Archive for the Totally Judging Category

A little respect

Topic 1 of This Series

This topic was at the bottom of my list. I was also what I was originally working up to with Love your neighbor but news of Ahmaud Arbery’s, Breonna Taylor’s, and George Floyd’s murders were more urgent to address loving our neighbors. Now that it’s Pride Month, it seems like the time for the topic of changing my mind about LGBTQIA.

It all began with Sodom and Gomorrah. All my life I was taught they were destroyed because of homosexuality. I just accepted that as fact because I didn’t believe the churches I attended would teach something false. After all, Landmarkism was developed precisely to refute wrong doctrine. (That’s a post that I’ve probably written at some point.) Hence, I believed the Procter and Gamble connection to Satanism when I heard it taught at church. (It was not true.) But the backward masking scare tripped my bullshit detector despite only being about 13 years old. (My intuition correctly detected it was bullshit.) That was the first crack in my “church is always right” (as long as it’s a Landmark Missionary Baptist) wall.

Still I believed what I had been taught about Sodom and Gomorrah because “the Bible is clear.” The story is clear, but it says something a bit different from the narrative I was taught. (Read the story, Genesis 18:16 – 19:29) Sodom wasn’t “full of gay men;” it was full of greedy rapists. Throughout the rest of the Old Testament when Sodom is mentioned with the reasons for its destruction it was not over sex. It was the wealth the city didn’t share with the poor and lack of hospitality. (Ezekiel 16:49)

All the teaching that LGBTQIA+ people in this country would cause our destruction is based on a false interpretation. “Teh gays” represent no threat to the nation. I felt duped even though part of the problem was that I didn’t read the passage myself for most of my life. The crack in the wall grew bigger.

I continued believing for a while that it was a major and damning sin because my indoctrination has deep roots. However, I was no longer “hostile” toward it. I had to many gay friends and family to ever wish harm to anyone. Eventually I reached a point where I was no longer confident that the Bible was “clear” about it.* As it turns out, there is missing context for what was likely being portrayed in the Law given to Israel after they were led out of Egypt.

God’s people, Israel, were set apart by God and were instructed in the Law how to look and act differently from the other nations who worshipped other gods. (Leviticus 18:3) Part of that had to do with sex. (Leviticus 18) The surrounding nations had fertility gods and were believed to have sexual rituals associated with the temples to and worship of those gods. As I wrote in Love your neighbor, “All of the laws about loving our neighbor either seek to prevent harming them, or provide justice to those who have been harmed. Even the commands to love God provide protection and justice to others because idol worship always leads to oppression.” Lesbian sex was not mentioned in the law though sex with animals was prohibited for men and women. The author of Diary of an Autodidact explains the meaning of the word translated “sexual immorality”:

First, the word translated “sexual immorality” is porneia, which has an…interesting history. The word is thrown around a LOT in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. Porneia is used primarily to describe idolatry or selling oneself to another god. (The root of the word combines “sex” and “transaction,” that is “prostitution.”) So the Israelites seemed to be continually committing “porneia” with other gods. Esau committed “porneia” when he sold his birthright. (How crazy is that?) Christianity, particularly starting with patriarchal church fathers like Augustine, decided that “porneia” really meant sex outside of marriage, which is…not its clear meaning. To the Greeks and Romans, porneia had become an idiomatic way to refer to “acceptable” extra-marital sex – namely, men sleeping with prostitutes or raping their slaves. (There was a different word, moicheia, to refer to adultery – that is, a man messing with another (free)man’s chattel.) This could be an entire rabbit hole here, but suffice it to say that the cultural baggage of the Greco-roman world combined with the cultural baggage of Second Temple Judaism to create a whole doctrine that is rather foreign to the Torah or to the culture the bible was written in.

It does not appear that consensual sex was what the Bible writers were portraying as sin. I’m not saying I think it’s okay for us to go out and sleep around with whoever we want. I just don’t see how consensual sex between 2 people in a romantic relationship with one another is the abomination God was referring to – gay or straight – and certainly not marriage. He is much more concerned with oppression.

*I’m not saying the Bible is not inerrant. I’m saying neither translation nor interpretation are inerrant.

As the world burns


Photo by Koshu Kunii on Unsplash

I can remember once when I was either in my teens or early twenties talking with my mom about something related to the End Times. It was in a dispensational context, of course, because that’s what we knew because that’s what we were taught and everything outside of our Baptist sect was either false teaching or a “slippery slope” to falling away from the true faith. Our conversation turned to The Rapture at some point which is the only part of the conversation I remember. Mom said, “We probably won’t know the rapture happened because churches will still be full.” That shocked me at the time not only because she said it but the possibility it could be true.

Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
“‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.
“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’” Matthew 13:24-30 NIV

These past few weeks have shown me that the tares are thick among the wheat. As we have moved into the worst pandemic in 100 years, I’ve seen Christians balking at having their rights violated by lockdowns and shutdowns. I’ve watched them grab onto outlandish and dangerous conspiracy theories with either no fact-checking or dismissing information refuting the conspiracies as “false news” and/or “liberal” attempts to destroy our freedom. I’ve seen pastors defiantly continue to hold in-person services and congregants attending with just as much defiance and cry about separation of church and state. I understand a lot of the behavior is denial. COVID-19 has destroyed what was normal life and it’s going to be a long time before we get that normal back – assuming we can.

Now we are in the midst of protests and rioting in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. The former officers might be innocent until proven guilty according to the way our judicial system works, but it is hard to watch those videos and see the photos and call that either accidental or justified even though it was not likely premeditated. I can’t help but wonder how many black citizens this happens to. It would still be happening unchecked if not for cell phones. Not that it brought justice for Philando Castile. I see a lot of denouncing of the looting and rioting from largely the same people who were offended by Colin Kaepernick. And I see a lot of silence.

I look at the way Conservative Christianity in the U.S. has morphed in the last *40 years and think of what my mom said all those years ago about the rapture. We spent so much effort focusing on the sins of others (those outside of our sects and non-Christians) that we failed to see the enemy turning us from the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:20) to follow the god of this world in seeking power and domination to hang on to our position of privilege. We drew a line and made ourselves watchkeepers of Western Christianity which we made the standard by our own self-righteousness. We have dehumanized, demonized, and criminalized those who are different whether it is a minor doctrinal issue that has no impact on the saving work of Jesus, or they look or speak differently than us. We labeled other sects, political ideologies, religions, and people groups as threats to our way of life thereby making them an enemy to be destroyed rather than follow Jesus’ command to love our enemies. We look nothing like Christ whom we are to follow into suffering or death.

I think a great many of us don’t know Jesus any deeper than as a get out of hell free token. We’ve turned salvation into a formula which builds our churches and makes us appear successful, but it is a façade. We oppress to maintain our supremacy and call it faithfulness to the Bible while few ever go any deeper than a prosperity gospel similar to Joel Osteen’s Your Best Life Now while condemning him as a false teacher. We focus on sexual immorality and abortion while ignoring the sexual abuse rampant among our churches including pastors and elders. We don’t look at our own greed and violence and divisiveness. We’ve said our Sinner’s Prayer and we go through life never growing beyond publicly avoiding vices like alcohol, drugs, and cussing and blame the other for anything that causes us discomfort let alone suffering. We blame all the troubles in our country on others while refusing to see how we created or contributed to the problems. Rather than lamenting we rage. Rather than repent we cling to our idols. We are Americans first and nominally Christians second provided our faith doesn’t interfere with how well we think of ourselves and our possessions.

We have just celebrated Pentecost while many of our cities are literally burning. Pentecost for the Christian is when the Spirit was poured out on all people. God spoke to His people through Isaiah and said:

Wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
stop doing wrong.
Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed. (Or justice. / Correct the oppressor)
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.

Are we going to listen to the Spirit, or will we be like those whom Paul warned the Thessalonians, “The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.” We need to be on guard as to which voice we are listening to and whom we are following. Are we following Jesus and all he commands in loving our neighbors or are we following the world in seeking to serve ourselves? Jesus calls us to pick up our cross and follow Him, and he said this before he went to the cross. They knew what the cross meant. Do we?

*I chose 40 years because I remember next to nothing about Christianity other than going to church every time the doors opened for the first 9 years of my life. And most of my 10th year we went nowhere.

When you play with fire

Protesters gather calling for justice for George Floyd on Tuesday, May 26, 2020, in Minneapolis. Four Minneapolis officers involved in the arrest of Floyd, a black man who died in police custody, were fired Tuesday, hours after a bystander’s video showed an officer kneeling on the handcuffed man’s neck, even after he pleaded that he could not breathe and stopped moving.
Carlos Gonzalez, Star Tribune via AP

The following was initially posted on my personal Facebook timeline.

Fellow white people, let me tell you a little story. And it’s gonna piss some of y’all off. A lot.

