Attention, Black Hills males with inferiority complexes! Come learn how to be manly God-warriors from this smug mook.
Something called "The Awakening" is hosting a "Black Hills Men's Conference" on Saturday, October 12, at the Sturgis Community Center. The keynote speaker is Brad Stine, who styles himself "the premiere comedian/teacher to men in the U.S." For a small fee ($35 registration), "God's Comic" will bust your gut and hit you between the eyes with real! aggressive! masculine!!! truth from the Lord. Stine's favored topics:
- Die a Warrior!
- The Bible is a man’s book
- The weapon to defeat addiction
- Great sex for married men [Brad Stine, "Men-Only Events," BradStine.com, downloaded 2013.08.28].
Even if I were a Christian, Stine would have nothing to teach me other than the continued weakness and errancy of mankind. Stine sounds like he's reading the Bible in the original Klingon. Or, like far too many fallible mortals, he's simply living by a Bible concocted by his testosterone-craving imagination to suit his own desires for machismo and admiration.
To briefly rebut each of Stine's stock topics:
- Jesus did not die a warrior in any conventional, chest-thumping sense. He died in submission and public shame.
- Any claim that the Bible belongs to anyone other than all of humanity should offend Christian ears.
- Stine plies the same addiction to machismo peddled by the energy drink and erectile dysfunction ads that make commercial radio unlistenable in my household.
- If Jesus had one Saturday conference to spread the Gospel, he would not spend that precious time advising men how to have great sex! Jesus and the Bible aren't opposed to nookie, but to think that great sex! is a top-ten Biblical priority demonstrates the self-serving deceit of Stine's schtick.
As a bonus, Stine gets on TV by smirkingly asserting, contrary to all obvious truth, that President Barack Obama is not a Christian. We know such a statement to be a pernicious lie. Whatever a real Christian man is, he probably doesn't tell pernicious lies. Stine peddles that pernicious lie. Bodybuilders and 98-pound weaklings alike can draw the logical conclusion.
Bighorn Canyon Ministries, incorporated in 2011 by Rev. Rep. Scott Craig, associate pastor George Yorba, and Family Heritage Alliance exec Dale Bartscher, is one of the big movers behind this perversion of Jesus's message. Other sponsoring and thus erring churches are the Sturgis Open Bible Church and the Bismarck Prairie Family Church. (Pastor Greg Carr will probably ride his motorcycle—irony!—in the October chill just to show how macho God makes him.) These men will gather just a block over from Dick and Jane's Naughty Spot. Maybe these warriors for Jesus will stroll up Lazelle Street for a breakout session to tell Sturgis smut-peddler David Eliason what makes a real man.
Christian men, save your $35. Don't spend your money on Stine's fake-Christian affirmation of conventional John-Wayne masculinity. Be a real man: spend your money and your time with your wife and kids. Don't serve yourself; serve others, and serve the Lord.
pathetic bible thumpin twits\
The Russian Premier is thumping his chest and attacking gay propaganda. He and the preacher might have something in common.
Instead of passing around communion, they'll be passing around Viagra.
"He has been the exclusive comedian to Promise Keepers for 6 years."
Well that about says it all. The leader of the clowns has spoken. You cant fix arrogance, it is what it is. You cant get unaddicted to anything with prayer, you can only substitute one addiction for another, religion, it is what it is.
On the other hand you can help this man with his addiction, "getting his hands on other peoples money" by shelling out your $35 and going to his little party.
Personally I would rather spend that money on a Wanda Sykes show. At least she can tell you how to please a woman. WTF
The Blindman
PS The Church Of Bill is the healthy alternative
Cory, you're pretty adamant about your theology of agnosticism. Not to sure that your advice about how to "serve The Lord" will resonate with many of us average Christians, but thank you for the alternative perspective friend.
Lee, are you suggesting that the message or the messenger is wrong?
What's funny is the followers of people like Stine et. al. seem more like the Stepford Wives. :^)
Lee just what is an "average Christian." Would that be most of the Christians that I know today?
They go to church every couple of years, if there is a funeral. They swear they do believe in what is written in the "good book" but then they turn right around and break three or four commandments.
Or is it these people? Pray away the gay, pray away the addictions, "pray away the truth, hopping that the truth will change somehow.
Here is a short list of people that have sold their minds to religion that I personally know, or knew.
Meth heads, steal, manufacture, and kill, to get what they need
Gay unstable people trying to live a lie
Boozers, do anything for a drink
Coke whores, both sexes, "The white is right until you get caught" crowd. Willing to prostitute themselves or someone else to get what they want.
To a person these people got religion and then fell from the two inch curb, that was suppose to be their religious foundation, to the street, and did it again and again. Every time this happens these people give their religion the credit for the cure, but blame themselves for the failure. Shouldn't it be all the same?
I find it amazing that preachers "comics when their good" can pick and choose what is right and what is wrong when the complexities of the situation are so vast and varied. They don't seem to have any trouble giving advice but are nowhere to be found to except the responsibility of their actions when they fail.
"An average Christian," I guess that like every other religion, it is what it is until it isn't anymore.
The Blindman
Lee, imagine I were a monarchist living in a democratic society. I could say democracy is all wrong and advocate for crowning you king. (Actually, I'd advocate for crowning your wife queen; she'd look better on the money.) But I could also read the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and other political scholarship, have serious conversations with my dedicated democratic wife and friends, and offer a logical critique that says to my democratic friends, "If you're going to practice democracy, that's the wrong way to do it."
Brad Stine's he-man schtick is the wrong way to practice Christianity.