Tektonics Apologetics Ministries on “The failure of the church…”

Let’s give poor Mr. Horvath a break and pay a visit to our old friends at Tektonics Apologetics Ministries. Here’s a front-page article on The failure of the church to educate:

This is an article about how the church at large has failed us.

It is, of course, by no means meant to imply that there are not exceptions to the rules to be discussed. You may be part of a local church body without these failings, and if you are, you should be glad of it. But let’s be honest — most churches ARE failing when it comes to these matters we will discuss.

The article is introduced by two quotes, one of them from Dr. Daniel Wallace:

Even with the proliferation of Bibles today, Christians are reading their Bibles less and less. I believe the evangelical church has only 50 years of life left…because of marginalization of the Word of God. We need another Reformation! The enemy of the gospel now is not religious hierarchy but moral anarchy, not tradition but entertainment. The enemy of the gospel is Protestantism run amuck; it is an anti-intellectual, anti-knowledge, feel-good faith that has no content and no convictions. Part of the communal repentance that is needed is a repentance about the text. And even more importantly, there must be a repentance with regard to Christ our Lord. Just as the Bible has been marginalized, Jesus Christ has been ‘buddy-ized.’ His transcendence and majesty are only winked at, as we turn him into the genie in the bottle, beseeching God for more conveniences, more luxury, less hassle, and a life without worries or lack of comfort. He no longer wears the face that the apostles recognized. … The God we worship today no longer resembles the God of the Bible. Unless we return to him through a reading and digesting of the scriptures—through a commitment to the text, the evangelical church will become irrelevant, useless, dead.

But I’m going to take a contrasting view: the problem with modern Christianity is not that Christians fail to act as though they really believed in it, it’s that God fails to behave as though He believed in it. The church is straying, not because all Christians ought to be more thoroughly indoctrinated or because their religious faith needs to be more like doing homework, but because they have no real-world center of reference for their notions of what God ought to be like or how He wants us to relate to Him. And that, simply put, is exactly what we would expect in a world where God was a figment of human imagination.

The “Bible-based” trilogy, third & final installment

While we’re on the subject of Bible-based Christianity, I thought I’d offer one closing thought: Bible-based Christianity is itself a testimony to God’s continuous and universal absence from the real world. If God were as involved in real life as the Gospel portrays Him as wanting to be, Christianity would be God-based, not Bible-based. The Bible is a collection of ancient texts that were written by men, branded as “inspired” by men, selected by men (out of a much larger body of “inspired” texts), canonized by men (more than once, with results that still do not agree), transmitted by men, translated by men, interpreted by men, and applied by men. From beginning to end, it is a work of men, and the only reason why Christians base their religion on it is because God does not show up in real life to directly define the content of their faith.

Now even stealthier!

Our old friend Anthony Horvath has figured out that if he does not link to this blog, it won’t generate a pingback that might tip me off that he’s talking about me again. That’s not too surprising, since he’s once again distorting the facts in order to contrive some kind of pretext for accusing me.

Now compare that with an exchange I had recently with an atheist who, because I granted him superhero status and the title “Hyperbole Boy” has concluded that there is no better example of a Christian being unloving, for, after all (and he cites passages), Jesus was so nice. This sort of disproportionate response to what I said is exactly why I gave him the name “Hyperbole Boy.”

This post makes it back on the front page of his blog, which might prove confusing for some of his readers, since there’s no obvious link from the front page to the post where he called me “Hyperbole Boy.” Nor is there any link to the article where I listed some appropriate Bible verses–not surprisingly, since in that post I never came anywhere near claiming that there was “no better example [than Mr. Horvath] of a Christian being unloving.” (Speaking of “Hyperbole Boy”!) I merely highlighted the contrast between the supernaturally-enabled loving and inspired response recommended by the New Testament, and the rather lame attempt at name-calling which was the sole substance of Mr. Horvath’s reply. Nor did I mention anything at all about Jesus being nice. Mr. Horvath just put that there to provide a segue into the argument that Jesus could be just as abusive at times, and even more so.