I’m not sure i get al of your stuff. I’ll bookmark your site and keep coming back. Maybe you can break through to me. (I’ve been called a fundamentalist many times in my ministry. Not that I agree with that assessment.)
hi timm. good to have you around. hopefully some stuff stimulates thought, that’s the main reason for me doing it… that and the odd rant!
it’s since become a little community here which has surprised and delighted me.
did someone say community…before long it’ll be a church and then it’ll become institutionalized and then some of your cartoons will be ranting against your own institutionalized community and God will have the last laugh and we will all bemoan the medium of cartoon as an outdated mode of conveying Gospel truth and yearning for new ways of being community and the cycle will begin again…fickle creatures us humans!
hahahaha! i must say, this doing a cartoon a day riot has become an institution in my life already! i wonder how long i’ll be able to do it before i get fed up. if it weren’t for the interaction here my energy and motivation for asbo would have fizzled out some time ago. so, in truth, it is the input of those who comment that has made this blog what it is… whatever that might be.
(Except, and this is something I’m exploring right this minute: whatever it was in me that drew me into being fundamentalist in the first place hasn’t quite gone away…. I like Jonny Baker’s idea about playing parkour on the rigid structures of institutional religion - you know, the vaulting and swinging over concrete walls and bridges and other urban furniture in a way that is somehow unutterably cool, but relies on the ugliness of the architecture it is rebelling against in order for it to happen. I am sometimes scared by the ugliness of the fundamentalist me - but without it I wouldn’t be the free-wheeling, unlatched if not unhinged, joyful radical I seem to have become. All that, and I still have poor fashion sense and bad social graces ;).
Comment by Steve Lancaster — January 10, 2008 @ 8:37 pm
hey steve! i spent the day with jonny yesterday… he’s my best friend… and he doesn’t half talk some rubbish! only joking! that’s a really good analogy i will grudgingly admit.
i want my roots in christ, his person, his teaching… nothing more, nothing less. all the other stuff, including paul and the early church dogsa and recent church dogma etc. etc. is a pale reflection in comparison to him. christ is what matters.
as you’re running and jumping round the walls in an uber cool fashion, try not to bump into me cos i’ll be there too!
the thing is Jon, I was tuning into something about addiction to fundamentalism, and thinking isn’t that the ‘drink’ talking - I’m going to change, just after this weekend, I’ve had so much to cope with lately, I need the support of my fundimentalism, when life gets better I’ll change. or even worse - people are so messy and demanding, they get in the way of my ’spiritual buzz’.
it’s confusing me, as I a couple of pages from a worthy book of dogma the other day, and it did feel good.
I want God to change me so I can feel real pity for him too.
Su,life is so hard and painful - sometimes - but fundamentalism - the God TV watching, I’ll have a relationship with a doctrine not a person - is a delusion.
Seems like a way out and then you get into more troubles than you started with.
It is like drink.
Let’s support each other through life’s struggles, that’s the ticket.
OSO, I come from a calvinist possition that is arminian in it’s outlook. The longer I exist, the more I worry about my calvinism and the more I concern myself with my arminian outlook.
I can’t nail myself down (although I try daily) because I find the world and God moving around me and questioning everything I think.
Having said that, I guess I must make the point [a genuine question]… Are you unshakingly calvinist or do you have questions about it?
[This is a genuine quest for dialogue to help my own journey as I find myself undecided and looking for answers inspite of previous experiences ]
I’m angry at him because he’s so self-centered and insufficient when he doesn’t think he’s any of those things. He’s going to hurt a lot more people and continue to hurt himself along the way.
Hopefully he’ll grow out of it.
I know my anger says more about me than it does this character.
no sas … on the contrary… an interesting other take. thanks!
my thought when i did the cartoon was that i was happy for the guy to be out of his oppression. i guess if you’ve come out of that kind of restrictive environment it may take a long time, forever, or never to find your wings.
is there anyone out there, i wonder, who reads this blog who can give more insight into what it is actually like to make a new life or rebuild faith after coming from this sort of background?
“i want my roots in christ, his person, his teaching… nothing more, nothing less. all the other stuff, including paul and the early church dogsa and recent church dogma etc. etc. is a pale reflection in comparison to him. christ is what matters.
as you’re running and jumping round the walls in an uber cool fashion, try not to bump into me cos i’ll be there too!”
Bravo!
