tweet me!

Evangelical megapastors tweet more than any group of humans on earth, outside of 14-year-old girls. I'm convinced of it. What's interesting is that they think we care. More interesting still, is that we do care. They're celebrities. Lisa Bevere is making a mocha (again)? I wonder how she makes them. Aww, Jonathan Falwell's dog fell asleep on his computer. How cute.

We read. We care. We kinda idolize. What does that mean? The leader-worship of this culture is bizarre. I don't say much about it down here, because people are primed to say one of a dozen things, all in the neighborhood of, "Yeah, at some places, they do really put pastors on a pedestal, but I don't think we do that here." Right, of course not.

When John Bevere spoke at JRA a couple of months ago, he went so far as to suggest that this country doesn't respect pastors in the way they should. They (gasp) sometimes question them. They sit back, and say "What do you have for us?" Far be it from me to question the likes of John Bevere, but um, helllooooo. Jerry Falwell. Oral Roberts. Pat Robertson. Ted Haggard. We should be questioning a little (or a lot) more. The non-Christians get it. They see these people, and say "Hey, sheeple-- what's up with your messed up leadership?" One of my non-Christian friends calls these people the "douchebags for Christ." This makes me laugh.

But she's right. Not that these people, and others like them, haven't done good things. But that their ratios tip in the negative direction. And a lot of the Christian community seems to brush that under the rug. To raise up their victories, and downplay their failures. I guess we all do that for ourselves. But in the twitter age, when someone like Falwell dies, and the "He was a great man," megatweeters start thumping the keyboard, people notice. And make no mistake, it's not an effective "witness." We need a more nuanced, loving, and critical voice towards our leaders.

Then again, I haven't been saying what I need to say either. I haven't been as nuanced as I'd like them to be. And the only reason I'm doing it right now is that no one can read this. So what does that mean? I've been seduced by the culture. I've held back on my true thoughts. I've been struggling to find a voice that isn't destructive. But in so doing, I've become passive and dismissive of true discourse. I've said some things, and framed others, in ways that are disingenuous. I haven't been walking that line I was talking about very well.

I saw this truly great bumpersticker on my way to Chicago last week. It said: "Jesus would slap the shit out of you." And it's great firstly because it poses an answer to the age old question, "What would Jesus do?" but also because it captures reality. The satire of the message is that it mocks everyone-- the overly-righteous super-Christians, the middle-of-the-road Sunday Christians, the anti-religion pseudo-intellects (all of which I have been, by the way). Notwithstanding the violence, I think the spirit of the sticker is intact. And it makes me wonder, how can I be the kind of Christian that Jesus would not slap the shit out of? Because that's the kind of Christian I want to be.