Song of the Day:
"With You" (I Fight Dragons)
That one's for you, Erin. Thanks for bearing with me as I'm working on all this mess.
At 17 single-spaced pages, I'd estimate that I'm roughly halfway through my Lakewood analysis. This is taking even longer than I had anticipated, and, unfortunately, I've had to nix my visit to Casa Juan Diego to make time for all the writing. At this point, I have incredibly mixed feelings about Lakewood and Joel Osteen's message, and while writing about Lakewood's music has been very fun and uplifting, I'm getting into their actual beliefs now and really struggling with some of this stuff. I don't want to entrench myself as some sort of defender of orthodoxy tossing stones at "successful" people from the safety of the academy (especially since I hold plenty of views that might be labeled less-than-orthodox myself), but there was some stuff at Lakewood that really unsettled me, and I'm trying to devote the necessary time to explaining it all in a fair, thorough, and respectful manner. While Lakewood definitely has some redeeming qualities, there is also some deeply harmful theology being espoused there --not just "unorthodox," harmful--, and since Joel Osteen is such a widely recognized figure, every pastor needs to be prepared to point out the problems in his message when asked. Our church members listen to him and like him and believe in him, so we can't just ignore Joel Osteen or dismiss him as a fad. I've met him now, and he's an incredibly nice guy, so we can't be cruel when responding to his message. In all the sermons I've listened to, I've never heard Joel say a cruel word about someone, and I will not speak a cruel word about him. I will, however, attempt to compose a systematic rebuttal against what I see as a very skewed message.
Thoughts and prayers appreciated as I try to sift through all this. My goal is to be able to post before Friday so that I can devote a little more time to researching the next two churches.
Peace and Blessings,
Tom
PS-- This video might still find its way into my actual writeup, but I can't resist going ahead and posting it now. I feel like it's a pretty good preview.
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