Good Morning World!
Another Thursday, which means I get to tell you all how lovely and fun Wednesday Night (5pm at Vagabond) Giblet Coffee was. If you were there, you know how much fun it was, if you weren't well, Tough Shiites to paraphrase my dear dad.
Read a lively and quick little piece this morning and thought I'd share It's by a lady named Jenifer Venasco, whose writing reminds me of Ms. O'Mally at the ADN. Enjoy!
Here's A Franklin Grahm interview, can't understand the lack of morality and ethics that peeks through this guys Christianist rhetoric. Step one; dodge the question, "do you believe President Obama is a Christian?", by saying you'd have to ask him. Step Two; define a Christian within a narrow view, ignoring the hundreds of less traditional types of Christianity; including non-trinitarian beliefs, Coptics, Nestorian, Adoptionist, Socianism, Arianism, Unitarianism, Palagianism, Manicheanism, Bogomilism...I could go on, but you get the idea.
Forgive me if I now express a religious opinion, it's not done to minimize the non-Christians among us, but I know how talk of God and Jesus can be painful and upsetting to many of us who have been persecuted by Christianists and Ignorants.
No one has a monopoly on the interpretation and understanding of what Christ is or was (or wasn't at all). Which is a fundamental, if increasingly ignored, principle of American Baptist theology. (The one inherent in the Baptist 4 Freedoms, for those who don't know;
Most Baptist traditions believe in the "Four Freedoms" articulated by Baptist historian Walter B. Shurden:[41]
- Soul freedom: the soul is competent before God, and capable of making decisions in matters of faith without coercion or compulsion by any larger religious or civil body
- Church freedom: freedom of the local church from outside interference, whether government or civilian (subject only to the law)
- Bible freedom: the individual is free to interpret the Bible for himself or herself, using the best tools of scholarship and biblical study available to the individual
- Religious freedom: the individual is free to choose whether to practice their religion, another religion, or no religion; Separation)
Be wary of anyone who tells you what a Christian is, or is not. That said, I believe that persons using the Cross as an excuse for fascist, theocratic political manipulation are misusing the words of Christ himself; his greatest Commandment
"Love God, Love thy nieghbor as Thyself (actually the greek sense was more "as a member of thy household")".
The rest of his preaching seems mostly to be about the worthless-ness of wealth, and the need to build community by helping the "least of these" Those who annoy, who fail, who quit, who are sick in mind or body, (expressed as possessed by demons/spirits), and who fall short. Guess what, that last line includes EVERYONE.
There is a bumper sticker I love "When Jesus said to love thy enemy, he probably meant don't kill them". Isn't that the essence?
So, if you claim Christianity, then trust your God to be big enough to defend himself, he doesn't need your help. The changes Christiansts fear, in my mind, are the effects of that big old God making his Kingdom on Earth a better place.
When one fights and drags against it, it's a demonstration of a profound lack of faith in that God. It's the act of a fearful, insecure child. Trust God to bring the healing and fairness of Gay Marriage safely and healthily into the mainstream. Trust his teaching, and his guidance of scientists and physicians to learn about Transgendered people and the power to help them.
Trust that God can handle many interpretations of himself, and of his Christ, (and Buddha, and Mazda, and Mohammad, and the Earth Mother, and even the God with No Name, plus all the rest) and Quit trying to control the country because of the fearful LACK of faith the Christianist position betrays.
Anyhow, thanks for the chance to ramble.
Brianne
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