I have to say that there is not one blog, out of the eight million that must exist, that I read. The thing about blogging is that it is either someone’s first thoughts — which we know by definition are never their best thoughts — so that’s not interesting, or as time goes by they simply repeat themselves. Moreover there isn’t a lot you can say about anything consequential in 300 words. I write the back page of the magazine and I always wish it was three times as long as it is.

So here, then, is Wieseltier’s standard for “consequential” writing: Never say in 300 words what you can say, instead, in 1,500.

That explains a great deal about why his columns read the way they do.

“I have made this letter longer than usual,” Pascal once wrote, “because I lack the time to make it short.” Wieseltier seems to subscribe to the opposite point of view.

He’s also cheating himself. He wishes that his back-page column could be “three times as long as it is” because he has more to say than he can fit into that single page published 20 times a year. Wieseltier doesn’t seem to realize the obvious, common solution to that problem — take the best stuff that doesn’t fit and post it online.

But let’s just consider his assertion that “There isn’t a lot you can say about anything consequential in 300 words.” If that’s true, it should be hard to find any counter-examples.

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, he passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then ’tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.

That’s only 128 words. Must not be consequential.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Please — that’s only 45 words. That’s not even a blog post — it’s almost a Tweet. Clearly trivial.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

That’s 268 words — almost, but not-quite, consequential.

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

That’s only 226 words.

I guess it must be true, then, “There isn’t a lot you can say about anything consequential in 300 words.”

2. I am shocked — shocked! — that American Christians would lie about an imaginary threat of legal persecution.

3. Travis Mamone has posted a mixtape for his new e-book The Other Hidden Wound: Uncovering the Effect of Patriarchy on the Male Psyche. I mention this for two reasons: 1) Mamone is a good guy and a terrific writer. I enjoy his blog and I’m looking forward to reading his book. And 2) His playlist includes “Less Teeth, More Tits,” from the Lunachicks, and that’s a good excuse for me to brag about having seen them live at JC Dobbs. That was fun.

4. “But, look, if you’re not doing anything wrong, what do you have to be scared of?” “If you’re a good person, you don’t have anything to worry about.”

5. New Jersey has been through enough hardship recently — Hurricane Sandy, Jersey jokes, the Nets leaving for Brooklyn, Donald Trump, Snooki — but at least it was spared this horrible possibility.

6. “So there was a forum in Grand Rapids last night on being gay and Christian,” Ben Irwin writes. “Keep in mind this is a city where you can barely throw a stick without hitting a church. Or a Christian publisher.”

7. Matt Young offers two reasons why Christians should not say the Pledge of Allegiance. Here’s Reason No. 3: Because asking, requiring or pressuring free people to “pledge allegiance” is creepy, creepy, creepy. If your spouse asked you to pledge your “allegiance” every day before leaving the house, you’d suspect there was something deeply wrong with them. And you’d be right.

Like CT, it was generally conservative — reflecting the conservative social and political views of its writers and readership, but not aggressively partisan, and thus distinct from the transparently political operatives of the religious right.

But at some point — I’m not sure exactly when this happened, I wasn’t paying that close attention to it — it seems Charisma and its publisher Steve Strang have decided to embrace the religious right model. Strang these days seems to aspire to be the next Tony Perkins. He wants to be a political player and, like Perkins, he won’t let facts or truth or honesty hold him back from pursuing that goal.

Some recent examples:

• Steve Strang, “DOJ Diversity Police Seeking to Shackle Christians“: “The Department of Justice is robbing Christians and other conservative people of our rights to believe as we choose and to be free to speak in pushing a politically correct emphasis for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) agenda …”

• Os Hillman, “4 Questions to Consider in Response to the Gay Agenda“: If “government and businesses … have to offer the same benefits to homosexual couples as … to heterosexual couples,” Hillman warns, then America is on a “slippery slope” and is “headed the way of Europe” or could even “end up like Canada.” If that happens, Hillman says, then America will be judged like the Amorites: “The Amorites were a very ungodly people. God saw their sin as so great that He was going to use the Israelites to wipe them out.”

