Should Christians Boycott Businesses That Don’t Think Like Us?

There was a big ruckus when I was in high school over Procter & Gamble supposedly being a company that gave some of its profits to the Church of Satan. I knew it was true because my cousin knew a guy who saw company officials admit it on “Phil Donahue.”

The story hinged on the company’s logo, a man in the moon with long flowing hair and beard that looked out onto 13 stars. The company denied any devil-worship – and has sued Amway multiple times over the past three decades for allegedly keeping the story alive.

The point some Christians latched onto was that buying products from a company that donated part of its profits to the Church of Satan was furthering the work of the enemy.

In the P&G case, evangelical apologist Bob Passantino, said that Christians risk discrediting their faith in the eyes of others with such behavior. “It's not just a stamp we're wasting. It's our credibility. Our credibility is on the line. People might think if Christians are stupid enough to fall for this falsehood, maybe early Christians were gullible enough to fall for the resurrection story.”

But the question remains: Are we wrong to knowingly give money to people who do things with it we find objectionable?

The Apostle Paul, though previously having told early Christians to abstain from meat sacrificed to idols, wrote that he felt perfect freedom in doing so. Why? Because an idol isn’t really a god, and he gave thanks to the true God for providing the meat before he ate it. Whatever anybody else did or thought wasn’t his concern.

Well, to a point. He did note that people of his day should feel free to eat meat without asking where it came from – but if someone specifically told them it had been sacrificed to idols to leave it alone “for conscience sake.” And that wasn’t for your conscience, but for the other guy’s – so he wouldn’t think you were endorsing his idol.

So that seems to clear up one thing: If you buy a product and some of the profits go toward something objectionable – but you don’t know it – there’s nothing to worry about. But what if you do know about it?

There’s no real guideline here. But look at the opposite circumstance: preferring Christian-owned businesses over non-Christian ones. I’ve seen Christian business directories and ads and signs containing the icthus (Jesus fish) – but would God want me to prefer those companies over any other?

After all, Jesus was criticized by religious leaders for associating with sinners: IRS agents, whores. (So if you ever wore one of those wristbands asking “What Would Jesus Do?” – there’s your answer. And point of clarity: I am NOT saying you should “do business” with hookers.)

How will people who don’t know God’s love ever find it if someone doesn’t show it to them? If all the Christians in a community agree not to use Larry’s Transmission Shop because Larry doesn’t believe in God – or heaven forfend! – believes in a different god, poor Larry’s got no hope of ever meeting this God that all the good Christians talk up so much.

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Victoria Jackson's anti-gay statements are not following the Bible

Victoria Jackson, the Saturday Night Live actress turned outspoken Christian, has ticked several people off with her criticism of Fox TV's Glee for including a kiss between two male characters.

Jackson has been a Christian since the days she was on SNL in the late 1980s-early 1990s, reportedly once telling Al Franken, who had asked her why she looked downcast, that she was saddened that everyone else on the show was going to hell.

In an HLN interview (See video) defending her statements that homosexuality is a sin, Jackson repeatedly quoted the Bible, and held one up, saying, “Well, it doesn't matter what I think. What matters is what the Bible says."

One thing that it says is, "What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?" That's the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthains 5:12 (NIV). The context is that the church in Corinth was putting up with — and even celebrating — a man who was sleeping with his father's wife.

The apostle shamed them for this, continuing: "I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people — not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people. "

Jackson isn't alone in her rants against the "secular humanism" and "liberal agenda" that are "destroying our country." Lots of Christians have gone before her. Lots will come after. Problem is, Christians are told specifically not to judge those outside the church. And if the makers of Glee are "outside the church"— as Jackson herself asserts — then the Christian Victoria Jackson has no business judging them. If another "inside the church" breaks Scripture, that's whom she's to correct. And if that person doesn't listen, she's not to associate with them.

I'm all for Christians trying to positively affect the culture, but it seems as though most of them are doing it by trying to make people who aren't Christians behave as if they are, which is clearly unscriptural, or they make schlock entertainment, such as the Left Behind books and movies.

Victoria Jackson once sat in a car with a cat at the wheel in a famous SNL skit. It drove her off the cliff. Now it's Jackson's misappropriation of Scripture at the wheel.

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Alabama Governor Robert Bentley stirs debate with Christian comments

Shortly after he was sworn in as Alabama's 53rd governor on Monday, Robert Bentley spoke at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once served as pastor. He told the crowd, on the 25th anniversary of the federal holiday honoring King's birthday, that he is governor of all Alabamians regardless of party affiliation or color.

Then, reports The Birmingham News, he said something that raised eyebrows.

"There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit. But if you have been adopted in God's family like I have, and like you have if you're a Christian and if you're saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister.

''Now I will have to say that, if we don't have the same daddy, we're not brothers and sisters. So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother."

Birmingham Rabbi Jonathan Miller sent Bentley a note requesting a dialogue and inviting the newly sworn in chief executive to speak at his synagogue, Temple Emanu-El. Other Jewish and Muslim leaders expressed concern about Bentley's personal beliefs tainting his governing.

As an evangelical Christian, I agree with Bentley's statement, but not the way he delivered it.

The perception from those who don't share his and my faith can understandably be one that causes worry. One recent gubernatorial candidate in Alabama, Ten Commandments Judge Roy Moore, is among a group who seek to bring Christian rule to government (dominionism).* I don't believe Bentley is in that camp; he just chose to speak his beliefs at an inopportune time and without considering how they'd be heard by non-evangelicals.

The Apostle Paul and Jesus himself didn't say the same thing the same way to everyone. Jesus spoke in parables to crowds, then explained them to his inner circle -- and to us reading his words millennia later. He healed one man and told him not to tell anyone and healed another and told him to tell everyone.

