Now Coram Deo, a writer I enjoy reading and whom I appreciate, has turned his sights on a caricature cartoon depicting Jesus and one of His apostles. He becomes very critical of Triablogue and Dan Phillips among others, and these are not worthy targets of critical attention. That's the problem.
Here's the first comment I left:
CoramDeo,In response:
Yes, you are being unreasonable.
You pictured Christ in this blogpost and The Pilgrim did so here.
So, seriously, unless you think it’s a fair expectation that people are going to be worshiping this Twitter cartoon…lighten up on the “2nd commandment” nonsense.
Grace and peace,
Rhology
The Pilgrim says:
Actually, Rhology, to be entirely fair, none of those pictures in my previous post were depicting the Lord Jesus Christ. The context of that post was false christs that people have created. In every instance the image was of a false christ. So if displaying an image of someone’s idol is wrong, then I am guilty as charged. The one and only instance in which the true Jesus was cited in that post, a picture of a page of Scripture was presented. Additionally, I checked out the other link you provided to Coram’s blogpost and it appears that he did the same thing.
Sincerely,
- Pilgrim
And:
Coram Deo says:So in response this morning, I said:
Thanks Pilgrim.
You don’t need to apologize, Rho; I forgive you. I couldn’t help noticing, however, that apart from a weak effort at deflecting the charge of breaching of the 2nd commandment, you failed to respond to any of the other scriptural proofs I cited, and you didn’t give any Biblical exegesis in support of the caricature.
In Christ,
CD
Brothers,
Come on now.
ALL of the pics in those posts depicted Christ, but by use of a caricature! That's exactly the point of this Twitter cartoon thing! You yourself use the word "caricature" of it, and that's precisely what the "hippy Jesus" and "neocon hawk Jesus" and all those other ones are supposed to communicate.
I am not faulting you for those, not at all, so don't get me wrong. I'm faulting you for your inconsistency. I thought those caricatures were dead-on and actually a lot funnier than the Twitter cartoon. The Twitter cartoon thing didn't do a lot for me, just b/c it wasn't all that funny. The reason it was cited was b/c it made use of obvious caricature to poke fun at modern evanjellyfish practices. You did the exact same thing with your "hippy Jesus" picture. And each is a great point and a good illustration of modern practices to be opposed by the biblical Christian.
You're making a mountain out of, not a molehill, an imaginary molehill. If you really believed that the 2nd Cmdmt says that no images of Christ are permitted in any way, and then you go after someone for enjoying a caricatured image of Christ, you wouldn't post caricatured images of Christ.
Rather, you should withdraw this nitpicking and recognise that the 2nd Cmdmt applies when people are, for example, worshiping images of Christ. And then stop making unnecessary trouble among faithful followers of Jesus. Sheesh, even ripping Driscoll some more (of which you do too much) would be preferable to this.
Grace and peace,
Rhology
