Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Who's In Charge Here?

Dear Evangelicals:

Full disclosure: I'm a Christian and an American. I never heard the name Paul Jones until I discovered some of Manfred Mann's European hits just a couple of months ago. I don't know the work of Fiona Jones at all. So....

The interviewer looks like he wants to sell me a "genuine" Cartier watch out of the lining of his coat. That's nothing new; the Bible is full of such characters. The problem is the con game being run by the Christian Industrial Complex. In subsequent interviews on non-religious programs, Jones comes across as warm, funny, grounded, articulate, and confident -- cardinal sins in Christian culture -- a culture which, alarmingly enough, runs counter to what the Bible says on nearly everything.

The stammering; the simpering (Fiona's); the inexplicably-unbiblical insistence on praying something called "the prayer of salvation"; the vile notion that real Christians don't suffer (Fiona again); the unbiblical certainty that, if it isn't churchy, it must be ungodly; the idolatrous (there, I said it) idea that Christians are always "in control" and precisely aware of "what God is doing" at any given time (which is vastly different from knowing the character of God) -- all of this is Christian culture right down to the ground. None of it, however, seems to be who Paul Jones is, if you can believe what you see in his other interviews.

In the comments on this video -- which include this post -- some atheists have expressed the feeling that Jones has let down the side, if you will. Oddly enough, I share that feeling as a Christian.

It is true that, like all babies, Christians who are young in the faith tend to imitate what they see and hear indiscriminately, without really questioning whether they're following Jesus instead of just another human being. The Christian Industrial Complex runs on the unwillingness of the rank and file to ever get past this point.

Paul Jones was not the interviewer here, but the interviewee. He went where the questions led. I hope he's stronger now.



No comments:

Post a Comment