Nat:  Hey, Jack. Have a seat and let me buy you a coffee.

Jack shot out his left arm, cocked his elbow and checked his watch.

Jack:  Sure, if you don't mind my leaving in the middle of something; my ride is due shortly.

Nat:  I don't see a major problem with that.

Jack:  I did want to tell you about my experience at Riddance Gathering.

Nat smiled.

Nat:  What did you learn?

Jack:  Well, I'm more confused than I was the first time I went. But I did learn that ignorance is not the end of life as we know it, and it actually qualifies one to be an emergent-in-good-standing.

Nat:  So public stupidity is a growth strategy; who knew?

Jack:  If I talked like these guys at work, Security would be following me back to my desk and helping me out to the car with my office kaboodle.

Nat:  This is clearly a movement of credentialed buffoons, I don't think anyone challenges this.

Jack:  You don't like this movement.

Nat:  These guys are charlatans and carpetbaggers. It might be possible to view them with some sympathy if they just sat there in their sofas with a dumb-and-desperate look of earnestness on their faces, but they really are a gang of intellectual junior flyweights. I saw Tony Jones embarrass himself on a video the other day. He clearly crossed the line between stupid and criminal, and this is typical of the movement. I think they must be having some sort of competition to see who can be the first to win a Darwin Award. I'm taking out a loan to bet on Tony.

Someone trying to peg his theology asked him if he had been born again, to which Tony said, "Yes. What does that mean?"

What the guy should have said was, "Well, Tony, what did it mean to you when you said Yes?" Or he might have asked what Jesus meant when he talked about being born again in John 3. But Tony chuntered on about how when he was five he was pressured into confessing to an experience at camp when his body whooshed. I can well imagine how easily led someone like Tony would be at five seeing how pathologically naïve he is now. I'm sure this boy lost a lot of lunch money at school. But the grim inanity of characterizing a second birth as nothing other than an exercise in manipulation is too pathetic to accept. There has to be dishonesty here. Stupidity can take someone only so far.

Jack:  If these people are this dumb, how can they survive in a world full of seminaries and evangelical theological societies.

A beamer tooted its horn.

Nat:  Ah! That is a question I would like to answer, but I think your coach awaits.

Jack:  Hold that thought...