Elmer Gantry Is A Really Amazing Example Of A Book That Does This Well - I Read It Specifically Because

Elmer Gantry is a really amazing example of a book that does this well - I read it specifically because it was banned across America (for being too accurate). But it knows what it's about! It's a critique of performative religion, nominal cultural Christianity, sensationalist prosperity gospel preaching, etc.

Iron sharpens iron, and awareness of the issues in the church is much more useful, and narratively satisfying, than 'Christianity Bad' media.

I mean if we're really getting into it, most problems with people creating stories to critique Christianity boil down to either a. They do absolutely zero research and think "why do bad things happen" is unanswerable for anyone who believes in a fundamentally good deity, b. They assume that the religious beliefs of two churches in Missouri run by an abusive pastor are the religious beliefs of 3 billion people, or c. They're actually critiquing cultural systems which utilize Christianity to uphold oppression (good! Critique that!) but they conflate that with the religion itself which often leads back to the first two points, meaning they make factually incorrect statements about actual religious teachings and approach faith as inherently evil (wrong! Read the Book!)

I do believe you can write a story critiquing faith or religious systems or religion and do it well but unfortunately 90% of the time this is how people do it. Which is poorly done and useless.

Jesus Christ is Lord

Hear me out, but I think the university system has become one of the most effective indoctrination systems possible, producing the desired mindset in the student near invariably.

Firstly, there is agenda setting. The topics of debate, the options presented. We debate not whether God is real but if He is good, not whether Big GenderTM is good but how it interacts with post-colonial logics, not whether humans are logic-drive consumers but how we can harness this to efficiently consume our way to Nirvana. Every department, module and academic has centuries of layers of preconceptions and ideologies baked into what they teach, and the don't (nor could they, in fairness) disclaim this. It takes the grace of God and hefty extracurricular study and the right friends to understand this as fast as it is being taught to you.

Second, and building on this, there is the myth of neutrality. Most departments are obsessed with appearing scientific, and objective. They want to be like maths or physics, merely relaying the facts of the matter. They can and will deduce the truth of psychology, of economics, of ethics, even of poetry through technical language and shoehorned mathematical diagrams.

However, it is my firm conviction that this approach is mythical: not only can politics or ethics not be solved in an equation, but neither can science. They both involve stories.

At the beginning of every scientific endeavour is a human mind that desires an answer to a question that interests them, usually because they want a specific answer, because it fits a specific story. The same is true of every poem written, every political theory constructed. They are all telling stories, whether true or not. Let us not forget the scientific method came to Descartes in a dream. Science is inextricable from narrative and rhetoric. Maybe, MAYBE scientific data itself is unbiased, (but even then we must ask who gathered it, how, and for what reasons?) but as soon as a human mind touches it, organises it, draws conclusions, it becomes part of a story. That story will fit the worldview of the scientists almost every time, except for supremely objective scientists faced with data that undeniably contravenes their worldview (but in most cases, an experiment like this would simply not be performed). I'm not suggesting that science is largely wrong (in fact it's mostly right), but that it is not the whole truth - it is selectively pursued and used to show that which fits the narratives of those doing the science. That's just how humans work.

And so in our materialist culture it is no surprise that psychology will tell you religion is a delusion, neuro-science that human minds are a bunch of neurons firing and that love is a chemical reaction, biology how man rose from sheer probability and will continue to rise to near Godhood, physics how the universe created itself and will one day be reduced to nothing, ethics how God is evil and mans intuition is sufficient for morality, history how Christianity is evil, politics how we will solve human conflict by taking justice into our own hands, economics how we will achieve heaven on earth by building it ourselves.

All these disciplines have a story they want to tell quite divorced from any scientific data, and God, if He has any role at all, is the villain. Of course, nobody knows the answers to the mystery of consciousness, the origin of life, the origin of the universe, the purpose of humanity, what it means to be good, how humanity might be saved. But whatever those answers are (and we'll definitely calculate them soon just give us one more century!!!!), they certainly do not include God, and you will be derided for suggesting it. Most material these disciplines produce will show God doesn't exist and is evil, because that is obviously true to the people producing it. And they will sell you this as objective, neutral information.

