Unconditional Respect= Participation Trophies?

Growing up I always had a special attraction to World War II stories.  I was taught to lionize Corrie Ten Boom and others who stood up against the Nazis, risking their lives to protect others.  I fell in love with Dietrich Boenhoffer.  I read Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I read about Jane Addams, Mary Bethune, Mother Jones and Amy Carmicheal.  These men and women were heroes because they took a personal stand against injustice.  I knew that all good people should aspire to be like them.

All good people would of course include all good Christians.  I did not study the long history of injustice and abuse sometimes instigated by the church (pogroms) and other times promoted by the church (Nazi propoganda) and in some cases merely given tacit approval by the church (Ku Klux Klan).  If I had, if Christians would study the dark side of their own history, maybe we wouldn't be so prone to repeat it.  But regardless, I grew up respecting these people because of their character and their accomplishments.

The church was supposed to lead a love revolution on the planet. This was Jesus' command, to love one another.  This was Jesus' example, to go about doing good.  This true Christianity still survives, but not in the Christian publishing empire.  Nope, the visible church is once again at time instigating abuse, promoting abuse and giving tacit approval to abuse. And this time, it's my beloved country. This time, it's my beloved fellow citizens foaming with self-righteous hatred at any suggestion of living a life of love as a society.

Pay a penny tax to help the children of the poor?  Suggestions like that provoke overt anger in "good Christian" men.  Restrict access to high-kill firearms so that society suffers less gun violence?  "Good Christian" men become livid at the suggestion that they modify their behavior in any way, for any purpose.  They demand their rights be respected!!

But other people's rights?  Let them fight for themselves.  Well-off white Christian men worked hard for what they have, and it's theirs!  It is not possible anymore to get them to consider that other Americans work just as hard, if not harder, for far less because they were born without the advantages of middle-class white people. They won't even admit these advantages exist.  And if they do admit to any advantage, they have no gratitude or sense of humility about having it, they will just claim it is because of their parents' hard work.  As if the children born into poverty all have lazy parents- which is what they truly believe.  They do not even try to understand what life is like for those on the bottom tier of economic system.  They don't believe it is right or good to do so.

That is where we are today. Good is called evil, and evil good, and by the very people (Christians- followers of Jesus Christ!) who should be leading the charge to minister to "the least of these".  

Today's evangelical church has a new cause- patriarchy, not brotherly love.  Today's evangelical church has a new enemy- gay people, not personal failure to live a life of love.  Today's evangelical even has a new "least of these" to be concerned about, and it's not the poor, the crippled, the widowed, the hungry or those in prison with whom Jesus chose to be concerned.  (Oh  no, especially not those in prison!)  The church is concerned about male privilege- the loss of which they liken to being castrated. This is the emergency the church must respond to NOW- not feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, housing the homeless or visiting the socially isolated.  The big need today is for wives to offer unconditional respect to their husbands.

Unconditional respect?!  When I was a child that would have been loudly denounced. That's what Stalin demanded of the people of the USSR.  That's what Hitler demanded first of Germany and then the world.  American earn respect, they don't demand it.  Unearned respect is an oxymoron anyway. 

Respect carries with it the idea of admiration, a belief in the superior nature of the one being respected for a real reason.  We respect Teddy Roosevelt for taking on trusts. We respect Mother Theresa for her dedication to the poor. Some respect athletes for the dedication that made them world class players, or even for the natural talent they possess.  But in all cases, respect is there because admiration was there first.

Recently the right wing has rightfully attacked "new age" pedagogy, which gives out trophies to all children for participation, rather than rewarding only the best results.  Conservatives scoffed at the notion that a child's self-esteem was at stake.  Life is competitive, and only the ones at the top get rewarded.  I tend to agree with this, that self-esteem will always be based on real accomplishment. Accomplishment should be recognized and rewarded, in an effort to encourage children to strive for true achievement.  Merely showing up should not earn awards.  The "self-respect" such awards create is short-lived and unsatisfying, and makes children expect big rewards for little effort.  Critics claim that the unearned awards would make lazy, demanding whiners out of our nation's children.

