The new alarmism: How some Christians are stoking fear rather than hope

From The Washington Post-

When did Christians start stealing scripts from home security commercials?

We’re all familiar with the canned tropes of the alarm system advertisement: the female resident alone in a darkened house; the ominous threat lurking outside with a crowbar; the horror-flick music rising to a crescendo as the intruder approaches the door—but then repelled by the sight of the ADT sign in the window. Whew! Crisis averted. Cue bright sunshine and smiles and a three-course breakfast with the whole family around the table. Secure.

The home security industry trades on a combination of fear and idylls. In fact, they depend on swelling the idyllic in order to heighten the fear. The more you have to lose, the more you feel the threat.

A spate of recent books from Christian leaders and intellectuals seem to have stolen this script, swelling the jeremiad shelf. We might describe this as “the new alarmism.”

More here-

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/03/10/the-new-alarmism-how-some-christians-are-stoking-fear-rather-than-hope/?tid=ss_tw-bottom&utm_term=.d8bd192f2fc3

Childish behavior

An interesting piece on being powerful or being a child from the Christian Century.

In heaven we can ask Paul himself, but in the meantime I'm rooting for nepioi, infants. Gentle does not fit the prickly, irascible Paul very well, although in one of his fits of braggadocio he might have fudged a little. Paul was more infantlike, and I don't mean that in any warm, fuzzy way. Martin Luther spoke the truth when in 1538 he looked at his family of six children, ages four to 12, and remarked, "Christ said we must become as little children to enter the kingdom. Dear God, this is too much. Must we become such idiots?" I seem to remember incessant screaming at ungodly hours, being thrown up upon, never getting anything done and staggering wearily through the day with a soiled spot on the shoulder of my jacket.

Never forgetting Paul's total lack of modesty, we set out to live differently. John Chrysostom instructed his congregation on how to win over unbelievers: "Let us astound them by our way of life. This is the unanswerable argument. Though we give 10,000 precepts in words, if we do not exhibit a far better life, we gain nothing. It is not what is said that draws their attention, but what we do. Let us win them therefore by our life." You'll miss a few parties; you won't get invited certain places. Most adults on the prowl for a quiet evening prefer peace and quiet and therefore will not get near the baby. It's OK. In The Lord of the Rings, the wise wizard Gandalf tells the hobbits, "Let folly be our cloak." Folly worked pretty well for Jesus, Paul, St. Francis and a holy host of others . . . or we might say it didn't "work well," but was faithful and strangely powerful in an infant, toddling kind of way.

http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=1392