#bojsploitation

I heard this sermon in 2008, and it took me weeks to recover.

It made me cry.

You can listen here.

It's awful. It's really, really awful.

And I bring it up here because in all the Christploitation media I've mentioned in these two weeks, I personally have not been the object of derision.

But in Martin's sermon, he's maligning me. He uses crass language in the name of "honesty," and in the end he only humiliates the women listening.

Sermonaudio has the transcript if you want to read it instead of listening.

But here are the moments that are chilling and humiliating and are Reefer Madness level of exploitation.

He's deliberately trying to humiliate the women listening to him. It makes him feel self-righteous and superior at the cost of the women around him.

It's exploitation.

When I started thinking about this BOJsploitation genre, the first sermon that popped into my mind was John R. Rice's 1935 pamphlet, What's Wrong with the Dance?

Have you read it? Would you like to? It's 48 pages long, and if your church had a Sword of the Lord tract rack in the lobby, you might have seen it.

Here's how he introduces it:

CHILD OF THE BROTHEL, SISTER OF DRUNKENNESS, LEWDNESS, DIVORCE AND MURDER, THE MOTHER OF LUST--A ROAD TO HELL!

Also last semester, BJU's new shiny spokesman Renton Rathbun chose the clickbaitiest headline. It's peak BOJOsploitation.

He called it "Hate More. Kill Better."

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We know he's talking about the mortification of sin. But it takes a long time for him to get to that point. And he flippantly states that "the Church is losing the skill of hating and killing."

This is the guy who started his sermon about gender binaries talking about sexual assault. And this is the guy who talked the students' neighbors as Sonderkommandos. And this is the guy who said that he's "punching them in the face." And the guy who said that men "pressure women into degrading themselves."

And he's saying it in the same pulpit that Dan Olinger "joked" about "killing" a student.

BJU loves to glorify violence. They love to exploit people from the pulpit. They love BOJOsploitation.

And fundy pastors love it too.

They are all as bad as the Reefer Madness producers.

Mark and avoid.

Here's Rathbun's whole thing. Note that he's equating pastors with holiness, and if you disagree with that, you need to learn more about "killing."

We live in a world where 62% of American pastors have a syncretistic worldview. It was pastors who enabled the success of the Revoice movement, which is responsible for grooming young men and women into embracing a gay identity within Christianity. And currently, there is a dwindling confidence in pastors’ spiritual credibility.

Now more than ever, the American church is in desperate need of pastors who are ready to address a simple fact: the Church has come to despise holiness. Yes, the Church at large seems fond of God’s love and goodness, but holiness leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.

Many fear pursuing holiness will make us unrelatable, robotic, and judgy. Yet, the most sobering statement of 1 John 2:1–6 is that the first and primary exhortation is to stop sinning. Yes, if we do sin, we have an Advocate. But John wrote his epistle principally so that his people “may not sin.”

When we do speak of practical matters of holiness, we often explain our way into retaining at least some sin. When 1 Timothy 2:12 forbids women “to exercise authority over a man” in the church, we roll out our feminists to help us see that “authority” is misunderstood by conservatives. When Romans 1:26–27 speaks of the sin of homosexuality and its “vile affections,” we roll out our same-sex-attracted pastors to help us see that only the act of sodomy is a sin, not the attraction part.

The Church is losing the skill of hating and killing. We do not hate sin as God does, so we do not kill it. We might condemn parts of it—but hating and killing it goes too far. Yet, God says He hates the work of those who sin (Ps. 101:3; 119:104). He hates abominations (Prov. 6:16–19; Jer. 44:4). He hates the planning of evil (Zach. 8:17). And God has instructed us to hate evil (Ps. 97:10), even abhor it (Rom. 12:9).

Our worldview is confused, so our compassion has become confused. In attempting to show compassion for those who are tangled up in sin, we have begun showing compassion for sin itself. As my pastor once stated, “When we forget the sinfulness of sin and God’s own hatred for it, we forget the cost of sin for the Son of God.”

How can we kill what we have become accustomed to? How can we assassinate that which we have been pining after? We need a biblical worldview of holiness. The puritan John Owen confronts us, “Do you mortify; do you make it your daily work; be always at it while you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you!”

Pastors, do not give up. Do not give in. Do not go gently into the night. Fight for holiness in your own heart (1 Pet. 3:15) and in the hearts of your congregations (1 Pet. 1:15–16). Fight because you love God. Fight because you love your people. Turn your people into killers of sin, or it will be killing them.

And after the moment when he claims to talk "plainly" but he's actually exploiting the empathy of his audience, he goes on to call those outside fundamentalism, "Sonderkommandos."

He says at 4:25:

The Sonderkommandos would be those ... those Jewish people that would usher people kindly to their death, pretty gruesome death, actually. We are surrounded -- and I think, and this is one of the disadvantages of your generation -- you are surrounded by Sonderkommandos: men and women who are church leaders that are so interested in you liking them, that they are ushering you gently and happily to hell. And when someone comes and punches you in the face and says stop going this way, it makes us upset. We love our Sonderkommandos who are nice and sweet to us.

Wait. What? Do you see what he's doing?!?

First of all, he's comparing BJU's neighbors and even family to those working for the Nazis who usher people into the gas chambers.

Dude! You claim you taught logic. Did you know about reductio ad Hitlerum? It's a fallacy!

And then he compares being kind and gentle to ushering people to their death. And punching people in the face -- personal violence -- is honorable.

It's so twisted. It's not biblical. It's not like Jesus at all.

This is a long thought that I'm going to break up over three weeks (at least). So make a cup of something hot and settle in.

My husband was watching Reefer Madness when I got home from school the other night. Have you seen it? It's hilariously terrible. All camp.

Its genre is an Exploitation Film. You can read about it here. They are typically B-Movies (or worse) that are the cinematic version of click bait. They pull you in with some little veneer of truth ("The Food that Your Gastroenterologist Wishes You Ate") and then string you along toward some nothing burger. The producers don't really care how long you read/watch. They just want your initial click or ticket purchase. That's all they need.

But with the Exploitation Films there's another layer of ick: there's the foregrounding of desire. It's like a blood sport but with the erotic. Something teases you into wanting to see more even while it's condemning what you're watching. That both-and -- the joining of repulsion and attraction, the self-righteousness of watching evil -- is the appeal.

But more disturbing that Jim Berg's sermon or that he's preaching at all is Alan Benson's introduction:

For many of us, our speaker this morning doesn't need any introduction. But as life happens and time moves on, we forget that things change, and so I'm introducing to you this morning someone that you might only know as a professor in our seminary. Yet to me, and to so many others, Dr. Jim Berg is so much more. His life's work is a remarkable testament of the grace of God, and that life's work has had and is having a definite impact on the Church of Jesus Christ. I pastored for 25 years, and I think thinking back over those days and what I actually did in pastoral ministry, trying to use the word of God in the lives of people.… And I'm not sure that there's a singular author whose work more impacted the work I actually did with people than the life’s work of Dr. Jim Berg. God has blessed him with a practical insight into the word of God that is theologically saturated, and that isn't always true. But his focus on truly understanding the working of the Holy Spirit of God, using the word of God in the lives of God's people to bring about transformation into the image of Christ is refreshing insightful. I wish it was common. It's actually not, but God has used him to write in such a way that we are seeing true discipleship being implemented in the church for God's glory. He has a passion for and is incredibly equipped in biblical counseling, having received a doctorate from Southeastern Seminary in that field, and I am thrilled to have him come and open not just the word to us this morning, to open it through the lens of his own heart and be our preacher.

And last month Renton Rathbun preached on the "Failure of Dating in College."

Which we all know is going to be terrible. You can hear the BOJOcentric Theory of the Universe even in the premise.

He starts with the same Exploitation introduction:

And today is going to be a little controversial if you didn't hate me.

His text to explain "good" "dating" is Ephesians 5 which is not about friendship but marriage. So that's a problem, a big problem. Women don't submit to their boyfriends, dingus.

Start at 16:13:

So what some men do is they will push the young ladies towards sexuality through texting … through pushing them to want to try to get them to send them pictures or whatever it is. And let me tell you this, young men, if that's what you're doing, and if even if you think that's kind of funny… You know what? maybe this place isn't for you. I mean, if that's the kind of person you are, the kind of person we're looking for at Bob Jones University are men who want to be like Christ, not men who are trying to pressure women into degrading themselves so that you could have a little pleasure.

While he's talking overtly about sexting his resolution to it is a No True Scotsman fallacy.

But go back. He says that BJU is not "looking for ... men who are trying to pressure women into degrading themselves."

Renton, have you met any men at BJU? Have you read the GRACE Report? Have you read Bob Jones, Sr.'s "Modern Woman" sermon. There's a lot of degrading of women. It's pretty much the brand.

Secondly, wait. Men pressure women into degrading themselves?

Are you sure that's what you mean to say? That's a big tell there.

If I put a hat on my cat, am I pressuring my cat to degrade himself?

If I put a bowl of chocolate out on the floor, am I pressuring my dog to poison herself?

You see the problem with your statement? You can't let go of the fact that women are guilty of their own victimization, can you?

CW: sexual assault

Why am I going through all these BOJsploitation texts?

Because BJU has just hired a new spokesperson who is all shiny and hip....

But his primary message is BOJsploitation.

If you're outside what he's saying, you can giggle at it. If you at all empathize with his target/subject, you're going to feel exploited.

Renton Rathbun is this new shiny spox. He's the director of BJU's Center for Biblical Worldview.

Which is hilarious if you're outside BJU's universe. BJU sees itself as the Center of their Worldview? Um.... That's not a good thing.

We honestly used to call this the BOJOcentric Theory of the Universe.

Anyway, in a sermon two years ago at BJU's "CORE Conference," Rathbun preached on "God's Binary Box."

And right off the bat at 1:30, he exploits his audience. He's doing it simply to present himself as worldly-wise and sophisticated. It's to get his audience to believe him, and nothing more. And it's horrifying:

But my first introduction to … to someone who was a homosexual was when I was in the military, so I was there during the Clinton years when it was don't ask, don't tell. I knew that there was a guy on the floor below me in our barracks who had his own room. And so people, you know, the rumor was that he was a homosexual and the rumor was correct. But I remember that the guy across the hall from me was really upset over it. Later on in the year, the guy across the hall ended up raping that young man. So my first introduction to the world of to the homosexual world was the abuse of a homosexual. I'm saying this because I want you to understand what we're going to talk about is going to be very clear cut.

He moves on to say that there are two kinds of people in the world: boys and girls. Period. End of discussion.

The introductory example does nothing but shock. There's no other purpose to it.