I grew up in an abusive home. I never knew what was going to be the thing that set my dad off because there was no rhyme or reason to it. So I became hypervigilant trying to stay one step ahead and not have to suffer the screaming and berating and having the shit beat out of me. When I failed to be “good enough” and got the berating, if I cried, I got a whipping. If I cried because the belt freaking hurt, I was often beaten more and told it wasn’t going to stop until I stopped crying. And so I began stuffing my emotions as part of my hypervigilance. And I became afraid of ALL authority because if your mom can’t (or won’t) protect you, who can? (I believe she did what she did out of survival also, but it doesn’t erase the damage.)

There came a point where so much had been stuffed that it started coming out on anyone. Puberty was when I couldn’t hold it all in anymore and I lashed out at people who did not do anything that should elicit my rage. It’s taken a lot of therapy to address my reaction to my injustice.

Now imagine that type of abuse only it’s directed at people with a darker skin color. You’ve got a large amount of people actively perpetrating injustice on an entire group of people which has been happening for centuries. Not only that, but there is another group who look like the perpetrators who do nothing to help. Those are the enablers. There are some allies in that group, but they remain a minority just like the victims. The black people as a group remain hypervigilant all the time and have for centuries. They are either ignored when they try to protest peacefully, or they are denigrated if they make the group with the power uncomfortable by not worshiping their idols and not staying “in their place” and providing entertainment. Or they march in the streets – unarmed – and are met with tear gas, rubber bullets, or real bullets. I don’t know what that’s like because I belong to the privileged group with the power. Mine was individual directed by a single individual. But I know that people can only take so much abuse. As others have said, it’s a powder keg that has sat near the fire getting hotter and hotter until a spark blows it. And when it does, just like an individual abuser, the collective abusers and enablers join to vilify the entire group and claim vindication about the “thugs” and “animals.” And the abuse continues because now it’s “justified.”

I understand why the rioting and looting happen. I’m not saying I condone it, but neither will I condemn it. Violence begets violence, and black people have suffered violence at our hands for far too long. (We reap what we sow) Instead of putting out the fire, we just move it and claim we are fighting it or have put it out. Yet it not only continues to burn, it continues to be fueled to make it hotter. Jesus is not on the side of the oppressor; He is on the side of the oppressed. The TRULY oppressed.

And now I’m really gonna piss y’all off.

“But abortion!” Because that’s where we go when anyone points out how we oppress non-Anglo-European White people. (That’s called deflection, by the way.) I am pro-life from womb to tomb. But if all you do to be “pro-life” is vote for people who claim to be antiabortion and maybe you go to the March for Life rallies and do nothing else, congratulations for not doing jack shit about abortion. If you aren’t willing to fund pregnancy centers, and healthcare, and healthy food, and housing for pregnant women, sit your ass down and shut up. If you aren’t willing to provide all those needs to the children after they are born (healthcare, food, housing), sit your ass down and shut up. If you aren’t willing to provide birth control, sit your ass down and shut up. If you aren’t as willing to hold the fathers of the babies you claim to love as accountable as the mothers whom you probably call “whores”, sit your ass down and shut up. If you say women need to “keep their legs closed” but can’t manage to tell men to keep their dick in their pants, sit your ass down and shut up.

And finally, if you profess to be a follower of Jesus and aren’t willing to sacrifice anything you earn to help even the people you don’t think deserve any help, are you really following Jesus of Nazareth or American Dream Jesus? Because one of those isn’t Jesus the Son of God and will not set you free.

Cynical and disillusioned

Sheila Gregoire of to Love, Honor, & Vacuum did a series on her blog this week about problems she saw with the popular Christian marriage book “Love & Respect” by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs. I commented on the 3rd post because she said I’ve been thinking for a while – that Jesus often isn’t the center of our teaching. I started a comment and then realized I was about to typed out a big rant, and decided that the potential length called for my own blog post.

There are a couple of posts I should probably finish first, but I’ll start with this and let the other 2 be explanations after the fact instead of a build up to.

So here’s Sheila’s posts:
A Review of Love and Respect: How the Book Gets Sex Horribly Wrong
Love and Respect: Why Unconditional Respect Can’t Work
The Ultimate Flaw in the Book Love and Respect: Jesus Isn’t at the Center
Our Podcast: The Love and Respect Earthquake, Tidying Up, and More!
Your Stories of Women and Marriages Damaged from Love and Respect

Here’s my comment on the 3rd:

The church I quit last year did a sermon series on this book back around January 2015 (my guess based on when I added and updated Love & Respect in my Goodreads). I didn’t see a problem at the time. But this time last year I started to see what was consistently missing from most (if not all) of the formulaic sermon series (plural) that I was started to really listen to. The Holy Spirit.

I was about to type out a whole rant, but I’m going to save that for my own blog when I have more time.

