I do believe that I’ve found the perfect way to ring in the New Year, namely, by being declared a heretic. For someone having a blog titled Just This Side of Heresy, you cannot plan this kind of attraction. The story follows thusly: I posted a comment on YouTube that said, in essence, that the shared belief of Muslims and Christians, that we are sinful people, can be used as an opportunity for evangelism. This was read by one enthusiastic person as “All religions are the same. Let’s not make salvation by Christ a requirement for Heaven.” I tried to clarify myself with another response, affirming that I do believe we should preach Christ crucified, but I was too late—I was labeled a heretic and an enemy of Christ. The first part had no impact, because I’ve been called that on several occasions (now three), but the second statement genuinely hurt. I felt as though I was being chided by a high school student, who was insisting that they were Jesus’ best friend. Even though I know that they’re in no place to make such a judgment (nor am I), it still stung. Unity of the body is important to me, so I found the person’s blog, read a few entries, posted a positive and hopefully encouraging comment, with a preface that said I hope that there are no hard feelings between us. I cannot guess how it will be received, but I can hope for something positive.

This comes on the tail of a joke I made to a friend, only a few weeks ago. I said that if my non-fiction career ever takes off, it will be a great pleasure to be declared a heretic by the likes of John MacArthur or R.C. Sproul. Perhaps, I thought, it might even be worthy of the Top One-Hundred Things To Do Before I Die (dispensationalists, you may insert “…before the Rapture,” if you so choose). As I am currently reading Brian McLaren’s A Generous Orthodoxy, I am surely already on their prayer list. It’s a sad commentary on the Christian community that McLaren (may I call you Brian?) can preface the book with a half-comic warning to his readers that they risk guilt by association, and everyone knows what he’s talking about.

So it’s true, in my very first theological discussion of the year, I was declared a heretic and worse. Perhaps this is going to be easier than I thought. Rather than shooting for a condemnation by MacArthur, I ought to make a New Year’s resolution to insure that my excommunication is an earmark in the next Reformed Baptist constitution. What I find most distressing is that though I follow McLaren closely in orthodoxy, I am not primarily a post-modern Christian. Where I part ways with most evangelicals is my departure from T.U.L.I.P. Calvinism which, somehow, is still misconstrued as being morally relative. Someday, I hope someone will explain that accusation to me in light of the fact that Calvin preached something that was entirely new in his day.

Epilogue: I refuse to be the guy who gets self-righteous about other people’s self-righteousness. Hypocrisy-detectors have become the new Pharisees, replacing those that they accost. I was pleasantly surprised to find that neither McLaren nor Doug Pagitt, who co-wrote Church Re-imagined, do this. It’s a very likely pitfall for people who don’t follow the recently traditional version Christianity.

Parcour
(...kind of what I've been doing all along)

This month, I caught up (a little) with the digital age. We switched from dial-up to DSL. Following that, I made a discovery: I love YouTube. Somebody on TV was talking about a new extreme sport that's sweeping America, called parcour. Basically, the world becomes a giant, extreme obstacle course. If you get a chance, visit the aforementioned YouTube and type in "parcour." Some of the more impressive videos show teenagers and college students leaping painlessly from three-story rooftops and walking up walls. In the nineties, when I was in highschool, we called it free-style walking or freewalking. Anyway, I forgot how neat it was.

THIS is one of my favorite videos.

Years ago, me and a few other friends did stuff like this when we went away to camps in the summer. We would leap over creeks. I would jump from concrete pedistal to concrete pedistal. Come to think of it, that was at Wal-Mart, not camp. Just because I can, I celebrated finding these videos this week, by:

I. Jumping off the side of the escalator at the Penn Square Mall in Oklahoma City.

II. Jumping off a balcony in a house we're working on, onto the staircase below, then over that handrail, to the floor.

Silly? Probably. But it was fun. Unless my wife reads this; then I'm probably going to be in trouble.

~J

Correction: Amy knows me. She won't be surprised.