Speaking of blasphemy...

Anybody wanna take a wild guess at what this says....? Please, Take a guess.....

Okay, Okay.. I'll tell you. It's tongues. The site where I found this suggests that you roll the "r"s to make it sound more realistic. This shirt is printed in Got Good Religion Gold. They offer many other phrases that you can get printed in any color. For example: Pentecostal Plum, Souly Ghost Green, Fresh Anointing Fuchsia, Lord Have Mercy Lime and the list goes on. Go to www.holyghosttees.com to check it out. I honestly can't decide if they're really serious or not. Initially it's rather comical. But I think it's blasphemy, which is not a word I throw around lightly. For our younger readers, blasphemy is defined "to speak impiously or irreverently of (God or sacred things). To speak evil of; slander; abuse. " I don't think it would be an exaggeration to label that as blasphemy.

On another note, Jordan just informed me of a new teenage revolution called The Blasphemy Challenge. I googled it. Apparently this has been floating around in the media for more than two months. Newsweek published an article on Jan. 8th. You can read the whole thing here. To sum it up for those of you who've heard nothing about it yet, it's a challenge from a couple of prominent atheists to publicly blaspheme the Holy Spirit - which many know as the unforgivable sin. The question they ask is "Do you have a soul you're not using? We want it."[paraphrased] They ask you to make a video condemning yourself to hell, then post it on YouTube. Your reward - at least for the first 1001 who take the challenge - is a free DVD - The God Who Wasn't There. I went to the site, but I can't bring myself to watch any of the videos. It's painful to even think about someone doing such a thing. It grieves my soul. Here's a snippet of what NewsWeek Journalist Jerry Adler reported

...another self-described blasphemer, whose real name is Michael Lawson,replies that he knows exactly what he's doing: he's daring God to send him to hell. "We want to show the world that we really mean it when we say we don't believe a word in this book," he says. He means the Bible.
God could not be reached for comment.

I ask myself, what drives someone to atheism? What drives them to take it to this level? Ironically, I believe it can be the same thing that drives me to forsake my flesh and cling to the cross. Religion. Pure religion. How many times have you heard an atheist rail against Christianity because of hypocrisy and other reasons? I've known many young people who grew up in religious homes only to convert to atheism out of bitter disillusionment. It's upsetting to think that religion played a big role in that. It motivates me to do something about the mediocrity that is running rampant in this generation of "Christian" young people.

There is another side to the spectrum. Some enthusiastic people have created http://www.challengeblasphemy.com/ . I haven't been able to look at any of their videos yet. But we shall see.. we shall see.. More on this tomorrow.