Your Deadly Sins |
 Wrath: 40% Gluttony: 20% Lust: 20% Sloth: 20% Envy: 0% Greed: 0% Pride: 0% Chance You’ll Go to Hell: 14% You will die, after conquering the world as an evil dictator. |
And I want to go first by saying “Fuck Yeah!”, after reading this article in the Washington Post where Juno and X-Men actress Ellen Page gave an interiview, and wasn’t afraid to use her own F-Bomb:
I call myself a feminist when people ask me if I am, and of course I am ’cause it’s about equality, so I hope everyone is. You know you’re working in a patriarchal society when the word feminist has a weird connotation. “Hippie” has a weird connotation. “Liberal” has a weird connotation.
(emphasis mine)
This morning I was getting ready to compose a post about the whole “Merry Christmas Controversy”, in which I was going to implore my fellow Christians not to participate in the uncharitable complaining which has cropped up in recent years in the face of well-meaning, or even purely commercial attempts to recognize the seasonal celebrations of our non-christian neighbors.
I was going to comment that this sort of harping seems to originate from voices whose agendas appear inconsistent, at least in this Christian’s viewpoint, with the teachings, much less the example, of Jesus. Of course if you’re a Christian who read this blog, I’m probably preaching to the choir.
I was going to explain that this “War on Christmas” nonsense makes us look like fools at best, and worse, that it encourages the kind of bigotry that led a group of young men, who probably consider themselves Christians, to attack group of young Jewish men and women on a subway for replying to their “Merry Christmas” with “Happy Hanukkah”
But I want to stop right there for a moment. I’ve got more to say on the Christmas thing, but something caught my attention, and I almost skipped right past it.
If you’ve been following the conversation on here the last week, you’ve noticed the phrase “human tribe” popping up a few times. You’ve seen that the recurring theme this week has been — what motivates people to help others when it’s not in their own direct self-interest?
You’ve read Red’s heartfelt thank-you to someone who helped her out, depite their disagreements.
We’ve wondered out loud how to change society so that helping people in need is the norm.
Now let’s go back to that subway.
Cause I wanna take notice of one of those people we’re talking about. Those people, like the KBR employee with the cell phone, and Red’s not-so-anonymous benefactor. A regular person, who didn’t just stand by & do nothing.
His name is Hassan Askari. He’s a 20-year old accounting student from Bangladesh, who says he’s not a hero. He’s a Muslim, but he wasn’t thinking about the religious differences between himself and these strangers.
“I didn’t have time to think about that,” he said. “I was more thinking that these guys were going to get beaten up and I should do something.”
According to Mr. Askari, his parents are proud of him.
They taught him to stand up for others.
Because it’s the right thing to do.
I really don’t.
Especially in the face of the tremendous harm that religion has done, supposedly in the name of god, I’m not suprised that you choose not to believe.
I often find believing to be difficult myself. It’s not God I doubt so much, as it is “His people”.
Actually, that’s not entirely true — I do question God. I don’t have any actual proof that God exists, or resembles what I believe God to be. But I still choose to believe. For lack of a better explanation, for reasons I’m not entirely sure of, it works for me.
However, I don’t understand how people who claim to believe in the same God I believe in, can behave so heinously.
I don’t understand a Christianity that’s more concerned with stopping gay people from getting married than with teaching its husbands to respect their wives.
I have nothing in common with a Christianity that soothes the conscience of the affluent with the notion that “God wants you to be rich” while opposing public policy that would help poor people (and everyone else) get their kids to a doctor.
I take issue with a version of my faith that makes no room for “foreigners” in “our country” when we’re supposed to be foreigners in the world.
I find atrocious an image of God that allows its followers to condone torture in the name of security, that advocates making war against an innocent population for profit. Didn’t Jesus say “love your enemies” and “blessed are the peacemakers?”
This is not the God I believe in. This is not the faith I practice.
The God I believe in is just as concerned with Iraqi & Afghan & Mexican & Guatemalan lives as American ones.
The God I believe in says his followers are required to take care of the sick & the hungry & the prisoners.
The God I believe in gave women a place of honor, and taught us alongside our brothers, and picked us to witness to his most wondrous of miracles.
The faith I practice doesn’t need to legislate its principles.
The faith I practice knows once the choice of what to believe is taken away, nothing else matters for much.
OK, so back around July I posted this image on my myspace page.
In nautical terms, a flag turned upside-down is a distress signal – a sign that all is not well aboard the vessel flying the colors. That’s how I interpret this, and how I think many people who are currently displaying the flag upside down intend it. The ship of state has been boarded by pirates masquerading as patriots.
I posted it to get a reaction, and maybe spark some discussion in my small circle
He sent me a message, asking me to take it off my default picture, saying it was “disrespectful” to those who have given their lives defending it.
