My Big Announcement

I have decided to be rather reactionary. I have a proclamation to make in response to the proclamation that appeared in the Edmond paper. First things first, June weddings are still on. Brides, don't get out that calender yet, you're okay. The second is that last year June was also National Pride Month. They missed the boat on that. It's an unshocker if you hit on it a year after the first time. The third and most important thing I have to say?

God is not an asshole. Yes, you heard me. God is not an asshole. He is not that old grandpa with a beard that likes to poke human brains with a pencil to see if it will make the body jump. He already knows that would make the body jump. Poking human brains with a pencil to see what happens is something HUMANS would do. So is, for the record deciding entire groups of people need to die. I'd even go so far as to say that's a MANLY thing to do. Men come up with this stuff. Not God.

You see competing visions of this in scripture all throughout the pages. On one hand, "God" is telling Israel to go kill everyone who currently lives in the promised land then he's telling them to be kind to the stranger in their land. Demanding the blood of animals and sons and then and telling people to stop that because he desires mercy and not sacrifice. So who wants the blood? We do.

Yes. It's us. The asshole god is made in our image. God steps in and says no. Love says no. We stand with the crowd and yell "Crucify him!" because we are the ones who want blood. Christ was the final and most dramatic plea to "cut that out!" and even though we've done our best to work around that (the Church couldn't shed blood, but they could stretch you out on the rack?) the gospels still say no.

We can put our blinders on, and we can explain our way around it, but it's still there. God is not an asshole. He isn't setting us up to fail. He's patiently waiting for us all to come Home.