Recent events have made me think again. Often people preach Jesus as a loving and caring person. He is not. He hates everyone that does not believe OUR doctrines. If you do not tow our line of belief-ism, then you are going to hell.

That is our Gospel. That is our truth. The truth warriors have realized that Jesus is our weapon.

With him we can judge and condemn anyone we want.

Now, we are the Elect, so there is no need to worry about judging others. That is why God placed us here and why God gifted us! If we do not share the Good News that people are going to Hell, then no one will.

Jesus is our weapon, we can use Him to abuse those who we deem less deserving of God's grace than we are.

So, we encourage all those who follow the Online Disernmentalist Mafia Creed to go forth in joy knowing you are doing the will of our Doctrine and Our God.

Sola Scriptura!

I. Todyaso

Recently I went to that apostate site CRN.info as I heard Ken Silva was teaching mightily there. I also heard that Pastor John Chisham also known as Pastorboy was there beating the holy tar out of those emerging Warrenites! I was gleeful at first until I came across an accusations by Tim Reed who stated that Pastorboy had told someone to "Take their plank and shove it."

I was shocked!

I was shocked that an apostate like Tim Reed would rebuke someone as holy as Pastorboy! Yet, I also realized that what Pastorboy stated was unwholesome and nasty and bordered on the homoerotic!

In fact here is his full quote to Tim.

pastorboy Says:
June 9th, 2008 at 8:15 pm

Hey Tim,

Take that plank and shove it. No really, i mean it. No satire. Straight up. I am sick and tired of your false accusations. Be a man and quit attacking me over the computer with your ignorant side comments. You don’t know me! I pray that you get born-again and find out what real love is. “OH PB, you don’t know what real love is” Whatever. If I have a log, yours is a redwood.

UPDATE: Pastorboy claims this was all satire, yet I will point out that he stated: "Take that plank and shove it. No really, i mean it. No satire." He claims we are lying, yet it is obvious who really is.

 I am appalled at this sort of language. We have taken great pains as such people like Ken Silva and Steve Camp have gone far in revising our Church history to remove anything that might be crass. We love Luther, but deny any foul language or crassness that some claim as total falsehood.

I must state as some other writers here also have, that some ODM's are losing sight of their own holy standard and becoming much too worldly. As a pastor myself I would tell my own church to leave it or defrock me if I was telling the unsaved or apostate to "Take that plank and shove it."

Sadly John is not the only one that has stated this sort of thing, but we have given grace in the past, yet now it is sin just running amok in the ODM camp and must be dealt with! Sadly it was another emerging apostate that pointed out Chris Pajak, who sometimes writes for CRN, as stating something very similar! How sad when even apostates and heretics can so easily find sin in our own camp!

If we are to win in this Truth War of higher self righteous standards, we need to live by them.

I call that those who know John Chisham and his church call for his immediate dismissal as pastor at his church, we must keep the sinners like this out. Unless he is truly Elect then he can just repent and keep on sinning.

And John, the eye is painful enough place to have a plank, we do not need new places to shove them into.

Jesus wept,

I. Todyaso

Here is an important post from my friends at CRN.Info and Analysis concerning the grace of God. The important part, however, is not necessarily in the post proper, but rather in the replies that it has generated so far. (26 as of this post.) I will explain in more detail below. First, let me set the stage by reviewing the post.

The post begins with the retelling of a story from Philip Yancey's book What's So Amazing About Grace? It's the story of a young woman who is deeply embroiled in prostitution who sells her 2 year old daughter because she makes good money doing so. Here's what happens next:

At last I asked if she had ever thought of going to a a church for help. I will never forget the look of pure, naïve shock that crossed her face. “Church!” She cried. “Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They’d just make me feel worse.”

Philip Yancey then writes:

“What struck me about my friend’s story is that prostitutes much like this woman fled toward Jesus, not away from him. The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she saw Jesus as a refuge. Has the church lost that gift? Evidently the down-and-out, who flocked to Jesus when he lived on earth, no longer felt welcome among his followers. What has happened?