And yet these same conservatives want grown women to give unconditional respect to men!! They even claim that the men's self esteem is suffering because they do not get the moral equivalent of participation trophies each day from their beaming wives.  Women are urged to give "unconditional respect" to their husbands or their poor man will suffer from being emasculated.  Men "desperately need" this unconditional respect, according to popular author Eggerichs, in his big money-making enterprise (books, DVDs, seminars, $$$$$) Love and Respect.

Christian men are "desperate" for their participation trophies?  But won't all that unearned "respect" ultimately back-fire?  When reality breaks in and the marriages fail and the broken, wounded people emerge from families led by immature, lazy, demanding whiners won't that be a bad thing?  Because it is. It no more builds strong families to offer husbands "unconditional respect" than it builds winning sports franchises to give all players equal time in a starting position.  Human nature doesn't work that way.  

This Eggerichs guy is getting rich, filthy freaking rich, by telling Christian women to use the same "new age" pedagogy that conservative rightly criticized and applying it toward their relationship with the grown men they married.  I am sure it is generously proof-texted, but that doesn't make it true.  If only Christian women would seek God on their knees, and then use the good brain God gave them to seek our truth, this book would not be a best-seller.  The world will be a much better place when the self-made Christian golden ghetto disappears, and all the hucksters and snake oil salesman disappear with them.  

I am happy to report that my husband earns my respect by his character and achievement. When his character  or actions are not worthy of respect, he figures it out pretty quickly and takes appropriate action. THAT is why our marriage is making it where many others have failed.  The damage of misogynist fundamentalist religion in our marriage was addressed (is still being addressed) by both of the adults in this relationship.  We each, regardless of our gender, have taken (are still taking) responsibility for our beliefs and the actions that spring from them. As God spoke to Cain in the garden, "If you do good, shall you not be rewarded?" 

Trophies go to those who earn them.  Respect is awarded to those who earn it.  Unearned respect, like unearned trophies, may feel good at first but the concept is just setting men up for failure.  Ultimately the world does not continue to stroke the egos of lazy, demanding whiners.  It just is not going to make better men or better marriages, and by extension better families.  Christian homes will be a toxic mess of entitled husband/fathers, harried wives/mothers  and wounded children who will see right through it as they grow up under the madness of such a contrived emotional system of padre pandering.

PS The unconditional love that "women long for"?  All of humanity longs for it. And that, we are COMMANDED  to offer freely to one another, married  or not, regardless of gender, or age, or any other descriptive term.  

John 13:34

New International Version 1984 (NIV1984)

³⁴ “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

Dear Fil

(Warning: strong language ahead.)

Dear Fil,

Please don't call here anymore. Every time you call, you set off a shitstorm of abuse in my household.  Once it even ended in a suicide gesture.  The worst part of that incident was that it involved criminal activity that endangered other people.  Yes, the missionary kid got blinding, puking drunk chugging Four Loco and malt liquor in the Wal-Mart parking lot and drove home.  He could've killed not only himself, but other innocent people.  This last phone call had him driving 25 miles over the speed limit in poor weather conditions, angry at all those people who were "in his way".

What did you do to this man's heart as he grew that has filled him with so much self-loathing and rage?  And why does driving seem to factor into the fallout?  You, Mr. Missionary Preacher Man, are a wicked, heartless, cold-blooded reptile.  You are completely self-centered.  You don't give a shit about your children's hearts, only how they make you look to your cult peers.  You don't even ask any important questions, ever, and when people try to talk about things like feelings, you change the subject.  You are a braggart, and the only value your children and grandchildren have for you is for bragging rights.  Fuck you.  You have contributed nothing  but harm to your family; your legacy is broken men who abuse their wives and children, religious addicts mired in depression and who seek release in bullying others. You are the lowest of the low.  And you suck up undeserved respect from your career choice and the children you intimidated into never questioning you or your cult.

In a perfect world, you would be having some kind of end-of-life fearless moral inventory.  In a perfect world, you would be seeking to truly know and truly care for the hearts of your children and grandchildren.  Hell, if you were even human some of that might be happening.  Non-religious people live this way all the time, without any prompting from moral tomes.  Here you claim to follow Jesus the Christ, a man who promoted love, sincere love, as the highest way any man can choose to live, and you have one of the most cold, lifeless hearts I have ever known.