• “Did Boy Scouts of America Sell Its Soul to the Devil?” asks the headline of Raynard Jackson’s Charisma column. Not wanting to keep readers in suspense, Jackson answers that question in his first sentence: “When the Boy Scouts of America’s (BSA) leadership voted to allow openly homosexual kids to become Boy Scouts, they, in that one act, sold their souls to the devil.”

And in the pages of Charisma, selling your soul to the devil is not a figure of speech — as this video posted by Matthew Paul Turner illustrates:

Click here to view the embedded video.

• “I have nothing against gay people,” writes Jennifer LeClaire, the news editor of Charisma. “That said … There is a gay agenda and it’s working overtime to send millions to hell.” LeClaire previously argued that demon rape by succubi and incubi causes people to become gay. Following the mass-shooting of elementary school students in Newtown, Conn., LeClaire cited notorious liar David Barton on the importance of prayer in school and wrote, “Can We Please Put Prayer Back in Schools Now?”

This noxious stew of lies, legends and delirious fantasies about the Other can only be written and published by people who do not know and do not care about the human beings they’re dehumanizing. This is nasty, evil stuff.

I don’t claim to have any special gifts of spiritual discernment, but I can hear what these Charisma writers are shouting at the top of their lungs. This is hate. And lies. And lies in the service of hate. Whatever spirit is at work in this, it cannot be a holy one.

2. Evangelism is hospitality.

3. This, I think, is an example of what David Brin calls “sousveillance” (see here).

4. One thing I’ve repeatedly said to my daughters is, “There’s no such thing as a dumb question.” After reading this, from NPR’s Code Switch, I’m rethinking that bit of advice.

5. “Black Americans were nearly four times as likely as whites to be arrested on charges of marijuana possession in 2010, even though the two groups used the drug at similar rates, according to new federal data.”

So perhaps the strongest argument for the legalization of marijuana is that America is incapable of justly enforcing any prohibition against its legal use. Law enforcement had a fair chance to allow this to exist as a fair law. It failed miserably. It failed four times over. It quadruple failed.

A law that cannot be justly enforced cannot be called a just law.

6. Joseph McLendon has an interesting take on Wolf Blitzer’s foot-in-mouth moment with a survivor of the Moore tornado.

7. Jesus wept.

Please observe the following video from Lt. Gen. David Morrison, chief of the Australian army:

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is how a leader ought to respond to allegations of sexual abuse by trusted officers within the organization that leader is responsible to lead.

Lt. Gen. Morrison is blunt, unequivocal and clear. And he is angry. The tone and substance of this message conveys everything that leaders of the various Christian churches have failed to convey.

This is the message that Pope Francis needs to be giving at the Vatican. This is the message that the “Ethics and Public Life Commission” needs to be giving in the Southern Baptist Convention. This is the message that the leaders of the Reformed Boys Club in American evangelicalism should be giving in response to the scandal at Sovereign Grace Ministries. And this is the message that all of these leaders have utterly failed to give.

Morrison is taking responsibility and he isn’t taking any crap. “I’m responsible for this,” he said. “I’m the chief of the Australian army. The culture of the army is in my hands during my tenure, and I’m doing as much as I humanly can to improve it.”

He’s not making excuses and he’s not making exceptions in response to allegations he describes as “derogatory, demeaning, and repugnant to me.”

You can read a full transcript of Morrison’s statement in the video above at Feministe, but here are just a few excerpts to highlight the vast difference between his remarks and the defensive denials and equivocal evasions we have heard for decades from the so-called “leaders” of so many churches:

If this is true, then the actions of these members are in direct contravention to every value the Australian army stands for.

… I have stated categorically many times that the army has to be an inclusive organization in which every soldier, man and woman, is able to reach their full potential and is encouraged to do so. Those who think that it is okay to behave in a way that demeans or exploits their colleagues have no place in this army. …

If that does not suit you, then get out. You may find another employer where your attitude and behavior is acceptable, but I doubt it. The same goes for those who think that toughness is built on humiliating others.

Every one of us is responsible for the culture and reputation of our army and the environment in which we work. If you become aware of any individual degrading another, then show moral courage and take a stand against it. No one has ever explained to me how the exploitation or degradation of others enhances capability or honors the traditions of the Australian army. I will be ruthless in ridding the army of people who cannot live up to its values, and I need every one of you to support me in achieving this.

… If you’re not up to it, find something else to do with your life. There is no place for you amongst this band of brothers and sisters.