And I asked him about something he had posted on his page about all things being fair in love and war.
He replied with the complaint that the war was so politicized that they can’t do their jobs as effectively as they could if they could, say fire on civilians instead of worrying about offending the Muslims, who want us all dead, and how pulling out of the war now would mean that those who died already will have died in vain.
Now this is a guy who’s over there. now. in the middle of this hell. He’s there by his own choice, and being handsomely compensated (PSCs make in a month about what the average soldier makes in a year), yes, but in more than one way, he’s family. On the one hand, I want to shake him up with just what kind of evil he’s actively helping to perpetrate. On the other hand, I don’t want to mess with his head in a way that could literally get him killed.
So I told him that i wasn’t going to argue firehouse politics with a man inside a burning building. That I hope he gets home safely, sooner rather than later.
And I can’t help feeling that in that agreeing-to-disagree, I have failed my friend, and the cause of peace, and God.
I can’t help feeling there’s more I should have said.
I SHOULD HAVE SAID that they didn’t fire on civilians because they’re supposed to be the “good guys”
I SHOULD HAVE ASKED why he didn’t recognize Jesus’ words as anything more than “religious writing”
I SHOULD HAVE SAID that he will have to reckon with God about this eventually, and that I pray that he doesn’t wait till he’s on the other side of an IED.
Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. May God have mercy on us all.
Way back when my brilliant cousin started this blog, she invited me to participate, partly as supplementary estrogen, and partly because “someone who could write from a liberal christian perspective would be an interesting contrast to all us secular agnostics and atheists.”
So some time near the beginning, by way of introducing myself, I posted a blog on what I mean by Christian. DeeK posted a response that at the time, hit me rather hard. Maybe he took my post as a clumsy attempt at evangelism, maybe he was just sharing his own perspective….I don’t know, and I suppose I lacked the courage to ask. Writing or talking about my faith among people who don’t share it is something that’s still a challenge to me. I’ve never been anxious to proselytize (something that gave me tremendous guilt pangs in my fundy-lite phase) even when I wanted to be a missionary (maybe i shoulda joined the peace corps instead…) and it’s hard to put into words what I wear under my skin.
The brand of Christianity I chose to identify with for much of my adolescence and young adulthood sometimes emphasized “The world hates us” so heavily over “God so loved the world” that any disagreement us youngsters encountered with non-believers was hailed as “persecution.”
I thought I had grown beyond that.. or that I was “too smart” to have internalized it very much. My fantastic liberal-Catholic-raised parents taught me better. I could argue the left-hand side of Christian politics with people 20 years my senior. Hot-headed and underinformed, but unwavering in my conviction that Jesus was a liberal.
But when DeeK said:
“I guess this is way of saying I accept the need to embrace others as wonder attempts, but I would like to leave the Jesus part out of it.”
I heard “Leave the Jesus part out of it.” Imperative. command. period. end of sentence.
I completely missed that he also said “ I accept the need to embrace others as wonder attempts“
And I assumed he was saying “your superstitions are not welcome here you deluded irrational fool”
For that misperception, DeeK, I humbly ask you to forgive me.
Unlike my gutsier relatives, I’ve always been a “nice girl”. And I was new around here. And I thought I had offended. And my feelings were hurt, so i took my toys and went home like a big baby, at least where spiritual/religious matters were concerned.
How hypocritical that I accused Jovial of the same thing in comments some months later. I hope you will also forgive me.
Trouble with that is, my belief in God-what I really believe, that thing i struggle to put words to, not the knee-jerk prejudices I’m trying to unlearn in light of Truth- inform every part of my thinking, and to avoid that is to strip all my convictions of their meaning. This is not to say that I can’t participate in a discussion without regurgitating a bunch of random Scriptures – as a matter of fact I rarely quote the bible to make a point in a discussion with people who don’t accept it as authoritative(partly because I’m no biblical scholar and partly because I detest seeing proof-texts quoted out of context).
But I’ve discovered I feel almost as out of place among secular progressives as I do among conservative Christians, and for the same reason. Because the “natural” assumption in both groups seems to be that progressivism and Christianity(or ANY monotheistic faith, really) are so diametrically opposed as to be mutually exclusive; that I must be insincere in one or the other; that I am, in short, a “liberal” in spite of my belief in Christ. I don’t know how to respond to this sometimes.
So I’ve avoided the Red Queen’s many attempts to call me out & get me to do my job. Please forgive me, for having kept my head down when the wingnuts brought out the big guns. And please continue to call me on the carpet when I fall silent.
Apparently sometimes God talks to Christians through snarky agnostics, reminding us that hanging onto power in this world was never part of the plan.
Meanwhile I rant to my mom about how the power-mad maniac brigade currently claiming to operate in Jesus’ name looks more like the Antichrist than the Son of God. To which she invariably replies that I should write about it, talk about it, after all, I’ve been given a forum to do just that…..
