The Jesus Police

Getting run out of the faith or consigned to hell by fellow believers because you don’t buy their particular world view is not for sissies. Apparently you can be hell bound for being a Democrat, wondering why gay kids shouldn’t be exposed to the foundational  American values of the Boy Scouts, or drinking coffee at Starbucks.

After numerous run ins with the Jesus Police I decided to find out for myself just who these people are. I figured this would be some handy information to have, since they’re literally everywhere, and they are totally unpredictable.

Sure,  there are some things that you know will attract their baleful stares.  Being a Democrat, not believing Obama is a Muslim, thinking gay rights is a civil thing. Then there’s the earth is more than six thousand years old heresy, or believing there are good reasons why the word Jesus does not appear in our constitution. You’re not reading the KJV or you’re disagreeing with Paul. These are things you know will get your sorry butt thrown in Jesus Jail.

It’s when they show up at Starbucks, bibles drawn and cocked, or they bristle at a picture of fried chicken, (FRIED CHICKEN?) that you know you need more insight into what actually sets the propeller on their beanies spinning.

So I went to their website, SMITE.ORG and had a look around.

Turns out they are not all that organized, more like a group of balloons suddenly released into a stiff breeze. But they do share some common traits. First, you do not actually have to love scripture to belong to the Jesus police, you just have to be able to quote it. And with the internet, Bible Gateway.com, a laptop, and the ability to use a keyword search function, you don’t even have to possess a cohesive theology.

At the top of the Jesus Police pyramid, much like the wise mystic holed up in a cave at the top of some mountain deep in the Himalayas is the “I studied it in the original Greek at seminary” clan. I think there’s around fifteen of them, because if there’s anything more useless than knowing ancient Greek in America today I can’t think of it right now. But still, they have the authority to lock you up in Jesus Jail so you have to be careful.

I know this from personal experience. I once told one that the bible I have is in English, and when you gave it to me you said it was inerrant, so take your “ What it really meant in the original Greek” and see if you can order a Big Mac. I like to have never made bail.

Another arm of the Jesus Police is the “God told me” militia. These dudes are nuclear armed, because when they drop the “God told me” bomb, you are toast. Who argues with God? Of course when you point out that claiming God as cosigner on your personal dogma is a cheap debating trick not proof, it’s off to Jesus Jail you go.

Then there’s the “you are sowing disunity in the church” crowd, disunity meaning “Does not agree with me.” When you ask them if the church they’re referring to is the one with 30,000 denominations, each shouting apostate at the others, out come the bible cuffs.

There’s a few things you need to know about the Jesus Police, first, they have the sense of humor of an ashtray. Nothing in their world is funny, which is understandable given that so many people in their world are abominations. What’s to laugh about? One plus is that they have a terrible time sneaking up on you, watch for the most depressed looking guy in the crowd. Chances are he belongs to the Jesus police.

Next, quoting non KJVscripture is not a defense in Jesus court. In fact it can get you additional charges. Back in 2009 a church in North Carolina actually burned non-KJV bibles. Now there’s some irony for you. A church burning bibles.

 To sum up, the Jesus police are born to annoy, an iconic branch of the faith without which it would be just a bit more dificult to feel superior.

Locked and Loaded

The Family Research Council, whos primary mission is apparently the anti-harvest because they are expert at appalling believers and unbelievers alike, recently sent Jerry Boykin to address a meeting of WallBuilders. Now there's a pair from hell.

WallBuiders, no shrinking violet when  it comes to converting American history to right wing Christian mythology, and the American Research Council, which wouldn’t recognize research if it fell face forward into it, are charter members of Fleece the Flock, Inc. an organization formed to find out what the Rubes want to hear and then sell it to them. When these guys get together dung hits fans, usually in the form of mouth foaming, and this time was no different. Boykin claimed that
Jesus , when He returns, will be locked and loaded with an AR-15 assault rifle, His robe soaked in the blood of His enemies.

Said Boykin “The Lord is a warrior and in Revelation 19 it says when he comes back, he's coming back as what? A warrior. A might warrior leading a mighty army, riding a white horse with a blood-stained white robe ... I believe that blood on that robe is the blood of his enemies 'cause he's coming back as a warrior carrying a sword.  And I believe now - I've checked this out - I believe that sword he'll be carrying when he comes back is an AR-15.”

To quote one of my favorite lines from the show West Wing, “This is bad on so many levels.”

Would a fashion concious Jesus, whose perhaps most famous command was to “love your enemy” actually wear a robe stained with enemy blood? And how do you check this out, Google? Even worse, how do you debate morons? It’s not like they understand words with more than two syllables.

