You can hang a six-foot tall, anatomically correct, chocolate sculpture of Jesus in a hotel lobby during Holy Week. You can photograph a crucifix submerged in your own urine and receive everything from federal funds to "visual arts competition" awards. You have a constitutional right to burn the American flag and compare the president to Hitler. Such expressions are clearly protected by the First Amendment right to freedom of speech. Turns out, this freedom covers all speech unless it is negative or critical toward Islam.
We already knew it was a bad idea to draw a bunch of cartoons about The Prophet, but in a recent case of sharia law coming to a campus near you, a Pace University student has been charged with two felonies, criminal mischief and aggravated harassment, for placing a copy of the Koran (or is it Quran, or Qu'ran? Depends on who you ask, I guess) in a toilet.
You probably remember back in 2005 when a "detainee" (i.e. terrorist) at Gitmo alleged (i.e. lied:"(Turns out, it was the Muslim detainees who were flushing the pages down the toilets, trying to clog them and create a disturbance. May these infidels never receive their 72 virgins upon entering heaven! Details here.)":) about interrogators ripping pages out of a Koran and flushing them down a toilet? Well, in response to this unsubstantiated allegation, adherents to this "religion of peace" protested around the world, killing dozens of people to protect the honor of their holy book.
So, in order to avoid future peaceful protests by these peace-loving Muslims, the folks over at HamNation are offering the following video on proper bathroom etiquette:
I gotta go… I think the hate crime police are on their way.
Said at Southern has a podcast of an interview with Derek Webb up today that I thought was interesting.
One of the things that caught my attention was Derek's account of how he "got saved" and the next few years that followed. After having been converted at a Young Life camp, he got involved in Young Life. Nobody encouraged him to find a local church to belong to and the Young Life club meetings, for all intents and purposes, became the "church" that he attended. It wasn't until a couple of years later that he began to get involved with a *real* church where the Word was preached, the Sacraments were administered, etc.
My collegiate experience was very similar. I was raised in the Lutheran church (LCMS), but I got connected with The Navigators early in my freshman year. I got saved (re-saved?1) through a Navigator's Bible study after I saw the Bridge Illustration and realized that I'd never had a vivid conversion experience when I had "jumped across" from death to life. When faced with the option of choosing heaven or choosing hell, I made the no-brainer decision to jump across, to pass from death to life.
Following my conversion, I became very active in the Navigators circles. I got on the leadership team, I drafted up my before-during-and-after testimony, and I attended every Friday night meeting they offered. Church was the last thing on my mind. Well, that's not quite true. Having come from a "liturgical" church, and having never been coaxed into "making a decision," in my mind organized religion (i.e. church) was an enemy of the gospel. We had our own fellowship (Friday nights). We had our own sacramental system (illustrations and scripture memory systems). We had our own elders (Nav staff) and deacons (student leaders). The only time we really needed mainline churches was when we needed funds for our international missions projects.
If you think this is a rant against the Navigators, it's not. I had so many opportunities for spiritual growth during my –ahem– five years of college that I only wish I had even a tenth of those same opportunities today. I merely want to float the idea that para-church organizations would do well to emphasize early and often that the word "para" (i.e. alongside) is there for a reason. I'm wondering if there is a way for us to balance the role of para-church organizations in a way that they compliment the work of local churches instead of standing in competition with them.
I'd be curious to hear some observations from other post-collegiate-ministry folks. Is it just me, or is this a pretty common experience?
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