Words I'm Tired of Hearing.
The problem with heavily used words, is that, as its usage continues, people tend to forget why they use them, or what they mean. Most often this happens with Buzzwords. Especially in politics. A couple such words that I've heard a LOT as Nov. 7th rolls around are "Agenda", and "Indoctrinate or Indoctrine".
Christians tend to use the word indoctrinate when referring to "The Left", "The World", "The Secular Humanists", " The Doctors"... They image they conjur up is one of secret late night meetings held in front of a giant whiteboard where non-Christian folk hatch an immense comprehensive plan to "turn our children gay", "persecute the church", and fabricate lies like "Global Warming", "Evolution", and that the world is chock full of "Poor Ugly People". It's a harsh word to use. Honestly. My point is, there is no indoctrination. There is no seedy plan being hatched by any of those people to do any of those things. What there IS is a large majority of folks, believing what they believe and baed on a heartfelt conviction passing it along because they think it is true and beautiful. Sound familiar? I don't view Evangelism as indoctrination, or an agenda I possess. It is the natural byproduct of what I hold dear in my heart and mind. This is not all to say that what the left is "pushing" is correct, but I think it's much more beneficial (and 1000x more important) to our cause as Christians to understand with whom we are dealing - people just like us.
Christians tend to use the word indoctrinate when referring to "The Left", "The World", "The Secular Humanists", " The Doctors"... They image they conjur up is one of secret late night meetings held in front of a giant whiteboard where non-Christian folk hatch an immense comprehensive plan to "turn our children gay", "persecute the church", and fabricate lies like "Global Warming", "Evolution", and that the world is chock full of "Poor Ugly People". It's a harsh word to use. Honestly. My point is, there is no indoctrination. There is no seedy plan being hatched by any of those people to do any of those things. What there IS is a large majority of folks, believing what they believe and baed on a heartfelt conviction passing it along because they think it is true and beautiful. Sound familiar? I don't view Evangelism as indoctrination, or an agenda I possess. It is the natural byproduct of what I hold dear in my heart and mind. This is not all to say that what the left is "pushing" is correct, but I think it's much more beneficial (and 1000x more important) to our cause as Christians to understand with whom we are dealing - people just like us.
posted by Jarrett Green at 10:19 AM
4 Comments:
I remember attending some young christian leader's confrence where they basically ripped evolution, global warming, and overpopulation (which they even had the audacity [idiocy?] to assert something to the effect of: "we could round everyone up, give them a place to live in the USA or [North America?] and use the rest of the planet for farming" to prove their point that there was still planty of room on the planet [although they were no doubt careful to note that this doesn't give us a green light on the whole sex before marriage thing]). Then i saw a video in one of the classes I subbed for (in PUBLIC SCHOOL!!) where this guy from like 1984 came on and explained the idea of exponential growth and how you don't realize you are running out of room until the jar is half full of beans and it is set to double in five minutes.
I think it would be interesting to track the seduction of the "religious" by the "right" during the 1980s and into the 90s and look at how the church was used to propogate things like global warming (remember like ten years ago when we just chalked it up to a liberal tree-hugger conspiracy) for cold political benefit. I see the advent of the megachurch as a great example of one of the fallouts of this seduction.
I wonder if the ignorance [or insouciance] of many in the church to the ongoing poverty that is encouraged by our government's propogation of a farm subsidy program that keeps the world's poor poor is something that will be regretted ten years from now.
sorry for the rant...just wanted to get some stuff off my chest, i guess.
parag. 2: "cold political benefit" refers to the benefits enjoyed by the "big industry" players that were a result of the rather embarassing track record of the repub. party on environmental issues. If they won't burn in hell for it, some of them might at least die of skin cancer.
Indroctrinate- to imbue with partisan ideology or to teach uncritically.
Though I do think indoctrination happens these days, I agree with you that the word is used too often.
I really like the last few sentences of your post. Too often we are like the disciples who asked Christ the million dollar question, got their answer and still wanted more. Why is it so difficult to drop our agendas for His? (We love, He does the rest.)
(PS haven't seen you three around WM...hope you are well.)
i didn't know i posted that comment anoymously; definitely didn't mean to as i hate truly anonymous comments (it's different when you really know who "anon." is).
just thought i'd come back and find that post since i had you confused with somebody else back then.
sorry about that "haven't seen you around" comment when i hadn't even seen you yet...i meant it...just not for you...yet. oh duh!
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