But, it's not a perfect world. You won't ever change.  You are a self-centered, self-involved religious bigot and all you care about is gaining religious hit points to increase your stats with your fellow fundy cult members.  Shame on you.

What makes me the angriest is how *I* catch the heat for your abuse after you call.  My husband doesn't even try to talk to you about anything important anymore, though he has in the past.  It's too painful to come face to face with the reality that your parents don't love you.  So, he plays along with your little games.  Talk about the weather, talk about nothing, and then you issue your demand for him to show up and pay homage to you in person, opening that "invitation" with a remark of how older brother has just fulfilled HIS obligation, so when are you going to get with the program?

He stuffs all his feelings when you call. He becomes numb.  He says the phone call went well, and then changes the subject. The only difference in his demeanor right away is that he is a bit more distant.  Over the next few days he becomes less and less affectionate, a little more irritable. He starts to spend more time watching sports and disappearing into computer games.  When someone calls him on bad behavior, he will apologize, but not with the affection and sincere regard for the other's feelings that had characterized him in more recent weeks. In short, he becomes his "old self".

He disappears back into PAPD, needing to cause a conflict in order to discharge all of his anger, and ultimately, give reason to the overwhelming shame he feels because of your indifference to his heart.  The conflict has to arise from someone's response to his silence or inaction, so he can tell himself he didn't start it, it's the other person's fault.

That other person is always me.  That's because you, Fil, by your overt and covert teaching, raised my husband to hate women.  You raised him to view them as empty-headed and emotional, with emotional being a bad thing rather than a part of the healthy human condition.  When he is in this, his reptile brain, he becomes you, Fil.  He treats me with the same contempt and resentment that he saw (and I have seen) you treat his mother.  This time it took over twenty-four hours for him to come back to reality.

Right now I am not in danger when he gets like this, but only because my son is here to protect me.  My son goes away to college in a year.  If my husband isn't free of the bomb in the brain that you planted, that you set off every time you call, then I will have to leave him.  I will be forced to leave him for my own safety, because he won't stop taking your calls.  And you won't stop calling.

And fuck you for that.   Fuck you because you never call because you care for anyone but yourself.  You call because you have no heart friends, and the wife is in long term care now.  You can't even abuse her openly anymore.  It won't have the same affect when you tell her that her contribution to the conversation is "the stupidest thing you ever heard", because she has Alzheimer's now.   I wonder who you DO abuse now to try to feel better than everyone else?  People at church?

I think old abusive people are the saddest people on earth.  But don't come looking for pity here.  You won't find any from me. I wish my husband could tell you the truth about how you've hurt him, even though you wouldn't care and/or would deny responsibility.  I wish he was strong enough to cut you off completely from his life.  But he's not, not now, and he may never be.

And then your abuse just keeps on hurting him, because I will have to leave him if there's no hope he'll ever be completely safe for me to stay his wife.  That will really really suck if you get to cut him off from the only person in this world who has ever truly loved him or cared for his heart.  At least the children we raised together will always care for him, unlike your children who only come around you when the guilt you lay on them gets too much to bear.

Please don't call here anymore.  Just don't.  Oh, and get some help for your religious addiction before you die.  It would do so much good on the earth if you would.

A beautiful pro-life message

From a facebook wall discussion:

 Until a child is out, born and breathing in the world, it is just Potential. I've seen too many still born babies at full term and too many late term miscarriages in friends and family to feel otherwise. The loss of potential is sad, painful, heartbreaking, the loss of a potential person who could become anyone, be anything, even more so. But to choose a potential person over the well being and best interests of a being who is already here, with years of experience, choices, friends, family, and everything else already behind them, is to denigrate the value of lives already here just in the hopes of a better "what if". To me, it is to say that all a woman has done, achieved, and impacted in her life is not as worthy or important as what her child MIGHT achieve IF it manages to survive.

