Priorities matter (thank you Warren Zevon).

In my "Favorites" is a folder called "Blog Nasties". The title says pretty much everything anyone needs to know about the wingnuts inside: for example there's a clown who thinks the Sydney Anglican Diocese are hell-bound heretics because they’re not explicit enough in their support for a literal seven day theory of creation (although he does like their prohibition against women reading the bible aloud when in the presence of men), and there's another charmer obsessed with the idea that childbirth is a painless process for any truly "biblical" Christian women, and that the feeling slightest twinge of pain is "proof of a rebellious unsaved heart and a Jezebel spirit" (Please pray for the poor lady married to him). Sadly these two are by no means the worst of the bunch.

I'll never post a link to any of them, because the less exposure they receive the better. While they are kind of funny, it should never be forgotten how much misery, hurt and alienation this kind of crap causes.

Still, one of them - who incidentally, I knew while we were both studying - has for these last few months been on a bender about Penal Substitutionary atonement (here’s the Wikipedia definition - although please read it with a grain of salt: it's not exactly written from a neutral viewpoint). Like all true fundamentalists, he’s adamant that anyone who disagrees with this way of understanding Christ's death is a raving liberal with no respect for scripture - whatever that means.

In response I’ve been writing my own $0.02 worth on the subject of atonement (a class that my erstwhile fellow student didn’t enrol in all those years ago), and these words of insight and erudition were just about ready to post today…

… but this evening I found this clip of the late great Warren Zevon playing “Boom Boom Mancini”, and was reminded by the Holy spirit of the need to get my priorities right. So here it is.



When the church has a better understanding of the sentiments expressed in this song than it does of soteriological permutations then I think we’ll really be getting somewhere. And when we can demonstrate these understandings in the way we live then people really will be climbing the walls to hear what we have to say. Just like they did when Jesus spoke.