Whether it’s the pope in charge of the Roman Catholic Church, or the little popes in charge of Neo-Reformed American mega-churches, or the leaders responsible for overseeing the anarchic polity of unstructured Baptist denominations, church leaders too need to be “ruthless” in ridding the church of people behaving disgracefully. Their message should be the same as Morrison’s: “Get out.”

Premillennial dispensationalist prophecy types like Tim LaHaye and John Hagee … believe that “the end” cannot come until after every nation and tribe on the planet has heard the gospel. And they really, really want “the end” to come. They can’t wait for this world to be over with already.

This leads to the odd situation of PMDs supporting the preaching of the gospel to every tribe and every nation in order to speed the day in which every tribe and every nation is swept away in the apocalypse. That’s an oddly contradictory sort of motivation, but anyone who’s looked at PMDs’ ardent “support for Israel” will already be familiar with this dynamic. They are fiercely “pro-Israel,” because that’s where Megiddo is, and therefore where Armageddon will happen, and they can’t wait to see Armageddon when all the Jews get wiped out.

Both LaHaye and Hagee are fond of saying that “the end” could come before they reach the end of their sentence/interview/sermon. It could come, they say, at any second now. That claim would seem insupportable given that: A) they believe that “the end” cannot come until every tribe has heard the gospel preached; and B) many tribes, such as the people pictured above, have not yet heard any such preaching.

But don’t worry, LaHaye and Hagee believe they have this covered. They believe that after all the real, true Christians are snatched off the earth — which could happen at any moment — the RTC gospel will then be preached to every tribe and nation by an army of singing Jewish virgins.

No, really. This is what Tim LaHaye thinks when he looks at a picture like the one above: “Oops, looks like our missionaries missed a spot. Oh well, the 144,000 singing virgins will have to get to them after we’re outta here.”

I may have mentioned this before, but PMDs are nuts.

The first is from Kimberly Knight of Coming Out Christian who introduces this clip from America’s Got Talent with a warning that it might make you a bit teary:

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you can’t watch that video, it features Jonathan Allen, 20, of Lawrenceburg, Tenn., who tells the story of being kicked out of his parents’ house on his 18th birthday because he’s gay. He relates that background in his introduction to his Talent audition — shocking and dismaying the panel of celebrity judges.

“That’s a terrible story,” Howie Mandel says, and it’s hard to disagree.

After the kid brings the crowd to its feet — Jonathan’s got some pipes — Howard Stern said, “I don’t know if your parents are watching tonight, but I would like to say to them, ‘What a wonderful son you have.’”

And you realize, watching this, that what you’ve just seen is a lop-sided moral dispute in which two devoutly religious believers, acting on their idea of “obedience” to a holy God, have been publicly put to shame by Howie Mandel and Howard Stern.

Let that sink in. When your religious beliefs and actions cause you to lose the moral high ground to Howard Stern, then something has gone horribly wrong with your religion.

The other video that helps to illustrate how American evangelicalism has come to be racked by the opposing strains of “obedience” and conscience is from Darrell Dow of Stuff Fundies Like, and it’s not quite as inspiring or lovely as Jonathan Allen’s audition. This one is an earnest church trio’s rendition of Lanny Wolfe’s* “My House Is Full (But My Field Is Empty)” — a staple of missions/evangelism guilt-trips that will be familiar to anyone who’s been a part of the American evangelical subculture in recent decades:

Click here to view the embedded video.

That song captures the guilt-driven evangelism obligation that is, for many evangelical Christians, the first disturbing experience of a conflict between conscience and what we’re told obedience requires. Maybe it was door-to-door evangelism, or maybe it was “street” evangelism, or tract-bombing passers-by on the sidewalk or the Boardwalk. The experience was unpleasant and you dreaded having to do it, but you were told that it was your Christian duty. If you shirked that duty, you would be responsible for those lost souls being damned to Hell for eternity.

The pastor or youth minister seemed to know that you were reluctant to fulfill your duty to evangelize, and he would turn to Romans 1:16 to shame you into it. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ,” that verse says. And if you were reluctant or hesitant or anything less than enthusiastic about this aggressive evangelistic effort, then the pastor suggested that you must be shamefully ashamed of the gospel of Christ.

