true (as I do) have tried to say, “Well, it doesn’t have to actually be a WHALE. Any large water creature could do.” That’s why there has been focus on this bit of minutiae. I won’t argue with anyone over what creature they think it was, but I will disagree with someone who thinks it didn’t happen at all.

        1. A whale’s throat opening is not big enough for it to swallow a man whole. In “Moby-Dick,” Melville’s preacher discusses this and concludes that Jonah must have ridden in the whale’s mouth for the three days and nights. The problem with its being a fish is that fish cannon vomit (once something’s in a fish’s stomach, it doesn’t come back up), so how did Jonah get back out? A much bigger problem, to me, but one I haven’t heard discussed, is how Jonah breathed while he was in the belly or mouth of a whale or fish. There’s no air in there (whales breathe through their blowholes, not their mouths).

        3. Oops, that line should read, “Fish cannot vomit.” I don’t even want to think about what “Fish cannon vomit” might mean.

        5. Most whales yes, but the Sperm Whale does have a larger throat, one possibly big enough to swallow a man. I recall a book in my Fundy high school, written from all things, the whale’s POV, and how he was musing on God’s thoughtfulness on creating this one particular species of whale for just this purpose. Corny, but it did come off with some thoughtfulness; also included was the story of James Bartley, a sailor supposedly swallowed by the whale his ship was hunting, discovered when his shipmates were butchering it. 😕

    1. This is why we mock fundamentalists.

      If this guy had a heart attack, would he allow a medical team to treat him “scientifically”? Or is he one of the kooks that will only allow prayer as a valid form of treatment. I wonder.

      1. Ok, after looking at their website, they really are kooks. They even offer a baptist basement seminary to spread their kooky ways. Heaven’s music? 😆

    3. Once again, I can’t tell if those Heritage Baptist Church folks are mocking fundamentalism, or if they’re just nutty as a can of Mixed Nuts.

      There are, however, a whole raft of people who don’t want science taught in schools, because they think it disagrees with the Bible.

  14. The more random and extra-biblical a pastor’s conclusions the less other Christians will have landed at those exact conclusions. This position creates several advantages for the clever pastor.

    #1 Because no one else has thought of this new fundamental and necessary doctrine, the possibilities for random applications are endless!!

    #2 No one else will have beaten him to the book title “The Nine Types of Grapes in Naboth’s Vineyard Applied to Your Tithing Life.”

    #3 The less people came up with the same conclusion as us, the more people we can separate from! Huzzah!

    1. “The Nine Types of Grapes in Naboth’s Vineyard Applied to Your Tithing Life.”

      That is gold, my friend. Pure gold.

    2. This first discovery will also help aspiring gnat strainers as all the next pastor will have to do is disclose the tenth and secret grape type. Then he can not only show how this last grape type is the true key to the victorious Christian life; but can now chose from two options.

      He could first of all make friends with the first pastor (with the first nine grape types) completing his long and arduous research on this neglected doctrine in order to score an honorary doctorate from the first pastor’s basement bible collage.

      Option number two is equally tantalizing. He could separate from the first pastor, starting his mud-flinging campaign by writing a book on how the first pastor was a liberal compromiser who purposefully withheld this last vital bit of information that was so obvious. If he can associate this truth-withholding conspiracy to either Nimrod or Egypt he gets bonus points.

      1. And if he’s smart he may try to link Egypt with Nimrod by saying Egypt’s pyramids are lesser attempts of the tower of Babel, then he may go and start is own Basement Fundy University

        1. It’s been done – Alexander Hislop “The Two Babylons”. Toughest read ever. First half is pretty good. Second half is Rev. Hislop explaining how Revelation was fulfilled in the late 19th early 20th century.

  15. Majoring on gnatology gives the fundy preacher something to do while he ignores the real issues going on in his church. It allows him to overlook the fact that we are instructed to love God with all our heart, soul, and strength, and to love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves; that we are to speak the truth in love, and without it all the sermons, lectures, standards, and rules are empty works. Gnatology gives him a means of justifying his offensive methods of “soul-willing” when he should be following the command to teach (since faith comes by hearing, not trying to get someone to stop yelling at you), then baptize.

    1. You are so correct. I’m sure Darrell will gladly issue a mea culpa to all the entomologists out there. However, mosquitoes may be better representatives anyway. After all, they do suck blood out of unsuspecting victims…

      1. I have a book at home that claims (well, he doesn’t claim it black and white, but it’s obvious what his intention is) that demons are small bug like creatures shaped like flies and mosquitos.

