According to the Telegraph, the City Council of Bristol (U.K.) set out to “prune bushes and remove cover from an area known as the Downs to improve the landscape and encourage rare wildlife.” Huzzah for green spaces and rare wildlife, right? To quote the legendary Lee Corso, “Not so fast, my friend!” Apparently the word “wildlife” can have multiple meanings, because gay rights activists are claiming that the city council’s plans are “discriminatory” because the spot is, um, well, a popular spot for homosexual “outdoor recreation”, so to speak. Although these outdoor escapades are illegal, these activists believe they have a right to a government-provided space to engage in them. Cutting down some bushes would violate this right, see?

So, work on the area has been stopped while the council seeks “to make sure any work we will do is sensitive.”

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In other news, the Association of Unauthorized Bank Asset Procurement Specialists (AUBAPS) is claiming that their members’ rights are being violated because banks in all of England are equipped with security cameras. This is, of course, a violation of their right to privacy while engaging in their behavior of choice. The Central Bank of England is considering how they might be more sensitive to the concerns of bank robbers who might be offended by the current videographic arrangements most banks have in place.

You have changed for the better.

You have a nice voice…

These are all messages from his compliment machine, an exhibit in an ongoing art project in Washington, D.C., that plays random compliments as pedestrians walk by.

People are drawn to your positive energy…

The *real* message of the project might not be so flattering. Joshua Zumbrun quotes Greaves as saying, “It’s a response to how on kids’ soccer teams… win or lose, everyone gets a trophy.” Greaves refuses to unpack this statement any further, saying only “People can believe it [the compliment] or not.” Zumbrun continues, “Will they believe it? If everyone gets the trophy, if everyone receives the compliment, does it really mean anything?”

No. No, it doesn’t. As Amy over on the Stand to Reason Blog puts it, “… it’s hard not to see the meaninglessness of endless, unmerited compliments, randomly dished out, unconnected to any real truth about the recipients.”

You are on a constant quest for knowledge…

Like an inverted version of Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron, the compliment machine invents a reality in which everyone is equally wonderful, equally worthy of praise. We like the compliment machine because it tells us what we already believe about ourselves. In our pride, we believe that we deserve the compliments it pays us, no matter how random or disconnected they are. We truly believe that I’m OK, and you’re OK. We don’t really believe that any of us deserve God’s wrath; we can’t imagine a god who isn’t made in our own image, that wouldn’t let us all into heaven for doing our best.

This is, I believe, why we have so much trouble believing the doctrine of total depravity. We can cope with the idea that we were bad enough that we needed a savior, but we still believe that the Father was obligated to send us one. We like the idea of having a choice between heaven and hell, but the thought that we are so wicked that we will always, in all circumstances, choose hell because it best suits our wicked and rebellious hearts is just too much. We can acknowledge that we sin from time to time, here and there, but not that, as Paul Washer says, we’ve “never done anything but sin!”

Your eyes are beautiful…

And so, our gospel becomes a spiritualized version of the compliment machine:

God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life…

God desires for you to have total victory in your finances and in your health…

We end up with a gospel that doesn’t take our sin seriously, addressing our “felt needs” without addressing our single greatest deficiency: our complete and utter wickedness before God.

Until we realize we are dead, we cannot be made alive. Until we understand the depths of our sinfulness, we cannot repent, that our sins may be blotted out (Acts 3:19). While this gospel keeps playing, we will never be made into something truly incredible: holy, blameless, children of God.