The author of the blog post, Joe Martino, rightly points out that this is exactly what has gone on in the church by noting what the church has become: Not a refuge for hurting people, but a miserable place where Christians thrive on destroying one another (as exemplified in the world of blogdom). The woman in Yancey's story is right: Why would anyone want to go to a place where the people there only make them feel worse. Churches are good at making people feel worse. We are really good at helping people 'comprehend their worse-ness.' Ironically, most people need very little help understanding the depth of their depravity.

The problem is that we construct churches nowadays so that they 'fit the neighborhood.' The neighborhood, sadly, is often a place in the suburbs, or a place where people of like feathers can gather in way-too-expensive buildings where all the latest amenities are present (ATM's, Coffee shops, McD's, etc). We Christians plant churches in comfortable neighborhoods where comfortable people can go and worship a comfortable God in a comfortable atmosphere along with other comfortable people. We necessarily exclude people like the prostitute in the story because there is no room for her in our comfortable world.

In other words, the churches we plant and the churches we are, are notplaces constructed for the hurting, the broken, the fragile. They are places constructed for the comfortable. (A shabbily dressed prostitute is unlikely to believe for a minute that she is welcome, let alone wanted, in the typical suburban mega-churchopolis; or in most churches for that matter.) We hope will remain comfortable because if they are uncomfortable they might not want to be a part of our club any more. But what if churches were places where the hurting people of this world knew they were not just welcomed but wanted? How would we accomplish such a thing? How would they know? What sort of preaching would they hear on Sundays, Saturdays, or any days?

Well, one person who responded to the post at CRN.Info demonstrates exactly what would not happen in a church where people, hurting people, knew they were wanted. Here's one one respondent wrote:

And the wonderful thing about this story is it is not about grace! Grace is not grace if we offer our broken approval and don’t tell the truth. [Where did the author offer broken approval?] Of course a sinner is going to feel lousy in the church if the law is preached and they come face to face with their sin. [Can't people come face to face with their sin by preaching grace? Why does a person need to feel lousy at church when they feel lousy every minute, of every day? Shouldn't 'church' be different?] Of course, we should do so seasoned with salt. But allowing an unrepentent [sic.] sinner to be locked in the chains of their sin without offering a way out is not love, nor is it grace. It is our broken attempt at empathy. [Uh, where did the author leave the sinner locked in chains?]

* * *

I fully understand what grace is. [No, you don't; no one does.] But no one can understand the depth of the grace of God until they understand the awful depth of their sin. [Yes, they can. They live it every day! They see it in the mirror, their empty pockets, their broken relationships, etc.] I see this prostitute as one who has a sorrow for the pain of her addiction, a sorrow for what she has to do to feed it, but not a godly sorrow that leads to repentance and trust in Jesus. [How do you know what she was feeling, were you there?]

* * *

I agree that the church is broken. I agree we need to be much more like Jesus. [When Jesus preached to the prostitute in John 8 he did not demand repentance. He simply said, 'go and sin no more.' But there is nothing implicit in that sentence that demands she 'repent' of her past sins, only, rather, that she guard herself from future sin.]  I don’t think we do this through compromise with sin, however. [No one does. No one did. This is a straw-man.] I think the church can do much better at reflecting the love of Jesus to a hurting world, while still communicating the truth of Gods Word. [Then we should teach grace, because, as you say, law cannot save us; it is a poor mirror at best.] We as individuals are called ambassadors, communicating the will of the King to a world that He died for. [Emphasis all mine.]

These quotes are from three different responses, all by the same author, but they faithfully convey the point this particular author is trying to make. He wrote, "But no one can understand the depth of the grace of God until they understand the awful depth of their sin." I'm curious about this comment because I think the author of it has inferred it, incorrectly, from Scripture but has not read it explicitly. But, and here's the point, how much more did this particular prostitute need to 'understand the awful depth of her sin'? She was living the awful depth of her sin! She understood it every minute she was awake. What she needed was the grace of God, what she needed was relief, what she needed was a balm, what she needed was a church--not in the sickening sense of a building with multi-purpose rooms and stackable chairs, but a people who shared in her hurt, suffered with her, carried her burden. 