That message worked on me, at first. I was not ashamed of Christ — I loved Christ. And if loving Christ meant I had to go out and perform a series of rude, clumsy, off-putting confrontations with strangers, then I’d just have to suck it up, set aside my discomfort and do my duty. “Who will go and work for me today?” I will — even if the thought of doing so makes my stomach hurt.

It took quite a while for me to realize that queasy feeling in my stomach had nothing to do with nerves or fear or a lack of faith or being “ashamed of the gospel of Christ.” That queasy feeling was my conscience reminding me of Rule No. 1 and pleading with me not to be a jerk. That was why I didn’t want to knock on doors or walk up to strangers on the sidewalk or distribute tracts to wary passers-by — because those things made me feel like a jerk. Why? Because acting like a jerk tends to make one feel like a jerk.

Contextless, cold-calling, hard-sales evangelism almost always and almost inevitably entails acting like a jerk. It involves treating other people as objects rather than as subjects. It involves forcing onto them an experience that none of us would want to have forced onto ourselves.

But I did it. I knocked on doors, I passed out the tracts. I did what I honestly believed obedience required me to do, even when my conscience was screaming at me to stop, just please, for the love of God, stop.

It’s a lose-lose situation. When conscience and “obedience” are pulling in opposite directions, guilt is inescapable. Your stomach hurts because your behavior toward others seems unloving, yet you’re unable to correct that because obedience tells you that to be “truly loving” to others will require you to double-down on that behavior.

Unless or until you find a way to reconcile conscience and obedience — to get them pulling in the same direction — something’s gotta give.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

* In defense of Lanny Wolfe, here’s Sandy Patti and Larnelle Harris singing Wolfe’s biggest hit, “More Than Wonderful” which is really good despite — or maybe because of — the fact that it’s also immensely cheesy. It’s like having Barry Manilow and Dianne Warren as the church music directors in charge of a worship team led by Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle (or maybe led by Jordan Peele and Jane Lynch).

They do not hate or fear LBGT people. They fear God. They carry a perception of the wrathful Old Testament God who will destroy cities or nations if “sin” is found in the camp. … Attempts to reconcile this ancient God of wrath with the God of love and inclusion that Jesus represented tend to create a sort of cognitive and spiritual dissonance. And so, most Christians don’t hate and fear gays — they really want to love them. What they fear is God’s wrath and what they hate is the idea of the destruction God will bring down if LGBT people are accepted — if “sin” is allowed.

The problem is that even for Christians bound by such a stunted view of sin, conscience says something else. Conscience tells them that even if they don’t feel fear or hatred, behaving as if they fear or hate others is still wrong. So they feel trapped — torn between the conflicting demands of conscience and “obedience.” If they avoid the guilt of sinful disobedience by allowing “sinful” others in the camp, they incur the guilt of mistreating those others. Conscience pulls them toward love of the other; “obedience” pulls them in the other direction.

You can see the enormous strain of this being-pulled-apart in a recent guest-post by Peter Wehner at Tim Dalrymple’s blog on Patheos’ evangelical channel. The post, titled “An Evangelical Christian Looks at Homosexuality,”* reveals Wehner’s struggle to reconcile the tug of conscience with what he perceives as the demands of obedience. He begins by stating that “I’d associate myself with the views of Timothy J. Keller, senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City,” linking to a recent discussion in which Keller inadvertently restated, endorsed and underlined the point Danny Coleman made above. Keller said:

If you say to everybody, “Anyone who thinks homosexuality is a sin is a bigot,” [Jonathan Rauch] says, “You are going to have to ask them to completely disassemble the way in which they read the Bible.” Completely disassemble their whole approach to authority. You are basically going to have to ask them to completely kick their entire faith out the door.

That, in a nutshell, is the fear Coleman describes. And it is the fear that pervades Wehner’s argument.

But Wehner is also more honest than Keller. Keller pretends as though the accusation of bigotry arises solely from the belief that “homosexuality is a sin.” Wehner recognizes that, in reality, the accusation of bigotry arises from Christian support for legally enforced bigotry. He seems to recognize that the problem is not so much that Christians like himself believe “homosexuality is a sin,” but rather that this belief has led many such Christians to deny full legal equality to LGBT people. I am an enthusiastic, almost obsessive, coffee-drinker. I don’t think Mormons are bigots because they regard drinking coffee as a kind of sin. But if the Saints suddenly lost their minds and began lobbying for laws denying coffee-drinkers like myself the right to marry, or insisting that it should be legal for employers to fire coffee-drinkers, then, yes, that would be bigotry.

