Thread by @mcjulie

The Christians are not okay

https://twitter.com/robertjeffress/status/1467575773871677450

I'm curious about what he could possibly mean -- how is "ungodliness" measured, in the entire history of our country, really? But not curious enough to listen to his annoying unhinged ranting.

I remember one time @paulcarp13 and I were in my grandma's church and they had a guest preacher whose entire sermon was about how Bill Clinton lied.

This was in, like, 2003.

It achieved instant greatness as the worst sermon I ever sat through, edging out "For Easter: The Jesus Institute Part 2: Even more Jesus Institute"

Not only did it have an inexplicable focus on a guy who wasn't even president anymore, it had blatant revival-tent audience participation prompts.

"And why were we so mad at Bill Clinton?" (waits)
"Because he?"
(waits some more, makes a "say it with me" hand gesture)
"Because he liiiiieeeed"
(people do say it with him, but it's halting & awkward, they're not into it)

All that was bad enough, but then his main theological point was that, supposedly, according to some radical new scriptural interpretation I'd never heard before, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" ONLY refers to the particular sin under discussion.

So his idea seemed to be that if the sin under discussion was "adultery," if you had NOT personally committed adultery, stone away!

I'm not sure what his justification was for that interpretation. He probably had one, but it might have been nothing more complicated than "what that REALLY means is...[x]"

NEVER let evangelicals tell you they favor a "plain" reading of the Bible, that they don't "interpret," that their scriptural understanding is coherent, or that it is stable over time.

In the years since, I've seen similar sophistry among politically conservative Christians who justify behavior that *appears* to be contra-scriptural by arguing that the scripture actually applies extremely narrowly.

The most grotesque one is arguing that "the least of these" bit in Matthew ONLY applies to other Christians, so apparently you can treat non-Christians like crap, no problem.

Here's the thing about that sermon. I don't KNOW what the other people sitting in that Idaho church thought about it. @paulcarp13 and I complained about it all the way back to Bellingham. My grandmother never mentioned it.

But we all sat there listening to it. Nobody walked out. Nobody threw tomatoes. There was no OFFICIAL counterpoint. So, just like that, it becomes acceptable doctrine.

I've thought about that sermon a lot in the past few years. I would bet money that, if that guy is still out there preaching, he's a major Trumper.

And I'm sure he's got reasons why lying & adultery are bad when Bill Clinton does them & righteous when Trump does them.

And I've got reasons why I'm an EX-evangelical, why I think the faith is corrupt and bad, and why I encourage other evangelicals to #EmptyThePews