No one would condone sin by offering her a way out of her sin. Sinners need to know not that they are so pathetically bad that all they can do is feel worse or understand they are worse than they already know. Sinners need to know there is a way out of their current situation; a different way; a better way; a Jesus Way. When Jesus healed the man named Legion, he didn't first sit down and explain to Legion the depths of his depravity or discourse on the Law and demonstrate how a holy God demands perfection. Jesus simply set the man free, then the man wanted to follow him. The woman at the well in John 4, again, no demand for repentance; just an offer of Grace. The apostle Paul: No demands; just grace. Now this is not to say that they did not repent. It is to say that grace has its own funny way about itself. In Luke 15, the Father demanded nothing of the prodigal son; only the older brother did. And we can see quite clearly in the parable whom Jesus takes the most offense at. The Father offered unconditional grace; the older brother did not. (Before I'm accused of not paying attention to the younger son's 'repentance', please carefully note in verse 20-24 the Father ignores the prepared speech the younger son gives in verse 21.)

The point of the original post is not that repentance isn't important or that preaching 'all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God' should be neglected. Rather I think the point is that the church never gets to that point because 'sinners' do not want to be a part of, or visit with, or be involved with Christians in a place where they see people ripping each other to shreds, people who are supposed to love one another deeply. In other words, how can the sinner trust the church when it says 'God's grace saves you' when it is clear to any thinking person that the church refuses to practice grace towards one another? Jesus said, "Love another. By this all men will know you are my disciples." Love one another he said. But we don't. We devour one another for sport. We destroy one another for pleasure. We devastate one another for utter delight and joy. This, I contend, is why people don't want to be a part of the church and why they believe the church makes them feel worse and further why they won't listen when we talk about sin.  Jesus may well have preached such things when he was at the dinner parties of 'sinners, tax-collectors,' and the like. But Jesus first had to find himself in the company of 'such people' before he did so.

Why did Jesus have to command us to love one another? Why did he have to command the one thing that should be the most natural to those saved by grace?

The replies I quoted above were written in response to Joe's post. The irony is this: Joe's post was confessional. He wrote:

And the whole time people who’s lives are being blown apart just keep on dying. They just keep on living the wrong way because Darn It, I AM RIGHT!!!   One camp  picks apart a person in the other camp because he doesn’t go far enough down the Theological trail with them. They may agree that one goes to Heaven by believing on the work on Christ but down the path they disagree so it’s Ok to tear each other apart. I wonder, does this make you as sick as it does me?

The second response in the thread is this:

Point the finger at this site, because you all are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

If you disbanded, it would be one less place that was spewing hate on the blogosphere towards brothers and sisters in Christ.

This is from the same person who wrote those three responses above. Implication: He is unwilling to admit that he, too, is part of the problem. Joe did this; Pastorboy did not. Do you see how Joe's point is proved in the very responses made by Pastorboy? What a sickening display, which is why I'm still awake at 1 AM writing this lengthy post exposing the ignorance of one who claims to understand grace: He doesn't. Grace does not point the finger at other people; it points the finger at the self. Grace does not admit the faults of others, but the faults of the self. Grace does not help other people realize their sins, it rejoices that it's own sins have been forgiven and delights to share the same with others. Grace needs no help tearing people apart that they may be set free. Grace makes no demands of us.

Still, the bottom line to the story is that woman's criticism of the church is dead on. Churches are so concerned about protecting their purity that they can do very little to involve themselves in the lives of broken people. All we do is rant and rave against all the big stuff while offering very little in the way of imparting God's healing grace in Christ to hurting and broken and shattered people.

There is a big difference between these two ideas, a difference, I suspect, that would make more sinners give their attention to God than there mere pointing out of how depraved they are. Instead of putting all the focus on humans and their depravity, why don't we instead put all the focus on Christ Jesus and His truly remarkable, amazing, incomprehensible grace. It seems to me that to do the former is to make church far more about 'me' than it should be; to do the latter is to keep the focus exactly where it should be: On Jesus.

Soli Deo Gloria!

I fear we have snakes in the grass! Vipers even.

