Subtle Evangelical Narcissistic Navel Gazing

The response of the Evangelical blogosphere to the news of Osama bin Laden's death was frankly disturbing. The overwhelming fixation on "how a Christian should respond" quickly reached the point of nauseous. I very early stopped reading any of the numerous posts on the subject. Of those I did read, the best was Steve Scott's subtly sarcastic response here.

In interaction with another blogger I asked for specific examples of inappropriate responses by Christians. This brother did respond with some examples, but again I was left with the feeling the vast majority of Evangelical and Reformed blogging or posting in social media on the subject had little to do with those specific examples or any specific examples at all. For some reason the OBL story became an occasion of an Evangelical and Reformed pontificating to a degree that was just plain overly excessive. Given the nature of blogging and social media such as Facebook, it was probably inevitable.

And the world at large? The truth is the media at large, the media beyond the Christian Evangelical world, really didn't care what Evangelicals thought about it at all. The silence on the "Christian response" from that media was deafening. They rightly were focusing on other more pertinent aspects of the OBL story.

But that was not the point was it? We as Evangelical or Reformed Christians can now smugly pat ourselves on the back because we "responded appropriately" to the news of OBL's death, thus insuring our own self-righteousness and preserving our "testimony". The truth is that it was much ado about something no where as overwhelming as we made it out to be.

Could it possibly be that underneath all the Evangelical and Reformed pontificating about "how Christians should respond" was a certain degree of subtle narcissism? Could it just possibly be?

~ The Billy Goat ~