Category Archives: Faith

_Not Worth Fighting For_ Review: Part 3

Posted by Caleb Coy on

Chapter 2 discussed the hope of the resurrection and the life of Jesus as the core of Christian nonviolence.  We dealt with the question of helping a neighbor who is being attacked and how a Christian committed to nonviolence may handle such a situation and why.

Chapter 3 leaps right into a very very difficult question: “What would you do if someone were attacking a loved one?”

I have a wife and a child.  I love them and want to protect them from evil.  Because of this, many things in this world are unsettling to me even more than they would be were I single and childless.  Whatever I believe and do, I must live like Christ.
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_Not Worth Fighting For_ Review: Part 2

Posted by Caleb Coy on

“Pacifism is not a monolithic stance or approach to war, violence, or politics.  There are varieties of it.”

The first chapter of the book distinguished between pacifism and passivity.

In chapter 2 D. Stephen Long deals with the difficult question “What About Protecting Third Party Innocents?  Can we just let our neighbors die?”

Long doesn’t pretend all this is easy.  He’s a reluctant pacifist who came from a military family.  He doesn’t let us choose pacifism for some bogus reason.  He rejects that liberal pacifism where we just say we hate war but perpetuate the conditions that make war “necessary”.  He rejects the notion that war is bad because all soldiers are bloodthirsty savages.  Many soldiers are and have been decent, loving, exceptional, faithful people who seem to be incapable of harboring hate, and what we call good soldiering requires “self sacrifice, disciplined community, and moral attentiveness.”  He rejects the notion that pacifists are better because they don’t like war and everyone else does.  Practically nobody loves war (except immature American boys who play Call of Duty all day and think war would be fun).  Even the most battle-hardened want to avoid it, with few exceptions.  So we can’t reject violence for cheap reasons.
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_Not Worth Fighting For_ Review: Part 1

Posted by Caleb Coy on

When you think of people who believe in nonviolence, what image comes to mind?  Is it someone you find distaste in?  Is something about them other than their commitment making you dislike them?  Now picture someone who is like you or someone you admire in every way.  Then imagine them truly believing in nonviolence.  Would you call them a sissy?  Coward?

In my last post I introduced the chapter-by-chapter review of A Faith Not Worth Fighting For, a collection of essays on Christian nonviolence, specifically questions often asked about it by skeptics, or just curious seekers.

The first chapter opens with a common misconception worded in this question:  “Isn’t Pacifism Passive?”

We come to see that this argument against peacemaking has not roots in logic or theology, but comes from what I’ve found is a mixture of semantic misunderstanding and aesthetic distaste.  In her essay C. Rosalee Velloso Ewell addresses this question very well.

[note: for the sake of clarification when I speak of pacifism I will speak of it in broad terms, meaning a commitment to nonviolence, which we will see is based on the word for “passion”.  Whether that means a decision never to use violence ever, we shall see as we read along.]

As with the rest of the book, Ewell leads the discussion based on five assumptions for Christians:
1) Jesus and his story are real
2) We are to be witnesses of Jesus
3) We “see thru a glass dimly” (1 Cor. 13:12), but “we do see Jesus” (Heb. 2:9)
4) Faith is a journey in which we question ourselves and shine our light for others
5) It all goes back to the life (and death, and  re-life) of Jesus
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Announcing: A by-chapter review of _A Faith Not Worth Fighting For_

Posted by Caleb Coy on

I will take away the chariots from Ephraim
and the warhorses from Jerusalem,
and the battle bow will be broken.
He will command peace to the nations.

-Zecheriah 9:9-10

I’ve been looking forward to reading a certain book for a while, now that I’ve had some friends recommend it to me.  The book is called A Faith Not Worth Fighting For, a collection of essays about Christian nonviolence.  It is a book that I already know will challenge me, will set the voice of scripture up against some things people sometimes tell me who also read that scripture a lot.

