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I Have A Problem, Therefore You Must Also Have The Same Problem

23 July 2006 9 Comments

I was reading this article from the JollyBlogger and noticed the sermon where Billy Sunday mentioned card playing. From reading the sermon on JollyBlogger’s web page, I went and “Wikipediaed” Billy Sunday and noticed that:

In 1887, after a night of drinking with some of his teammates, Sunday was invited to attend a service at the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago, Illinois. He began attending services at the mission regularly, and it was after one of these services that he accepted Jesus Christ as his saviour and was “born again.”

and

Sunday is noted as being one of the major social influences in the temperance movement leading to the adoption of Prohibition in 1919. One of his most famous sermons was “Booze, Or, Get on the Water Wagon,” which convinced many people to give up drinking. As the tide of public opinion turned, he continued to strongly support Prohibition, and after its repeal in 1933, Sunday called for its reintroduction. He said “ I am the sworn, eternal and uncompromising enemy of the liquor traffic. I have been, and will go on, fighting that damnable, dirty, rotten business with all the power at my command.” Sunday preached that “whiskey and beer are all right in their place, but their place is in hell.”

What do we see here? We see a man very influenced by Charles Finney in his early walk with Christ but also the first of the fundamentalist preachers who turned a personal struggle into the fight that all must fight against to be considered ‘real Christians’. Therefore, a mentality of:

I Have A Problem, Therefore You Must Also Have The Same Problem At Work Within You.

Personal ideology became the total theology of the movement they started. Because Billy Sunday had a drinking problem meant that all people who consumed alcohol had a drinking problem. Because alcohol almost destroyed Billy Sunday meant that alcohol will destroy you. The only way to get rid of the temptation, addiction, vice, etc. is to engage in movements to permanently ban the temptation, addiction, vice, etc. ‘in God’s name’ instead of preaching the Bible that talks about overcoming the temptation, addiction, vice, etc. Victory was elimination. Overcoming was elimination. However, when it appeared that the elimination of alcohol (temperance) failed, the mentality went from victory and overcoming by elimination to victory and overcoming by distinct isolation and seperation and the bunker mentality of Christianity appeared on the scene.

Unfortunately, the same ‘having the problem, therefore you must realize that you have the same problem’ has permeated the church today where Christians everyday are turning from victorious Bible believers into seperatist conquerors of vice and agenda within their own bubble they built while fatally hoping the world around them dies in judgement. How:

Take the missionary that comes in once a year and talks about the missions field and turns the conversation from missions to “they are starving, and you are fat and lazy, therefore to be real Christians, you need to send them your money and become starving and you are so selfish you couldn’t sing “Jesus Loves Me’ in Swahili and fall asleep during the slide presentation.” Because I am the missionary and see the poverty, injustice, famine, and war and am ‘doing something’ for Christ, you need to become a missionary and experience it to be at the same Christian level as I am.

When personal ideology becomes the newest crusade, the unfortunate thing that happens is that the crusade becomes the entire theology base of the individual. You hear nothing else come out of their mouth but ways to enhance the crusade of personal ideology. Bible versions about certain vices or character traits gets twisted in order to promote the personal ideology. What we have here is lack of balance and closed blinder vision.

This will never change until we start seeing beyond ourselves and start seeing the world around us.

9 Comments »

  • moviestar_eyes said:

    hmm. interesting post. I would like to read more. I definately see what your saying,however, and will probably read the post again, before I finish forming my thoughts on it.
    God bless.

    # 1 August 2006 at 12:00 pm
  • JOLLYBLOGGER said:

    Totem to Temple – When Personal Ideology Becomes Moral Crusade…

    Totem to Temple picked up on my Billy Sunday post and ran with it in a very helpful and insightful direction with a post titled I Have A Problem, Therefore You Must Also Have The Same Problem . It’s really…

    # 3 August 2006 at 10:52 am
  • The Boars Head Tavern » Blog Archive » I have a problem….and you better have it, too. said:

    [...] Totem to Temple has a good insight on an issue all over evangelicalism: My problem must be your problem. [...]