        2. Isaac Bashevis Singer (a Hasidic Jew) says something similar in one of his stories. I assume he got that from the Talmud or the Midrash or one of those other sets of Rabbinic lore.

  17. Outside of Fundidom, it called OCD. I’m convinced that with the proper mix of SSRIs and maybe lithium, the FBI could be a thing of the past (pun intended).

  18. I went to a church for several years where the Pastor sat down with the men of each house and dictated to them how their children must dress starting with the shoes and type/color hose the girls must wear! Talk about minutiea!!! 🙄

    2. me too, but it was the Deacons who were assigned a couple families each. Oh yeah, I remember that day…I was told that since my dad was “out of the picture” (my mom and dad were separated, he lived 15 mins away) that Deacon Jackass was going to “step in and discipline when necessary.” His son, who was my age, has since committed suicide. 🙁

    3. Thank God we finally got away from that horrible church but it took my husband at least two years and a lot of anger to finally get over the spiritual abuse we endured! 😥

    4. Talk about “the half-gods.” I was never in a church that was that bad, but one church – we lived next door to a big supermarket, which rented movies on VCR. He preached against them, and against women wearing pants. I used to run over to pick stuff up from time to time dressed in my sweats or shorts, or to rent a movie, and I would sweat bullets for fear that he or his wife would show up while I was there.

  19. One of my favorite sermons when I was a teen was “5 Reasons why the woman left her bucket at the well.”

    1. The pastor at the small church where my husband was ordained preached this sermon at his ordination service: “Be a Chicken!” His text was from the passage where the rooster crowded after Peter’s denial of Christ. His points were things like the rooster was prepared, the rooster did what he was supposed to do, the rooster was loud, the rooster was part of God’s plan. I just sat in the pew and tried not to giggle. Yes, that’s exactly the inspiration to start a young man as a minister of the Gospel!

      1. Hmm, the woman at the well left her bucket because she forgot it, she didn’t need it anymore, she took the whole well with her- Hallelujah! I can’t remember the other points.

        It’s kinda like playing Bible Outburst coming up with all the reasons something may have happened and making a sermon out of it, yes?

        1. She forgot it, didn’t need it anymore and she took the whole well with her… I’d be interested to see how they got three different points out of those.. they all seem the same to me.

          But I’ve heard that same sermon from non-fundies.

          My most hated IFB sermon was “Why did Jesus ask Peter three times if he loved him”. Oh the rambling on about Agape vs Phileo and blah blah blah. Peter denied three times. Christ asked three times. Simple. To the point. To be honest, I’ve found most pastors that reference the greek constantly to find hidden nuggets, whether they are IFB or not, are full of themselves, and want to make the scriptures out to be unnaproachable by ordinary folk who don’t have time to learn koine greek.

        2. The real kicker there is that they were speaking Aramaic, not Greek.

          So Jesus never said any of those Greek words in the actual conversation.

        3. Most IFB preachers don’t know greek most of them just use Strongs Concordance. One even preached a message called Hush! You Don’t Speak Greek. Studying greek may help you understand and appreciate the translation you use, but its not foreveryone. There’s a line between intellectual pride and rejecting koine greek because you cannot order a pizza with it.(yes some IFB preacher actually said that to.)

        6. So Darrell, the fact that they weren’t speaking Greek invalidates the Greek used in our Bibles? 😉
          I’m all for ending abuse of the language, but we can’t deny the text.

      2. I much prefer — and have actually used — the one about the Palm Sunday donkey: (a) The Lord knew its location; (b) the Lord had need of it; (c) The donkey was willing to be broken. The nice thing about an outline like that is that you can use it when you can’t think of anything else. It’s also a great illustration for kids.

  20. I know why the kid sneezed seven times. Cause seven is the number of God and Perfection cause God is perfect.Although I do not know how this relates to Revelation 13 where the beast has seven heads.

  21. Frankly, this is what happens when you write a bestseller 2000 years ago and there’s no followup. Its why we have horrible fan fiction ie: the IFB.

    1. Interesting comment! You can take it two ways: applying it to those who create whole new religions with their fan fiction (the Mormons, Christian Scientists, etc.) and those who actually write Bible fan fiction (at places like fanfiction.net).

      I wouldn’t recommend visiting the latter for Bible fanfic, though. Too much slash.