I'm 23 weeks pregnant. We chose to have this child, made the conscious decision as two committed, loving adults that if we got pregnant, baring health risks and life threatening birth defects in the child or risk to me, we would carry through. I wish no child was ever conceived except in those circumstances, by people willing and able to take care of it. I don't understand the mentality of someone being worthy enough to sleep with, but not have a child with, but that's just me, and I don't want to force my views on others.

But if something happened tomorrow, and we were to face a choice over my well being and safety, my life, over that of our baby,Jericho and I both agree we would tell them, "Save Me, save Em." From our first pregnancy, we discussed and worried about this, that dark fear of "What if" the worst happened. And Jericho told me then, it would be unfair and selfish for me to choose our baby over him, leaving him alone with a baby to raise, and no me to help or love either of them. In that case it's choosing the baby over the fathers well being, the same thing just with no physical risk to the dad, just a huge burden of sadness and loneliness, and a child he might resent to boot. And every time since that, the decision was already made. "Save Me, Save Em." if something should happen, because otherwise it would be choosing the unborn child not only over myself and my husband, but over my other already born children as well.

It would not matter to me if in a bit of clairvoyance God were to tell me that should my child live, he would cure cancer and bring peace to the world, unless he also promised my other kids and husband would be better off without me, proof that would never come, the answer would always be, "Choose me, Choose Em." Its not that I think I'm better than what my kids could potentially be, its that I know, as long as I'm here, I will do my best to love, protect, and guide them. It's the one little power I have on this earth, and something I won't give up without a fight.

I'm 23 weeks pregnant. We chose to have this child, made the conscious decision as two committed, loving adults that if we got pregnant, baring health risks and life threatening birth defects in the child or risk to me, we would carry through. I wish no child was ever conceived except in those circumstances, by people willing and able to take care of it. I don't understand the mentality of someone being worthy enough to sleep with, but not have a child with, but that's just me, and I don't want to force my views on others. 

But if something happened tomorrow, and we were to face a choice over my well being and safety, my life, over that of our baby,Jericho and I both agree we would tell them, "Save Me, save Em." From our first pregnancy, we discussed and worried about this, that dark fear of "What if" the worst happened. And Jericho told me then, it would be unfair and selfish for me to choose our baby over him, leaving him alone with a baby to raise, and no me to help or love either of them. In that case it's choosing the baby over the fathers well being, the same thing just with no physical risk to the dad, just a huge burden of sadness and loneliness, and a child he might resent to boot. And every time since that, the decision was already made. "Save Me, Save Em." if something should happen, because otherwise it would be choosing the unborn child not only over myself and my husband, but over my other already born children as well.

It would not matter to me if in a bit of clairvoyance God were to tell me that should my child live, he would cure cancer and bring peace to the world, unless he also promised my other kids and husband would be better off without me, proof that would never come, the answer would always be, "Choose me, Choose Em." Its not that I think I'm better than what my kids could potentially be, its that I know, as long as I'm here, I will do my best to love, protect, and guide them. It's the one little power I have on this earth, and something I won't give up without a fight.

Just Checking In

My first semester is over, and one thing I have learned: life is not going to get any easier for the next 20 months.  The school is not hard except in the most critical area: actual hands on learning of technique. We are given brief verbal instructions, once (sometimes not everyone gets them even) and then expected to perform like professionals. I kept waiting for the written instructions, checklists, visual aides, videos and helpful hints to be offered, in any format.  I finally found out (after flunking the hands on portion of the test) that they never will be offered.  It is expected that everyone who is not finding their own way to learn these skills (i.e. developing their own curriculum) and/or is not in the group who is lucky enough to hear the brief instructions in the first place, they will all be eliminated at the end of the next semester.

That, at this point, looks like it will include me.  BUT, I am now aware that I am waiting in vain for real teaching, and so I will spend my three weeks between semesters doing my best to develop my own curriculum for this skill.  Also, I know better now the level of expertise expected, though it is possible that starting out slow I will always lag behind the curve.  If that turns out to be the case, no worries. I will do my best to transfer to a different medical training school for a similar job.  The other option relies more on academics and scientific acumen, which are my strengths.  But I will have wasted a year and a lot of time and money.  :\

So, I am hoping that my home education skills at putting together my own curriculum will pay off in a big way.  Wish me well and pray for my success, all who read here.  I will need the cooperation of others so pray that I will have favor with the right people for this to work out.