I hope it is just an oversight at Christian Research Net who have been true Truth Warriors extraordinaire for some time. I was surprised that even those Apostates over at CRN.(Mis)Info. can see this a mile away, that my own mentor and great Pastor/Teacher/Discernmentalist Giant/ has not seen this!

It seems that Ken Silva is trying to do damage control for Ingrid of Slice of Laodicea. We have shown here in a couple of posts already that Ingrid seems infatuated with the fires of hell themselves and is secretly pushing contemplative prayer through the back door of her own organization.

I first broke the story here with our now world famous video.

Yet is also was apparent that she was up to something some time ago at her "kinder gentler blog".

Yet, as i dug deeper into her source I was horrified to see this paragraph.

"We rightly criticize those who engage in transcendental meditation and other mind relaxing exercises because these practices are connected with false religions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism, and have nothing to do with Scripture. Such forms of meditation focus on emptying the mind to become detached from the world and to merge with the so-called Cosmic Mind, not to attach to, listen to, and to be active for a living, personal God. Yet, we can learn from such people the importance of quiet reflection and prolonged meditation." (PDF FILE)

I see this now as a very bold move to infiltrate the ODM's with her hidden agenda to spread contemplative prayer within the ranks of the Truth Warriors.

I believe this started when she interviewed Doug Pagget who is a Yoga Guru Pastor in the Emerging Church under the tutorial and control of Brian McLaren. I see now that she was really opening the door for Doug to push his New Age Yoga on her listeners.

Now with this exposed we need to be more diligent. Chris Rosebrough of Extreme Theology has already gone to the dark side and is thanking Rich Warren, so anything is possible now as Warriors are falling everywhere. Like when we lost Mike Corley when he went to visit Mark Driscoll's church Mars Hill. (Why name a church after a planet? I believe there is another story of astrological influence there!)

Now is the time to stand more firm on OUR doctrines that save. We need to cast out those who are bringing in the impure teachings to our Churches. Boycott Crosstalk America over their hidden Contemplative agenda today!

Tell them I. Todyaso sent ya!

Updated: If you are not convinced in this Ingrid also uses subliminal messages on her blog. I one is a keen discerner, you will see this on the bottom of the page.

Blog at WordPress.com | Theme: Mistylook by Sadish

This is a hidden message to those who are into Contemplative Prayer. Notice that she uses "Mistylook"? This is on the post Meditation the biblical way and uses part of the word, "Mystic".

We know Our God is angry and hates sinners. We have bible verses that prove that and will cram them in your face if you ask us to. We also noticed that some "Truth Warriors" are not doing enough (though some are and here is a great post about how you can be a True Christian and also be rude!) to spread the Good News of the Angry God and His Wrath.

We pray that Team Pyro will step up to the New Standard and High Bar we have set. We are also saddened they do not go far enough and have even shown a little "emergent tendencies" with things like this.

We here at The Discernmentalist Mafia refuse to compromise like this and will even stand up against the nonsense that God loves sinners. We know God only loved the Elect of which we are. If you are not, then God has a place prepared for you called HELL!

 I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings,

I Todyaso

Here is some more sound bible teaching. 

Recently a person accused us of casting the first stone. I as a bit taken back at this as he was acting like it was wrong to do so. We see many examples of God commanding us to stone people. From adulterers, homosexuals, witches, Sabbath breakers, and disobedient children. In fact if we look carefully at scripture we are never told to not continue in the practice of stoning people. The closest thing is when the woman is caught in adultery and Jesus challenged the people that if they were without sin to cast the first stone. We can only conclude that Jesus being the only one there who had no sin, knew she was being falsely accused and so He also did not stone her. Be it known that if she had, Jesus would have picked up a stone and began to take care of that sinner.

 We see that even Paul took part of the stoning of Stephen without batting an eye. Paul later boasted in how many times he himself was stoned, which goes to show that we still should be doing so as Paul also stated imitate me and I imitate Christ for we are also denying that some enjoy the sufferings of Christ!

If we see a sinner sin, we should confront them and if they do not turn, then we should treat them like the sinner they are and as a tax collector. Even today we hate tax collectors and I bet most of our gentile readers would love to drag one out of the city limits and cast a few stones at one of them!

