Standards

Self-Realization

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Age 2 minutes: Welcome to the world, little one! And welcome to fundyland! In three days you’ll be in a fundy church nursery for the first time.

Age 5: I don’t really know anybody but fundamentalists. Well, there is that one weird kid in kindergarten who brought a Transformers lunchbox that day and got yelled at by the teacher. He doesn’t go to our church so the rest of us don’t really play with him.

Age 11: Oh, it is wonderful to be a fundy! Any interactions with the lost usually consist of telling them why they’re so much more sinful than we are. My parents usually wear an odd mixture of pride and horror when I’m loudly telling the waitress at Olive Garden why we don’t drink wine like those people at the next table. I’m so glad I know all the answers to everything.

Age 15: Reality has begun to creep in a bit. Family reunions and neighborhood friends provide brief glimpses of those outside the fundy bubble and it is both fascinating and terrifying. I’m starting to realize that everyone else is “normal” and I’m the weirdo. Sometimes I feel the urge to condemn everyone else and stand up for Jesus but mostly I just want to fit in and understand what everyone else is talking about. I’m tired of being asked questions about standards we have that I don’t know the answers to.

Age 19: Fundy U provides even more chances to meet people from outside the bubble. I’m not even sure what some of these kids are doing here but I’ve learned that the rebels are so much more fun than the squares. I still don’t understand their pop culture references but I’ve learned to just laugh anyway. Listening to them I realize that there are more amazing things in the world that I ever knew.

Age 25: I went to my first movie today and then drove home listening to music from a radio station my parents would still never approve of. As I drove I saw billboard that I’d never noticed before. It read “Welcome to the start of 20 years of recovery.” Let’s hope it only takes that long.

FBFI

FBFI Rallies To Defend Chuck Phelps

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With convicted rapist Ernie Willis safely behind bars and Chuck Phelps having proven himself to be a liar by his statements under oath, one would think that the IFB world would have the grace to blush. Or at least one would hope that they would stop talking about the trial and bad publicity and wish for it all to be quickly forgotten. But evidently that is not the case.

Dr. Ed Nelson, pastor and representative of Baptist World Missions (which has Chuck Phelps on its advisory board) is an insider in the world of the IFB as evidenced by this glowing introduction that Chuck Phelps himself made for Ed at Maranatha Baptist Bible College back in 2007. Ed is obviously a made man. So apparently, Ed decided to return a favor at the FBFI Conference held on June 14th by making sure that everybody knows exactly what the FBFI thinks of Chuck.

“The only way you get publicity is to have somebody hate you, as brother Chuck Phelps has had, and they come up with evil reports [about you,] then you get in the papers. And by the way, thank God he [Chuck Phelps] stood right all the way through all of this and we ought to stand with him and encourage him, but I don’t suppose newspapers here in Indianapolis write a whole lot of articles about Crosspointe.”

(You can hear audio of these statements on sermonaudio.com, the remarks start about 21 minutes in)

He’s stood right through all of this? He stood right when he questioned the integrity of the victim? He stood right when he lied about her age? He stood right when he refused to apologize in any way for enabling her rapist and covering up the crime in front of the congregation? “Right” must have some different definition in the FBF.

I can almost hear the voice of Paul crying out “[Y]ou are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.” But they will not listen. They’ll simply defend their guy to the bitter end no matter what he has done or who he has hurt.

For more details on this you can check out the Chuckles Travels blog.

Public Life

Saturday Morning Conspiracies

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The entire time I was growing up, I heard tales of how Saturday morning cartoons were the instruments of Satan to warp young minds into a worship of the occult and practice of witchcraft. People like this guy told us that everything from He-Man to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were really part of a global conspiracy to enslave the nation’s children in between ads for breakfast cereal. Sneaky.

Of course, the real problem with these claims of satanic subterfuge is that the vast majority of a generation of cartoon watchers eventually grew up into more or less responsible adults who were curiously non-satanic. One would think that if Old Nick was afoot in our subconscious there would be a whole lot more ritual sacrifice, demon possession, and general witch-like cackling going on. Heck, to hear some folks talk, by this time you’d expect a pentagram to have replaced the stars on the American Flag. A quick look around, however, shows that instead of the really cool sins we were promised, it’s pretty much just the same old lust of the flesh, lust of the eye, and pride of life that we’ve always seen.

But maybe the conspiracy theorists will be proven right after all. Perhaps our entire society is composed of sleeper agents who harbor dormant demons unaware and some fateful day when a yet unwritten Miley Cyrus song plays on the radio, a veritable Satanic army of cartoon watchers will spring to life, wreaking havoc, sacrificing small animals, and possibly even bringing back disco. The word “nightmare” doesn’t begin to cover it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go deal with my daughter who has been watching Scooby Doo all morning and is now levitating our cat.

Update: Jordan Poss has provided me with some excerpts from the book Turmoil in the Toybox (PDF 4MB) by Phil Phillips which describes some of the various cartoons and toys are of the devil.

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