What Would Amos Say?

[substitute]

Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks' wares. [...] The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. What would grace be if it were not cheap? — Diedrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

From the Register article I cited yesterday about the "SWAT Team" kids preaching on the beach. Photo credit to Andy Templeton for this excellent piece of photojournalism. The other pics with the article are good also.

The perfectly scrubbed whiteness of these people — even when they're not white — is alarming. They exist in a perfect bubble of privilege and cultural isolation. Their friends and family are all like them. Their ideal world is a kind of 1903 Tennesse where everyone is inexplicably 2006 "cool": chastity, whiteness, conservative politics, extreme sports, rock 'n' roll music, TV, great new snacks, and women in their place, obediently following behind their husbands even while surfing some massive waves.

The place where dogmatic evangelical religion and cluelessly neotenized teenage privilege meet is the best-gilded turd you'll ever see. But you'll smell it, too. Smell is pretty strong around these parts.

Comments

"street-witnessing machines,"

[nebris.livejournal.com]

I for one welcome our Xian Deathborg Overlords. ;P

~M~

[kniwt.livejournal.com]

Sure looks like a publicity shot from some Falcon gay homosexual video to me. (Not that I would know about such things, of course.)

I'll resist the urge to call for a caption contes-- oh, drat, too late.

[electricprune.livejournal.com]

"bubble of privilege and cultural isolation", beautiful, i try to avoid orange county precisely because of that. then, it's easy to repel against places where thoughts like, "i'm too brown, and artistic to feel good here." actually occur to me.

[switchstatement.livejournal.com]

some of them are probably assholes, but, i don't know, i feel bad for them. naive tools. the rest of OC seems so corrupt and horrible, though. if i had to chose between hanging out with these kids and the haidl kids, i'd go with jesus.

have you seen "saved?" starring film and pop star MANDY MOORE.

[cataptromancer.livejournal.com]

Mene mene tekel macarena.

[nosrialleon.livejournal.com]

I keep trying to figure out how to photoshop that into one of RPS' 'queer porn novel of the week' covers...

[threepunchstuff.livejournal.com]

One of these guys was instructing a couple of underlings at the Starbucks in Huntington a few months ago. He had this whole rap about how to give your peers the gospel without tripping their Jesus-freak alarms. Which passages to quote for countering which kinds of objections and dismissals. Very slick. The guy was probably 19-20 and his rookies couldn't have been older than 14.

[sesby.livejournal.com]

good stuff. would you mind friending me? :)

[mcpino.livejournal.com]

You know, I've been thinking about this...if I'm at the beach, and God's at the beach...

[studeronomy.livejournal.com]

This guy is apparently trying to save his twin brother from an eternity separated from God. Apparently at birth one yelled "shirts!" while the other claimed "skins!", but somewhere along the line skins went astray and shirts is trying to reverse the backsliding.

At least that's what I took from the photo.