They can laugh it up now, but it won’t be so funny on Judgment Day.

emailnuevo on April 22, 2008 at 12:02 PM

Yep

So a tech guy showed some other tech guys a years old viral video? NO WAY!!

Nonfactor on April 22, 2008 at 5:33 PM

So why not “Terry Tate: office linebacker”, like most death-by-powerpoint sessions I have been forced to endure?

The most offensive thing is the first commandment. God gave you reason but he will damn you to hell if you use it.

LevStrauss on April 22, 2008 at 1:52 PM

I can’t believe that anyone who genuinely and sincerely seeks the truth would be damned by God just for not having reached the point of belief before the point of death. No matter what we believe, nobody knows empirically what happens when we die. My theory is that the truth we seek is presented to us after we’ve crossed that threshold: that God in some way gives us the choice to accept or reject Him, with full knowledge of the truth and the consequences.

Chesterton wrote (sorry, you’re flying Air Rosmerta now; the dial is set to All Chesterton, All The Time, with an occasional break for C.S. Lewis or Monty Python): “Christian morals have always said to the man, not that he would lose his soul, but that he must take care that he didn’t. In Christian morals, in short, it is wicked to call a man ‘damned’: but it is strictly religious and philosophic to call him damnable.”

… celebrate the creation of a spiritual welfare state.

How is that any less offensive than this video?

deewhybee on April 22, 2008 at 1:16 PM

Others have addressed the first part of your post, so I’ll just reply to the last bit: the Christian’s spiritual “welfare state” has little to do with a worldly welfare state – though the two have one important thing in common.

The main difference first: we’re born with the freedom to work our way up to the lives we want to live, so a political welfare state that enslaves us, stealing the fruits of our own labor to provide for the lazy against our will, is unjust and a barrier to progress. But in the spiritual realm, Christianity teaches us that nobody can work their own way into Heaven: all have sinned and fallen short. Only the mercy of God, freely given through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, can save anyone.

The big similarity: both the worldly and spiritual “welfare states” reward people freely, through no merit of their own. In the economic world this is unjust. In the spiritual world it’s “unjust” too, but God has chosen to pay that price for us – He was the one who was unjustly robbed of His very life. Yet we rejoice: both at His immense love thus proven, and at the resurrection as proof of His victory over sin and death.

Chesterton said: “Children are innocent and love justice, while most adults are wicked and prefer mercy.”

I would like someone to explain to me why people think the greatest thing that ever happened in the history of the world is that Jesus was nailed to a cross. People who claim to love Jesus dance, sing, celebrate, etc. about it. I would think that someone who truly loved Jesus would think that him having been nailed to a cross would be a terrible thing and take no comfort in it, rather than celebrate the creation of a spiritual welfare state.

Try to go to church on good Friday, and you will get the effect you are looking for.
What you ask is kind of like saying, you packed the car for the trip but leave for the vacation…then you wonder later, “What so good about a vacation, all you do is pack and and you leave out the vacation part. You have to read the whole book, not just one chapter.

I would like someone to explain to me why people think the greatest thing that ever happened in the history of the world is that Jesus was nailed to a cross. People who claim to love Jesus dance, sing, celebrate, etc. about it. I would think that someone who truly loved Jesus would think that him having been nailed to a cross would be a terrible thing and take no comfort in it, rather than celebrate the creation of a spiritual welfare state.

Actually, we don’t think it was the greatest thing that ever happened in the history of the world. What we really think is the greatest thing that ever happened in the history of the world is that act coupled immediately with what came after. The two acts are inseparable — man doing great violence to God, and God surmounting the act and yet forgiving man, for he knows not what he does.

Had things stopped at the crucifixion, there would be no legs to this story — just another sad death, like so many performed in the world before and since. It’s the part of the story after that point that makes the difference.

Where’s the Spanish Inquisition when ya need’em?!