    # 5 August 2006 at 11:35 am
  • admin said:

    To the guys at the BHT:

    Thanks for the trackback/pingback.

    #######################################

    I was thinking about this topic again a couple of days ago and I though about another instances in modern parachurchianity where this mentality existed.

    Christian men’s conferences

    Typical Instance #1

    “…. I admit, I have looked at pornography whether it’s the hidden magazine under the seat of my twenty year old Honda Civic, gone online when the wife is out of town or borrowed the porno tape from the buddy at work.

    Can I hear an amen?????

    (silence is deafening)

    Come on now, fess up and admit it, you’re a dirty rotten porno scumbag too. You love business trips because you buy Penthouse at the airport newsstands without the wife knowing about it. You love going to the strip bars calling it ‘building business relations’. Fess up, be honest with yourself and admit that you are a porno freak like I used to be.”

    You’re a man, you have this problem whether you believe it or not.

    Instance #2

    “… I’m white, and I am from the old Confederate south. Therefore, that automatically makes me a racist. Guess what? You’re white and from the south, you know what that makes you????

    Yeah, that’s right. You’re an automatic racist too…. Come down and repent and when you get home have a ‘racial reconciliation service (and never see or do anything with the other race until next year’s service)

    Instance #3

    You work way too much (to pay off the big house that I must have to be considered ‘anointed’ and ’spiritual’ in the success-driven megachurch). You never spend quality time with the wife. You never ‘butterfly kiss’ your six year old daughter. All you do is come home, eat fast, and retreat to your home office and do more paperwork. You’re a deadbeat dad like I was before I gave up the corporate life…..

    # 5 August 2006 at 12:48 pm
  • pilgrim said:

    I have met some of these as well, and the problem is if you try to explain that to them, they don’t listen.

    They can build big deals about it on a faulty foundation, and won’t deal with the foundation of their argumentation, but from their false assumptions.

    It’s like being asked–”Yes or No–have you stopped beating your wife?”

    # 6 August 2006 at 12:44 am
  • A Gracious Home » Everybody’s got problems and convictions. The question is… said:

    [...] A few weeks ago JollyBlogger put up a “humorous” piece called Billy Sunday on Card Playing. He followed it up with a post called Totem to Temple: When Personal Ideology Becomes Moral Crusade in which he points the readers to a post at Totem to Temple called I Have a Problem, Therefore You Must Have the Same Problem. They are each worth reading and all relatively short. But the main point is that Christians are so prone to making a personal conviction over some problem into a measuring stick by which they measure others. The example used was the fact that Billy Sunday had a problem with alcohol so therefore everyone must have a problem with alcohol so therefore alcohol must be completely done away with. As Totem to Temple explains: We see a man very influenced by Charles Finney in his early walk with Christ but also the first of the fundamentalist preachers who turned a personal struggle into the fight that all must fight against to be considered ‘real Christians’. [...]

    # 9 August 2006 at 8:56 pm
  • Single and Content said:

    This principle very much applies to today’s Christian singles who are unhappy with their unmarried status. They are currently promoting the view that discontent due to singleness is acceptable (where does Scripture make such an exception to the call to contentment?)and attacking those of us who are content. In their attempt to sanctify their desire for marriage into a need, they are creating and focusing their faith on their ideology. The point made in the blog piece is so applicable to this issue.

    # 11 August 2006 at 2:04 pm
  • Norma said:

    Another example is pacifism. Instead of desiring inner peace and making sure personal relationships are not combative, and converting others by example, modern day Christian pacifists set up lobbying groups in DC and march in the streets.

    # 12 August 2006 at 4:36 pm
  • Neil said:

    The pro-lifers in my part of the country have this same mentality. If you don’t picket with them, you’re spiritually inferior to them.

    # 12 August 2006 at 6:38 pm