The “Love & Respect” series was from November-December, 2014. That was during my first year of sobriety, and while I was “coming to,” I was still entrenched in patriarchal indoctrination. And I was still kind of desperate to save my failing marriage. So I didn’t see anything off at the time. That came later most glaringly with the InCite Conference of 2017 with fired pastor Perry Noble who was billed as a headliner of the conference shortly after his stint in rehab for alcohol abuse.

An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money. 1 Timothy 3:2-3

Noble had no business being on that stage. Around that same time I noticed several megachurch pastors around the country using the phrase, “The Best is Yet to Come” just as ours had done in connection with a fundraising campaign.

By this time, I had a little bit of sobriety, I was working through some issues, and I was questioning everything. One of my twitter friends was talking about Robert Morris’ book “The Blessed Life” and Morris saying Jesus was “God’s tithe.” That reminded me that he said that garbage when he spoke at our church in 2014 for a sermon series based on that book. I found it odd when I heard him say it, but I was in early sobriety, and barely able to discern yet. Now? God didn’t “tithe” himself. Jesus is God. And even if we divide out the Trinity, Jesus is 1/3 not 1/10. But still, how can God tithe himself and who is he tithing to? HE IS GOD! I haven’t yet been able to get through that book. I have it, and started it because the pastor sent a signed copy when I started giving money only he addressed it to my daughter not catching that it was MY name on the check and apparently assuming that “Jamie” = “James” and as husband he was the spiritual leader. He was not. But I digress.

I had to step down from serving once I went back to school because I couldn’t put in sufficient practice time. If I was just singing, I could, but not playing guitar, and there were loads of vocalists by that time. Also, at this point, I was only attending when I was scheduled on the worship team. I was still listening to all the sermons via podcast, but then a sermon series happened that got all over me. The pastor made the statement, “Jesus was a carpenter. He was a man’s man!” This wasn’t the only hypermasculine statement, but it was the one that pissed me off. I am a carpenter. I don’t do it for a living, and rarely have time to do it as a hobby (for now), but I’ve been building and fixing things that fall under the carpentry umbrella since my very early 20s. You don’t need a penis to be a carpenter! Does this also mean that men who aren’t carpenters are less manly? That’s just ludicrous. He even made a statement about men who’ve been “wussified” and I was like, “That’s the ‘clean’ version of Mark Driscoll a few years ago talking about how men have been ‘pussified’!” That whole series could have been a Driscoll series, and may have been one of his recycled. And Driscoll is another disgraced pastor who has no business on a stage or behind a pulpit.

It was a couple of months after this that there was a guest preacher who gave a standalone sermon to tell parents what they need to do to guarantee their children will follow God. That’s the sermon when it hit me that there was no mention of the Holy Spirit at all, and only a passing mention of Jesus. It was all about doing a set of things “right” so that your kids will turn out all right. But you can do everything “right” and kids will still have a mind and will of their own. Without the Holy Spirit to guide your relationship with them, and without the Holy Spirit guiding them, there is just behavior modification to be accepted by your tribe. The odds are certainly better if you raise them up, but motives matter, and if it’s to make y’all look good and not for them to actually love Jesus and obey Jesus in order to love others, it’s just empty works. There are no absolute guarantees because “Christian formulas” are NOT Jesus.

I stopped listening to the sermon podcasts during that summer’s “Hot & Heavy” series. A story was told, that I have heard told before that I don’t believe actually happened. It’s the reason for following the “Billy Graham rule” because a female congregant tried to seduce him to go to a hotel room she had reserved right across the street from where they were eating as they had met for counseling. I am just as skeptical of that story as I am of Billy Graham’s claim of finding a naked woman in his hotel room. Maybe one of those stories is true. Maybe they both are. But even if so, isolated incidents do not indicate a pattern of women to fall on their backs with their legs up in the air for pastors. It goes right along with patriarchal and complementarian men blaming women for men’s lusts and fantasies while portraying themselves as hapless victims. It makes women enemies just by their very existence. And this is not of Christ no matter how big of a platform they get.

This turned into the long rant that I figured it would. I wrote about magic formulas 3 years ago. I guess once your eyes get opened, you just can’t unsee it. Sheila is right. If obedience to Jesus is not our primary desire in every aspect of our lives, all else will become idolatry and we will chase after and follow anyone who makes us feel better or promises us a comfortable life rather than following Jesus.

Joy Beher and hearing God speak

I have not heard directly what Joy Beher said. I don’t watch The View, nor do I follow it because I don’t care. I don’t watch any talk shows nor do I listen to talk radio. They don’t entertain me. If what I keep reading about on Facebook is true, Joy Beher is wrong in her assessment that Mike Pence hearing God is mental illness. But I’m not about to go on a rant against Joy Beher in defense of Mike Pence.

