Topic: Flush

[Weisshaupt]

Flush

[IronDioPriest]

How wonderful for the children of the congregation.

[Pandora]

"A budding star of progressive Christianity:?Nadia Bolz-Weber, a tattooed Lutheran minister, represents a new, muscular form of progressive Christianity."

Oh barf.

[LadyVirginia]

180 people show up at her church each week

she has a blog at patheos.com -- as you could probably guess she likes to talk about herself

she's only 44? 

[Libertas]

That's some sick stuff...doing Satan's work...one apostate church at a time.

Special place in Hell for such!

May the trip be swift!

[Pablo de Fleurs]

Pastorette Butch Van Dyke & her liquor license.

[Pablo de Fleurs]

Her message: Forget what you’ve been told about the golden rule — A God doesn’t love you more if you do good things, or if you believe certain things. God, she argues, B offers you grace regardless of who you are or what you do.

This is a theologically mixed message. While it could be argued that God does not “love you more if you do good things” (any more than the new, freshly repentant, sinner) you DO have to believe certain things…or at least 1 thing: that Jesus Christ died for your personal sins. He does offer grace to anyone…but that grace must be accepted & received in order for the transaction to be complete. Meaning you could be a former murderer or even a tyrannical, Marxist, black-liberation, Planned Parenthood blessing Chicago thug...and grace is extended to those who truly accept Christ (an area where only God knows, as man cannot judge the heart of another – we’re left to the outer actions & the “fruit on the tree” we can see).

Christianity, Bolz-Weber preaches, has nothing to do with rules; it is the process of things constantly dying and then being made new. Those things, she says, might be the alcoholic who emerges into sobriety, some false narrative we have about ourselves, religious institutions that no longer inspire.

Again, semi-correct: not rules but a relationship…with a person; namely Jesus Christ. However, fruit on the tree is respecting those “rules” (10 Commandments, loving one’s neighbor as one’s self) and obeying those rules. One doesn’t set up a marital relationship & then continue thrashing & disrespecting the spouse.

Interesting she uses the sobriety-emerging alcoholic as an example – doubting she’d ever use the heterosexual (or celibate)-emerging homosexual – in the vein of Christ’s “Now go and sin no more” admonishment to the woman caught in adultery (John 8: 1-11 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%208:%201-11&version=NKJV).

She prefers a cranky, troublemaking and real God who at times of loss and pain doesn’t have the answers either. “God isn’t feeling smug about the whole thing,” she writes about Jesus’s resurrection and the idea that the story is used as fodder for judgment. “God is not distant at the cross. .?.?. God is there in the messy mascara-streaked middle of it, feeling as [bad] as the rest of us.”

Well…He does ave an answer. The pain & suffering of Christ’s scourging & crucifixion evidences His joining with us in the inevitable pains of living. He is there with us (if one seeks Him out) and provides a method of escape. And I’d daresay He feels much worse about it than the rest of us.

She provides an alternative religious experience for those caught between disbelief & new age spirituality – those yearning to fill their God-shaped hole. The only problem is that she back-fills only 1/2 the hole...& that with a dump-truck full of manure.

[Libertas]

She provides an alternative religious experience for those caught between disbelief & new age spirituality – those yearning to fill their God-shaped hole. The only problem is that she back-fills only 1/2 the hole...& that with a dump-truck full of manure.

Most excellently summarized Pablo!   

[LadyVirginia]

She provides an alternative religious experience for those caught between disbelief & new age spirituality – those yearning to fill their God-shaped hole. The only problem is that she back-fills only 1/2 the hole...& that with a dump-truck full of manure.

Most excellently summarized Pablo!   

She's no different than those who go out an seek a new age spiritual experience because they long to feel something without any requirements to adhere to a set of obligations or expectations.

[IronDioPriest]

She provides an alternative religious experience for those caught between disbelief & new age spirituality – those yearning to fill their God-shaped hole. The only problem is that she back-fills only 1/2 the hole...& that with a dump-truck full of manure.

Most excellently summarized Pablo!   

Agreed. I would go so far as to say that aside from her middling theology, the manure begins with her visage and persona. Purposely drawing attention to ones self via unorthodox appearance - an appearance that clearly indicates affinity with a perverse lesbian lifestyle - is not part of a pastoral vocation. The fact that she is indeed married to a man and has two children, yet chooses to appear unmistakably as a butch lesbian, indicates an affinity for facades, and personal statements over preaching the Gospel. One ought to wonder what she's hiding based on her appearance alone.

[fordguy_85]

I know this is a somewhat old topic, but this is sort of a sore spot for me. All this is is a further contamination and weakening of our nation. Once you have raised a generation that undergoes, nay, clamors for a paradigm shift in core values, beliefs, and morals, then it isn't long before this sort of thing is no longer on the fringe. Paul wrote in II Timothy 4:1-8 KJV

1 I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom;

2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine.

3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;

4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.

5 But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.

6 For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.

7 I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith:

8 Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.

Paul said that the Word must be used (on the believer now) to reprove and rebuke, which tells me that there are things that should not be done that are condemned by the Word. Then that same Word is to be used to exhort with longsuffering and doctrinal teaching to help stop this sort of thing from occuring in the church. Because, people want to hear that all is well, all the time. Such is not always the case, as we all know full well. He goes on to say that he had "kept the faith". He had not let slip those things he held dearest of all. Paul turned from a life of ease as a member of the religious elect of his time to pursue truth and righteousness. He knew that "freedom" and the "fulfilment" of spiritual needs offered by such was in fact merely a particularly malevolent form of slavery for which all hope must be exchanged.