Wehner doesn’t explicitly call out Keller for the self-serving disingenuousness of his “Anyone who thinks homosexuality is a sin” straw-man nonsense, but I give Wehner credit for acknowledging the legitimate substance of the complaints about anti-gay bigotry. The main thrust of his argument is to challenge that substance without challenging the belief he shares with Keller, that homosexuality is a sin.

Wehner’s conclusion isn’t wholly conclusive. He seems extremely cautious not to be perceived as advocating “disobedience” lest he incur the wrath of God or of the tribal gatekeepers of evangelicalism. But he’s clearly pointing toward a solution that I think can work for conservative evangelicals like Wehner or Keller or Dalrymple. They don’t need to change their theology or their hermeneutics in order to stop denying other people full legal equality and civil rights:

I think it’s reasonable to say that even for orthodox Christians,** how the Scriptural injunctions against homosexual behavior should manifest themselves in modern American law and society are not self-evident. For example, you might believe homosexual conduct is not what God intended but (like idolatry) that view should not be written in law.

I’d be quite pleased if more anti-gay Christians would settle on that view. (Keller calls this a “Neo-Anabaptist” position, but really it’s just plain Baptist — more Roger Williams than John Howard Yoder.)

My main point here, though, is not the conclusion of Wehner’s argument or the logic he uses in getting there. What strikes me more is the impulse compelling him to make this anguished argument — which, again, is the strain of being pulled in opposite directions by the demands of conscience and the demands of “obedience.” For Wehner, as for many white  evangelicals, “their whole approach to authority” compels them to believe that God demands a “firm stance” opposing homosexuality. Yet Wehner’s conscience is pulling him the other way — he seems to genuinely regret the harm that is being done to LGBT people by Christians who advocate laws denying their civil rights.

The pangs of conscience are clearest toward the end of Wehner’s post, when he recalls a conversation with former InterVarsity president Steve Hayner:

“I doubt whether God will have much to say about our political convictions in the end,” Steve said to me, “but I’m quite sure that he will have something to say about how we loved the least, the marginalized, the outcasts, the lonely, the abused — even when some think that they have it all. Political convictions that lead toward redemption and reconciliation are most likely headed in the right direction.”

Hayner describes a trajectory leading “toward redemption and reconciliation” and emphasizing the powerless, “the outcasts, the lonely, the abused.” And Wehner says, “It seems to me there is great wisdom in his words.”

It seems that way to me, too. But I should warn Wehner that the gatekeepers of the white evangelical tribe don’t look kindly on anyone who allows this wisdom to shape their hermeneutic. That, they say, would be disobedient. It would “ask them to completely disassemble the way in which they read the Bible. Completely disassemble their whole approach to authority.” You’d be asking them to kick their faith out the door and they’d prefer, instead, to kick you out of the tribe.

Just ask Steve Chalke. Chalke’s evangelical credentials were beyond question — even more than Keller’s or Wehner’s or Dalrymple’s. But he was judged to have headed too far “in the right direction” of reconciliation and love for the outcast, and he was banished from the evangelical tribe — cast into the outer darkness with the mainliners, the “progressives” and the Episcopalians.

But here’s the joyous thing that Steve Chalke discovered. He’s not anguished. He’s not torn between conscience and obedience. For Chalke, obedience to God and conscience are pulling in the same direction. That unity of direction is at the root of the meaning of the word “integrity,” which is why Chalke’s farewell letter to the tribal gatekeepers — his manifesto in support of marriage equality — was titled, “A Matter of Integrity: The Church, sexuality, inclusion and an open conversation.”

When conscience and obedience are integrated — when they are pulling in the same direction — then faith becomes something that perpetually challenges us to become better people. It calls us to constantly expand our love and our capacity for love and to move ever onward, ever outward and ever Christward.