Irenaeus on April 22, 2008 at 12:32 PM

Shhh…if you invoke them they will not come. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

It is only inevitable that Christians evrywhere will riot in the streets and start lopping off heads of the infidels. *crickets*

What was the context of him showing this video during a major presentation? It just seems so out of place.

Yeah, that puzzles me, too.

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

I rest my case.

Perhaps the connection could be made that this reflects a general anti-religious bias on the hard Left

I’ll buy that, but I think we may be looking at the question from the wrong end. Often the Left doesn’t use sacrilege to win elections; they want to win elections so they can indulge in sacrilege.

Zorro on April 22, 2008 at 1:09 PM

How’d the scan go?

(sorry, OT, i know)

I would like someone to explain to me why people think the greatest thing that ever happened in the history of the world is that Jesus was nailed to a cross. People who claim to love Jesus dance, sing, celebrate, etc. about it. I would think that someone who truly loved Jesus would think that him having been nailed to a cross would be a terrible thing and take no comfort in it, rather than celebrate the creation of a spiritual welfare state.

How is that any less offensive than this video?

deewhybee on April 22, 2008 at 1:16 PM

The most offensive thing is the first commandment. God gave you reason but he will damn you to hell if you use it.

I would like someone to explain to me why people think the greatest thing that ever happened in the history of the world is that Jesus was nailed to a cross. People who claim to love Jesus dance, sing, celebrate, etc. about it. I would think that someone who truly loved Jesus would think that him having been nailed to a cross would be a terrible thing and take no comfort in it, rather than celebrate the creation of a spiritual welfare state.

How is that any less offensive than this video?

deewhybee on April 22, 2008 at 1:16 PM

Isaiah 53:5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: … and with his stripes we are healed. [10] Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, … [12] … and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

The joy isn’t in the crucifixion. The joy is that, having been crucified and put to death, Jesus was resurrected. The joy is in the victory over sin … in that sin had brought death into the world. Jesus, by his resurrection, defeated death and, therefore, the sin of this world.

I hereby release the Presbyterian Martyrs Brigades! This infidel shall cower in horror when he is ruthlessly not invited to a potluck.

TheUnrepentantGeek

And I hereby release the Methodist Avenging Angels.

Lessig is now condemned, CONDEMNED I say, to sit in the FRONT PEW for church!

-shudder-

That’ll teach him!!

I would like someone to explain to me why people think the greatest thing that ever happened in the history of the world is that Jesus was nailed to a cross. People who claim to love Jesus dance, sing, celebrate, etc. about it. I would think that someone who truly loved Jesus would think that him having been nailed to a cross would be a terrible thing and take no comfort in it, rather than celebrate the creation of a spiritual welfare state.

How is that any less offensive than this video?

deewhybee on April 22, 2008 at 1:16 PM

It is a terrible thing, the worst of all things, the killing of God Himself (Jesus is God). We “take no comfort” in that fact ALONE, as evidenced by the thousands upon thousands of people sobbing their eyes out at the graphic portrayal of Jesus’ suffering and death in, say, The Passion of the Christ. If you were in the theater for a screening of that you’d know what I mean.

The “comfort” comes from the fact that Jesus loves each of us (including you and me) so much that He was willing to go through THAT to pay the price for our sins so that we could go to heaven and be with Him forever. “Endless love” indeed.

Imagine that. A God Who would, quite literally, rather die than live without us. Hence all the songs and celebrations. Amazing love.

Yes, but not in the “death to all infidels” offended.

Just “roll my eyes” and “I think I’ve heard everything I need to hear from you” offended.

Ah, but this is old stuff, isn’t it? Quite honestly compared to dunking a crucifix in a jar of urine this video is practically high entertainment!

controversy!

Dr.Cwac.Cwac on April 22, 2008 at 12:35 PM

Sorry, Ed. I should have phrased that better. Mea culpa.

OK. How about this pithy comment.

Anyone have an indication of how the members of the Westboro Baptist Church are going to respond?