I believe if we are to have true revival, we need return to sound biblical teaching and start stoning people as needed. If you vote, vote for politicians that would back passing such a law that would allow freedom of our religious rights to stone a sinner as the bible commands.

Remember, Jesus stated if you love me you will do as I command. Our obedience must never be compromised as the prestigious and grand Way of the Master Himself John MacArthur teaches.

Hoping to stir up the people and the elders and the teachers of the law,

 I. Todyaso

I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe, to the Jew first and also to the Greek Romans 1:16

Jesus Christ the same; yesterday, today, and forever. Hebrews 13:8

The very beauty, in my opinion, of the scripture is the very fact that It is universal in its application to the entire world for all of time. In my study this week of Romans 4:1-13, I see this very clearly, especially in verse 3, and in 9-12:

3What does the Scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness." 9Is this blessedness only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We have been saying that Abraham's faith was credited to him as righteousness. 10Under what circumstances was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised, or before? It was not after, but before! 11And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So then, he is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them. 12And he is also the father of the circumcised who not only are circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.

Paul is writing to Christians in Rome. They came from many different backgrounds, but could be placed very succinctly in two categories: circumcised (Jews) and uncircumcised (gentiles). These two categories are helpful to understanding to whom Paul was explaining this central doctrine to the Christian faith; Justification by faith. The Jews claimed Abraham as their father, Paul explained that He was father to all peoples who followed in His footsteps of being declared righteous because of their faith. Their faith was in what God said (His Word) and in who He sent (His Son, Jesus) Since Emergents like red letters, here is a quote from the latter:

28Then they asked him, "What must we do to do the works God requires?" 29 Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." John 6:28-29 NIV

Pisteuo is the greek word that is translated belief in this passage, and the meaning is incredibly rich and powerful: 1. to think to be true, to be persuaded of, to credit, place confidence in 1. of the thing believed 1. to credit, have confidence 2. in a moral or religious reference 1. used in the NT of the conviction and trust to which a man is impelled by a certain inner and higher prerogative and law of soul 2. to trust in Jesus or God as able to aid either in obtaining or in doing something: saving faith So the root of our theology must be in what God has said (The Bible) and in whom he has sent (Jesus Christ).

Herein lies the problems with Tony Jones' theology, because the Bible is not authoratative, it is like any other literature that can be deconstructed. Also, the Bible is not there to order our steps today, rather it is a grand story in which we see Jesus and we ought to emulate His footsteps (what he did) instead of listening to and obeying what he said. Tony makes the excuse in the next several pages of the book TNC that evangelism and other acts of obedience (including believing upon the Name of Jesus Christ alone for salvation) are not necessary, indeed that God can act outside of our obedience. While that is true, Tony, that God can act despite our disobedience, He cannot act out of His character.

Tony goes on in this chapter ( and so will I ) stating that theology is always changing. That is, our God, who is unchanging, indeed the same yesterday, today, and forever, who claims He is the way, the TRUTH and the life, changes, because our opinion about Him is fluid. Tony states that God does not change, yet he says in the same breath that our view of God changes based upon our surroundings, upbringing, culture, etc. In other words, the unchanging God, who wrote the unchanging word must change to fit in the context of our time and culture through our opinion of Him. (theology)

Tony also claims that this deep deconstructive emergent approach to the Bible and to theology is some blessed spiritual gift that he and other liberal theologians alone possess, as he looks down on we simpleton reformers who take God at His Word, recognizing that His Word, in fact, trancends time, culture, tradition and our opinion.

Our theology, while time-tested and well researched is too limited for our emergent friends. Instead of (heaven forbid) evangelizing the lost, we should spend our time in coffee shops deconstructing every word of scripture, making it fit to the ever-changing cultural mores of today. And then we need to do the same tomorrow, because yesterday in now irrelevant. And it does not matter that we take our time not doing what God has clearly called us to do (make disciples of all nations) because God's actions are not contingient on what we do anyway. Besides, the emergent theologians are deconstructing Hell right out of the scripture, making Christ's substitutionary sacrifice about mending relationships with one another, ushering a kingdom of God on this earth that we work together with God to bring about (because God is not capable, apparently) and where God's generous orthodoxy (it does not matter in whom you believe, or in what you believe, just that you are honest about it) will welcome all people into the hereafter and the forevermore after reconciling and restoring them.