On another note, my husband is happier and healthier than he has ever been.  He is working on his shame issues with his therapist, and that seems to be the foundation of all his depression and repressed anger.  Life with him is really good.

Also, I started doing thirty minutes of gentle yoga most mornings and evenings.  I got my first yoga lessons as a Christmas present.  I am now twenty pounds lighter, way more limber, and also happier.  Did you know the "Ohm" sound is really the first and last letter of the Sanskrit alphabet (Alpha and Omega, anyone?) followed by the MMMM sound because it is made with mouth closed reminding one of the presence of God within (...the kingdom of God is within you).  Why are Christians so scared by yoga?  Crazy.

I have thought about taking the blog off line, but I still get regular visitors reading for how Bill Gothard negatively affected my life.  So, though I will rarely post, I am going to leave the blog up for now.  I wish more evangelical women in crappy home school marriages would read here.  They would find the bread crumbs I left, and maybe be able to follow them out to freedom for their own family.  That's my wish.

Peace and good will, SS

My husband is outside playing basketball with our six year old neighbor kid.  It is so sweet to watch.  I think every smile on that little one's face brings a bit more healing to my husband's heart.  It makes me very happy to watch.

70/04/2012

Self-Congratulatory Ego Stroking Nonsense

"You are a REAL MAN when you: commit to study God's Word, when you teach your children, when you love your wife."

o_0


Seriously?  Now Christians are willing to dehumanize all other people everywhere in order to stroke their own egos and emphasize their superiority to those other mere (hell bound, presumably) slobs?

This is so obviously wrong that it should never see the light of day, and yet Christians are proudly plastering this all over their facebook walls this morning.

Can you imagine Jesus ever saying such nonsense?

Does Jesus anywhere call for people to "study God's Word"?  I don't think so.  Please post chapter and verse from the gospels if I am wrong.

(Fundies: don't even try to say Jesus=the whole Bible so a verse from OT or epistles are on the same level as the actual teachings of Jesus as remembered by the early church.  That's a load of manure and if you were more intellectually honest, it would have occurred to you too.  Meditate on the lesson of the Mount of Transfiguration and it will be plain: Jesus and Moses, Elijah, the disciples are NOT on equal footing.  Jesus is GOD.  Those others guys are just people, like you and me, whose lives were touched by God.  HUGE difference!!)

Jesus commanded us precious few things, so they are easy to remember:  A new command I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you.  By this will all men know you are my disciples, if you love one another.

When it comes to children, Jesus loved them and touched them.  He warned people not to offend them.  He said nary a word about "teaching them".

Of course, Jesus was a constant teacher, but when I see a fundamentalist use the word "teach" in connection with the word "children" it usually means something very different than emulating the life of Jesus and how he related to those he taught.  It means spank, demand obedience even when unfair and unjust, and coerce them to emulate spoken and overtly taught parental values like what to think, feel, watch and say. This would include memorizing Bible verses and parroting Christian cliches without thinking about them very deeply.  All a far cry from the nurture and compassion Jesus showed little children and commanded us to also show.  All a far cry from the love and acceptance Jesus showed the crowds of people who came to Him to be healed and taught about the love of God.

Jesus and women? Jesus turned Old Testament misogyny upside down by accepting women as disciples, talking to them as equals, touching them without concern as to whether they were "bleeding" or not, commending for their faith, calling them up to the front of the synagogue, and more.  The list of the ways Jesus defied the patriarchy and honored women is very long.

I don't believe Jesus would ever have used the phrase "REAL MAN" about anyone, because it implies that other men are lesser and women, well we all know what the opposite of a "REAL MAN" is right?  A pussy, a girly-man, a pansy, and a wimp are all pretty much interchangeable insults used as the opposite of a "REAL MAN".  The phrase itself is misogynist to the core.

Oh, and the PRIDE fed by such a statement!  I simply cannot see Jesus ever endorsing such ego-stroking hyperbole, not ever.  If there is one thing Jesus was "against" it was religious posturing and the pride that goes with it.  Oh. my.