Paul said he tried to be all things to all men so that by all possible means he might save some. When you are "governor of all the people," as Bentley had just said in his inauguration address that he is, you should state your beliefs in a method that won't put off large numbers of your constituents. It's easy for me to not fear Bentley wants to make Alabama an "evangelical state," but it isn't easy for non-evangelicals to not fear.

If the shoe were on the other foot, I, too, might fear.

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Photo: Alabama.gov

*Apologies for the Wikipedia reference, but it actually was the only objective piece on the subject I could find.

UPDATE: Bentley apologizes

Give back to the community?

It's the latest buzz phrase for urging civic responsibility: Giving back to the community.

It sounds good. After all, who is opposed to building a Habitat for Humanity house or volunteering at a shelter? Nobody would knock someone for helping teach an adult struggling with illiteracy to read. Still, something about the phrase has rubbed me the wrong way -- and I couldn't put my finger on why.

There's the shaming aspect of it: The community has given to you; it's you're responsibility to give back, and how dare you not do so? But that's not what bothered me. It was something else, and it was not until I was in church this morning that I figured it out.

"Now let us give back to God our tithes and offerings," the minister said as the collection plate was about to be passed.

And that was it: I wasn't offended to be told to "give back to God," but I was offended at "give back to the community."

It's not that I don't think "the community" has given me anything and that I don't want to give anything to it. Rather, it's the mindset. I like doing things to help others. I covet opportunities to do so. But I don't do it because I feel the community has done something for me and I, therefore, owe the community something back. I do it because God has given me everything I have -- loaned it to me, really -- and I want to use what he has given me to show his love and his face to others.

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Photo: U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

How to Make Snow Ice Cream (Video)

Lots of people from the south are probably trying to dig up their snow ice cream recipes. Here's a video I made with my now-wife (from Connecticut) after I showed her how Alabamians use that stuff they hate so much to shovel:



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Christmas trees make non-Christians feel excluded, researchers say

Merry Christmas! Now cut it out.

Researchers at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, say a 12-inch Christmas tree caused non-Christians and/or those who don't celebrate the holiday to feel excluded, thereby lowering their sense of self-worth.

(Read the story on MSNBC.com)

Social psychologist Michael Schmitt, who led the study, said non-Christians and non-celebrants felt their sense of self worth lowered after entering the room with the tree, while all but one Christian/celebrant who participated felt their sense of self worth increased by seeing the tree.

He suggests toning down Christmas displays in public places to make non-Christians feel less left out.

But following that line of thought would lead to an entirely different conclusion.

(This is just a thought experiment, so don't get angry -- I'm only making a case full of Schmitt's own reasoning to show it's ridiculousness.)

Argument: Christian (X) and non-Christian (Y) each have a self-worth level of 5. (1 being lowest and 10 highest.) Each walks into the room without a Christmas tree. X and Y both leave the room still at self-worth level 5.

Next, X and Y walk into a room with a 12-inch Christmas tree. Y now feels worse about himself (down to level 3), but X feels better (up to level 8).

Our proposed solution is to remove the tree and leave both X and Y at level 5. This is great for Y, but worse for X. Should X be forced to suffer just so Y's feeling's won't be hurt? Maybe. But wouldn't a better solution be to raise both X and Y to level 8 -- or higher?

Now we need to figure out how to make that happen.

Ricky Gervais from 8 to ∞
In a related item, funnyman Ricky Gervais writes on The Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog on how his older brother convinced him within one hour to stop seeing Jesus as his hero at age 8 and become an disbeliever in God altogether.

Gervais says it doesn't bother him if others believe in a god, but there's no science for it, so he doesn't.

It's mostly an intelligent read, but he does pull out the canard that science is superior because, among other things, "It doesn’t hold on to medieval practices because they are tradition. If it did, you wouldn’t get a shot of penicillin, you’d pop a leach down your trousers and pray."

This argument always gets a bug up my bum because some (not all) scientists are so fond of saying that something isn't true unless it's been proved by science. Gervais himself argues in this very piece that it is impossible to prove God's existence through science, therefore it makes perfectly good sense that he doesn't exist.

By this reasoning, if someone had by happenstance mixed up a batch of penicillin during the Middle Ages it wouldn't have cured anything because there was no scientific research to prove that it would. Leaches would have worked better.

No, I can't prove through scientific methods the existence of anything outside this physical reality; I can prove it through spiritual methods. Anyone who doesn't have -- and doesn't want -- the instruments to measure those things can't see it.

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(Photo: Christmas Tree by Anna Cervova)

Elephant named Elephant? Not very creative

The Birmingham Zoo in Alabama has just added an elephant to its upcoming "Trails of Africa" exhibit.

They got the 29-year-old bull, named Buldwagi, from Disney in Florida, The Birmingham News reports.

Buldwagi, it turns out, means "elephant."

So the Disney people, who came up with Mickey for a mouse (after first coming up with Mortimer for same mouse), Donald for a duck and seven different names for dwarfs, could only think up to call an elephant Elephant. That's sad.

If I were raised by a pack of wolves I wouldn't want them just calling me Human in their wolf talk. Be creative. Think up something to do with my personality or appearance. If you look at a picture of Buldwagi you'll notice that he has only one tusk. He lost the other in an accident when he was very young.

There's you a name, right there: Unitusk. Or Accident-Prone. Or Piano Key Donor.

Wait, wait: Tusk Tisk.

Whatever you go with, he won't care. He doesn't speak human.

But, you're thinking, they don't actually call him Elephant; they call him Buldwagi, which, since he is an African elephant, is Swahili or something for elephant.

Not so. It's Seminole.

Yes, apparently there is a word in Seminole for elephant. Probably something descriptive, too, like "Giant With Snake Nose Who Dances with Uncreative Nomenclature Givers."

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