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Ah, time for another edition of Data Dump. This week we’re going to look at 5 posts I’ve bookmarked under the title “Christianity” and give you my quick comments.
What You Can Learn from Calvin and Hobbes about the Message and the Medium
I think that I may have been too young to appreciate Calvin and Hobbes– they weren’t in my local paper, and by the time I started reading the strip he was already done. The point of this article, though, is about Christianity. You see, we live in a day where if we can slap “WWJD”, “Lord’s Gym” or just about anything else on a T-shirt or coffee mug, we will. Fred Sanders attempts to teach us
Anybody who has a message that they care about communicating should pay attention to the great lesson taught by Calvin and Hobbes: The lesson is that not every message can be communicated in every medium.
Can the message of Christianity really be contained on a coffee cup without cheapening it?
Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith
Again, I have not read this book, but Dale Van Dyke has, and he starts a critique of the book here.
I’m sure that we’ve all see one. The fake $20 that’s really a tract. Centurion over at Pyromaniacs talks about how people are trying to trick people into getting saved– and how phoney it is. Let alone insulting– it’ll take a couple of seconds before that kind of tract ends up in the trash. But the point is that we’ll stoop to anything to try to get people to come to Christ– anything but proclaim who He really is and doing what He said the way He said it.
Christianity Without Salvation
What happens when you take the cross out of Christianity? What if you erase Christ and in its place keep his teachings. You get “Christianity and the Social Crisis”, a book designed to meet people where they were and encourage good living, a kind of Christianity lite. However, the part of the article that most fascinates me is the closing sentences:
The Christian confession of faith, by itself, offers no guarantee that either individuals or societies will be transformed. But, for believers, not even the smallest steps forward can be taken without it.
Here is a basic understanding of the salvation that is lost on most people– the confession of faith is the beginning– “not even the smallest steps forward can be taken without it.”
“Perillous” Days for British Christians
Where will the current start of discrimination against those that are Christians end? This article details reports, especially in Britain, of Christians receiving persecution for their faith. No one’s being burned at the stake, but people are being passed over for jobs and other things that are starting to build.
Don’t get me wrong—this is all pretty trivial, compared with being burned at the stake. I am big enough and ugly enough to stand being ridiculed. Slightly more worrying are the circumstantial reports of people, such as Christian obstetricians concerned that their career paths are blocked, because they take a biblical stand on abortion.
And that concludes today’s edition of Links a Lot. Tune in next week for more links on a given topic!