Comment by Steve Lancaster — January 14, 2008 @ 2:52 pm
is there anyone out there, i wonder, who reads this blog who can give more insight into what it is actually like to make a new life or rebuild faith after coming from this sort of background?
If I can take a stab at it… This past summer we were asked to leave an evangelical/fundamentalist church that had been our home for eight years. The reason? We professed a belief that the earth was more than 6,000 years old. We were very hurt, obviously, but the experience forced me to reevaluate many things that I had been taught in that environment. Fundamentalism (within christianity, anyway) was a late 19th/earth 20th century reaction to the horrors and atrocities of modern life. They took the best parts of evangelicalism (study of Scripture), but then divorced themselves from the world. Everything outside their own sphere became a threat to the authority of Scripture and of God. Wantt to reach the world? Send a check to a missionary from the safety of your own cocoon.
I still trust Scripture, but not necessarily man’s interpretation of it. It’s the job of the Holy Spirit to give us understanding, not a denomination.
thanks steve. i would never want to underestimate how it must feel to be in the situation where the safety nets are gone. it seems, that for some, the safety of certainty is very important. how must it feel when the rug is pulled from under them? for those who maintain their faith christ is still present, but i wonder what harm is done to those whose hurt divorces them altogether? i guess for some, awful and for others, a blessed relief… but i don’t know.
I’m a big old mess theologically. I don’t believe Jonah lived in a fish for 3 days. I’m not saying he didn’t. But in my heart I know that I personally haven’t accepted it as true. I also doubt that Jacob came out of the womb holding on to his brother’s heel. But I get what the bible’s saying on both and I’m more than happy to accept the truth of that.
I think sometimes we just miss the point when we hang on to the ‘word for word’ meaning.
Like creation/evolution. I always believed in creation. Then I went through this huge guilt because it stopped making sense. Not God as Creator but the timeline and stuff.
One day it just kind of hit me that it really makes no difference to our story. I don’t think the point of genesis was for a load of us to walk around insisting God made all this in 7 of our short days. The point was God made us, we sinned and became seperated. It sets the scene for the whole of the Israel story where God keeps bringing them back over and over and then ultimately, Christ on the cross. Yay!!!
The deeper truths make my heart bubble up. I want to love him. The wording and the argues make me wonder if I’m in trouble for my feeble brain. Makes me want to hide.
Hi… my name is Marcus.
I am afraid that my work will drive me to alcoholism.
I see myself lapsing every day in every way, shape and form.
Comment by Marcus — January 10, 2008 @ 12:43 pm
It the recovering alcoholic’s story wasn’t so sad, I’d want this on a t-shirt. Good stuff, Sir.
Comment by Jason — January 10, 2008 @ 1:33 pm
Oh, this just makes me laugh so hard because it is just sooooo truuue in my own life. ASBO, you’ve hit it spot on once again!
Comment by Elle — January 10, 2008 @ 2:10 pm
chin up marcus!… i get the same, but often it’s life in general. hard isn’t it sometimes (or often).
thanks, jason.
hi elle… enjoy the freedom!
Comment by jonbirch — January 10, 2008 @ 2:51 pm
Caricatures. Let me show you them.
Comment by Bill — January 10, 2008 @ 3:24 pm
I’m not sure i get al of your stuff. I’ll bookmark your site and keep coming back. Maybe you can break through to me. (I’ve been called a fundamentalist many times in my ministry. Not that I agree with that assessment.)
Comment by Timm — January 10, 2008 @ 3:59 pm
hi timm. good to have you around.
hopefully some stuff stimulates thought, that’s the main reason for me doing it… that and the odd rant! 
it’s since become a little community here which has surprised and delighted me.
Comment by jonbirch — January 10, 2008 @ 4:09 pm
did someone say community…before long it’ll be a church and then it’ll become institutionalized and then some of your cartoons will be ranting against your own institutionalized community and God will have the last laugh and we will all bemoan the medium of cartoon as an outdated mode of conveying Gospel truth and yearning for new ways of being community and the cycle will begin again…fickle creatures us humans!
Comment by Marcus — January 10, 2008 @ 5:51 pm
hahahaha!
i must say, this doing a cartoon a day riot has become an institution in my life already! i wonder how long i’ll be able to do it before i get fed up. if it weren’t for the interaction here my energy and motivation for asbo would have fizzled out some time ago. so, in truth, it is the input of those who comment that has made this blog what it is… whatever that might be. 