While I think she is wrong, and not solely because of my belief in God and having heard from him myself, but because I have a little bit of knowledge about mental illness, I refuse to call for The View to be canceled because I’m offended that she is wrong. She has every right to say that. She is entitled to believe it and to say it. I will wholeheartedly support that right because I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That includes the 1st amendment that her opinions are fully protected under. Just as I will support the right to speak of the opinions of the outraged Christians who are too thin skinned to handle criticism of the world. But to them, as a follower of the risen Jesus the Messiah, I ask you this:

What do you think you signed up for when you decided to follow Jesus?

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.” John 15:18-20

He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth. Isaiah 53:7

How are you going to stand firm in the face of true persecution when you can’t handle being offended? Is Jesus not enough? How do you expect to lead a nonbeliever to Jesus when you can’t quietly go about doing the works that you were called to do according to Ephesians 2:8-10?

Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. James 3:13-16

For far too many generations we have been indoctrinated into a false christianity. We have been taught to look at the sin of the world around us and fear the consequences of the sins of the other without ever being taught to look at ourselves and whether or not we are following Jesus or following the world. This led us to following “bold Christian leaders” who stand against the world to save us from destruction, which was always to keep us “safe and comfortable.” And so we turned to political leaders to save us. But putting our faith in the world system (even a “good” one) instead of putting our faith in our only true hope which is in Jesus Christ is antichrist. Jesus says in Revelation, “I am making all things new.” This is the fruit of the Gospel. Not that we will be saved by the world’s system, but that only Jesus saves. Not that the world provides the “safety” and “security” to follow “religious conscious,” but that Jesus provides us the faith to follow Him against the wisdom of this world.

“I have told you this things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart. I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

Following Jesus is NEVER about fighting for our rights or security or safety or comfort. It has always been and always will be about loving God with everything we are, and loving our neighbor as ourselves. It’s not a fight against people, it’s a fight against the demonic whose mission has always been to turn us against God. And we are to accept being outsiders to the world with joy.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. 1 Peter 1:3-9

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Romans 12:14

Anyone claiming that God is saying something different than that, isn’t hearing the voice of God as revealed in Jesus.

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse! Galatians 1:8-9

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 1 John 4:1

“The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air (Elvish translation). Much that once was is lost; for none now live who remember it. It began with the forging of the great rings: three were given to the Elves, immortal, wisest and fairest of all beings. Seven to the Dwarf Lords; great miners and craftsman of the mountain halls. And nine, nine rings were gifted to the race of men, who above all else desire power. For within these rings was bound the strength and will to govern each race. But they were all of them deceived, for another ring was made: in the land of Mordor, in the fires of Mount Doom, the dark lord Sauron forged, in secret, a master ring to control all others. And into this ring he poured his cruelty, his malice, and his will to dominate all life.

One Ring to Rule them All.”

Culture wars and agendas #NaBloPoMo

I was going to start this off by saying that I think fighting culture wars are a colossal waste for Christians. But I sat long enough to come up with some cultures that are worth the time and effort to fight against, such as racism, rape culture, patriarchy, fascism, and the like. You know, cultures whose primary aim is to control and harm others. I am wholeheartedly for fighting for justice for the oppressed and the marginalized. There’s a few commandments throughout the Bible to do just that.

So really, what I find the colossal waste is the agenda wars. These so-called “agendas” are touted all the time by the right. I’m using the right rather than the left because I was part of the right wing for so many years. I not only heard the rhetoric, I spoke it. I was all in with it, and looking back, it’s because I never really thought the ideas all the way through. After all, you don’t have to think it all the way through when you are in an echo chamber and your adversaries are largely abstract epithets.

I wish I could say that one day my eyes opened and I could see the propaganda for what it is, and it is propaganda, but it was a gradual awakening that took a few years. I also cannot take any credit for the change in thinking. Additionally, I still have a long way to go, because I go from 0 to 88 mph when I get outraged. Like Matt Walsh tweets popping up in my feed TWICE today. To be honest, I mostly agreed with one of them (which is rare!), but his smug tone eclipsed his moral stand.

