Bookaboom
Mar 26th, 2008 by Jesse Moore
Bippety boppety boo.
I logged on tonight hoping that I would just start writing, and that the events of the days of my silence would fall onto the screen and assemble themselves into order, as though verbs and direct objects had opposite polarity. Instead I used the title of an obscure cd (one of the first I ever bought) as the title of this post, and some nonsense from Cinderella as my lead-in. If I were you, I’d stop reading now 
I’m a little confused by the political world right now. My mom alerted me to the fiasco that was breaking over Obama’s pastor, Rev. Wright, and at first I gave Obama the benefit of the doubt. Then I heard the clips from the sermons, which made me mad. I then sought out the full sermons that those clips were taken from, and I actually think that those clips were taken a little out of context, but there’s enough vitriol in his sermon to divide a country, in context or not. For the life of me, I still don’t quite understand what his point was, comparing the loss of life from 9/11 to other catastrophies and then blaming it on the government and on race and whatever other oppressive force exists to promote victimization.
Politics aside, you know what really bothers me that was flushed out of my examination of this? I absolutely can’t stand it when pastors, priests, etc (let’s just call them clergy) take more reference points from the newspaper than from scripture. Seriously! Rev. Wright quoted all sorts of references, and the bible wasn’t heavily hit. So many of the sermons that make it to the media are guilty of this pop-culture concentration. Pastors, like reporters, are showing a little too much bias when it comes to their professional roles. I’m more incensed at many other points in Rev. Wright’s sermons that never made the news, and it’s these less inflammatory, but no less biased points that concern me.
Here’s what I’m trying to get at: mixing personal or political opinion in with the Word of God only waters down the Word of God. Rev. Wright tried to use references from popular culture, throw in a dash of conspiracy, a pat of racism, a helping of incitement and ended up with a sermon filled with quotes like these:
“The government lied about Pearl Harbor. They knew the Japanese were going to attack.”
“The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.”
“The election was stolen. We went from an intelligent friend to a dumb Dixiecrat. A rich Republican who has never held a job in his life; is against affirmative action (and) against education.”
“For every one Oprah, a billionaire, you’ve got 5 million blacks that are out of work. For every one Colin Powell, a millionaire, you’ve got 10 million blacks who cannot read. For every one Condi-Skeezer Rice, you’ve got 1 million in prison. For every one Tiger Woods, who needs to get beat at the Masters, with his Cablanasian hips, playing on a course that discriminates against women, God has this way of brining you up short when you get to big for your Cablanasian britches.”
Yuck. I don’t even like knowing that these statements will be on my website.
I know how important pop-culture needs to be for the emerging church - my friends from as long ago as bible camp knew that I wasn’t going to throw out my secular music when the speakers told me to because I thought it was important to know what my un-churched friends were responding to. Pastors like Rob Bell (Mars Hill) are utilizing YouTube, Myspace, iTunes, and blogoirs (my term for the emerging genre of books that are basically memoirs in blog post form, albeit in a print medium) to reach the un-churched through pop-culture methods. There are other pastors however, that are going to get hooked on the easy laugh and the easy “Amen” whenever they reference the nightly news or Oprah’s latest show, and they substitute the word of God and sound doctrine for some kind of watered-down tabloid style sermon.
I left a church in college because a pastor taught his entire sermon from a newspaper, and he used “the facts” from an aritcle to condemn a revival that was bringing thousands of people to Christ through uncustomary means. When I challenged him on his sermon and asked him to give me a scriptural basis for his argument, he said that it wasn’t his job to convince everyone (meaning me) that he was right, but that he had to preach what God put on his heart. I told him that he should try to discern between messages delivered by God and those delivered by the paper boy, and that was my last service at that church.
I can’t help but wonder why Obama didn’t have a similar reaction to the things that Rev. Wright taught.
I think the sad thing about this situation is that people hear these words and it creates a bigger divide in this country both politically, culturally, and racially. I think it even more sad to hear Rev. Sharpton, Rev. Jackson, or Rev. Wright putting down people of their own race who have succeeded. I truly feel that leaders in the African American community do more to create a bigger divide than they do in bringing people together. Not that I don’t believe there is still discrimination out there, but they introduce conspiracy theories and government cover up to build up there cause and thus make them more powerful. Never doubt a man’s desire for more power even if it goes against their cause. This goes equally for politicians as well. My post is not meant to be racist but only as an observation. I believe God loves all no matter what color and I do too.
In reference to this post, a faithful blog reader sent me the following link, which is a reaction from the editor of a Christian monthly magazine - definately worth reading.