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.

Love your enemies: It will drive them nuts.

No, "if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Love your enemies--it will drive them nuts. (I took this bit from Romans this morning but Paul is quoting Jesus.) It's really a brilliant concept. If you're battling someone's depravity (racism or oppression) in the court of public opinion, it's absolutely deadly to their case. If you repay evil for evil, you play into their hands. People don't feel sorry for someone who's participating in a dog fight.

I've noticed something else about being kind (not indulging the behavior, that's different) to someone who is repeatedly ugly to me though--the relationship gets better. Sure, you can't make a pit bull stop being a pit bull, but you can make her want to bite less. If you refuse to play the game, it's not any fun for them any more. Once it stops being fun, they stop playing. If you're lucky, they start seeing you as something other than a target.

It gets harder and harder to attack someone you've stopped seeing as a thing and started seeing as a person. I'm convinced that this is why Christianity became legal in the first place. The Roman public stopped seeing them as things. They refused to fight back. They continued to help people even during times of extreme plague and more of them lived through the plagues despite being exposed to it. Nero's persecution of the Christians aroused public sympathy because they didn't respond with violence. By the time of Constantine, it was politically advantageous for him to make the religion legal---and that's exactly what he did. He didn't convert right away because he was a Roman Emperor, The Way was pacifist and he had a lot more people to kill. I don't know if he had a vision or not. I just know it Jesus' vision---responding to violence with compassion--that made it happen.