Response to Piper’s “20 Reasons…” Part 3
June 9, 2008
This is a continuation of my comments on John Piper’s “”20 Reasons I don’t Take Potshots at Fundamentalists”.
Questions 11 – 15:
11. They tend to raise law-abiding, chaste children, in spite of the fact that Barna says evangelical kids in general don’t have any better track record than non-Christians.
Actually, as Piper already points out, they do NOT have a better track record than non-Christians. It appears that the god-given child raising instructions of the Fundamentalists are not very effective. You would think children reared using the very instructions of an Almighty God might have a “slight” advantage over the reasoning of a mere mortal parent.
12. They resist trendiness.
As long as the trend is what they consider a worldly trend. They flock to Christian trends like growth groups, bible studies, divorce groups, mega churches, and entertainment based worship, etc. This isn’t exactly resisting “trendiness”.
13. They don’t think too much is gained by sounding hip.
Ahhh, but hip is relative is it not? They may not be hip as to what they consider the worldly “hipness” but they need to be “hip” in their own Christian social group. If they fail the “hipness” test for their own little group (how to dress, what to say, creationism, the magic prayer words, etc.) they may find themselves shunned.
14. They may not be hip, but they don’t go so far as to drive buggies or insist on typewriters.
But they do insist that the world is 6000 years old and God made the sun stand still and other highly implausible things, so they are essentially living in a pre-scientific world while taking advantage of the scientific advances that make their life so much easier than their ancestors. Susan Jacoby has said: “Nor did it really matter if vast numbers of Americans believed, at the time of the Second Great Awakening, that the earth was exactly four thousand years old. It matters very much today because creationism, which denies the most critical scientific insights not only of the twentieth but of the nineteenth century, has adversely affected public education in many areas of the nation and is one important reason why American high school students know less about science than their contemporaries in Europe and Asia.” (The Age of American Unreason). This backwardness is nothing to be excited about.
15. They still sing hymns.
How is a hymn so much better than a contemporary Christian song? There are theologically bad hymns just as there are theologically bad contemporary Christian songs. (Assuming you have the right theology!) There are mindless hymns just like there are mindless contemporary songs.