Sunday, November 8, 2009

I'm in ur face, blotorchin ur adiktionz!

"J-Pip is my rapper name yo!"

John Piper, for those of you who don't know, is a heavily Reformed, strictly Calvinist pastor in Minnesota capable of cranking out fairly intelligent books at about the rate that you and I internally monologue. Though I don't necessarily agree with every doctrinal stance he holds, it's difficult to not admit the guy is pretty amazing. In fact, I have doubts that John Piper is human rather than a futuristic robot fueled by God's divine will, overflowing so heavily with the Holy Spirit that it leaks out his eyes and lisp-twisted mouth. He is most famously known for his push into the "Christian Hedonism" movement, and coining the catch phrase "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him."

Beyond that, Piper has a reputation in the Twitter world (@JohnPiper) for spouting these really abstract phrases from time to time that make people blink, then immediately spout "what the?"

Sometimes these are controversial statements, an example of this was when the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) was meeting in a conference center to discuss if they should allow gays to not only receive church membership, but to allow gays to serve as clergy as well. In the middle of this meeting, a tornado... no joke... formed outside of the building, ripped through it, and disappeared. I don't think ten minutes had passed before Piper lit up the Internet with his public acknowledgement of God's divine will made manifest to those depraved near-apostate Lutherans and that they had better fall on their knees immediately and repent earnestly lest they be smote. Unfortunately they cleaned up his original post shortly after "they" (whoever "they" may be... its pretty slippery, but everyone has them) realized the controversy that could latch onto this sort of a comment. The neutered version can be found here: http://bit.ly/239uty

But what brought me to blog was this comment which I received via Twitter this afternoon from good ole J-Pip.

"Is anyone really addicted to porn? Put a blow torch in their face; they will turn off the computer. IF they believe its real."

I've thought about this sentence for most of the day, trying to ascertain what exactly he is trying to get across, but what I think Piper is trying to say is that people many times try to abuse the term "addiction" as a crutch to excuse their human (Calvinist depravity!) demand to sin. He then qualifies his statement by saying (in my words) "Ohhh you think you're addicted huh? How about I blowtorch your FACE and see how quickly you drop that net connection!" Because in John Piper's mind, addiction is a powerful hold that would sustain through a facial flame-broiling. If you give up your grasp on pornography, drinking, drug use, casual sex, etc by threat of facial reconstruction with an angry flame, then you probably aren't addicted, and you're just lying to placate your desire.

What do you guys think? Just keep in mind, in the time it's taken us to discuss this, John Piper has already cranked out another book. What have you done today?


3 comments:

  1. Haha, I love this whole thing, the humor is well placed. I think he has a point, to an extent, but at the same time, we are in all reality, faced with not only a blow-torch to the face, but eternal fire in hell to the whole body. We actually are facing this very real punishment for these addictions (for the non-Christians anyway), but as Christians, the term addiction shouldn't be thrown around nonchalantly, considering the blatant disdain shown for addiction in the Bible.

    Anywho, interesting idea, J-Pip, as you call him is a beast, and I love him. :)

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  2. I appreciate the humor. I'm a fan of John Piper, but not a fan of off the cuff remarks like he made.

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  3. I know I'm way late, but I'm here now.

    I think Piper (at least your interpretation of Piper) has something of a valid point here, actually. I'm not denying that there are real addictions that need to be treated as such, but I think there are times when we have sinful habits that we convince ourselves (and others) that we can't help but continue on when, really, we just aren't committed to throwing them aside.

    Piper puts me to shame in productivity, too. Jerkface.

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