To Be a True Player You Have to Know How to Play...

As products of the larger culture, our churches tend to not be places where we can be honest about our sins and hope to be transformed into better people... Well the honesty about sin tends to be abstract and the better people we hope to become seems oriented about finding what does and doesn't work. We are still obsessed with being successful as the broader culture describes it, we just give the barriers and goals different names. Sin keeps you from being successful and if you're a Christian, you're giving yourself the best opportunity to hit those success markers: more money, bigger boobs, better sex, smarter kids, more access, etc... Our sins are little hindrances toward self-fulfillment. "The church" is just another association that augments my personal growth, it only has a value insofar as it develops my human capital. Remembering that we are creatures in service of God and each other doesn't really have a place in a model that values the self so much it is willing to destroy it.

So, as long as that's the church, I don't think we can be honest with each other and confess that Jesus is anything more than the most recent manifestation of some fertility god and that there is an end for humanity apart from a more powerful, more universalized self. But I also see no reason to fret, or any reason why we can't continue in this vein. I mean, I see it as a horrible, deadly illusion, but we're nothing if not adaptable.

So here's some help.

I think I have something that Ted Haggard can use as long as he wants to remain in the Fourth Stage of Evangelical Denial ©. It might even help him get back to Stage 1 and back on top of his game.

It's all a case of mistaken identity.

"Neil Patrick Harris is gay – and wants to quell recent reports that he had denied it. The actor tells PEOPLE exclusively:

"The public eye has always been kind to me, and until recently I have been able to live a pretty normal life. Now it seems there is speculation and interest in my private life and relationships."

People


Problem solved.