Stand Down Soldier, Stand Down

Why Binkie, there you are in full blown DefCon 3 mode, bible drawn and cocked. All dressed up in the armor of God, manning the trenches against the advancing gay horde and their allies.

Stand down soldier, stand down.

Oh, I know you’ve got this self image to protect. You’re a lean, mean fighting machine straight out of a video game. I’ve seen your paintings of the church militant. Unfortunately what the world sees is more  pimply faced adolescent holed up in his parents basement playing  Assassins Creed on his X-Box with the music of Styxx  pounding in the background.

C’mon now, we have bigger fish to fry. There’s a broken world out there, ready to hear about the love of Christ and you’ve gone and enlisted in a culture war that we were not commanded to wage.  That armor you’re wearing? It’s truth, righteousness, the Gospel of Peace. Its about faith and salvation, not warfare.  Ephesians 6.

So let’s  get back to fishing for men, after all, that’s what Jesus asked us to do. And those two most important commandments He mentioned?  You know, the ones about loving God and our neighbors? Why don’t we give that a shot? Imagine the effect we’d have if we treated gays like human beings instead of abominations.

Let’s treat the least of us with grace and compassion. Apparently when we do, that’s the way we’re treating Jesus. When we don’t it’s not pretty  ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” Mathew 25:44-46

When Jesus sent His disciples into the world He told them to “Proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.” Mathew 10: 7,8

Now this is important, so listen up. If they were rejected He told them to move on to fresh fields, no staying around trying to force folks to toe the line. No vast legislative efforts to make the outside world look like the church.

Time is short, so move on. If someone doesn’t like your message others will, so move on. This is about salvation, not hand to hand combat.

Guns In Bars

I'm gonna suggest you clear the room, cause 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.

North Carolina has passed a law allowing guns in bars. BOOM. Damn!!!

The problem, of course, is that North Carolina already allows alcohol in bars. I am an expert in the effects of alcohol consumption on the brain. I spent 21 years consuming alcohol, often in excess, and my studies lead me to conclude that alcohol consumption in the presence of guns is an idea comparable to barbecuing with gasoline, only more dangerous.

Now I may be an extreme case given that when I drink I fall down a lot, still it’s a really bad idea to have guns in bars and I doubt much good can come from it. Let’s do this, whenever you think of passing a law allowing guns in bars run immediately to an electrical outlet and plunge your fingers into it. The citizens you represent are still gonna die at an accelerated rate but this way you’ll be there to greet them.

Seriously? CARLOS DANGER?

All the fury about the latest iteration of disgraced ex-congressman and current New York city mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner’s roving fingers is completely misplaced. If a disgraced, adulterous ex-governor can win a seat in Congress in South Carolina I see no reason New Yorkers shouldn’t have a morally retarded mayor.

Sexting strangers is sordid, and frankly it weirds me out, but we’re missing an equally troubling aspect of this scandal in Weiner’s choice of screen name, Carlos Danger.

Seriously? CARLOS DANGER? What kind of fevered preteen id came up with that alias?

Plenty of politicians and world leaders have served admirably while possessing the personal morals of an ally cat, but at least they seemed like adults. Anthony Weiner appears to be stuck in some sort of sexual time warp, an adolescent, sudden rush of hormones stage, that drives most pre-teens bat crap crazy until they grow older and realize “Hey, I’m a sexual being, but that doesn’t mean I have to live in a crazed fantasy world forever.”

Hey New York, you can do better. Surely, in a city of nearly 8.5 million people,  there’s a stud muffin you could run for mayor with a more mature level of personal moral failure.

Boom!

I recently came across an article by a young seminary student that claimed a PhD level education was necessary in order to understand the bible, which if true is great job security for a seminary student.

“Cause after all, there’s not a lot of work out there for someone who’s paid thousands of dollars to learn ancient Greek and Hebrew if us ordinary believers can just pick up an NIV bible and understand it with a little discernment and a desire to know Jesus.

Which brings me to schism. I’m sure we could have schism without theologians, but they make the job so much easier. Every denomination has their theologies, all of which are supported by scholars with long strings of letters after their names shouting apostate at theologians they disagree with.

Bottom line is it’s all about power. Make the faith so complicated the sheep feel compelled to have paid professionals to sort it out for them. Voila. Job security. Elites clinging to power amid a shrinking pool of believers.

Maybe it’s time to blow it up and see what rises from the rubble. Oh, it’ll be messy alright, but Jesus showed us it could work.

Welcome to the Church of the Victim

Victims never recover. As long as the world and the people in it are the source of my woes, I’m doomed. Because you see I have no power over them. People are gonna do what they do. My real hope is that I’m the problem, cause I can change.

So I cringe when I hear Pastors and believers railing at the world, “We’d be just fine if it weren’t for the pornographers, or the abortionists, our children would not be fleeing the church if not for Hollywood, or gays, or Democrats, or liberals.”

Shut up with that stuff! Stop your whining and grab a mirror.

The church of the New Testament thrived in a sinful, broken world, today our faith grows like a weed in hostile environments, places where to self identify as a believer can be fatal. Why are we in decline in the freest country in the world for religious expression? If it’s the culture we live in we’re doomed, but If we’re screwing up, if we’re blowing it, we have a chance, we can start doing things differently, we can change.

The anarchist in me suspects we’re going to have to start heaving figurative bombs at the denominational ruling elites. We’re gonna have to occupy the church and send all the old, white victims running the church to therapy. We’ll need to retire the haters, send them packing. Or we can do nothing, just make sure the last believer out turns off the lights.

Welcome to the Christian Domestic Discipline Network- Loving Wife Spanking in a Christian Marriage.

Well that wasn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever done. When your brain spontaneously explodes into thousands of tiny pieces, gathering them up and putting them back together is work, work made harder still because you have no brain, just a lot of little brain pieces.

“How is it, John,  that your brain just up and exploded with no warning?”

I’m glad you asked.

Over the years I’ve developed a favorites list numbering almost two hundred Christian websites.  I find a website or a blogger that I like and that website/blogger leads to another. In time you have all these wonderful voices writing about Christ and the faith bookmarked so that you can return over and over again.

But every once in a while you stumble onto a website that is so totally bat crap crazy, so weird that before you have time to x-out your brain explodes. The closest I can describe the experience is sticking your finger in an electrical outlet, or for those of you who were products of the sixties, that moment when the LSD kicked in.

This time, it was the Christian Domestic Discipline Network- Loving Wife Spanking in a Christian Marriage.

As they explain it,  “A Christian Domestic Discipline marriage is set up according to the guidelines set forth in the Holy Bible, meaning the husband has authority over his wife within the bounds of God's Word and enforces that authority, if need be, through discipline including but not limited to spanking. He uses his authority to keep peace and order in his home, protect his marriage, and help his wife mature in her Christian walk.”

They go on. “Christian Domestic Discipline is not BDSM. It is not a game. While we do not deny its sometimes erotic nature, it is ultimately not for erotic purposes. It is often much different than the domestic discipline you will find outside of the Christian faith. As in, “Yeah, we know it’s hot but that’s not the only reason we do it.”

Paddles, apparently bare ass wives bent over a chair ready for a whipping, and the Bible? So yes, of course my brain exploded.