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Adventures With Andrew

6.26.06 @ 12:01AM

EVERYTHING IS LAWFUL
Re: R. Andrew Newman's Kicking the "Christianists":

Andrew Sullivan displays many of the traits of the latter day post-modernist (a.k.a. Nietzsche's Last Man). They cannot see any transcendent truths beyond themselves. Sin is a construct not to get in the way of personal happiness and self-fulfillment. As a matter of fact, certain sins are not sins at all, but instead they are actually indicators of a person's holiness. Sin is not to be overcome with the salvation of God's grace; instead sin is to be redefined, or failing that, it is to be ignored entirely. Gone is the tragedy of life, where human inclinations battle against duty, obligation, and eternity. The late thinker Alan Bloom summed up Nietzsche's Last Man when he commented that it wasn't the Last Man himself, but what he valued to be so nauseating. The Last Man transforms the world in order to live a comfortable, guilt-free, worry-free life. There is no Dark Night of the Soul, no Golgotha, no Heaven and no Hell. The confessional, like the revival tent, is so 19th century.

Of course, what Sullivan preaches is nihilism. Behind his easy language, his own take on Christian theology that promises a Christ without the Cross and salvation without sin is an abyss. This abyss is a pit of pointlessness. Five hundred years of Enlightenment thought is reduced to: Anything goes. And if the Church stands in the way of this moral free-for-all, well there is always the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

I think Shakespeare captures the modern despair that awaits those who choose to follow Sullivan's path when he wrote:

"There would have been a time for such a word. To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
-- JP
Indiana

Mr. Sullivan is very intelligent; we cannot argue that. It appears he believes that by the Church defining homosexuality as an abomination, it is directly attacking him. The Church, however, is rejecting what he does, which is practice sodomy, not who he is. It loves the sinner, but hates his sin because it brings death to his soul, which God and therefore His Church, loves. Mr. Sullivan wants the Church to change its teaching, which he says threatens him. It appears, then, that he identifies more strongly with what he does (sodomy), than with what he pretends to believe (Catholicism). I would say, then, that Mr. Sullivan's true religion may be Sodomy, to which he is trying to evangelize Catholicism. You're wrong, prodigal son. Come home.
-- John Duckett

A very well-written article by Andrew Newman, exposing the hypocrisy of Andrew Sullivan. And what a shamelessly pathetic attempt of Sullivan to try and wear Martin Luther's "Here I stand, I can do no other" mantra. Luther stood for what Scripture clearly teaches: that a sinner is saved by faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. Conversely, Andrew Sullivan is acting upon his subjective feelings, and against Holy Writ.

At the root of Sullivan's problem is his taking a well-known term, "Christian," and redefining it to suit his own purposes. I remember in a 1998 Nightline interview, he was debating a Christian activist, Janet Folger (full disclosure: my former boss), on whether or not gays could change through a relationship with Jesus Christ. Folger spoke first, and Sullivan responded with these words: "Well, I'm a Christian, too." He did this to blunt anything his opponent had to say on the subject.

Problem: the Bible, God's inspired Word to those who follow Jesus Christ (2 Tim. 3:16), condemns homosexuality in very clear, unambiguous terms. In 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, the Apostle Paul listed a number of sins which would prohibit persons from entering the kingdom of God, including homosexuality. In verse 11, Paul then states, "And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." (Emphasis added)

The inference is strong: a practicing homosexual must repent, and receive forgiveness when he believes in Jesus Christ, who is faithful to forgive (1 John 1:8-9).

For that reason, Andrew Sullivan is not a Christian who is seeking to free Christianity from the clutches of a few radical "Christianists," who, by the way, are merely guilty of getting like-minded people to the polls on election day. It is Sullivan who is the hijacker. Like the modern leadership of the Episcopal church, he is trying to start a new religion that calls itself "Christian" but is something else entirely.
-- Greg Hoadley
Deerfield Beach, Florida

I read with interest R. Andrew Newman's piece on Andrew Sullivan. It made me wish to relate some experiences I have had when discussing things with Mr. Sullivan on his website, some observations I have made, and some conclusions I have arrived at concerning him.

To put it bluntly, Mr. Sullivan is a prancing, preening, solipsistic, narcissist. Have you ever noticed how every issue comes down to everybody on the planet having to change in order to accommodate Andrew's feelings? Humanity is supposed to jettison several thousand years of common sense about marriage because Andrew wants to marry his boyfriend. Catholics are supposed to ditch almost two thousand years of faith and doctrine because Andrew wants to marry his boyfriend. People with large families are supposed to give up SUVs to please Andrew who won't ever have a large family because Andrew wants to marry his boyfriend. I sense a pattern here.

Sullivan has a clever con going where he bills himself as a "Conservative" and gets gigs on Liberal TV shows where he plays the role of the "honest and principled Tory" delivering up the ritual anti-Bush diatribes. He has some British editors convinced he actually knows something about America and he writes columns about the American scene.

Andrew isn't shy about displaying his immense "knowledge." During the Terry Schiavo case, he scored a trifecta of ignorance in multiple disciplines when he declared that a simple feeding tube was "advanced life support," that starvation was a merciful way to die, and that some podunk probate judge had the unquestioned constitutional authority to pass a death sentence on a person who had never committed a crime. I find it rather rich that one who is on extensive medical therapy for his own illness has the chutzpah to call a simple feeding tube "advanced life support," that one whose website is constantly filled with tales of the pain suffered by those with AIDS would dare call involuntary starvation merciful, and that one who incessantly bleats about the fate of al Qaeda murderers would have the unmitigated gall to call for an innocent woman's death.

Letter to the Editor

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