It’d be funny if it wasn’t so harmful to the enlarging of our tents.

Let It Go

 I feel a brain explosion coming on. It happens when I'm calmly surfing the net looking for cool stuff to share with you guys and I stumble onto an article or site that is so god awful moronic  that before I can escape my brain goes boom. It's a mess and a terribly time consuming job gathering up all the tiny little brain pieces and putting them back together.

It turns out the Disney movie “Frozen”, currently tearing up the box office world wide, pushes a gay agenda.  

According to Kathryn Skaggs, who  blogs as the Well-Behaved Mormon Woman, “The gay agenda to normalize homosexuality is woven into Disney's movie Frozen not just as an underlying message - it is the movie.” Apparently Disney designed the movie “in order to woo its intended audience, parents, into a frozen-state, which would then allow liberalism to indoctrinate children.” This puts a whole new light on the hit song “Let It Go”

The best part of the blog post, which is really long, is that she uses some great clips from the movie. So that’s fun. 

But Kathryn, we need to talk. Well behaved Mormon women don’t use their day passes to spew their mental condition all over the interwebs and they certainly don't write blog posts while they’re off their meds. Usually they let it go in group time where everyone has a peculiar mental twist and the counselors can nod and say thanks for sharing. No one in the group even notices your propeller beanie.

But out here, brains explode.

Slippery Slopes

If every single word of the bible isn’t literally, factually, and scientifically true, is God still God?

Is the point of the creation story how old the earth is, or that God created all things?

If stories like Adam and Eve or the Great Flood aren’t descriptions of actual, historical events, but rather allegories seeking to state clear spiritual truths, are they any less meaningful?

For inerrantists the bible becomes a trap, forcing them into incredible contortions of reason and bizarre rationalizations of totally unGodlike behaviors. Genocide, the death penalty for unruly children, stoning of adulterers, inerrantists have to develop complex and totally irrational theologies to explain away all kinds of things that a loving God would never do.

If, however, the bible is a book simply meant to be God’s means of helping man reconcile himself to Christ, an aid rather than an idol, then any questions that arise can draw us nearer to God. Jesus, after all was not referring to scripture when he said, “I am the Way”. The bible was never meant to be deified, Christ was. Reading the words of scientifically primitive writers was never meant to defy the truth of God’s creation in light of new information.

So relax, we have seen an explosion of knowledge in the last 100 years greater than the sum of all previously accumulated knowledge in the history of mankind and our faith still stands. So is the slippery slope really slippery, or even a slope?

Probably not.

Men's Relationship Rules

I thought I'd share this with you, Unfortunately I do not know who wrote this originally.....

WE ALWAYS HEAR 'THE RELATIONSHIP RULES' FROM THE FEMALE SIDE NOW HERE ARE THE RULES FROM THE MALE SIDE THESE ARE OUR RULES! PLEASE NOTE. THESE ARE ALL NUMBERED #1 ON PURPOSE!

1. MEN ARE NOT MIND READERS.

1. LEARN TO WORK THE TOILET SEAT. YOU'RE A BIG GIRL. IF IT'S UP, PUT IT DOWN. WE NEED IT UP, YOU NEED IT DOWN. YOU DON'T HEAR US COMPLAINING ABOUT YOU LEAVING IT DOWN.

1. CRYING IS BLACKMAIL.

1. ASK FOR WHAT YOU WANT. LET US BE CLEAR ON THIS ONE: SUBTLE HINTS DO NOT WORK! STRONG HINTS DO NOT WORK! OBVIOUS HINTS DO NOT WORK! JUST SAY IT!

1. YES AND NO ARE PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE ANSWERS TO ALMOST EVERY QUESTION.

1.. COME TO US WITH A PROBLEM ONLY IF YOU WANT HELP SOLVING IT. THAT'S WHAT WE DO. SYMPATHY IS WHAT YOUR GIRLFRIENDS ARE FOR.

1. ANYTHING WE SAID 6 MONTHS AGO IS INADMISSIBLE IN AN ARGUMENT. IN FACT, ALL COMMENTS BECOME NULL AND VOID AFTER 7 DAYS.

1. IF YOU THINK YOU'RE FAT, YOU PROBABLY ARE. DON'T ASK US.

1. IF SOMETHING WE SAID CAN BE INTERPRETED TWO WAYS AND ONE OF THE WAYS MAKES YOU SAD OR ANGRY, WE MEANT THE OTHER ONE.

1. YOU CAN EITHER ASK US TO DO SOMETHING OR TELL US HOW YOU WANT IT DONE. NOT BOTH. IF YOU ALREADY KNOW BEST HOW TO DO IT, JUST DO IT YOURSELF.

