Training a generation of human cogs.

Say something else in that ear.

"Parents in my generation bemoaned comic books (where the only words you read could fit in a bubble). Digital media is the same thing. We are training a generation of kids that don’t read or acquire critical thinking skills. They make great soldiers, cashiers, clerical drones, and other sorts of human cogs, but they don’t teach or make movies or write books or symphonies or, I imagine, pray the rosary or meditate on a mandala or take 20 minutes to watch a sunset completely, utterly disappear."
--Clarence 0ddbody (in an email to Steve V, June 26, 2013)

c0

I'm listening to a book now, The Gospel According to Jesus: What Is Authentic Faith? by John MacArthur. It's aimed primarily at mega church Christians and the tendency to burn brightly then burn out. (A problem with all churches, not just mega churches, but I think that's MacArthur's background.)

The gist is fairly simple – works are not required for salvation, but you are not saved if you don't exhibit them. I'm only halfway through, and I agree with him, but he's straddling a fine line between "you were never saved" and "you lost your salvation," neither judgment which any mortal is equipped to make.

It's much easier, and I believe biblical, to say "believe and do these things," which Jesus and the apostles repeatedly said in a variety of ways.

(It was very interesting BTW to hear MacArthur address baptism and bend over backwards to insist it's only symbolic. I'm sure he was anticipating an evangelical response, since he is confronting and audience in which "easy believism" is not a disparaging term but a theology.)

The early church felt "doing something" was necessary to begin and maintain an ongoing healthy relationship with God. I'm not sure how all the doctrinal minutia that divides us today messed that up.

[2013-06-16]

c0

I believe Jesus died on the cross for my sins and rose again.

Everything else flows from that, and everything is many things, but it is primarily being accountable every day for how I will respond to it.

[2013-06-14]

c0