Comment by jonbirch — January 10, 2008 @ 6:10 pm
Yay!
(Except, and this is something I’m exploring right this minute: whatever it was in me that drew me into being fundamentalist in the first place hasn’t quite gone away…. I like Jonny Baker’s idea about playing parkour on the rigid structures of institutional religion - you know, the vaulting and swinging over concrete walls and bridges and other urban furniture in a way that is somehow unutterably cool, but relies on the ugliness of the architecture it is rebelling against in order for it to happen. I am sometimes scared by the ugliness of the fundamentalist me - but without it I wouldn’t be the free-wheeling, unlatched if not unhinged, joyful radical I seem to have become. All that, and I still have poor fashion sense and bad social graces ;).
Comment by Steve Lancaster — January 10, 2008 @ 8:37 pm
hey steve! i spent the day with jonny yesterday… he’s my best friend… and he doesn’t half talk some rubbish!
only joking! that’s a really good analogy i will grudgingly admit. 
i want my roots in christ, his person, his teaching… nothing more, nothing less. all the other stuff, including paul and the early church dogsa and recent church dogma etc. etc. is a pale reflection in comparison to him. christ is what matters.
as you’re running and jumping round the walls in an uber cool fashion, try not to bump into me cos i’ll be there too!
Comment by jonbirch — January 10, 2008 @ 9:49 pm
Hello my name is OSO. I am a Calvinist. Although I feel like lapsing, I know I won’t (The P in TULIP).
Comment by One Salient Oversight — January 10, 2008 @ 9:53 pm
Seems to me like Josh isn’t recovering all that well ;p
Comment by youthworkerpete — January 10, 2008 @ 10:12 pm
Comment by jonbirch — January 10, 2008 @ 10:20 pm
the thing is, life is just so hard sometimes, wouldn’t just a little fundamentalism fix it?
Comment by subo — January 11, 2008 @ 8:47 am
you know… you’re right su. hadn’t thought of it like that.
Comment by jonbirch — January 11, 2008 @ 9:59 am
the thing is Jon, I was tuning into something about addiction to fundamentalism, and thinking isn’t that the ‘drink’ talking - I’m going to change, just after this weekend, I’ve had so much to cope with lately, I need the support of my fundimentalism, when life gets better I’ll change. or even worse - people are so messy and demanding, they get in the way of my ’spiritual buzz’.
it’s confusing me, as I a couple of pages from a worthy book of dogma the other day, and it did feel good.
Comment by su — January 11, 2008 @ 5:24 pm
gods fave sheep was the lost one. thank heaven for the shepherd.
Comment by jonbirch — January 11, 2008 @ 5:31 pm
As a recovering fundamentalist, I say, right on!
Comment by Steve — January 11, 2008 @ 10:24 pm
I feel pity for the first man.
And anger at the second.
I want God to change me so I can feel real pity for him too.
Su,life is so hard and painful - sometimes - but fundamentalism - the God TV watching, I’ll have a relationship with a doctrine not a person - is a delusion.
Seems like a way out and then you get into more troubles than you started with.
It is like drink.
Let’s support each other through life’s struggles, that’s the ticket.
Love to you all,
Sas
I echo Jon, thank God for Jesus.
Comment by sarah — January 12, 2008 @ 12:14 am
that’s interesting sas… why anger at the second person? you don’t have to answer… just intrigued.
Comment by jonbirch — January 12, 2008 @ 12:47 am
OSO, I come from a calvinist possition that is arminian in it’s outlook. The longer I exist, the more I worry about my calvinism and the more I concern myself with my arminian outlook.
I can’t nail myself down (although I try daily) because I find the world and God moving around me and questioning everything I think.
Having said that, I guess I must make the point [a genuine question]… Are you unshakingly calvinist or do you have questions about it?
[This is a genuine quest for dialogue to help my own journey as I find myself undecided and looking for answers inspite of previous experiences
]
Comment by Robb — January 12, 2008 @ 1:06 am
A genius cartoon… where you got your inspiration from I cannot fathom…
Comment by Ali Wakely — January 12, 2008 @ 5:41 pm
hahaha! i meant to credit you.
Comment by jonbirch — January 12, 2008 @ 6:23 pm
just a thought, but isn’t being a fundamentalist a natural path of growing into faith?
Omid Djalili promised to bring back the fun in fundamentalist …. the fat in fatwah and the ham in …….
