Hail to thee, Camp Jesus, by the shores of Devil's Lake

[vovat]

You know how people are always complaining that trailers and advertisements always give away too much of a movie? I don't know that it's a complaint often used when it comes to documentaries, but it's kind of how I felt when I saw Jesus Camp. I'd already seen a lot of the craziest stuff, like the kids praying for a cardboard cutout of President Bush and the guy with the little toy fetuses, in news segments and such. Still, it was definitely interesting, as documentaries on such subjects are prone to be. I thought working in the clips from the liberal Christian radio host was more effective than simply having a narrator provide rebuttals (although it's certainly possible to make an effective documentary film of the sort without any on-screen rebuttals, as Hell House demonstrated). Before we even get to the camp parts of the movie, we see one of the kids being home-schooled and taught that there's no global warming, while we see a picture of Bush on the wall nearby. (I wonder what the mom thought of Bush's half-assed admission in the most recent State of the Union that global warming might be real?) There's also some pre-fall footage of Ted Haggard preaching. Man, that guy just seems so untrustworthy. Was anyone REALLY surprised that he turned out to be a total hypocrite? And why was someone who was supposedly totally secure in his faith tempted to solicit prostitutes and do drugs, while I've never had any particular desire to do either one of those things? Did the Devil find him a more promising target because he was respected by so many other Christians? Or is it another case of a self-styled Christian totally ignoring "let he who is without sin cast the first stone"?

And that provides a transition into something else I was thinking of that kind of relates to the subject, but wasn't actually addressed in Jesus Camp. It seems like a fair number of fundamentalists are frequently accusing "secular humanists" of "trying to make humans into God," or some such. Then they start insisting that they know who's going to Hell. Um, okay, if God is supposed to be all-knowing, all-good, and all-just, and you're obviously not, how can you be so sure what He's going to do or think? Isn't that kind of arrogant?

Comments

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

It seems like a fair number of fundamentalists are frequently accusing "secular humanists" of "trying to make humans into God," or some such. Then they start insisting that they know who's going to Hell.
Which is much more my definition of Playing God than most of science is. (of course any science that involves deciding who lives and dies falls under my definition of Playing God, too, but there's significantly less of those sciences than the fundamentalists accuse of playing God. Evolution for example. Believing in evolution is not making humans into God. Now, if you use evolution like the Nazis and turn it into an excuse for genocide, then you've got a Playing God problem).

And why was someone who was supposedly totally secure in his faith tempted to solicit prostitutes and do drugs, while I've never had any particular desire to do either one of those things?
Is this entry friends locked? Okay, no, so I won't go into details about WHY the conversation was taking place, but I recently had a conversation about a family with a lot of drug/addiction problems, and one person in the family had become an evangelist, and it was pointed out that evangelism was actually, psychologically-indicated, a kind of addiction-- getting high on spreading the Word, like-- always having to get another Fix of religion or you don't feel right. So it makes sense that such a person would be more prone to other vices too, if they're addictive ones.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

it was pointed out that evangelism was actually, psychologically-indicated, a kind of addiction-- getting high on spreading the Word, like-- always having to get another Fix of religion or you don't feel right.

Yeah, I hadn't really thought of it that way, but it definitely makes sense.

I think I have somewhat of an addictive personality myself, which is one reason (but certainly not the only one) that I steer clear of drugs and such.