Anyway, I was listening to a sermon the other day, and I could not finish because of the presentation. The use of a particular culture’s “agenda” killed the message, and not in a good way. Harping on a secular/any type of sexual/atheistic/liberal/conservative agenda in a way the presents it as a threat turns the members of the target group into an enemy, first by stoking fear, then by demonizing which dehumanizes an entire group. It caricaturizes people making them objects to be fought against rather than fought for. While this method of preaching gets a lot of amens, I’m sitting there wondering, where is Jesus in this? How would He have us engage these groups? How do these menacing portraits of others equip us to reach them with the Gospel, literally, the Good News of Jesus Christ? If we are presenting these people as abstract entities with agendas that threaten our comfortable way of life, how are we going to “Go, therefore, and teach all nations?”

Yes, we are to be counter-cultural, but we aren’t counter-cultural when we just want to preserve our way of life and/or we fear God’s wrath. That makes us just as worldly as the rest of the world. Instead, if we are going to truly follow Christ, if we are indeed his disciples, we will be counter-cultural because of our love and kindness to our fellow man – even those who hate us and want to kill us. Because we serve a risen King who has already won the battle. Satan isn’t just at work in the world, he is at work in the church as well. Jesus warned about tares among the wheat. He warned us about laying up treasure on earth rather than treasure in heaven. “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.”

Sexual abuse is not a joke

I kept sitting and looking at my screen wondering how I was going to start this. There is just no good way to start a post that’s going to expose a family skeleton. But I cannot sit silently by while otherwise good people excuse and normalize Donald Trump’s lewd and crass statements, which weren’t surprising to me given the totality of his reprehensible character which he has displayed since early in the primaries. It is a testimony to the condition of his heart, and not a good testimony.

And for the record, my rejection of Trump is NOT an endorsement of Hillary.

Shortly after I turned 15, my dad was caught engaging in beastiality. He would go to our church on Saturdays and clean the building, and as if it wasn’t bad enough what he did, it happened on church grounds. I heard the original phone call. I heard the plea not to tell anyone. But the membership of our church was told, and that was the end of Daddy’s membership there, and also his service as a deacon. This prompted a hasty move which would have me transfer to a new school and thereby give me some protection from any trickle-down effects of that news reaching the ears of other kids.

No one outside of my parents ever spoke of that incident around me, so I have no idea who outside of that church and the reporter of the incident knew about it. I’m not entirely sure who in the family knows besides those who also went to church there. To be honest, I could have largely convinced myself that nothing ever happened had my dad not brought it up from time to time. He never truly acknowledged the deviancy of his behavior, but never failed to paint himself as the victim.

Nearly 5 years later, he was arrested for rape of two 12-year-old boys. I was 19. This was not an incident that was covered up. His arrest was announced on the local radio station’s news. It was reported on the front page of the local newspaper. I still remember like it was yesterday when my best friend called me because she had heard about it from someone who heard it on the radio. She could not believe it, and was ready to set the record straight. I had to tell her, “Yes, the report is true.” Meanwhile, my mom was beside me saying “No, it’s not true.” I was confirming that Daddy really had been arrested for rape. She was denying rape had occurred.

But I would later read his written statement. Written by his own hand, he gave his account, and he was guilty. Yet he maintained for years and years that what he did wasn’t wrong. My mom stood beside him and supported him. A friend of theirs came to offer support and called those boys “just trash.”

Daddy plead guilty to avoid what would have been an ugly trial. The judge gave him the minimum sentence, but that was still 7 years. It would be another year after sentencing before there was a bed available in one of the state penitentiaries. He went to prison shortly after I turned 21, and served 5 years before being granted parole.

To give a little more perspective to this, the beastiality event occurred when he was 61 years old. The rape incident shortly before his 66th birthday. He was by no means a young man. We were Landmark Missionary Baptists – a sect that considered (and probably still does, to an extent) Southern Baptists too liberal.

I listened to him as time went on from the arrest, conviction, and incarceration make himself out to be the victim. He claimed he was “set up” because he was speaking out about the drugs in our neighborhood. By “speaking out” I mean talking loudly. He never assumed full responsibility for his actions, and absolutely never repented. Once I had children, especially a son, I had to watch him like a hawk because I knew he could not be trusted not to molest him.

Because I read the statement and listened to him make himself the victim instead of the perpetrator.

I have looked back at his behavior in the years leading up to the rape, and I can see the predatory signs in retrospect. The grooming. I have often wondered how many more victims there are. I carried guilt and shame that I was unable to stop him. Unable to protect those boys. Unable to protect any of them. I didn’t know how to recognize the signs beforehand. But to be honest, at that age, particularly given the fear I had of my dad’s wrath, I was powerless. Because I had been beaten and berated into submission my whole life. “Honor thy father…” And with the skewed view of sex I was raised with, it is no wonder that I have always been able to sexualize anything.