  22. AH yes, the Agape vs. Phileo sermon. I heard it more times than I care to remember. The pastor would always say “Do you Agape Christ? Or do you Phileo Christ?”

    Darrel–How funny for you to point that out! I don’t think it was ever brought up. But then that might imply that the 1611 has human error in it!

  23. Ok I know this is a wrong place to put it, but what would you think of this IFB church (not named; this isn’t the proper place)? Would their beliefs place as them as “IFBX” or not?
    – No alcohol and rock music. CCM and some movies allowed in private but discouraged. Parents strongly encouraged to homeschool.
    – KJVO, dispensational, no universal-church.
    – Against easy-believism but “we don’t wanna swing to calvinism” either.
    – Members are allowed to visit non-IFB churches but certainly not regularly. Friendly towards non-IFBs.
    – Most ordinary members don’t really listen to the IFB standards (except the alcohol and KJV part which they obey quite strictly). The pastor and an “inner circle” however certainly do. He wished more would follow suit but he doesn’t force it openly.

    1. ” No alcohol and rock music. CCM and some movies allowed in private but discouraged. Parents strongly encouraged to homeschool.”

      translation – anyone not homeschooling will be looked down upon. TV at home is evil.

      “KJVO, dispensational, no universal-church”

      translation – we are idiots for denying the body of Christ. Seriously. I am dispensational, and to an extent KJVO, but I never got why these local baptists couldn’t understand the local church exists only because it is made up of members of the one body of universal believers.

      “Against easy-believism but “we don’t wanna swing to calvinism” either.”

      Translation – we teach works salvation. Pray a prayer and then work for it to show you mean it.

      “Members are allowed to visit non-IFB churches but certainly not regularly. Friendly towards non-IFBs.”

      Translation – Members are not allowed to visit non-ifb churches. Non friendly towards non-ifbs.

    2. The “inner circle” is the primary feature and core of this church. IFBX is about control and the abuse of those who would challenge that control. Some of the standards (rules) go well beyond theology. If this church views those with “lower standards” as second class, carnal Christians, the “inner circle” probably views the rest of you at about the same level. Don’t walk, run for the exit. A lot of what you list is about appearances and not about a relationship with God. They are promoting deceit, a white washed cup. BS is still BS, even it is an acronym. This is an IFBX in a IFB wrapper.

  24. I don’t know if these examples fall under this category or a related category, but as I have done sermon deconstructions of Fundamentalist preachers, I did pick up Ron Williams (who runs the infamous and abusive Hephzibah House) saying that Abraham’s servant who went to find Isaac a wife is a type of the Holy Spirit sent to find the church and bring people to Christ, and I thought “Where’d he get that?”

    And Jack Schaap, whose theological lunacy is legion, preached on Job and declared that when Satan afflicted Job, he gave Job Elephantiasis, and again you have to think, how can he know that? Diseases develop over time. Elephantiasis may not even have existed back then. The Bible simply says he was afflicted with boils. Why would he even add this unprovable detail to the text?

    Guy Beaumont preaches a sermon where he just threw in the tantalizing anti-fact that “Simon Says” is a game designed to teach children how to conform.

    I don’t know if this is all “minutiae” as you are defining it, but it’s really weird: a fountain of misinformation and wrong stuff coming from fundy pulpits.

    1. Elephantiasis is not boils. Boils are a skin condition. Elephantiasis affects the deeper tissues.

      A remarkable number of the ailments mentioned in the Bible were skin diseases, including Biblical leprosy, which does not seem to be the same disease known as leprosy in the modern world.

    2. Spurgeon preached a similar message about Isaac finding his bride as a type of Christ seeking His church.

  25. Ron Williams visited our middle-of-nowhere church when I was younger. I remember he preached the same message every time he came, and it was the one just mentioned by Bassenco…

  26. SFL is not content to stop at merely straining at gnats. In fact, they’ll not rest until they’ve posted an entire series of blogs on the only true interpretation of Fundamentalism, found the most obscure Fundy websites, and written a Fundy rulebook for their faithful followers to mock and jeer at.

    Why did one of BJU’s societies wrap a kid in saran wrap?

    Why install a rapture hatch?

    Without agreeing with SFL about the most obscure details of Fundyland you will be doomed to wrongly be accused of legalism and wander in the darkness outside the camp.

    No detail is too insignificant to ignore or debate. There is simply no fight that is not worth fighting to the last blogger.