Peter Wehner is clearly aware of the discomfort and anxiety that comes from the kind of faith Danny Coleman described and Tim Keller endorsed — a form of faith in which conscience and obedience are at odds, pulling in opposite directions. It’s like being stretched on a rack. And, one way or the other, such faith will always entail being racked with guilt.

Maybe Steve Chalke is right. Maybe God is a better person than you think. Maybe obedience to what God wants doesn’t have to produce a queasy, uneasy conscience and the nagging sense that treating others unkindly and unfairly is still wrong, even when it’s done out of a sincere attempt to be obedient.

I’ve experience both forms of faith — the fearful kind Coleman describes and the fearless sort Steve Chalke advocates. The latter is a lot more joyful.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

* I had a hard time getting past that title, which seems like the archetypal headline for any in-group discussion of out-group people. You could fill a bookshelf with the unspoken assumptions packed into and conveyed by those six words: An Evangelical Christian Looks at Homosexuality.

Here are some potential alternate versions of that title:

• “A Member of the Tribe Observes Outsiders.”

• “I am a legitimate person. You are an issue and an abstraction.”

• “The Myopia of Privilege.”

• “Jonah looks at the Ninevites.”

• “Blessed are you, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has not made me a homosexual.”

• ”Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table. And you’re welcome.”

That actual title — “An Evangelical Christian Looks at Homosexuality” — includes something of all of those, and more. And that’s before we even consider the false assumption that “an evangelical Christian” must, by definition, be looking at homosexuality from the outside — that no evangelicals are LGBT and no LGBT persons are evangelicals. (Here are links to more than a dozen blogs written by people who are both.)

While there’s something of that attitude pervading the whole post, the general spirit of Wehner’s piece is better than that title.

In general, though, I’m way beyond tired of articles and blog posts titled “An Evangelical Christian Looks at …” It’s long past time for a new wave of articles titled, instead, “An Evangelical Christian Listens to …”

** The colloquial use of “begs the question” to mean “raises the question” leaves us without a term for what Wehner is doing here. “Orthodox Christians,” he says, are those who believe the Bible declares homosexuality to be a sin. And we know that the Bible says so because this is what “orthodox Christians” say the Bible says. He’s assuming the initial point. Or presuming it, actually.

But the Israelites broke faith in regard to the devoted things: Achan son of Carmi son of Zabdi son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took some of the devoted things; and the anger of the Lord burned against the Israelites.

Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is near Beth-aven, east of Bethel, and said to them, “Go up and spy out the land.”

And the men went up and spied out Ai. Then they returned to Joshua and said to him, “Not all the people need go up; about two or three thousand men should go up and attack Ai. Since they are so few, do not make the whole people toil up there.”

So about three thousand of the people went up there; and they fled before the men of Ai. The men of Ai killed about 36 of them, chasing them from outside the gate as far as Shebarim and killing them on the slope. The hearts of the people failed and turned to water.

Then Joshua tore his clothes, and fell to the ground on his face before the ark of the Lord until the evening, he and the elders of Israel; and they put dust on their heads. Joshua said, “Ah, Lord God! Why have you brought this people across the Jordan at all, to hand us over to the Amorites so as to destroy us? Would that we had been content to settle beyond the Jordan! O Lord, what can I say, now that Israel has turned their backs to their enemies! The Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear of it, and surround us, and cut off our name from the earth. Then what will you do for your great name?”

The Lord said to Joshua, “Stand up! Why have you fallen upon your face? Israel has sinned; they have transgressed my covenant that I imposed on them. They have taken some of the devoted things; they have stolen, they have acted deceitfully, and they have put them among their own belongings. Therefore the Israelites are unable to stand before their enemies; they turn their backs to their enemies, because they have become a thing devoted for destruction themselves. I will be with you no more, unless you destroy the devoted things from among you. Proceed to sanctify the people, and say, ‘Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow; for thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “There are devoted things among you, O Israel; you will be unable to stand before your enemies until you take away the devoted things from among you.” In the morning therefore you shall come forward tribe by tribe. The tribe that the Lord takes shall come near by clans, the clan that the Lord takes shall come near by households, and the household that the Lord takes shall come near one by one. And the one who is taken as having the devoted things shall be burned with fire, together with all that he has, for having transgressed the covenant of the Lord, and for having done an outrageous thing in Israel.’”

