Comments | mahf: (без темы)

mahf

(Untitled)

Mar 25, 2007 20:14

Nothing original here, just an annotated audiography. Two really good things to listen to. I know they're long, but you have mp3 players, you have ipods, you drive places, you sit at computers for hours at a time. Check them out!

MP3 Link #1: "Women, Gifts, and the Body of Christ" by Mike Cope

This guy Mike Cope preaches at Highland Church of Christ ( Read more... )

Comments 8

Jesus would spit Don Miller out of his mouth in a heartbeat mothwentbad March 26 2007, 23:09:22 UTC

This is the definition of lukewarm. Does Don Miller ever make any kind of point? The first 20 minutes (and I don't think I'll stick around for the rest) is a belabored "gee wiz". Shameless gallons of filler abound. Irrelevant recaps of what he learned about writing stories in High School English (and this coming from an "author"!). The only time he ever even touches on scripture is to say that he's kind of iffy on Genesis, he doesn't know about that, but that's ok, because he's not a hardass like those fundamentalists. This isn't an intellectual look at Christianity - this is a carbon-copy of every sermon I've ever heard with 80% of the Bible references removed and replaced with pop culture references. A lot of Amazon reviewers seemed to come away with the same impression of him, and they even note that near the end, he sheepishly confesses that maybe he should actually read the Bible someday if he decides he's going to stick with this "Christian" thing.

Re: Jesus would spit Don Miller out of his mouth in a heartbeat mahf March 27 2007, 00:11:07 UTC

First of all, I don't like your use of the term lukewarm, I think it comes from a silly reading of Revelation 3. For some reason, people seem to read it like cold=non-Christians, hot=good christians, and lukewarm=mediochre christians, who are to be understood as even worse than anything else ( ... )

Re: Jesus would spit Don Miller out of his mouth in a heartbeat mothwentbad March 27 2007, 23:27:17 UTC

When I said that every sermon I've ever heard is like this, I meant in style and in tone. It felt like the popular Baptist sermons I heard growing up, in that it's more about trying to be likable than it is about anything else. He hates rocking the boat. He warms up the audience by assuring us how much of a sweetie he is, with some disarming story about how he lost a golf club or put his shirt on backward or something similarly trite and harmless. He talks down to us in that way that schoolteachers talk down to children. He uses baby metaphors and constantly makes it clear that he's explaining something important and sweet and life-affirming to us. He refuses to make a point because points are pointy and dangerous. He is the sworn enemy of texture. As far as formatting goes, he has the art of the First Baptist Church of Merritt Island, FL sermon down pat ( ... )

Re: Jesus would spit Don Miller out of his mouth in a heartbeat mahf March 28 2007, 02:14:29 UTC

Yeah, I can see what you mean. I suppose I am less averse to the sort of friendly tone he takes because I grew up hearing much less friendly sermons. Old school sermons where they didn't gloss over hell or anything like that ( ... )

mothwentbad March 26 2007, 23:56:40 UTC

The first 20 minutes of the Mike Cope thing went a lot better, though I probably would've been better served by reading so I could skim over the slow parts. I might check the rest of it later.

mahf March 27 2007, 00:19:48 UTC

I think Don Miller displays an anxiety about the Bible that I don't quite share, but he still manages to express some of what I and a lot of christians find attractive about the story the Bible presents. The *why* the world is the way it is part that it seems to us to make so much sense of.

Mike Cope on the other hand has much less anxiety about the Bible, and perhaps a bit more maturity about reading it. He's come to a position, accepted the tensions involved, and is trying to live in it. Don Miller on the other hand, seems to be in perpetual adolescence. He expresses the uncertainty in a way that is affirming to a lot of thoughtful Christians who have also struggled with such issues and found Christianity satisfying for similar reasons.

Re: Jesus would spit Don Miller out of his mouth in a heartbeat mothwentbad March 27 2007, 22:20:01 UTC

I only got through the example about slavery, and his take on it is somewhat secular - Philemon was simply an account of Paul's ideas on how to keep Jesus's teachings when the dominant culture is one which is built on slaveownership. (Though I find it odd that while Paul says, "don't get married unless you absolutely have to - it's better than going to Hell, but just barely", he doesn't say the same about owning slaves, though the advice he gives to Philemon could arguably serve as a model. I haven't read Philemon in a while, but I don't remember misgivings about the institution of slavery being a strongly-developed thread - obedience to the master and benevolent treatment of the slave are, though, if I remember ( ... )

Re: Jesus would spit Don Miller out of his mouth in a heartbeat mahf March 28 2007, 00:38:55 UTC

I think the point about everything else in Paul's writings undermining the dominant culture of slaver (mutual submission, "in christ we are neither slave nor free", etc.) gives a bit more credibility to Mike's point ( ... )