    1. nice one!!

      The difference, of course, being that if someone disagrees with me here I don’t tell them that they’re a heretic or on their way to perdition.

      But don’t let that detail stop you. You’re on a roll, my friend. Carry on!

      1. I seriously doubt that any human on the planet, even a hardcore Fundy, would consider you hellbound for disagreeing with them about the Shunammite woman.

        May I suggest, Darrell, that if you were offended by my parody on your post that the issue doesn’t lie in the parody but elsewhere.

        1. I’m a very, very difficult person to offend.

          If someone makes a good play on my words I’ll be the first to smile and say “well done.”

        2. Good, because that’s all I was honestly trying to do. If you didn’t actually laugh, I guess I’ll have to try harder next time…

    2. “Without agreeing with SFL…”

      I don’t agree with many comments here (almost half really). In fact I am pretty much a fundamentalist (with a few alterations). I come here to have fun and get a good laugh as most visters do. If you can’t laugh at yourself there is usually issues there.

      If you are offended however, I would suggest not visiting the sight. No sense getting needlessly worked up.

      1. I’m sure that about half here are fundamentalists in the sense that we believe in the fundamentals of the faith.

        1. I so agree with you, exIFB. I try to stand by historic fundamental doctrine and defend the gospel’s purity. Contemporary fundamental culture has been scarred; the only solution I see is returning to true biblical doctrine.

          Easy to say, difficult to practice, especially for those who have (as you all like to say here) taken big swigs of Fundie Kool-aid…

      2. My comment wasn’t meant to be quoted back to me, since most of the original words aren’t mine, but simply parodied @Darrell’s original post.

        I do agree with your (and Kevin’s below) advice, though. “No sense getting needlessly worked up.” Were I actually offended, it would be wise for me to simply stay away and not get involved.

        Which is the ironic part of this site’s very existence. If the founder is offended by and disagrees with just about everything he sees in Fundamentalism, I’m struggling to comprehend why he would dedicate a significant part of his life focusing it…

        1. For the same reason we put skull and crossbone labels on things that will poison you would be my first guess. If something is poisonous to the soul should it not have attention called to it? To use a favorite fundy illustration: If you knew the bridge was out just ahead, beyond the blind curve, should you not be warning everyone about the peril ahead?
          So here we are, we have seen and experienced the poisioning of our souls, the abuse from the pulpits and the sanctimonious super-saints, the guilt and the punishment meted out by the fundy cult. We are recovering from those affects and doing our best to warn others about one of the most dangerous cults in America today.

          (so yeah, that would be my guess as to why I do it anyway… george, you have anything to add? no, george sit this one out, you go ahead.) 🙄

    3. If you just read the posts, you will find that it is not really as you describe it. Some of the comments can get a little abusive, but the posts are a legitimate form of humor.

      So skip the comments and enjoy the site.

    1. No doubt he has come to show us the error of our ways and bring us back to the glorious truth that is fundamentalism! HALLEUJAH!

    2. No nerves struck here, Soli Deo. Just using some of SFL’s own tactics on them. After all, everyone needs a little taste of their own medicine from time to time. In fact, the more I use sarcasm and irony, the more I feel like I fit in around here…

      1. Stuff Fundies Can’t Do: Understand sarcasm. I have yet to meet a fundy who knew when I was being sarcastic or joking. lowercase – your original comments were neither sarcastic or ironic. Just a futile attempt at humor.
        You can report back to the camp that you fought the fight against the evil people at SFL.

  28. Let’s leave lowercase dave alone. He’ll come to realize how futile his work is here. In the meantime, we can enjoy the attempts at humor from someone still drinking the Kool Aid.

  29. Now I’m confused. Is lowercase dave trying to satire Darrell, who is already satiring IFB? Does lowercase dave disagree with the things on this site, and therefore attempting to roast those who do agree, all the while not being offended by the content?

  30. And now the real fun begins.
    Some among us has probably been offended at something somebody said; but they must staunchly deny this because we all know that being offended is a sign of weakness. Sensing the tension in the air we must now ascribe this to everyone else being offended. Some of us are not actually offended no doubt, but the game is to guess which are the offended parties.

    It’s like a fundamentalist party game. The loser has to wear the ‘Weaker Brother” shirt.

    I’ve been in churches who played this game for weeks on end. There aren’t any ‘winners’ per-say, but the entertainment value is amazing.
    😐

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