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Aside from being collateral damage from my dad’s sexual deviancy and abuse, I have been the recipient of unwanted and unwelcome lewd comments, touching, kissing, and propositions. As a married woman, I have had married men who not only knew I was married but also knew I knew were married try to pursue sex with me. I remember hearing a group of guys I was stationed with talking about Faith Hill. “She has legs all the way up to her ass!” I knew what that meant. And I also knew that as a tall, slim woman with long legs, that I also had “legs all the way up to my ass.”

“Locker room talk” is demeaning, degrading, and disrespectful. It shows at best a seared conscience and at worst a lack of conscience to treat another human being in this manner. It is not simply a “potty mouth.” I have a potty mouth (which I learned primarily at home growing up), and there is a big difference between dropping the s-bomb, d-bomb, or even f-bomb as an expletive and bragging about or fantasizing aloud about forcing yourself onto another person. Sexual abuse is not a joke. Sexual abuse is evil. To dismiss it as less than that is to condone and enable evil – no matter which wing you identify with.

The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart. Luke 6:45 NASB

The Conservative Christian’s Prosperity Gospel

As Christians who believe that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant word of God, why then, as many times as God tells his people, “Fear not,” do we spend so much time worrying and hand-wringing over things we cannot control?

I often think that the calls by some pastors for a national repentance and revival are borne out of fear of losing American entitlement more than concern for the individuals in our nation. I am not saying they don’t care about people, but that they care more for our prosperous way of life. They fear suffering as much as their congregations do, and rather than repeating God’s word to “Fear not,” they stoke fear.

Jesus didn’t die on the cross for the United States of America.

There is a reason that the United States is not mentioned in the Bible.

We ain’t all that.

We have been undeservedly blessed with prosperity. Undeserved because we were not founded on Judeo-Christian values as touted by 20th century revisionists. We are no more sinful as a nation now than we were when our country was founded.

We were founded on the principle that only white men of European ancestry had value. Women had no vote. Male African slaves were worth 3/5 that of a white man. The indigenous people living in North America had no value, and were systematically rounded up, forced to relocate, and often slaughtered so that there is now just a small remnant of a few tribes left.

And we have the gall to think we are entitled to our way of life.

We have spent our prosperity on our own comfort, and above all we do not want to be uncomfortable. Discomfort is too much like suffering, and lord knows we do not deserve to suffer. We are to be healthy and blessed. It’s the sinners who are to suffer: the addicts, the alcoholics, the fornicators, the homosexuals, the abortionists, the feminists, the atheists, and certainly without doubt the Muslims. Not us. We made a decision to follow Christ and now God owes us health, wealth, prosperity, and security because we are not like those people.

We have followed a false American god for too long. We as Christians need to repent every bit as much as sinners. But not for our prosperity. No. So that we can once again be salt and light in the world and do good to others. Feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and take care of widows and orphans. We are saints because Jesus declared us to be saints. Not because we were or are good enough to be a saint. We did not and do not deserve the grace we have been given. And rather than worrying and stewing about ISIS and Democrats/Republicans, we should give to others out of the abundance we have been given.

Because that is what the Savior we call Lord told us to do.

Without fear.

Without worry.

Without judgement.

With love.

Because He first loved us.

If what you are preaching and proclaiming sounds is indistinguishable from the messages proclaimed in a political debate or rally, you are not being salt and light in the world. Our hope does not rest in a political solution. Our hope is in Jesus Christ and Him alone. Not in “old fashioned,” “traditional,” or “conservative” Christianity. Not in “progressive” or “modern” Christianity. Not in the President of the United States, the Republican party, the Democrat Party, Congress, or the Supreme court. Not in laws or guns or gun control or a Confederate battle flag.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1 John 4:18-21 ESV)

In the mud

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When I was in Kindergarten, I remember one day standing on the sidewalk, and it had been raining. Someone ran up to me right in front of me kind of in my face, and it surprised me so much that I stumbled back, and fell off the sidewalk onto my butt right in a puddle. I got significantly wet enough that a change of clothes was required.

When I got home wearing different clothes and carrying the ones I had worn to school in a bag, my dad questioned me as to what happened. I told him, and then proceeded to get a dressing down for falling down.

Naturally I fell into that puddle on purpose.

Because I was berated for falling, I began to develop a fear of accidents. That fear was reinforced over and over again throughout my childhood because I had a lot of accidents. You know, like kids do. The constant fear, however, led to a compulsive need to control my environment in order to prevent accidents and extraordinary efforts to cover up any that happened in spite of all of my careful prevention.

A life lived in constant fear is not a life lived well.

A life lived trying to anticipate what ifs is a life devoid of peace.

