- Life at the Coffeehouse -

Right on top of Monday's break-up spectacle, this morning the coffeehouse was time for a scintillating hour of Christianity Today. At the table next to me, this middle-aged fellow spent the whole show subjecting a bleary-eyed Japanese student to a sermon on the love of Christ. It was so patronizing, the theology completely insipid. Yet like Monday's program, it was hard not to listen—sort of like driving by an accident where you can't help but gape.

Still, Christianity Today is such an irritating program. Why can't these people just shut up for a minute, put more of their energy into feeding the poor and less into massaging their own egos? Evangalizing by example would be so much more effective. But that form of evangalizing would also require real sacrifice. Can't have that today, can we, since everyone knows that Jesus died so that that none of us have to make the least sacrifice—except of course those poor, poor souls not among G-d's Elect and so deserve exactly what they get. It's not our fault: we have no reason to feel guilty or act to alleviate their suffering, if G-d's fortune does not smile on them.

This lack of sacrifice, a void filled by the insertion of stern discipline: therein lies the secret bond between Christianity Today and contemporary politics.