Comment by su — January 12, 2008 @ 7:04 pm
Jon, re your question in comment no 21 -
I’m angry at him because he’s so self-centered and insufficient when he doesn’t think he’s any of those things. He’s going to hurt a lot more people and continue to hurt himself along the way.
Hopefully he’ll grow out of it.
I know my anger says more about me than it does this character.
Sas x
Comment by sarah — January 13, 2008 @ 12:04 am
Jon I know that wasn’t very nice so I’m sorry it if was hurtful.
Sas
Comment by sarah — January 13, 2008 @ 8:15 pm
no sas … on the contrary… an interesting other take. thanks!
my thought when i did the cartoon was that i was happy for the guy to be out of his oppression. i guess if you’ve come out of that kind of restrictive environment it may take a long time, forever, or never to find your wings.
is there anyone out there, i wonder, who reads this blog who can give more insight into what it is actually like to make a new life or rebuild faith after coming from this sort of background?
Comment by jonbirch — January 13, 2008 @ 8:49 pm
“i want my roots in christ, his person, his teaching… nothing more, nothing less. all the other stuff, including paul and the early church dogsa and recent church dogma etc. etc. is a pale reflection in comparison to him. christ is what matters.
as you’re running and jumping round the walls in an uber cool fashion, try not to bump into me cos i’ll be there too!”
Bravo!
Comment by Steve Lancaster — January 14, 2008 @ 2:52 pm
is there anyone out there, i wonder, who reads this blog who can give more insight into what it is actually like to make a new life or rebuild faith after coming from this sort of background?
If I can take a stab at it… This past summer we were asked to leave an evangelical/fundamentalist church that had been our home for eight years. The reason? We professed a belief that the earth was more than 6,000 years old. We were very hurt, obviously, but the experience forced me to reevaluate many things that I had been taught in that environment. Fundamentalism (within christianity, anyway) was a late 19th/earth 20th century reaction to the horrors and atrocities of modern life. They took the best parts of evangelicalism (study of Scripture), but then divorced themselves from the world. Everything outside their own sphere became a threat to the authority of Scripture and of God. Wantt to reach the world? Send a check to a missionary from the safety of your own cocoon.
I still trust Scripture, but not necessarily man’s interpretation of it. It’s the job of the Holy Spirit to give us understanding, not a denomination.
Comment by Steve — January 14, 2008 @ 9:02 pm
[...] (HT: ASBO Jesus) [...]
Pingback by Recovery is a Good thing | Careful Thought — January 14, 2008 @ 9:08 pm
thanks steve.
i would never want to underestimate how it must feel to be in the situation where the safety nets are gone. it seems, that for some, the safety of certainty is very important. how must it feel when the rug is pulled from under them? for those who maintain their faith christ is still present, but i wonder what harm is done to those whose hurt divorces them altogether? i guess for some, awful and for others, a blessed relief… but i don’t know.
Comment by jonbirch — January 14, 2008 @ 9:36 pm
steve
very sorry about your experience
praying for you
sarah
Comment by sarah — January 14, 2008 @ 11:31 pm
I’m a big old mess theologically. I don’t believe Jonah lived in a fish for 3 days. I’m not saying he didn’t. But in my heart I know that I personally haven’t accepted it as true. I also doubt that Jacob came out of the womb holding on to his brother’s heel. But I get what the bible’s saying on both and I’m more than happy to accept the truth of that.
I think sometimes we just miss the point when we hang on to the ‘word for word’ meaning.
Like creation/evolution. I always believed in creation. Then I went through this huge guilt because it stopped making sense. Not God as Creator but the timeline and stuff.
One day it just kind of hit me that it really makes no difference to our story. I don’t think the point of genesis was for a load of us to walk around insisting God made all this in 7 of our short days. The point was God made us, we sinned and became seperated. It sets the scene for the whole of the Israel story where God keeps bringing them back over and over and then ultimately, Christ on the cross. Yay!!!
The deeper truths make my heart bubble up. I want to love him. The wording and the argues make me wonder if I’m in trouble for my feeble brain. Makes me want to hide.
I go with what makes the fruit good?
Comment by allatseawithabucketandspade — January 18, 2008 @ 9:10 am
allat sea+ … this doesn’t sound like ‘a mess’ at all. sounds like you have your head screwed on to me.
Comment by jonbirch — January 18, 2008 @ 11:37 am