Theology does matter, Tony, and it is not an end in itself, rather a means by which we must see who God is in truth and respond in obedience. Theology is not created in a vacuum, rather, it recognizes solid truths about who God is by what He has had inspired to be written (the Bible), the creation (order, certainty, patterns) and the living Word, Jesus. It must be based on the rock, and not on the shifting sand of cultural changes and the intelligence of man.

To be continued . . .

One came to mind while I was reading chapter 2 and 3 of TNC. "You walk down the street. Right side, safe. Left side safe. You walk in middle; squish like grape." The moral of the story? The third way that Tony speaks about regularly in this book is stinking dangerous!

Tony tries desperately to compare this third way with the Protestant Reformation, and he is left wanting. During this reformation, he forgets that the true church, that had existed for 1500 years (much of it underground) was the lava that burst forth through the crust which was the Apostate Roman Catholic System.

Martin Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Tyndale, and others, for all their foibles, were men who were not seeking a third way, rather, they were seeking God's way in coming out of the prison system of the false Church of Rome.

During this 'soul searching' comparison, a few things come out about Tony and Emergent. First, and one that really calls into question whether these people are really Christians at all is the attack on the truth of the scripture. Tony will say that these are people having a conversation, but on page 19, like Rob Bell does in his book Velvet Elvis, Tony slyly calls into question whether the Bible can be trusted.

Tony argues that emergents desire to question the foundations, even the Bible. In doing so, He calls God a liar. He also opens the door to deconstruct the Bible like it is some normal book of literature. In fact, Tony does not see the Bible as a Holy Book, rather, He sees it as propaganda. Page 45 is very telling, where Tony compares the Bible to Mao's little red book. Is the Bible really to be reduced to this type of propaganda?

Back to the third way. On page 45, he sets the stage, calling into question reading the Bible in a healthy way, saying that most evangelicals read the Bible to prove their views to be right concerning homosexuals and women in leadership. These would be those on the right, both politically and religiously, those rotten fundamentalists. Then those on the left, both religiously and politically, those mainliners, who view the Bible with skepticism. These groups fight a continual tug of war. They fight between church polity, political parties, right interpretation of scriptures, social issues, and cultures. These wars between right and left have turned off these emergents, causing them to want to drop out. Then there is the third way.

The third way is to not be beholden to any one church- the church is organic, and as we cultivate our way through life we find different places in our culture that we can see God, and therefore those things are right and good. There is no sacred and secular- everything is sacred! We do not want to impact culture, nor do we want culture to impact us. Really, there is no culture. We want to do things in the way of Jesus, how he loved and accepted anybody.

The thought of wrath and judgement does not align with their view of Christ, so they leave that part out. Those in the third way do not hold to any political parties, rather, they pick and choose which planks are important to them. They don't like the parties, (but they will vote for Obama because of a sense that he is anti-establishment, and brings a subjective feel of hope) Of course the Bible is a sacred text, but the third way stays away from terms like inerrant and sufficient, they do not believe that it is sufficient for doctrine.

They believe that it is living, not in the way that it says, but in the way that culture (which does not exist) can help us understand that Paul did not really mean that women shouldn't be leaders in Church, or that homosexuality is a sin that will separate from God. No, homosexuality is to be honored and understood, and we should be accepting. After all, Jesus is a welcoming guy. He is our good buddy in the sky. He is not going to judge us, because we are joining with him to bring our picture of his kingdom here to earth.

Mr. Miayagi had it right. The emergents Third way is unsafe (just the way they like it) Unfortunately, they will wind up being squished like the proverbial grape when that truck of judgement and wrath that they do not believe in runs them over.

~ Pastorboy

***************************

I find it fascinating in this text that the Emergents are trying to break out of the old church mold, out of the patterns and the pretexts of the modern and into the postmodern. But some of the language and the rituals belie this very clearly in the book.

