Facebook Fire

Yesterday, that mini-firestorm on Facebook showed the Promethean blessings and dangers of social networking "fire." Heat and light are good in proper distance and measure and location. Too much light can blind and too much heat can burn (see yesterday's blog for the play-by-play.) My fire inspection after the event, like an arsonist investigator, suggests that yesterday's conversation got destructive.

It probably did not help that I called Brian McClaren and Co. (a very specific tribe within the Emergent Church nation) "lightweights"...even though I think it to be true. Cutting many of the ropes and pulling out most of the stakes of Orthodoxy will make your tent more flexible and more loose for sure...but wait until the storms hit and see what happens. The lightness of your narrative will make your tent crash and then blow away like some kite without a string.

The newer generations coming up do not respond well to accusatory finger-pointing and getting taken behind the shed for some old-fashioned "This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you" intellectual discourse. They have been raised to be "Nice." And nice, they are. And I applaud that...yet, yet, the idol of niceties can be like a doctor not telling a patient she has cancer. And to cease smoking "the killer" (bad doctrine). The Dr. might be nice but his "niceness" became nastiness in effect.

I have been listening to an audio book about the life of Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schultz. His mom died of ovarian cancer when he was 18 or 19 and his dad and her doctors would not tell Charles or his mother how sick she was and from what. Because of the lack of treatment, the dad and the doctors thought it best to not say much if anything. Which, in the end, appears to have caused much more trauma and agony to Charles and his mom than just telling them the truth. There is a time to withhold truth. But I believe, "Truth" sets us free, no matter what--even if it is told less than diplomatically. Although, we do need to be as tactful as the Truth allows us to be.

I am not against all views in the Emergent Church. I read a critique yesterday from LoFiTribe about "The Jesus of Suburbia" that acted as a Hellfire Missile aimed directly at my safe and very suburban heart. I think a test of maturity is to be able to sift through criticisms and remove the wheat from the chaff. Too many of us these days are not "Quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger." Keeping with the Iran theme, we would rather react Ayatollah-like in our anger-- metaphorically chopping the heads off of our opponents (that'll shut 'em up)--thinking that our anger accomplishes the righteousness of God.

There is a reason why I am on this Iran-theme...you will just have to keep reading to find out why!

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