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.
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