1. WHENEVER POSSIBLE, PLEASE SAY WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO SAY DURING COMMERCIALS.

1. CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS DID NOT NEED DIRECTIONS AND NEITHER DO WE...

1. ALL MEN SEE IN ONLY 16 COLORS, LIKE WINDOWS DEFAULT SETTINGS.. PEACH, FOR EXAMPLE, IS A FRUIT, NOT A COLOR. PUMPKIN IS ALSO A FRUIT. WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT MAUVE IS.

1. IF WE ASK WHAT IS WRONG AND YOU SAY 'NOTHING,' WE WILL ACT LIKE NOTHING'S WRONG. WE KNOW YOU ARE LYING, BUT IT IS JUST NOT WORTH THE HASSLE.

1. IF YOU ASK A QUESTION YOU DON'T WANT AN ANSWER TO, EXPECT AN ANSWER YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR..

1. WHEN WE HAVE TO GO SOMEWHERE, ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING YOU WEAR IS FINE...REALLY.

1.. DON'T ASK US WHAT WE'RE THINKING ABOUT UNLESS YOU ARE PREPARED TO DISCUSS SUCH TOPICS AS FOOTBALL OR MOTOR SPORTS.

1. YOU HAVE ENOUGH CLOTHES.

1 .. YOU HAVE TOO MANY SHOES.

1. I AM IN SHAPE. ROUND IS A SHAPE!

1.. THANK YOU FOR READING THIS. YES, I KNOW, I HAVE TO SLEEP ON THE COUCH TONIGHT.. BUT DID YOU KNOW MEN REALLY DON'T MIND THAT? IT'S LIKE CAMPING

Well I Didn't See That Coming

I wrote this a year ago......
 

“I need something to believe in,” he said. “It’s either that or just give up.”~Protester at Occupy Wall Street

We are blowing the moment. We are preaching a version of Christ that cannot be found in the Bible to a people that are crying out for the Christ that is present in the Gospels. What relevance is there in fulminating against gay marriage to a father struggling to feed his children? We are preaching against evolution while families wonder how to save their home from foreclosure. Our food pantries and benevolence funds are empty while pastors rant against gay soldiers putting their lives on the line for our country.

We are preaching to a dead church what the corpse wants to hear, while outside the sanctuary people who desperately need the Christ who was an advocate for the poor and the powerless can't figure out how the church they see at Value Voters conferences has any relevance to their immediate needs. So they turn elsewhere for comfort.

 There's a reason the church is deemed irrelevant by tens of millions of Americans. We're in an economic crisis of near historic proportions, more Americans live below the poverty line today than in anytime since the Great Depression. Millions of homes are in or near foreclosure, the percentage of Americans requiring food assistance stuns the imagination, at the current pace of job creation we'll not see a return to 5/6% unemployment for a decade if ever. And what are our so called religious leaders up in arms about? Gay marriage, evolution, and school prayer.

Could there be issues less important or relevant to the millions of Americans wondering how to feed, clothe, and shelter their families than gay marriage or creationism? Is it possible for the church to get farther from relevance to the immediate needs of their flocks or the people we're trying to reach for Christ than we are today? If a father asks "How do I feed my children?", "Vote against gay marriage, and for school prayer." is an answer unlikely to move him to Christ.

 So it's no wonder that for millions of people in crisis, the church isn't relevant, in fact they never even consider it as being part of the solution because the church seems blindly focused on problems that have no bearing on hunger, unemployment, homelessness, and the gut wrenching despair that accompany those troubles. There is a season for every cause, and to the extent that the church focuses on problems that do not have relevance to the season we're in, we fail Jesus.

People are in despair, fear, hunger. They feel that no one among the powerful heeds their fears.   And they AREN’T TURNING TO CHRIST FOR ANSWERS. Why? Because many people feel the same way about the church that they feel about the rest of America’s institutions. The church in America has become like the rest of the structure that resides at the top of the food chain, unresponsive, arrogant, disconnected, and self-righteous. The church lectures, protects its own, admits to no faults, seems more concerned with appearances than relevance. It has abandoned service to the least of us in favor of legislating morals. Maybe it’s time we take some guidance from the folks occupying Main Street and Occupy the Church.

Who knew it was going to be a Pope do the occupying?