That statement just is rotten to the core.  I know of one very abusive, mentally off-balance patriarch who will puff up with pride when he reads this statement.  His children are all emotionally wounded by growing up in his strict fundamentalist patriarchal family cult.  As they age out and break free, the family gets more fractured because the patriarch disowns them for choosing a life different from his own sick, twisted (but scriptural when one is allowed to proof text!) religious life.

His wife is miserable.  The children she sacrificed career and self-development to birth and raise are torn from her. She has to choose between "submission" to the patriarch and loving her children.  How sick is that?

But this guy fits the "REAL MAN" label above.   He, his life and his family are the living examples of how these religious catch phrases have replaced true devotion to Jesus with gaining the approval of your co-religionists.

My husband is a real man. So is my son. So are my Sikh, Jewish and Hindu neighbors.  A real man is one who exists.  Period.  Stop with the loaded language and ego-stroking, church.  It's repulsive.

*sigh*  I have to get back to studying.  I just wanted to get this off my chest.  Peace and good will to all who read here.  You are all real people, fyi!  :)  Shadowspring

Jesus vs. American "christians"

Probably everyone has already seen or heard of this video clip in which a Republican congressman loses it on the Illinois house floor.

I live in the middle of a very Religious City.  I think I saw recently where it was in the top rankings for religious cities in the country.  I don't have time to hunt down the link, but supposedly 53% percent of people in my city attend  Christian services or at least self-report that they do.  There are 800 +/- churches in the greater metro area.

The odds are good that if a person is white, older and female, they go to church.  If they are Christians, the odds are good that they (for some inexplicable reason) are also pro-everything Rush Limbaugh likes, anti-everything Rush Limbaugh hates, and are registered Republican.  This actually makes no sense if they were actual disciples of Jesus.

Though Jesus never took a side as far as politics go, he did take up for the outcast (lepers, blind, disabled for any reason), the marginalized (tax collectors, women of ill repute), the foreigner (Samaritan, Syro-Phonecian, Roman), and the economically disadvantaged (compassion on the crowds with no food, the widow(s) at the temple).  Nowhere did Jesus favor the rich or the powerful religious elites, in fact he warned people to watch out not to become like them (beware the leaven...) and warned them not to seek to become  rich (seek you first the kingdom, how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom...).

So, it seems pretty plain to me that if you are against universal health care, you are not following Jesus in desiring to heal the sick.  If you are against public assistance for the disabled, you are not following Jesus in having compassion for the economically/socially disadvantaged.  If you are in favor of further labeling and marginalizing gay people as "abominations", you are not following Jesus in showing acceptance and welcome to the marginalized.  If you want to build a big fence to electrocute people fleeing privation/starvation in hopes of providing a better future for their children here in America, in fact if you want to do anything other than make it easier for these people, both by ending American imperialist policies that hurt their own economies (drug wars?) and making an easier process for them to immigrate legally, then you are not following Jesus in showing compassion to the foreigners among us.  If you demonize people who are poor and hungry as too lazy to work and begrudge assisting them in any way, you are not following Jesus in showing honor and offering real help to the poor and the hungry.

If you praise the rich as being  "successful", claiming they are more virtuous than other people, you listen to Rush with more intention than you read your Bible.  The Bible is full of pronouncements of judgement (the disapproval of God) on the rich and those who strive to be rich.  There is no way you can be a disciple of Jesus and call the mega-wealthy "job creators".  The two opinions of the wealthy elite (Rush Limbaugh vs. Jesus) stand in stark contrast.  I suppose you could point to the prosperity promised observant Jews in the Old Testament as proof that wealth means God approves of you, but you can't point to anything Jesus said or did that upholds that belief. Paul goes as far as to state plainly (in more than one way in more than one epistle) that Jesus is the end of the Law.  If you're following Jesus, the Old Testament law is irrelevant.  The  new command of Jesus is the only one that matters:

1. John 13:34
   A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
2. John 15:12
   This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.

Which is why it is inexplicable to me, and so ugly, that  today's evangelical equates being Republican with being Christian.  It makes absolutely no sense.  Anyone who takes the call to follow Jesus seriously can not in good conscience align themselves with the current Republican party.  Go ahead and try.  It just doesn't stand up to scrutiny if you actually read the Bible and want to obey Jesus.  

