boston commoner.

welcome home

In posting the following, I am not trying to make any enemies. But something doesn’t sit well. In fact, it’s making me sick…

Advertised as “a retro 70’s looking shirt with a great message.” But the message is terribly incomplete. Of course God loves sinners of all stripes; however, without including the fact that He hates their sin so much that He would sacrifice His Son so that they could be free of it and its consequences, the “great message” of this tee shirt is rendered at best meaningless and, at worst, blasphemous. What will someone who does not understand the message of the Cross take away from viewing this “amusing” clicheed image and incomplete message? An unholy view of Christ and a warped view of love. Love means nothing if it doesn’t motivate actual change and salvation. I’m not saying the shirt’s creators or destributors don’t know this, but for goodness sake, did they think about what someone who can’t fill in the blanks for himself will take away from viewing this in passing??? “Christ came to save sinners, of which I am chief.” Put that on a tee shirt.

Furthermore, Jesus Christ is not a pop-culture icon. I fail to see how anyone who knows Him can in good conscience purposely trivialize His character and glory by turning Him into a kung-fu fighting action figure and then turn around and sell that degraded image to the public at large. I find this perhaps the most enraging of anything I’ve yet seen on this site. While perhaps I’d like to, I won’t question these people’s motives, but I do not feel the slightest compunction at calling their methods to the carpet. It’s time to grow up and get serious– to think.

And another gem from the people who proudly refer to their “ministry” as “the #1 Christian p**n site:”

(I use stars and euphemisms to avoid being erroneously identified and blocked by internet filters):

The “Save the Kittens” campaign, which encourages people to refrain from engaging their lust on the basis that “every time you [engage your lust], God kills a kitten.” Actually, friends, man’s (and woman’s) lust provoked a much stronger response from God. He didn’t kill a kitten; He killed His Son. He sacrficed Christ FOR THOSE WHO ARE SLAVES TO THEIR LUST. That’s the motivation under which we are operating as believers. And that is the message we ought to be sending to those who sincerely desire to be free from their sin.

I could mention Pete the P**no Puppet, The “NoHo” doll, and more, but I won’t go into all of this.

Now, let em say that I did fish around the site and found that for all intents and purposes, its creators do seem to ultimately have the desire to call lust sin and offer some kind of encouragement, at least, to be free from it through Christ. I can’t comment on their total theology, counseling methods, or other ministry philosophies with much intelligence, either way, however. So, again, I am not posting these links in order to question these folks’ salvation, nor their deeper motives to minister to people struggling with these sins. I debated posting anything about them at all because I knew I might step on some toes and also wondered if it were even worth it. But lust is a life-or-death issue, one Christ takes seriously enough. And Christ Himself ought to be taken seriously, as well. His character, His life, His ministry, His death, His resurrection, and His relationship to us now demand that He be taken seriously–not caricatured and put on an otherwise irrelevent T-shirt.

I just don’t get it.