Chapter one, page one and two there is the story of Tony fumbling around an 'elite' New York editor, coveting her mac book pro as he takes out his dell dinosaur. He hides the fact that the book he is reading is the Bible. And he does not talk to her- only observes. He notices her as she slips the mac book away and takes out her prayer beads- a rosary- and notes that she is praying to the 'Blessed Virgin' He confesses that this does not compute.

What does not compute to me is the fact that there is at least three open doors of conversation in this little story that could have been walked through to open a conversation about the Gospel. I am always looking for these open doors to walk through, to be fair. But the one that is painfully obvious to me is that she takes out the rosary and begins to pray.

To this, Tony responds as if this is something that is perfectly okay, to pray to a human, creating a idol in the mind and giving worship to one who is not God. At the very least, he could ask her how she prays and why, and lead to the Gospel. But you see, this is the synchronicity pablum and problem that emergents have. They must find truth in the other, and in doing so, they make God a liar.

Fast forward to chapter two, where Tony claims that emergent lands between the Scylla of secularism and the Charybdis of fundamentalism, a postmodern posture where emergents are open to the identity of the other. The other is defined as those who are in different cultures and practice different faiths, and have different lifestyles.

This is why the emergent village supports and praises movements like Faith House in Manhattan, an attempt to bring together all the worlds monotheistic religions under one roof. It is why Tony's own church (and his wife) practice Yoga on Sunday Mornings at Solomon's Porch (while the rest of us are at church). It is why Solomons Porch fellowship area is plastered with sayings, not from the scripture, but from Christian, Hindu, and Muslim mystics. It is why open homosexuality and women pastors and elders are openly embraced there despite clear Biblical teaching. It is why there is never a standard mentioned, why there is no Statement of Faith, why there is nothing but open-ended conversation.

The Bible is not even considered to be truth to be believed by faith, rather it is literature that is to be deconstructed as any other literature. And while they are trying to break free of the modern, they have this belief in the ancient-future movement where they take practices of the Roman Catholic church and use them in their communities. The Iconography, candles, incense, even the sign of the cross are used regularly. Throw in practices of contemplative prayer, and other disciplines that seek by experience and practice to draw closer to God, and you see why with Paul we scream "are you so soon following a different Gospel?!"

There is no standard in the Emergent conversation, no rock solid foundation. Only the bedrock of shifting sand which they gladly accept and embrace. Only problem is, you cannot embrace sand very long before it all slips through your fingers.

~ Pastorboy

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I guess the most striking thing that I have read so far from "The New Christians"  (TNC) is the illustration about the health of the forest. The well established forest is one which is supposed to represent the Church. As we walk into that forest with a forest expert, he does not look at the tall trees that are well established, he looks to the soil, the hummus, what is growing on the floor of the forest as determination of the health of the forest. This is what Tony claims in this book is an illustration of Emergent- the radical new growth on the floor of the old church forest.

I know that all illustrations are imperfect, however, as a former Science teacher, I must mention that not all things that grow on the floor of the forest represent health. Bears do poop in the woods, as do many other animals. They also die there, decomposing (rotting)into the ground. From this natural breakdown of organic materials, new things feed and grow. Some of these things are new trees and other plants. Many more of these things are fungus (like mushrooms) and lichens and other such things. Most of these things are poisonous if taken in by the wrong creature, such as human beings.

The Emergent church has brought us some new awareness of structures in the old church that can be brought into closer accountability to be sure. Our practices should certainly be reexamined so we can be more effective in living out our faith before others. However, much more of the movement is poisonous, certainly as they seek to deconstruct and rewrite the scripture to better fit their own world view and beliefs, and attempt to make eastern practices such as yoga, contemplative (centering) prayer, and eastern-style meditation into the mainstream.

Foresters will also tell you that one of the most effective ways of propping up the health of the forest is a good old lightning strike that starts a fire and burns up the underbrush and quickly decomposing it so the soil becomes more rich, effectively feeding the trees in the forest.  The fire of the Holy Spirit is desperately needed in the forest that is the church, burning off all that is harmful and hidden in the underbrush so that we can be fed and grown up into the image of Christ to the glory of God.

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And all God's people, sitting in rows on padded pews at the back of the sanctuary, said: Amen !