Back in a Bit & Katy Perry Puts the Fun in Funeral

I’ll be gone a few days, and have set the comments to moderation. (Back now.)

In other news, Katy Perry tells it like it is. Therefore, there is no excuse for missing the message that feral women are celebrated, and celebrating as they sing along in their cars.

It’s strangely fitting that the interludes are reminiscent of old horror-core rap like Gravediggaz and some of Wu Tang Clan’s more gruesome tracks…which is saying a lot. Investigate at your own risk. Vile stuff.

Dark horses draw hearses. Of course, we have heard and known these things.

5 My son, attend unto my wisdom,
and bow thine ear to my understanding:
² that thou mayest regard discretion,
and that thy lips may keep knowledge.

³ For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb,
and her mouth is smoother than oil:
⁴ but her end is bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a twoedged sword.
⁵ Her feet go down to death;
her steps take hold on hell.
⁶ Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life,
her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them.
⁷ Hear me now therefore, O ye children,
and depart not from the words of my mouth.
⁸ Remove thy way far from her,
and come not nigh the door of her house:
⁹ lest thou give thine honour unto others,
and thy years unto the cruel:
¹⁰ lest strangers be filled with thy wealth;
and thy labours be in the house of a stranger;
¹¹ and thou mourn at the last,
when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,
¹² and say, How have I hated instruction,
and my heart despised reproof;
¹³ and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers,
nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!
¹⁴ I was almost in all evil
in the midst of the congregation and assembly.

Willow Creek Pick-Up

Christian congregations across the Western world have been losing congregants for decades, if not longer. To combat this problem, in 1992 Bill Hybels started Willow Creek, and that church became a movement and a system, called “Willow Creek”.

Basically, it was a huge re-branding service that sold the idea that the problem with church was that it was seen as “churchy”. It is characterized by things such as describing itself as “seeker-friendly”; meaning non-confrontational, and throwing out the window repentant, discerning, yoke-ing bits of the Gospel. Things like: “You’re a sinner, and you’re in danger of Hell.”, “Becoming someone new means to stop being the old you, and that means behaving differently.” No more “First Baptist of Nowheresville”. Instead the Willow Creek system would recommend something like, “The Center of Overcoming Faith”; an unfortunate yet fitting descriptor.

What was defenestrated were several of the pillars of Christianity, and in its place was brought in marketing and psychology. People were no longer sinners, they were potential consumers of Christianity. The goal of the church was shifted away from boring old repentance and discipline, and towards convincing them that Christianity was pleasant, helpful, harmless, and comfortable; that it would improve your life both in quality and quantity. People in sales and marketing like to call those who buy many and varied things “discerning”; a fact that is belied by their multiplicity and variance. It was the Gospel stripped of all nutrients, coated in sugar, and believers as consumers.

Think of this method as the applied psychology of churching. Churches being Christians institutions, you could call this disaster for American Christianity: Christian Game.