Out of my distress I called on the LORD; the LORD answered me and set me free. The LORD is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me? (Psalm 118:5-6 ESV)

As a child, I lived in constant fear that was reinforced by an emotionally and mentally unsafe environment. I was always on guard because I never knew when an attack was coming nor what might precipitate one. Thus I became unwittingly and unwillingly addicted to excitement and therefore sought out ways to feed that need my body had for adrenaline.

Fear-based perpetual outrage.

Our news media makes huge profits off our need to feed our fear and anger. Social media provides us the means to instantly share and thereby stoke the anger and fears of our hundreds of friends and followers. We square off into our various tribes demonizing and dehumanizing whoever doesn’t agree with us. Because, after all, we are the enlightened ones and are therefore better than them. So we seek out more like us, and more information to back up our beliefs.

We are obsessed with being right instead of desiring to be at peace with and/or understand our neighbors.

We have convinced ourselves that we must be in absolute control of the world around us so that we can feel safe.

All the while the media profits from turning left and right against one another – brother against brother, sister against sister. So divided are we that we are losing cohesion and ultimately destroying the security we crave.

And while we are trying to control our surroundings to keep from falling in the mud, we fail to realize we are flailing around in the puddle that we fell in a long time ago.

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How did you learn respect

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I’ve always bucked against authority, but not necessarily for the sake of being a rebel. I’ve been repeatedly labeled an instigator, and I do not (because I cannot) deny it. I’ve even been called a honey badger. Honey badger don’t care. She does what she wants! Of course, she often gets “stung” by the cobra and then has to take a nap.

As much as I bucked against and resent(ed) my strict, legalistic religious upbringing, it kept me out of so much trouble I could have gotten in given all the vices I flirted with. I absolutely do not recommend legalism to combat vice because if it really worked, I might not have flirted.

Because I was under such strict authority, I developed an unhealthy fear of authority figures. Compliance was almost always out of fear rather than respect, at least initially. As I got older I learned to distinguish between dictatorial authority and leader/teacher/mentor authority, but I had a big learning curve.

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I’ve been seeing a lot of posts on Facebook that state they learned respect by getting good ass whippings as a kid. I know they are just resharing a meme, and I can’t speak for anyone else’s raising. But I know for a fact that I did not learn respect of any kind from any whipping I got as a kid. I learned from those whippings to fear punishment when I do wrong from those giving me the whipping, and nothing more.

I want to note, I am not anti-corporate punishment. I can’t say it’s never necessary, and I also cannot say that it was always given to me inappropriately. It was the berating from my dad that accompanied the whippings that did the greatest damage. Therefore, any spanking/paddling from anyone else was taken in the same manner – as punishment for not being smart enough to be good enough.

Therein lies a big problem when we try to project a meme as a cure-all when we don’t know any backstory. For all the discipline and instruction to respect elders and authority, I still carried around an unhealthy and disrespectful view of authority just waiting to spew out. A1C Nemec still gave a 2Lt the stink eye and a snotty answer over the way he asked her who gave the all clear after a simulated attack. SSgt Nemec was still openly and belligerently disrespectful to a Chief Petty Officer on multiple occasions.

Respect that is borne out of fear of punishment is not respect. It is self-preservation, and doesn’t place value on other people. Healthy respect places high value on another person regardless of that person’s position of authority.

We actually learn respect by watching others model what respect looks like. A quick glance through political posts on Facebook gives a clue as to where today’s children get their lack of respect from. “Democrats/Liberals are idiots!” “Republicans/Conservatives are stupid!” We disparage those with whom we disagree politically/ideologically/religiously and wonder why our kids are disrespectful.

I listened to my dad exalt himself above everyone my whole life and picked it right up and ran with it. It was my normal. I think this is the kind of attitude that fuels the perpetual outrage that manifests itself on Facebook through self-righteous political/religious posts demonizing, devaluing, and ultimately dehumanizing whatever group/culture/ideology/class/ethnicity/religion we disagree with. After all, we believe we have figured out what’s wrong with the world. “If only people would just listen to me…”

Most events are not clear-cut with a black-and-white clear cause and effect. People who hold different beliefs or belong to a different culture than you are not beneath you with nothing to teach you. We are all struggling with junk. When we have to tear someone else down in order to show our superiority, we are actually showing the ugliness of our own attitudes and beliefs. And that in no way exalts us above others except in our own minds.

It’s that lack of respect for other human beings that is what is wrong with our society today. And as long as we continue to perpetrate, the worse our society is going to get because where there is no respect, there is certainly no love.

So think about how you really learned respect and whether or nor you really show it.

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