Best of Bweinh! — Let Them Eat Cake

May 7, 2008, 10:00 am; posted by
Filed under Articles, Featured, Job  | No Comments

Originally published March 19, 2007.

When Prohibition swept through 1920s America, the effect was not just limited to the intake of spirits — several major corporations found themselves with, simply, nothing to do. CoorsThe ones that wanted to survive refocused their factories into other endeavors. Coors made malted milk and ceramics, while Budweiser hawked yeast — brand name and logo intact, but a wholly different product.

I’ve recently begun to engage, rather than ignore, some of the new and provocative literary products of our faith — The Prayer of Jabez, Your Best Life Now, and the Purpose-Driven texts that make up the majority of what modern believers rally behind. When I read some of these works I sense, whether above or below the service, embarrassment toward Christ and His message in light of a world ever more aggressive in its dismissal of that Message.

The writers and ideologues behind some of these works seem to have sensed this change, and seek to re-brand the faith in a style more palatable to our sin-soaked society — as if to apologize for the tension caused by our ‘judgmental’ nature. The name of Jesus is invoked and the cross around the neck remains intact, but the message is horribly neutered — a relativism that adds a carpool lane to our narrow way.

Let me tell you about my home. Vermont, for all her lovely rolling hills, has the unfortunate distinction of being the second-most unchurched state in the nation, with 25% of its population claiming no religion at all. (Oregon is number one; Colorado number three… atheism and poor hygiene must be linked somehow.) Of the remaining 75%, the number of evangelical Christians is staggeringly low, so with the level of combat one sees when preaching the gospel kin to that preached by the saints, a somber mindset sets in. I sense, daily, a mobile and coordinated effort to bring our faith to its knees — not in prayer but in defeat — by intimidating us into an intellectual sterilization of the Truth or the loss of motivation to preach it at all.

BudweiserThey want us to change our product.

But in these odd, hard-to-describe times, I’m all about the still. I won’t be selling any yeast like our friends at Budweiser, knowing it leavens the whole lump.

You will find in my message only 200 proof Gospel Truth.

Moonshine and bathtub gin, my friends.


Comments

Leave a comment!