Scot McKnight, as adept with political documents as he is with sacred scripture, celebrates July 4th with some simplistic suggestions for gun owners: store your gun in a "governmentally-based location".

Let freedom ring!

I came to this conclusion long ago: that God doesn't want Christians killing others. So, I sold my gun. Do I think owning and using a gun for hunting is fine? Sure. But, I think such guns ought to be stored in some safe, governmentally-based location. No one is following my idea, that I know.

In comment 17 he advises us all:

The only purpose of a gun is to kill. That is not true of everything else. If someone who does not hunt game owns a gun, they [sic] have declared at least a willingness to kill another human being or they have not considered what they are doing. It really is as simple as that.

And it really doesn't get any simpler than that.

Oops; I wrote that before I read comment 33.

We hope you all enjoy the Fourth.

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I prefer to think that the infamous steering committee sincerely desired my opinion of their Evangelical Manifesto but they just didn't know how to contact me.

So out of a temporary overstock of conviction I will offer a piece of advice for evangelicals' next scheduled Statement of Our Importance to Ourselves with Accompanying Signatures.

Make all statements about your identity clear and unambiguous. If you allude to "useful idiots", leave no doubt as to what you mean.

Make all statements of belief undisputed; nothing blunts the impact of a manifesto like an ensuing controversy and a nationwide scramble for definitions. Some possible declarations might include:

God is good.
Water is wet.
We really want to make the world a better place.

It's not unreasonable to hope that a simple majority of evangelicals can sign on for that. And since credibility tends to be notable by its absence, you might include something like:

Inasmuch as judgment of sin is an essential part of the Gospel we profess to have, insofar as believers' disobedience is a scandal and a discredit to the faith, and insofar as judgment begins at the house of God (I Peter 4:17), we cordially invite all observers of the Christian religion to dismiss our preachments until such time as we demonstrate a proper understanding of divine hatred of sin, the sine qua non of the euangelion.

I offer this believing that it is truly helpful advice. But beyond that, I offer it in the hope that you might spare us the pain of hearing men like Darrell Bock whining on and on about how, Yes, abortion is a holocaust, but we must not be single-issue people because "if we tip our environment enough out of balance that we have more tsunamis, of the kinds of scale that we've seen recently, that kind of thing...could it affect my grandchildren and great-grandchildren?" He admits that 50 million abortions is a "modern kind of holocaust", but "on the other hand I sit there and say if the environment goes sour and we can't sustain life on the earth, what kind of holocaust izzat?"

Yeah. I think the emergents' would agree that that is not a marketable eschatology of hope.

But back to my point: I would genuinely appreciate it if you guys didn't give occasion for the opinions of Dr. Bock to find a home on the public airwaves. We have seen enough moral lapses and heard enough of your trendy worrying about tsunamis to last us until the eschaton, and no one seems to be discrediting the Way of Jesus as effectively as evangelicals.

For the rest of us, an alternative for the term "evangelical" is desperately needed. David Wells settled on the word protestant, I've settled on the word non-conformist. But whichever way you go, waste no more time in making necessary distinctions.

For those following this evangelical ronde de lutins, you will want to read over some of the fallout, especially thither and yon.

It reminds me of the fun we had as kids playing Chinese Fire Drill at stop lights. It was great exercise and it amused the other motorists.

What does the Manifesto mean? when will you figure out what it means? and when you find out, will you tell us?

Do you regard it as helpful that the Manifesto means so many things to so many people? Was this document offered as a demonstration of the "unity and harmony of the body of Christ"? [page 12]

Does it disturb you at all that secular people have not yet made sense of it?

What sort of progress has there been for a better understanding of evangelical identity?

How are you coming on that reformation and renewal thingy? [page 11]

See also:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/july/10.20.html?start=1
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/DN-bock_13edi.ART.State.Edition1.45fa756.html

First follow Nature, and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same:
Unerring Nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchang'd, and universal light,
Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of art.
Art from that fund each just supply provides,
Works without show, and without pomp presides:
In some fair body thus th' informing soul
With spirits feeds, with vigour fills the whole,
Each motion guides, and ev'ry nerve sustains;
Itself unseen, but in th' effects, remains.
Some, to whom Heav'n in wit has been profuse,
Want as much more, to turn it to its use;
For wit and judgment often are at strife,
Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife.
'Tis more to guide, than spur the Muse's steed;
Restrain his fury, than provoke his speed;
The winged courser, like a gen'rous horse,
Shows most true mettle when you check his course.

Those Rules of old discover'd, not devis'd,
Are Nature still, but Nature methodis'd;
Nature, like liberty, is but restrain'd
By the same laws which first herself ordain'd.

--- Alexander Pope