I’d like to thank Carl Jenkins for really getting me interested in the reading, and for giving me bits and pieces of his reading along the way.  He did a book review.  I’m doing a full chapter-by-chapter throughout the next month or so.

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Pat Robertson is a false prophet: Not that this is anything new

Posted by Caleb Coy on

We don’t really pay attention to Pat Robertson.  Me and the people I know.  Goobers that we are, we’re wise enough to know he is incapable of being trusted about anything remotely spiritual.  In fact, one could create a guide on how to be a good Christian by merely saying, “don’t act like this man at all.”

But Pat Robertson isn’t Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist.  WBB is rather benign, since there is a small number of them and nobody takes them seriously.  No, Robertson is much worse.  He commands a media empire, and countless people look up to him.  Professed Christians are looking up to a servant of Shaitan.

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A Fist Full of Berries: Nobody Reads in Panem?

Posted by Caleb Coy on

The Hunger Games movie is coming out on DVD tomorrow.  I remember first hearing about the book.  I’m like, “neat teens book idea.  A little violent sounding.”

The idea sounded silly.  Then I saw the movie.  Then read the book.  Then the others.

On the surface, the idea seems very profane.  Kids killing each other.  For entertainment.  What has society come to?  But if you read these books what you soon realize is that the book is using such a profane thing to ask questions about what entertains us, and what we are willing to embrace and accept, what we are passionate about changing and what lengths we will go to to make that happen, and what the consequences are of those lengths.  And if you think that was a run-on sentence, then you see how oppression and violence can likewise run on and on and on, if we don’t do something to stop it.


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The 10 Suggestions: A Public School Solution

Posted by Caleb Coy on

It’s been a whole summer since the decision in Giles Co. VA to remove the ten commandments from a public display and replace them with an alternative.  This week many students will be going back to school, and some might even notice this new display when they pass by it.  Maybe.

I didn’t go up on a mountain, didn’t have a personal conversation with God, and my face is not glowing.  But I have read his book, his good book, and I can’t give you any new commandments.  Not that I need to.
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Home-style Chikin Fellowship

Posted by Caleb Coy on

Leaders of Chick-fil-a, I first want to extend my sympathy towards you after the loss of your vice president of public relations, Don Perry.  Public figures are often targets of hateful attacks, even in their deaths, and I am saddened to hear that there are so many people spewing hateful rhetoric in the wake of his death.  There is no reason to dance on the grave of anyone.

I also hope your claim is true that it was not anyone in your PR department who created fake Facebook profiles using stock photos of teenagers in order to booster your company’s reputation.  I believe your denial that you did so, although we would hopefully agree that whoever did so was guilty of lying and deceit.  I hope that your denial, which represents a denial that you would stoop to such a low place, encourages other people and organizations not to use stock photos to represent people who do not exist.
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In the Jailhouse Now

Posted by Caleb Coy on

I know some of you don’t care about people once they’re thrown in jail.  Criminal is criminal, right?  And the more of them there is in jail the better off society is.  Something like that.

Well, God disagrees with you.  I normally don’t adopt this tone when arguing, but if you’re the kind of person who has this attitude you can take such a mopping and it’s good for you.

So I want to encourage the rest of you to sign this petition because in Alabama the jail system is devouring the poor.  Contrary to the belief of those who don’t know Jesus but claim to really know his hand of justice, captive-releasing, justice-doing, poor non-devouring, and prison-visiting are important elements to Christianity.

Sentences should be fair, not just jail sentences.  An uncompassionate crime=jail sentence where you throw someone away and throw the key down the toilet does nothing to “fix” society.

Prevent extortion rackets in your local area.  Or just build bigger prisons.  I mean, whatever makes you feel better safer from all those criminals who aren’t worth troubling over except to lock up.  People putting you in danger by not paying their speeding tickets and all.

Here’s the petition:
https://secure3.convio.net/sojo/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=499