Third and most importantly, every piece of work you produce is in no small way a pass/fail for your future. Actually failing an assignment whilst maybe not something that would get you off the course would almost certainly restrict your future job or study choices. The pressure is immense, and subconsciously you know exactly what story your marker wants to hear. People give higher marks to academic writing which agrees with their worldview (or at least is a plausible option in their worldview, I read one ethics paper which laid out possible arguments for a position and casually said 'of course, religious arguments can be excluded since they are not reasonable'). They just do. Nobody is impartial. It's not a thing a human can be. So nine times out of ten without realizing it you buy into the preconceptions, the worldview, and the ideology of the module and you pick a safe option and you re-tell the story they want to hear. Because your future depends on it, because it is presented as neutral fact, because the options given were vetted from the start, and because this is all happening in a subconscious, momentary flicker of hesitation.

And what's more, you believe it to. Because you can't just write a 4000 word essay interfacing with some of the most complex ideas around and be convincing and do enough research without it leeching onto you. You can't just tell them what they want to hear but privately disagree - you come to the forefront of that narrative and you actually build and develop it. You smash your mind over the rocks of these ideas. It becomes ingrained and second nature because you immerse yourself in that ideological space because that is the only way you can write a good piece. You will write the essay they want to read, and you will fully believe every word of it.

So, your options are 1) resist fully, lose friends, status, grades and future by suggesting in writing that humans might have souls or that love might be real or that there is a God who has a place in the mechanics of the universe. 2) try to appease both - write a story that is within the scope of the modules plausibility area, but still good and true. Lose some grades, lose some of your integrity. Despite your best efforts, swallow some of the story they are teaching you. 3) Try to ignore the story, sit on the side lines. Focus on an area so small and insignificant that it doesn't affect any big ideologies at play. This is easier to do in some subjects than others. But, if you do it well you can get pretty good grades. But you will be censoring yourself and you will not find much truth or satisfaction in your studies. You will also buy at least some of the story they are telling you. 4) Go along for the ride, accept what they teach you, teach it to yourself. Get good grades.

This is a choice you can only make for yourself, I don't know what the best way is. For most people, 1-3 aren't even possible. How would you realise you're being indoctrinated if you already agree with the story they are telling you? If you have no other convincing, detailed, and evidenced story to tell the university, then maybe they're right. Trust the experts, after all.

Which brings me to the fourth, and most genius part of this apparatus: the people most indoctrinated, who have fully bought the story of their department, who sing it sweetly with all their hearts - they become the new academics. Dissenters are marked away - they become irrelevant, and importantly, stupid. The intelligent zealots are promoted to teach a new generation.

I honestly think that you are intellectually bludgeoned into conformity from day one of university. I imagine this is true of the southern Baptist seminary through to oxford. To keep your faith through this is hard. You need a solid foundation going into it, and state education is loath to provide that. To change it would be even harder: the people aware of the problem and willing to resist aren't exactly given tenure. I think we need more honesty and humility from academics, and more diverse options available across different institutions. In any case, we need the grace of God.

Bonhoeffer, writing in Weimar Germany, talks about how one can live a comfortable, secular, Bourgeoisie life whilst still being respectable and 'Christian'!

Not so anymore! There is much secularism must answer for, but I will say this in its defence - it will eradicate the normal, respectable, dead Christian. "Churchianity", cultural Christianity, and nominalism are all dying rapid deaths amidst secularisms' derision, lies, mockery, and cultural persecution.

More and more these days, if someone tells you openly they are a Christian they bloody well mean it.

Praise God!

maybe I am tumblr, maybe I am

Thinking about the apostle John. Quite a sad story in some ways. He was probably the youngest apostle, the baby of the group. After the ascension, when the church began, they all worked together from Jerusalem for some time, so full of fire and exuberance.

But things were very difficult for the fledgling church. The first apostle to be killed was his brother, big James.

After some time we're fairly sure he wound up in Ephesus, where he became a sage of the faith, training a new generation. He instructed Polycarp, Irenaeus, Ignatius. He refuted heresies. Appointed Bishops.

Over the coming decades, he would have read the completed gospel of Mark, as well as the early forms of the other gospels, if not writing one himself.

But one by one, his fellow apostles were killed in the line of duty. At some point, he became the last apostle.

He died in a world totally foreign to the one he was born in, one turned upside down by the movement he had been so instrumental in. He died leaving a legacy and so much clarity and wisdom for the church. He likely had students with him at his death, but he was likely in some sense alone.

Exiled in a foreign land, he was the last living witness to the greatest story ever told. A man who walked with Jesus. He remained, and for decades retold and affirmed what all his brothers and friends had died sharing.

He is held to be the only apostle who didn't die a martyr. But in many ways, he gave the most of himself for Christ. I can't imagine the faithfulness, the perseverance.

Also, he once went to the Ephesian bathing house, saw a heretic, and immediately left without bathing lol