So, any thoughtful Christian would decry the actions of the congressman from Illinois, right?  After all, the New Testament is pretty plain that the congressman's actions* (railing:  to complain by being harsh and angry (usually followed by "at" or "against") are declared something that disciples of Jesus should clearly not be doing  (I Tim 6:4; I Peter 3:9; 2 Peter 2:11; Jude 1:9).  

That doesn't even take into account the many places Christians are admonished to be kind, gentle, bless and curse not, and to cultivate the lovely fruit of self-control.  There is absolutely no way this rant of a crazed lunatic could qualify as Christian or garner the praise of Christians, right?  Right?!  Right!?!?!

Yeah, not right.  In the break room at a local business, when this childish churl came up on the television, the outspoken Christian in the break room cheered for him, clapped, exulted over his (uninformed and childish) rant.  Worse, her co-worker chimed in a belated "Amen!"  These are the same people who openly sneered at me last year when I remarked that I had nothing against gay folks getting married if they had the courage to go for it.  

These two women probably think they are "good Christians".  I am confident they are Republican.  If a Democrat had engaged in similar behavior, they would be loudly denouncing how "ungodly" the congressman was behaving.  If any one they hated, a gay person or an immigrant or a lawyer for the ACLU, behaved in similar manner, it would probably be reckoned as one more justifying reason for their hatred.  Yet because a Republican cursed, screamed, threw things and whined about not getting his way,  they actually applauded.

I fear for my country.  Pastors openly call for child abuse against boys who love and emulate their mothers, for state executions of gay people,  for ending access to birth control for women and taking away women's right to vote.  They would like to end affirmative action  laws so they can go back to discriminating against minorities in the work place without penalty.  I have heard all these things in either sermons broadcast on the internet, read them in books or witnessed it in person by a pastor from the pulpit.  I even heard one pastor declare that slavery was not wrong, because the Bible supported it, but he wouldn't elaborate because it was not "politically correct".  Uh, dude, it's way worse than that.  Unless nothing would please you more than becoming a slave,  which I doubt, there is no way you can love another person and enslave them at the same time.  It just can't be done.

Which proves my point: Jesus is no longer necessary for American evangelical and fundamentalist Christians.  They have the Bible, which they love way more and gives them permission to love what the current Republican party stands for ONLY IF THEY REMOVE/IGNORE THE WORDS AND LIFE OF CHRIST.  That's exactly what they do.  It's the only way a person who knows how to read could both claim to be a "christian" and honor the rich, slander the poor, ignore the sick, hate homosexuals and resent immigrants.  They have to love their politics more than they love their "lord" if in fact they publicly honor politicians who rail, curse and throw things when Republican legislation isn't passed swiftly.  

As a person truly smitten with Jesus, modern American Christianity disgusts me.  I am reminded  of a saying I heard recently, "Mixing politics with religion is like mixing manure with ice cream.  It does nothing for the manure (politics) but it ruins the ice cream (religion)."  

I haven't been to church regularly since last October.  I don't plan to attend  more than once a month for the foreseeable future.  Once you've been handed a manure-laden ice cream cone, it sort of puts you off of ice cream altogether, even when there is no manure added into the current edition.  *shudder*

There was a time when being ugly and rude was socially unacceptable, and it was largely because of religion that this was true.  But what will happen to our city, our country, when religion is the force behind public demonstrations of hate and violence? If things don't turn around in our society soon, we may find out.  

So while it was easy yesterday to just get up and walk out of the break room, I am concerned that one day not joining in will be enough to have my fellow citizens denounce ME openly. For those who scoff that America will never become so ugly, I hope you are right.  I once thought the church would be a place that promotes peace and advocates for the poor, but reality has dissuaded me of that notion.  Once the church has gone off the rails (and it has) what will keep the whole country from following?

PS The congressman's words were wrong anyway!  The Constitution of the United States of America clearly calls for the role of Speaker of the House.   "The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment."   You can read the entire text of the Constitution of the United States of America online here:  www.usconstitution.net