extremely charged rant or... i'll regret this in the morning

In C’tron’s words, “warning: extremely charged rant”. It also is all over the place because I’m just in rant mode. Its too long and its jagged. I’m sorry. Just trying to get it off my chest. Feel free to correct me.
I just read an email response to an inquiry from a reader, from Jefferson Scott, co-author with Ryan Dobson of Be Intolerant.
Now I haven’t read the book, so I’m not responding to IT in anyway. I just have a few thoughts that were born of his response via email. Here is a quote:

Specifically, we're targeting young people (aged 16-22) in our youth and college groups who are trying to ride the fence between Christianity and the world; the ones who don't want to offend anyone, assume one truth is superior to another truth, or do anything that is not politically correct.

I’m sorry I always go on the defensive here, but I think that unless we realize where this age group learned to ride the fence, and accept responsibility for it, and stop riding the fence ourselves, no number of books is going to help. First of all, I had to remind myself that he was talking about 16-22 year-olds rather than 40-60 year-olds. I’m having a hard time picturing these fence riding folks reading anyway, I read a Barna stat that explained that books are too cumbersome and geeky. But I digress.
The problem here in recognizing that an emerging age group is too tolerant is that it is only partially true. The part that is true is that they cannot recognize that some things are absolutely wrong and other things are not absolutely wrong. (the book’s subtitle is “because some things are just stupid”) The part that is not true is that they are the first generation to ride the fence. In fact, these kids come from several similar places. Some of them came from families that in order not to ride the fence, neatly outlined behaviors and attitudes that constituted ‘right’, or “appropriate”. Some of these dealt with sin and morality, others dealt with preferences and opinions. But because the law was equally enforced and absolute across the board, the children never learned to differentiate. If they knew the difference, perhaps they would rebel against or disregard only the things that didn’t have eternal significance. Because it is all given equal importance, it all gets lumped in the subjectivity category. In my house, there are 3 kinds of language, that which we use, that which we don’t use because (in my opinion, and I’m the dad) it is ugly and unbecoming, and that which we don’t use because it is dirty, obscene, offensive, or blasphemous. My kids know the difference. They know into which category our verboten language goes. This differentiation is also applied to other areas. If there was ever a possibility that any of my kids would rebel against me, I want them to know the difference between God and me. I want a fire break so that they don’t extend their teenage anger beyond its cause. Woe to me if I should cause one of these little ones to stumble. That can happen in any number of subtle ways. We can become a stumbling block by causing someone to dislike us and associate God with us, (Jesus save us from Your followers) rather than striving to be associated with God. If I can foster a faith in God, then He will bring them back to me. I exist to point them to Christ, not enforce my preferences on them and create them in my image.
Others of those kids come from families in churches where every effort was taken to look just like “the world” so that “seekers” would feel comfortable coming in and hearing about Jesus. But once inside, these seekers, and the Christians already there, heard only how to apply Jesus to your existent life be happier. They learned how to get what we want from Him, rather than learning about what He wants from us. This is terribly confusing.
I see the same results in these two categories. These kids can’t differentiate between this and that because church and everything Christian has been honed to look as much like the other as possible. Christian how-to books are about the same thing as secular how-to books – success, leadership. My first book is going to be called, “Plugging Jesus into your secular life”. But I digress.
So, a confusion has arisen in the off-spring of the Church of Subtle Differences. The first group I mentioned have trouble differentiating the inappropriate (cultural) from sin because the inappropriate was held as important as sin, and therefore, a relativism stance toward the inappropriate spreads toward sin. The second group have trouble recognizing the Truth amidst all the cultural influences in church, and therefore, deem these influences as equally important as the Truth. The result in each case is strikingly similar. Any disregard for one, includes the other.
There is another curious phenomenon related to this pattern. The intentional infusion of the secular look into the church in order to lure the unchurched, feels a bit like a “bait and switch” technique and has turned the emerging generation off. They feel this brand of church is not authentic. They stop coming, but the church goes on in the same manner until the methods serve only us. We become the recipient of the shallow, careful, inoffensive dissemination of the good news that we meant for the seeker, immature, and unbeliever. We stop growing physically and spiritually. We get confused about methodology and theology. We can’t separate our methods from objectives. It becomes about the way we do things rather than the way we do things being about Jesus. The way we do things. Try to look like them and then surprise them with our real agenda. Which brings me to this quote from the email:

People can take an idea like being "radically inclusive" and interpret it to mean they should allow people to do whatever they want: "You want to smoke, shoot up, have sex, steal, break, cuss, blaspheme...? Hey, any and all of that is A-OK with me, friend. I'm radically inclusive because of Jesus, you know?" I personally think that would make Jesus throw up.

Now, I could see someone holding such a party and inviting people in who normally do such things--that's the radically inclusive part--and then once they're there ask them to refrain from doing that here and start telling them about the Truth and purity of Jesus Christ and the life He offers them

That’s radically deceptive and personally I think it would make Jesus throw up.
From this, the 16-22 age group that I know are going to understand that the life Jesus offers them is one of deception. Invite us to a party and then ask us not to party. Forgive me but isn’t this like sticking gospel tracts in your panties and working at a “gentlemen’s club”? I can’t think of any instance where Jesus staged a get-together to look like something it wasn’t and then sprung the message on them. People were drawn to Him because He was real or they weren’t drawn to Him. After the rich young ruler came to Him, it isn’t recorded that He met with the disciples to plan a financial seminar to lure the young man back again.
Jesus, the God of the universe in human form, the provision for our fallen condition, the source of grace to us, was real. He was always up-front and clear as to what He was about. His Father’s business. He always made it clear that it wasn’t even about Him. It was about His Father. He didn’t say anything of His own, only what He heard from the Father.
I don’t think a book asking 16-22 years olds not to be what we’ve become is going to help a whole lot. What they are accused of here, is exactly the same thing that a previous generation has done, it has just manifest itself in a different picture. The only way to stop this is to repent. Right now they are doing as they have seen it done. If we change, maybe they’ll do as they see it done.
If you’ve made it this far, better set me straight.