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You know the ones. Those people who when you ask to pray, you get a whole lot more in return: reams of churchy-talk and runs of "we just want to thank you for ____." It has a name, apparently, as seen in the video below. I know this makes light of Tourette's syndrome but it has an interesting point: does dipping into hyper-religious speak distract from your goal of embodying Christ? Check it out:
(h/t Chad Holtz's facebook)
Thoughts?
It's a rough week to be a Methodist.
First, Jesus Needs New PR snarked at Methodists, saying they would be left behind (#6). Now yesterday Jon Stewart took some potshots at the characterization of Methodists as "not standing for anything" followers of Christ. Start out at 4:20 then watch for at least 30 seconds:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Wedding of the Decade of the Century of the Millennium | ||||
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Stewart: Being a Methodist is easy. It's like the University of Phoenix of religions: you just send them 50 bucks and click "I agree" and you are saved.Ha! Then again, you look at John Wesley's requirements for membership and compare them with today's and he may not be far off the mark. Read more...
Peter, his brother Andrew, James the older, John, Thomas, Matthew, Philip, Bartholomew, James the younger, Simon, Judas Thaddeus, Judas Iscariot, Matthias and Paul.
Notice anything? Yep...NO WOMEN. No Mary Magdalene, no Mary & Martha, no early house church patronesses. Heck, Paul made the list and he wasn't even around in the "Jesus of Nazareth" days. But no Mary who was the first person in Matthew, Mark, and Luke's gospel to see/know of Jesus' Resurrection. The book went on sale on July 22, the Feast of Mary Magdalene.FAIL. Read more...
...and other satirical Christian versions of video games at ChurchCrunch.
"Stuff Christians Like" blogger Jon Acuff points us this morning to a parody video of Sunday Mornings at a megachurch. I'm glad to be in on their secret strategy and I hope Acuff doesn't end up with concrete shoes for revealing their secrets.
As always, self-deprecating humor is often a good hack!
For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.So it would seem to indicate that Matalin was correct...such admonitions against laziness are in the Bible. But Jesus did not say it, and even 2 Thessalonians is not likely to have been written by Paul, instead representing what John Dominic Crossan calls "the Conservative Paul" who makes other statements contradictory to the other letters of Paul, especially on social issues like poverty and women (more here). Authorship is important in biblical study, people!
2 Thessalonians 3:10-13, NRSV
A guy has a released patent on a "screw-in coffin" that would reduce land use and ensure your burial is unique (h/t Gizmodo).
Christian TV lays the smack-down on rickrolling.
Hilarious!
BoingBoing.net has a humorous game up that I wanted to open to the HX readership:
Lowest score wins. Try it and post your results!You can play a game with coworkers or family called Click to Jesus.
1. Go over to Wikipedia.
2. Click "Random Article" just below the Wikipedia unfinished Death Star logo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
3. Choose the link in the article you think will get you closest to the Jesus article.
4. Keep track of the articles. Continue step 3 until you arrive at Jesus.
Scoring:
1 point for Random page
1 point for each click
1 point for Jesus page
Baristas are the funniest people on earth:
All this talk about Virtual Church (1, 2, 3...ah ah ah) totally ignores the awesome interactive capabilities of the Nintendo Wii and its potential for Virtual Church in many houses.
Luckily some entrepreneurial Catholic has it all figured out. Check it out! (h/t Everyday Liturgy's Twitter)
Of course, it's a bad.hack (even though it absolutely cannot be real) because of its scoring system of "grace points." Grace is never earned...that's a basic tenet of Methodism and a large swath of Christendom. If they were called "indulgences" then it would be accurate but an even stronger indication this is fake.
Still, kudos for the WASPs and the animation.
Thoughts?
I don't know...I've said for years that making atonement a transaction is bad theology. This just takes it to the next level:
(from FAILblog)
A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) is a computer-based attack whereby a website or company is inundated with thousands (or millions) of requests. It slows down the website, the computers can't handle it, and it takes it offline.
Recently an atheist organization suffered this kind of attack and has decided to take retribution...on God.
As you may already be aware, recently the Atheist Foundation of Australia and the Global Atheist Convention websites were the target of a significant DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, which began on Monday 19 October.Hilarious! Good luck with that! (h/t net.effect) Read more...
This is a call to all non-believers and advocates for freedom of speech to join us in a global co-ordinated minute of prayer with the aim of inundating God (in this context, the Christian god, God, as distinct from the Greek god, Zeus, the Egyptian god, Ra etc etc) with so many useless prayers that it causes his divineness to go offline as as result of our own DDOS ('Divine' Denial of Service).
The prayer minute will be at exactly 8pm (Eastern Standard Time) and 9am (Greenwich Mean Time) on Sunday 8 November 2009.
Honoring the spirit of the Fifth Commandment:
h/t Susan on Facebook.
Rev. Jeremy Smith
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