Category Archives: Doctrine

Doctrine

Logic

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It is never enough to use only one logical fallacy when forming a fundmamentalist argument. The building blocks of nonsense must be gently bludgeoned into place one atop the other to form a wall of illogic that stops thought and runs one into danger of exhausting their Latin vocabulary. Consider these beautiful bits of logic…

The Post Hoc Ad Absurdem Non Sequitur: “Prayer being taken out of schools led to the founding of the Emergent Church which will eventually lead to everyone being unsaved, drunk, and buying foreign cars.”

Or perhaps the Ad Hominem Circulus in Probando “Emergent Church types are nothing but a bunch of unsaved drunks becuase nobody who drinks that much could possibly be saved.”

My personal favorite is the Plurium Interrogationum Ad Verecundiam “Are you still an unsaved drunk Emergent Church member even though that’s clearly unbiblical?”

Line upon line. Precept upon precept. Fallacy upon fallacy.

Doctrine, education

Building “Character”

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No matter what indignity, embarrassment, or outrage may be afflicted upon the fundamentalist youngster the rejoinder from his elders and betters is always the same: “it builds character.”

What exactly is this character that we build by learning subservience to a vast and ever-growing body of arcane rules? Which virtue springs from self-inflicted penury due to poor educational choices compounded by the greed of a ministry who will not pay an honest wage? What goodness comes with the constant lessons of self-doubt and self-loathing?

The Lord requires that a man do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly but never that he prostitute his own soul liberty and good sense for the sake of putting another man’s foot upon his neck and calling it “character building.” To be sure, of all of the lessons that fundamentalism teaches perhaps none is greater than this: there is no inherent virtue in being ill-used of others.

Is a capacity for denying grace to one’s self and others truly a measure of Christian character? Perhaps “Christian caricature” would be a term more fitting.

Doctrine, Outreach

“What if?” Guilt Trips

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“For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: “It might have been!”~John Greenleaf Whittier

“What if?” is a very special kind of fundy guilt trip because comes from nowhere, contains nothing but imagination, and can be used on anybody about even the most innocent of activities. Consider…

What if instead of buying that candy bar you had instead given the money in the missions offering? What if that very dollar was used to print the tracts that went to deepest darkest Africa and converted the local medicine man to Christianity and caused revival to break out across the entire continent? But alas, you chose the candy. So now we’ll never know.

What if instead of sleeping in on Saturday you had spent an extra hour praying for your lost family member? What if that snooze button was all that was standing between their soul and eternal damnation? A little sleep, a little slumber, and now you’ll always have to wonder if you could have done more. You probably could.

What if you had dug deeper, pushed harder, or fought better? What glorious opportunities may have been had! What souls could have been won and empires built! But alas, poor craven soul that you are, you did not.

Guilt trips on the Subjunctive Highway. They’re a thing of beauty.

Doctrine, Standards

Cognitive Dissonance

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To be a fundamentalist one must master the art of ignoring the illogical and absurd. Consider these bits of doublethink…

We believe that Calvinism is a hindrance to evangelism…we also believe the Spurgeon and Edwards were the instruments great revivals.

We believe that praying written prayers is vain repetition…we also believe that praying the exact same words over breakfast every morning is a necessary and meaningful experience.

We believe that since canon of Scripture is closed, the Holy Spirit no longer gives direct revelation to people…we also believe that the Holy Spirit gives traffic directions and investment advice.

We believe that the Scriptures are the sole authority for our faith and practice…we also believe that Christian standards of dress and music somehow were all discovered centuries after the Scriptures were finished and include things not addressed therein.

We believe that every man has soul liberty and that every believer is a priest…we also believe that the pastor has complete authority to override that liberty any time he sees fit.

We believe that liberals have purposely corrupted our public school systems and lowered our education standards for their own political ends….we also believe that these semi-illiterate students are perfectly capable of understanding a four-hundred year old translation of the Scriptures.

We believe that the reason our church isn’t growing quickly is that the world is getting worse and worse as the end times approach and men’s hearts wax cold…we also believe that our soul winning program has broken records every year for the last 20 years.

We believe that good will always overcome evil…we believe that evil will always overcome good.

Feel free to add your own examples below…

Doctrine

The Tabernacle (A Study in Eisegesis)

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Back in Israel’s desert-wandering years, there existed a big tent building that housed the various instruments of Jewish worship and sacrifice as well as the divine presence of God himself. God spends seven full chapters of Exodus describing in great detail the building plans, the materials, and the builders. Inevitably, various religious folks have spent countless hours since then missing the entire point of Hebrews 8 and 9 and instead randomly assigning each detail with mystical significance.

Go to any number of sermon series on the Tabernacle and you’ll hear widely varying guesses at how the sewing pattern for the priests’ linen underpants have great significance to the church today. (The robes, however, are completely irrelevant to anybody but high-church sissies)

Do the number of cubits divided by the tribes of Israel and added to the number of chapters in Exodus provide a clue to the length of the Tribulation? Is the table of showbread a symbol of faith promise missions or perhaps a covered dish supper? What exactly were the Urim and Thumim — and more importantly, how did the pastor get the set that he keeps in his study for use in deacon meetings?

Nothing thrills the heart of a fundamentalist pastor more than the opportunity to open the Word of God and discover there some obscure allusion that seems to validates his own opinions. Possibly. Maybe. Almost certainly.