So Joshua rose early in the morning, and brought Israel near tribe by tribe, and the tribe of Judah was taken. He brought near the clans of Judah, and the clan of the Zerahites was taken; and he brought near the clan of the Zerahites, family by family, and Zabdi was taken. And he brought near his household one by one, and Achan son of Carmi son of Zabdi son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was taken.

Then Joshua said to Achan, “My son, give glory to the Lord God of Israel and make confession to him. Tell me now what you have done; do not hide it from me.”

And Achan answered Joshua, “It is true; I am the one who sinned against the Lord God of Israel. This is what I did: when I saw what it meant to devote to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, my conscience cried out within me. I saw among the spoil the children of Jericho who do not know their right hand from their left, and I hid them. They now wait hidden in a cave outside our camp, and their mothers with them.”

So Joshua sent messengers, and they ran to the cave; and there they were, 40 children of Jericho and their mothers with them. They took them out of the tent and brought them to Joshua and all the Israelites; and they spread them out before the Lord.

Then Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan son of Zerah, with the 40 children of Jericho and their mothers, with his sons and daughters, with his oxen, donkeys, and sheep, and his tent and all that he had; and they brought them up to the Valley of Achor.

Joshua said, “Why did you bring trouble on us? The Lord is bringing trouble on you today.” And all Israel stoned him to death; they burned them with fire, cast stones on them, and raised over him a great heap of stones that remains to this day. Then the Lord turned from his burning anger. Therefore that place to this day is called the Valley of Achor.

(Inspired, in part, by this post from Richard Beck and by this post from Danny Coleman.)

It’s Hattie Durham’s turn in the spotlight. Here in the middle of the third book of this series, the authors are taking time to reintroduce several of their peripheral characters, reviewing and revisiting their roles and histories in multi-page flashbacks.

Hattie’s Official Character Summary in these pages comes through the point-of-view of Rayford Steele, which echoes back to how we originally met her, through Rayford’s eyes, in the opening sentences of the first book:

Rayford Steele’s mind was on a woman he had never touched. With his fully loaded 747 on autopilot above the Atlantic en route to a 6 a.m. landing at Heathrow, Rayford had pushed from his mind thoughts of his family.

Over spring break he would spend time with his wife and 12-year-old son. Their daughter would be home from college, too. But for now, with his first officer fighting sleep, Rayford imagined Hattie Durham’s smile and looked forward to their next meeting.

Hattie was Rayford’s senior flight attendant. …

She was, from the opening page, defined by her relationship to Rayford and by her effect on Rayford. But this is never reciprocal. “Hattie was Rayford’s senior flight attendant,” but Rayford is not Hattie’s pilot. The possessives, like Hattie, belong only to him. Hattie is portrayed as the temptress distracting Rayford from his family, but he is not portrayed as the married man stringing her along.

For a brief instant in that first book it seemed like this might lead to something interesting. During the initial panic of the Rapture, we meet Hattie again from Buck Williams’ point of view and she’s nothing like the home-wrecking hussy Rayford described. Buck actually seems impressed with her as she struggles to maintain order and her composure in the face of a disturbing, bewildering crisis.

It seemed like the authors might be signaling that Rayford’s perception of Hattie was unreliable — distorted, unfair. It seemed that maybe they were suggesting that there was more to this woman than what the narcissistic pilot was able to see.

Alas, though, it soon became clear that such subtleties are not part of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ approach to storytelling. In their view, it was Buck who was mistaken about Hattie when he first met her. He couldn’t understand her, the authors suggest, because he did not yet know Rayford, and Hattie is defined by Rayford. She is “Rayford’s.”

The multi-page reintroduction and review of Hattie’s story here could have been a chance to shift away from this awful, reductionist portrayal of Hattie Durham. LaHaye and Jenkins might have softened that a bit in the retelling, or suggested perhaps that both Rayford and Hattie have grown since we first met them at the beginning of the story. But instead the authors double down, reinforcing the worst aspects of their Hattie-hatred by repeating it all in concentrated form. Once again we see that she is defined by Rayford Steele. She is the “other woman,” and nothing more.

The scene starts with what I think is meant to be a piece of advice for godly married men. Rayford wakes up in his New Babylon palace quarters and prepares to meet Hattie for dinner:

He certainly didn’t intend to stay out long with Hattie Durham. He dressed casually, just barely presentable enough for a place like Global Bistro, where Hattie and Nicolae were often seen.

