Friday 18 July 2008

Family idolatry, bisexual penguins, and more

In relation to this week's theme of sex, you should be sure to check out a couple of brilliant posts by Halden: Mark Driscoll, the church, and family idolatry, and Nature, grace, and the prevenience of the apocalypse. Man, I love Halden's blog – I tend to agree with him even more than I agree with myself.

For a critical response to Halden and me, IndieFaith also has some thoughtful and honest reflections. And for a bit of light relief, check out David's post on bisexual penguins.

1 Comment:

Bruce Yabsley said...

Ben it is generous of you to alert us to IndieFaith's critique ... which (as you can guess, from my response to the marriage post) I wish to echo. There seems to me a common thread in these posts where a critical observation has been made and then immediately raised to a high power, without other principles (or texts, or intuitions, or ...) used as a control. Now this is fine as one part of an argument or a dialectic, but in isolation it can't be used as a basis for action, and if it is then I think you do end up in the "social plague" from Dostoyevsky, that IndieFaith quoted: the caricature of perpetually re-splitting and warring protestantisms.

You wrote that you agree with Halden even more than you agree with yourself, but I put it to you that Halden's reaction to Mark Driscoll on the pastor's family over against his church, "[that his words were] perhaps the most horrifying thing I could expect to hear from the mouth of any pastor about the priority of the family", is crazed. By all means let's make as severe and incisive criticisms as we can, but for the love of God let them proceed from understanding, and some kind or charity. Halden's reaction by contrast exhibits a wilful refusal to take Driscoll's remarks according to their natural sense, or to interpret that sense with generosity.

Consistency requires me to seek out some tolerable sense in which these kinds of wholesale (dare I say apocalyptic) criticisms are meant, but I have been struggling to find any such sense. I'm prepared to allow that this may just be me, but I'd need some persuading.

On a completely different note: thank you for the Ray Anderson and (most recent) Kim Fabricius guest-posts: they've been most stimulating and thoughtful.

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