spirituality - a rebuttal

As TeamPyro continues to make a mockery of Christianity, they lie to their flock saying that no one has responded. I dropped by the blogs of those that linked to the TeamPyro supporting their posters and asked what it was they learned and if they were reading the references provided by TeamPyro. I haven't received a decent response yet.

Since TeamPyro choose to continue as their fans adore them, I thought I would continue to examine their misrepresentations to see if they will ever reply.

Here's the poster and here's the reference.



The typical viewer of this poster is thinking that Emergents do not value true spirituality, that they like things loose and messy. This furthers the misrepresentation that Emergents don't believe truth can be found in something as orderly (or objective) as Scripture. The train wreck is the obvious result of such practice and again infers the Emergent prefers a good train wreck over some clear direction.

The reference is to Amazon for Messy Spirituality by Mike Yaconelli. I have to be honest, I don't know Yoconelli but the very few things I know of Youth Specialties which he founded are quiet scary - but that's a separate post. The point here is what are the Pyro faithful learning?

I'm confident most were simply happy with the poster. Here are some of the comments. I do not see a demonstration of any intelligence related to the referenced content; only glee at poking fun at others.

Oh, for science to be able to clone this talent of yours into my own brain, Mr. Johnson! Drooling ~ Tothkeeper
Touche! Great posters, both! ~ Steve
Stop. You're killin' me. I just turned postmodern today. I can't take it! ~ jsb
Absolute genius! ~ Christopher Johnson
Snicker, chortle, guffaw! ~ SolaMeanie

Then one commenter suggests this isn't funny, "The new conduit for scorn: humor. But there is Someone who does not laugh." To which the gimp, Centuri0n, retorts, "at some point in your life, lighten up. I know you guys think "fundies" are humorless prigs, but thank heavens we are neither fundies nor humorless prigs. As they say in the High School spirit cheer, "how 'bout you?""

Then the others in the circus follow his lead and decide to visit the critics blog and begin an attack (not a dialog or confrontation) on unrelated beliefs. For example, "you will see that he denies the full humanity of Christ. Actually, a deity with no sense of humor goes pretty well with that kind of thelogy [sic]."

But I digress, back to Messy Spirituality. This is Publishers Weekly:

Yaconelli has ... humorously challenged what [he] saw as the church's many hypocrisies and inconsistencies. [He] explores the perfectionism that plagues so many in the church, an examination that is both challenging and deeply personal. He does an excellent job of naming some of the unspoken assumptions in today's church context, arguing, for example, that the church "has communicated that competence is one of the fruits of the Spirit." But even more effective are his vivid stories, where he gives blood and flesh to the idea of grace lost and found again in the church.

Who attending organized religion today has not bumped into what Yaconelli is trying to address. Is TeamPyro suggesting that competence is a fruit of the Spirit?

The premise is sound, i.e., let's be open and honest about the condition of what we see in the organized church and the associated inappropriate guilt we might experience by not conforming to that. To be clear, I say the premise is good. I would reserve judgement until hearing the proposed solution. I wonder if TeamPyro knows the proposal or was this another easy way to not consider any facts and mock someone? We will never know because they have abandoned reason for popularity through these posters.

Publishers Weekly continues:

While he seeks to connect with and help Christians who feel secretly ashamed about their lack of discipleship, he may lose some readers who feel uncomfortable with such levels of honesty. Those who persevere will discover a wonderful treasure.

One reviewer writes:

He sees below the surface mess of people's lives and invites the reader out of a world of self-condemnation and into a land of freedom. Some may be concerned that this book gives people a license to sin. Well, most people sin quite well without a license! When we are honest before God and give up pretending that our lives are neat and tidy, that's when God can take the messes of our lives and redeem them into something beautiful.

Again, depending on the solution, this is quite Biblical. Jesus confronted those that brought others out of bondage only to put them back under bondage of the law. It seems TeamPyro is not ok with us asking these same questions today.

The next commenter, however touches on some points that if true, I would take issue with. He write, "Yaconelli says, 'You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.'"

Oh, oh ... I'm not sure what is meant by that but it could be dangerous. This reviewer continues with, "Central to my philosophy of discipleship is the idea that Jesus died not to make us clean or obedient, but to form us to be passionate about knowing him in the midst of our profound uncleanness and disobedience." This could be heading in a bad way and the problem I have is that I don't know how much of this is the reviewer versus Yaconelli and again, the meaning could vary. Either way, it's on the edge of dangerous territory.

In fact, the reviewer states that he is "a man with a deep love for God and a deep love for himself and a deep love for sin. Yaconelli doesn't try to resolve the tension." That's not good, Yaconelli should help resolve that.

So based on these reviews, it's hard to know what Yaconelli is saying. He is clearly challenging some of the status quo with some sound questions but I'm not sure what he is proposing instead. If it is simply to feel comfortable, that is not sufficient.

I'm not going to buy this book. At the same time, the TeamPyro approach of not helping anyone think through this but rather to generally mock a group of people is very wrong. The book is about questioning the way we play church today and the TeamPyro is simply about negatively portraying Emergents in whatever way the viewer would like.

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