Martin Niemöller, who learned firsthand the danger of being, literally, a “Good German”, put it this way:
- In Germany, they came first for the Communists,
- And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
- And then they came for the trade unionists,
- And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
- And then they came for the Jews,
- And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
- And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.
I know, I said I don’t usually throw bible verses around without context, but here’s one I probably ought to remember:
James 4:17 Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.
May my God forgive me for my complacency, and may the Spirit keep reminding me to do what I ought to do…
Recently, my work on mundaneastrology.net and on my upcoming book 1648 (sorry to plug at your expense, but guerrilla marketing must prevail!), I have thought much about morality, not the thought of dying, but who provides our moral structure. I speak not here simply of your everyday “though shalt not steal” kind of stuff, though these morals obviously still matter. What I speak of here are of the trickle down variety. Who provides our overall moral guidance? Who should we listen and why? This simple question has many ramifications.
The Church mostly lost is authority on the basis of its overtly corrupt practices. It is doubtful that such an overburdened institution–the Church had become with every aspect of life throughout every class–would have been able to keep up with the demographic changes that Europe rolled out through the 16th to 19th centuries. Nonetheless, the Church’s obvious hypocrisy opened the door for Luther to enter and for Protestants to rush in. Very apparent question arises here. Since the Church, the self-proclaimed arbiter of behavior, could not be trusted, when did the lack of trust began? Did it occur evenly across the classes? (Doubtful). Who won the authority over your morality? Catholics? Protestants? Christians? Did anyone win?
All of these questions become prominent when you consider these questions for people that have great influence on society. Who provides the moral center for our representatives? Who decides it is morally ok to move to Montana, overburden their infrastructure and contribute far less to the economy than you take away? Who provides the morality that ignores global warming? The one that says Wal-Mart is OK? The one that says being loyal to your oil buddies is worth all of the lives sacrificed to your cause?
I think in our shift to a more secular viewpoint, who determines our moral structure has never been addressed. The Church rejects secularism so it has little authority to answer related issues. Protestants too obviously have trouble reconciling their faith and the post-modern world. Governments should govern, but expect a certain level of adherence to social code. Very few concerns prove black and white anymore. For instance, what is the the moral code for projects that have down-the-line-effects? Is it morally righteous to invest in a project that could damage the environment long after you are dead?
You almost make me ashamed to call myself a Christian.
Then I remember that you do not speak for Christ.
When you go around threatening people with beatings, rape, and murder because you disgree with them politically or culturally, you do not speak for me, you do NOT speak for the church, and YOU DO NOT SPEAK FOR CHRIST.
As a matter of fact, you’re acting in direct disobedience to the teachings, spirit, and example of Jesus, as well as several Biblical principles. Anybody with even a passing acquaintance with the most watered-down versions of Christianity knows this. You know it.
SO SHUT UP.
Or stop calling yourselves Christians.
If you care anything for the Gospel, retract your vitriol. Repent of your threats, and your hatred. Because you are harming this country, and you are harming the cause of Christ. What does a non-christian have to judge the claims of Christ by, but the behavior of those who profess to follow him?
However, I suspect that you care nothing for the Gospel, not the real one. I suspect you think “winning the world for Christ” means forcing everyone to act, dress, and think like your preacher tells you, so you don’t have to ever think about whether you’re doing right. Except that you’re too lazy to even do that for yourself, so you’d rather have the government do it for you. The same government you so resent paying taxes to so that people in real trouble have food and clothes for their kids, and decent care when they get sick. REAL things that Jesus ACTUALLY MENTIONED AS HOW CHRIST WILL IDENTIFY HIS FOLLOWERS
Think i’m Kidding?
Matthew 25: 31-46 (King James Version, just in case you consider all other versions corrupt)
Sheriff Who Seized FEMA Ice Could Face Charges
By HOLBROOK MOHR The Associated PressPublished: Mar 25, 2006
JACKSON, MISS. – Randy Walker swears he would have died from his diabetes after Hurricane Katrina had a sheriff not seized two FEMA trucks filled with ice and distributed it to residents, many of whom had to keep their insulin cold.
Now, that sheriff could be prosecuted on charges of interfering with a federal operation.
Forrest County Sheriff Billy McGee commandeered two 18-wheelers full of ice from Camp Shelby, a Federal Emergency Management Agency staging area, after five days passed with little relief for residents living without electricity in the wake of the deadly storm.
I have to say, it seems extremely unfair that this guy could be facing federal prosecution for doing his job… It’s late & I’ll post more later
Opinion from The Red Queen (only cause I can’t post a link in the comments section)
These were poor people in the south. In this administration’s eyes they should pull themselves up by the bootstraps and be greatful if they get any charity at all.
Now if it had been a swing state in an election year……….