My Sandcastle Faith

Source: Wikipedia

Neil Carter has a post over at the Recovering from Religion blog wherein he shares a snapshot of his personal journey from an old journal entry.* I think I kept a journal for about a minute when I was fourteen or fifteen and gave it up about the time I got my first job. I haven't looked at it in forever, but I'm sure it's filled with mostly angsty adolescent nonsense about girls I liked who didn't seem to like me back. Neil's journal entry reflects the thoughts of a contemplative twenty-nine-year-old father of three reflecting on the very nature of reality. Probably a bit more weighty by comparison.

God's Not Dead film to bring urban legends to life on the big screen

Social media recently brought my attention to a trailer for an upcoming film called God's Not Dead. The film stars Kevin Sorbo, known for his portrayal of a fictional hero from Ancient Greek mythology. Sorbo is instead cast in the role of a fictional villain from Contemporary Christian mythology, the evil atheist professor. A relative unknown plays the heroic Christian student. Both characters appear to be adaptations of those found in famous urban legends.

The film is based on a book, based on a popular CCM song and has accompanying workbooks, lectures, t-shirts, necklaces, seminars, evangelism kits, a complete sermon series with Power Point slides and numerous other consumer products. It's just further evidence that the foolishness of preaching has been replaced by the foolishness of the savvy copycat marketing of repackaged weak arguments for Christianity along with a heavy dose of the straw man fallacy. Throw in a dash of Christian pop culture icons from Duck Dynasty and you've got a formula for some financial success. All of this is sure to keep young people in the church and convince skeptics, right?

Computer Brains

I was reading a post about thoughtcrime as it relates to Christianity over at A Counter Apologist's blog when it dawned on me that one of my favorite Christian rock bands had engaged in some unintentional irony related to this issue back in the day.

First some background.

It seems obvious that CCM is highly derivative, and the Christian rock band Petra was certainly no exception. In 1984 (the year, not the book) the young people were all tuning in to keyboard-driven techno pop, so there was a natural inclination for a Christian rock band like Petra to veer away from their rock roots and produce a techno pop album. 1985's Beat the System was that album. It was the first ever CCM recording I was introduced to outside of Amy Grant, Keith Green and Truth.