My Journal

Self made millionaire Elizabeth Holmes is going to be in a movie I'll try to watch. The miniseries is called The Dropout, since this fraud had only graduated high school, then dropped out of Stanford, claiming to start a company Theranos that do blood testing better than anyone else. The interesting part, is that she was able to fool the world, Forbes, for a while. Pyramid scheme is one thing and very common, but this is a whole other level.

Tim Keller on Stephen Colbert's response to Dua Lipa, so did Alex:

I'll give my take first on Colbert, and then a brief analysis on Keller and Alex, who only both proved my criticism of them before.

The question is basically asking: Do you think your work (comedy) contradicts (overlaps) with your faith (Christianity/Catholicism)? If they do, which one wins out?

Had Colbert exercised his answer to his ability in humility, he should have stopped at "faith wins out in the end". Which basically gave the answer: Yes, and yes. His quirky joke like "I hope Jesus has a sense of humor" should do just fine as a finale to the question. But he had to go out of his humility to add further explanation to justify himself by saying "But I would say this..." Thus voiding his initial answer, for listeners who are unbias and clear minded. So his first answer was what he thought to be the textbook answer for a Christian/Catholic, and his second answer is his real answer, which is to justify himself but essentially evading the question with rap and quotes about the good things of laughter and love, so that the majority audience would not be smart enough to figure out his motive. He failed in Matthew 5:37, let your yes be yes, and no be no, anything beyond that is of evil.

So my reaction is not about how Colbert fail in bringing out the Gospel, or being a Christian witness, that's what the fundamentalists do, but that he failed in answering the question.

Now, let's look at Keller's case:

This is a skillful example of how to be a Christian in the public square. It is a form of witness that culture can handle. We should desire to have more Christians in these spaces and give them grace as they operate. Please do not make the error: if you cite person X at all you must answer for everything person X ever did or said. That is not fair. I am merely saying, this is a winsome way to answer this question that we should desire to emulate.

And here's his follow up to his commentators:

The recent post I made about Stephen Colbert's partial answer about his faith and the ensuing comments has shown me American Christians still have a long way to go on understanding Col 4:5-6, how to be "wise in the ways you act towards outsiders?" This is called contextualization. What is contextualization? It’s adapting your message to be understandable and compelling to particular hearers without compromising the truth in any way.Why contextualize? First, because everyone already does it. As soon as you choose a language to speak in, and vocabulary, and illustrations, and arguments, you are adapting to some human hearers more than others. If you don’t become conscious of how you are contextualizing—which is inevitable--you won’t contextualize well. Second, because Paul contextualizes in his speeches. Cf. how he presents to Bible believers in Acts 13, blue-collar pagans in Acts 14, educated pagans in Acts 17. Third, because the Biblical writers contextualized. See John’s use of Greek philosophy’s “Logos” in John 1; see the use of the Hittite suzerain treaty form in the book of Deuteronomy; see Paul’s contextualization of the gospel to Greek and Jewish cultural narratives in 1 Cor 1:22-24.Fourth, because Paul calls us to contextualization without compromise in 1 Cor 9:19-23. Fifth, because the incarnation itself was a kind of contextualizing so we could understand—the Word made flesh. Sixth, keep in mind you can’t and shouldn’t say everything every time when bearing a public witness to your faith. In Acts 17 Paul spoke of judgment but not of the cross or of how to get forgiveness. So it wasn’t a full gospel presentation. It was laying a foundation for talking to people later. Unless Christians are completely going to pull themselves out of the public square we will need to contextualize. Let's do so well.

Here's his reaction to comments.

My response to his first comment was, I just didn't know who he was referring to at first: Dua Lipa or Colbert? Sometimes as Christians, we can certainly do contextualization with questions, as Dua Lipa did. As for Colbert, other than saying that he's Christian, he evaded the question, if that's a winsome approach, then I can relate to some controversial interview Keller did in the past, starting with homosexual marriage, etc.

On Alex's case:

This is not surprising. Alex is usually caught in the confusion of fundamentalism and reformed. He was influenced more by the non-fundamentalists. But because he lacks nor cares for evangelical or person to person ministries where sacrifice is demanded, he could only cross that relationship line by extrapolation, and thus, using fundamentalist logic. By doing so, he had to constantly risk falsely accusing others of their comments. On Colbert's case, Alex differs from Keller slightly because of their ministries in life. Keller tries to encourage a way of evangelizing without scaring people off; Alex's is more about if there's a slightest right in certain things, JUSTIFY it with TNT! Both actually have problems, but I would say Keller's obviously on a better ground in this than Alex.

To do Colbert justice, his interview with Bill Maher was better: