Reformed Mafia: Subversive Chess Club?

In the comments section on another blog a guy suggested that we here at the Mafia are more fittingly called a "subversive chess club." I know he meant that as a slight, however good-natured. To his credit, though, it is a slight that is quite funny.

His reason for saying this: we have decided not to turn the Mafia blog into an endless argument with him individually. I believe he'd be perfectly happy to argue all day long. So, the Mafia is a group of wimps, really, because we won't "wrangle with the rival gangs." Rival gangs apparently defined as anyone with a chip on his shoulder.

So, I raise my hand and say, "Guilty as charged. I probably really do belong in a chess tournament as opposed to a gang turf war. Ya got me there."

This is simply my own clarification of what I personally see as the purpose for this blog's existence: as it now says above in our motto, we are "joyfully preaching."

It'd be wrong, and I admit it openly, to assume that because we've taken the Mafia moniker, that means we're committed to endless debates over speculative philosophy with any individual who wants to walk up and sock us in the nose.

What it means is that in an environment in which very prominent Baptist leaders can stand up and accuse Calvinists of believing "heresy," or of being "worse than Muslims," or even of being like the actual Mafia, we're willing to keep fomenting revolution in the ranks. We're willing to continue "joyfully preaching" while they apply those labels to us, and accuse us of splitting churches and killing evangelism. If we have to go "underground" we will, and we intend to keep "joyfully preaching" until they pry our Bibles from our cold, dead fingers. Call us subversive. Call us heretics. Sling all the mud you can and burn all the straw men in the world. But you cannot steal our joy in the Gospel of Jesus Christ; nor can you make us believe it is anything less than the power of God unto salvation. We won't be silenced.

But we also won't be goaded into useless debate. So there.