As a good Christian married man, it is imperative that Rayford not create the wrong impression for Hattie or for anyone else who may be watching. By appearing “just barely presentable,” he clearly signals his disdain for her so no one gets the wrong idea and Rayford doesn’t jeopardize his good Christian witness. It’s fine that the entire world knows him to be a loyal servant of the Antichrist, but he can’t have anyone suspecting he might be an adulterer.

Due to his eavesdropping on the plane, Rayford knows Hattie is no longer officially the “personal assistant” of the Antichrist/potentate, and he assumes this demotion is what she wants to talk with him about:

He would have to let her play the story out with all her characteristic emotion and angst.

Re-encountering the condescension and contemptuousness toward Hattie in this section, my initial thought was that someone should have reminded LaHaye and Jenkins that women would be reading their book too.

Women, after all, make up a big chunk of the audience for Christian-brand fiction. Just from a marketing perspective, it seems like a bad idea to alienate so many potential readers with dismissive caricatures. Most of this section has the awkward tone of those “you know how women are” jokes told at men’s prayer breakfasts — the kind of thing some men say about women when they’re sure that no women are listening. So why didn’t the authors realize that women are listening to this passage?

But then it hit me. The authors haven’t forgotten about their women readers. This passage is intended for those readers. It’s directed toward them. This whole survey and summary of Hattie’s history is meant to be a lesson for the ladies.

He would have to let her play the story out with all her characteristic emotion and angst. He didn’t mind. He owed her that much. He still felt guilty about where she was, both geographically and in her life. It didn’t seem that long ago that she had been the object of his lust.

Rayford had never acted on it, of course, but it was Hattie whom he was thinking of the night of the Rapture. How could he have been so deaf, so blind, so out of touch with reality? A successful professional man, married more than 20 years with a college-age daughter and a 12-year-old son, daydreaming about his senior flight attendant and justifying it because his wife had been on a religious kick! He shook his head. Irene, the lovely little woman he had for so long taken for granted …

Write this down ladies. These are your options: Hattie or Irene. You can be an “object of lust” or you can be a “lovely little woman.” You can be a wanton floozy working for a living and leading good men astray, or you can be a mother and a homemaker who has her priorities straight.

Hattie was 15 years his junior, and she was a knockout. Though they had enjoyed dinner together a few times and drinks several times, and despite the silent language of the body and the eyes, Rayford had never so much as touched her. It had not been beyond Hattie to grab his arm as she brushed past him or even to put her hands on his shoulders when speaking to him in the cockpit, but Rayford had somehow kept from letting things go further.

Remember, ladies: No touching! Irene was allowed to touch Rayford, but that was only because she was prepared to bear his children.

The responsibility to ensure that no touching occurs is entirely yours, ladies. That’s why the authors can say that Rayford never touched Hattie even when she touched him. And why Rayford’s “necking session” at an office Christmas party doesn’t count against his spotless record and his claim that he “of course” had “never acted” in response to the wiles of these seductresses. (If Rayford had groped Hattie, you get the sense the authors would have described it by saying, “It had not been beyond Hattie to press her breast into his outstretched hand as she brushed past him.”)

Rayford reminisces a bit more about the awkward dinner at which he had attempted to convert Hattie to the Rapture Gospel after awkwardly attempting to apologize — and to demand/receive an apology from her — for their prolonged non-affair of “the silent language of the body and the eyes.”

And here is the final lesson for you ladies: If any untoward touching, glances or body language occurs, you must forgive without qualification and you must apologize for your role in provoking it. And you should probably also apologize to the man you’re forgiving for allowing him to place himself in the uncomfortable position of having to ask for your forgiveness.

Rayford and the authors again lament Hattie’s failure to embrace the One True Gospel as it was presented to her in Rayford’s “earnest and focused” proselytizing. And they again attribute her rejection of this gospel to her willful hardness of heart and not to the horrifying context of having to sit through a passive-aggressive sermon from a creepy old married guy.

Less than two years later, Hattie was the personal assistant and lover of Nicolae Carpathia, the Antichrist. Rayford, Buck, and Chloe were believers in Christ.

So let that be a lesson to you all.