Christians in Context made this humorous blog about the 10 Marks of a Mainline Evangelical. Inspired by their post I made this one to fit the Philippine context:
20. Thinks that Martin Luther founded Christianity, because there’s no way those Catholic heathens are right!
19. Thinks that the name of their religion is Born Again.
18. Considers Alberto comics and Jack Chick tracts as accurate historical documents that implicates the Roman Catholic Church as the Whore of Babylon.
17. Believes that God needs them to defend His honor and existence from Dan Brown’s abomination – the Da Vinci Code!
16. Secretly fantasizes about opening a can proof-text whoopass to Eli Soriano, Felix Manalo, Apolo Quiboloy etc in time, for the meantime they’re contented with sparing proof-text with their high school church mate.
15. Only the King James Version of the Bible is the ‘inspired word of God’. While the NIV Bible is the 'New Inspired Version' of the Scriptures.
14. Believes in eternal security but are afraid that their ‘backsliding friend’ might be going to hell because they choose to live a life away from the church. (And I thought we were ardent believers of 'once saved always saved'?)
13. Believes that in God’s order of salvation around 75% of the entire human race and all the Roman Catholics would go to hell, majority of the Mainline Protestants would go to hell and probably 80% of their church would go to hell.
12. Thinks that John Mac Arthur, John Piper and Chuck Swindoll are theologians.
11. Believes that they’re going to heaven because they prayed the Sinner’s Prayer or have gone in front of their church’s sanctuary in an altar call to receive Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior.
10. T-shirts with Christian catch-phrases like: “Hardcore for Jesus”, “Stay Brutal for Christ” and the immortal ‘Jesus’ photoshopped to look like it was the Pepsi logo. Or any shirt that can be bought at Fig Tree in SM Megamall.
9. Likes to think that environmentalism is foolish because they’re already saved and God would eventually rapture them when its time to destroy the earth, as per 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 KJV. While advocating the cause of the poor is dangerous because it advances the ‘social gospel’ which they deem as a heresy, (I mean who do those liberal social gospel folks think God is –Mother Teresa?).
8. Convinced Jesus was a conservative Christian who attends in a non-denominational, Bible-believing, Christ-centered, Spirit-led Christian mega-church.
7. Tim LaHaye's Left Behind book series is gospel truth and Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth is prophetic.
6. Favorite authors are Joshua Harris, Rick Warren and Bruce Wilkinson.
5. Thinks that anyone who disagrees with them on minor doctrines (especially those who don't believe in Dispensational eschatology) have gone liberal.
4. Convinced that ecumenism leads to compromise and eventually the feared One World Government/Religion that would implement the mark of the beast in the end times.
3. Their notion of God's purpose for their life happens to correspond nicely with yuppie middle-class urban life –that’s their purpose and destiny, which they somehow realized after attending a Purpose Driven Life session in their workplace...
2. They can't fit anymore music on their ipod or mp3 player because it's full of Hillsong, Hillsong United and any other ‘Christian Rock’ music that was ripped from a CD that their Christian friend bought at House of Praise.
1. Might feel this blog is alienating and abrasive, and their inclination is to confront me with the fact that I might be backsliding –or worse apostasy!
Notice how much similar it is to the Christians In Context blog post?
I remember our discussion in class yesterday where our professor pointed out that whether we like it or not Evangelical churches are also prone to succumbing to tradition which is something that we Evangelicals disdain among Roman Catholics. Whether we like it or not we are also adherents of our own tradition.
What’s more tragic about it is that the way we approach contemporary culture and our socio-economic backgrounds is met with co-option or what I like to call as ‘christianizng’ as in creating a ‘christian’ or a sanitized version of the cool stuff in the secular world just so that we’ll also be able to enjoy the hip and cool in the ‘world’ because it’s already been sanctified by our Evangelical culture and tradition.
Perhaps this is one of the manifestations of how Americanized our Christianity is, which at close examination reveals to us how we seem to equate God’s will with the American dream, and how we most of the time use God as the sanctifier of our worldly lusts. Perhaps this joke would remind us that our God cannot be mocked…
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