Dear Bill (You may be wrong, but I'll always love you anyway)

I've liked Bill Maher since he introduced the phrase "crush some tinfoil on your antennae" into my vocabulary in high school. He also introduced me to the idea that if people want their children to be religious, they ought to get off their butts and take them to church instead of expecting the school to do it. A recent google search has revealed he considers himself an apatheist rather than a regular atheist, which I kind of like, and since he's the only one I know of, I guess that makes him my favorite..

I digress. Really. I do. I kind of like this smart ass, because he's insightful. I do. I also recognize that he and I could not be facebook friends because we would wear on each other's nerves too much. I watched a video of him talking about non violence and Christianity today. Mostly, that he thinks most Christians are not Christians because they aren't pacifists. He makes some good points. He's right. Jesus really was all about that "hippie shit". What he's not right about is that he gets to decide who can call themselves a Christian.

Oh, here's the link to the video. Enjoy.

Here's thing: Being a lousy Christian does not make you not a Christian. Baptism makes you a Christian. Shouting on the street corner doesn't make you a Christian. Wearing a t shirt with a bleeding guy on a cross on it doesn't make you a Christian. Strapping a giant wooden cross on your backpack and standing around a flag pole making your class mates as uncomfortable as possible doesn't make you a Christian.

Baptism makes you a Christian. Which means that no matter how hard you try, if you've taken one, no matter how much you protest, no matter if you unbaptise yourself (new European trend), you can't not be a Christian.

Basically, you're under Grace whether you like it or not. You're screwed. You're going to have to answer for all that crazy stuff you do or encourage (pro torture Christians, this means you. If, as Bill says, you look at that image of the suffering Christ and think "Romans are pussies, he still has his eyes", you're going to have to explain yourself) as if you knew better. Because really, you ought to know better. If you cracked that book open or made it to the end of Church school past the age of ten, you ought to know better. If you attended church and were half awake during the gospel procession (You do have to stand) you ought to know better.

Hitler, with his mass genocide and majorly creepy occultism? He ought to have to known better. Maybe he did and he did it anyway to spite his roots. This is the guy who is credited as saying "Antiquity was better than modern times because it did not know Christianity or syphilis". From what I can gather, and given how far he went to separate himself from Christ, he suffered from both. He did work his ass off to distance himself. He set himself up as a god, killed a lot of people who were distant cousins of Christ, and got real obsessed with early German religions. He tried. Hard. Yet people still point at him and say "See what fucking Christian Germany did? That asshole was a catholic."

You can run, but you can't hide, especially when people are looking for something and someone to blame other than the dead sociopath who shot himself in the head and ended up set on fire in a ditch.

Make that connection all you want, and you're right, he was baptized. He was baptized and running as far as he could and as fast as he could from what that meant. There are other ways to run afoul of the gospel, more subtle ways, much less blatantly pagan and murderous ways. In some ways, they're more insidious. These days, now that it's all over, we know the Nazis were monsters. It's harder to tell with people who wrap themselves in the flag and hold a cross before themselves and offer charity.

I agree with Bill. These people are more fans than followers of Christ. What I don't agree with him on is the idea that they're not Christians. They are. They're just really bad at it and totally missing the point.

It's time to stop crapping our pants.

What do I need to be afraid of now?

Stephen Colbert likes to ask his guests that question.

Click on yahoo.com or msn.com at any given moment and they'll tell you. Tonight, right now, it's: Economic Worries All Over the World, World Powers Seek to Control Europe Debt Crisis, BofA settlement pushes up home default notices, and Wildfire Threat. Every other day, every other business day anyway, it's that the stock market is plummeting because someone is afraid something is going to happen. It used to be color coded terror threats. Now it's bed bugs. Bed bugs, and grocery stores trying to trick me into buying something that a blogger thinks I don't need. Oh and did you know that the recession turned suburbanite lazy people into pragmatists?

While I am it, since when did the words European, Iraqi, Greek, and Egyptian disappear from the English language? It's like people have forgotten what adjectives associated with countries are.

I don't think we're going to get through to the media, any of it, conservative, liberal, or computers that churn out the next big thing based on an algorithm, so it's up to us. This lemming like fear is what is paralyzing this country. The sky is not falling. If the government asks corporations to pay taxes, they're going to keep on making money so they can keep making money. It's counter-intuitive to think that anything is going to happen if my employer's tax rate goes up besides her telling us to sell more insurance. Oh, I might have to glue together a few more of the old chairs we've been slowing replacing (particle board is awful) for a little bit longer, but it won't kill anyone.

Bed bugs, while they might leave a nasty welt on your skin, are not going to kill you. It is not worth worrying about. An entire industry has grown up around the fear of nasty bugs... and it's just stupid. From what I can see, Wall Street (which still owes all of us an apology) crapping its' collective pants is what keeps making the stock market so volatile.

There are some things that thinking about it too much makes happen. Friends drifting away, for example. Worrying about that, and needling them, or preemptively cutting off ties is a self full filling prophecy. Every little odd thing your body does not mean you have a new disorder. Take enough drugs, and you'll get a few. Work piling up. Money never coming in. Worrying about it doesn't do anyone any good!

Do something. Can't never did anything. Stop making excuses. Stop being afraid. Do something. "Perfect love casts out fear." God is not going to stop loving us. Fear is paralyzing. So take up your mat and walk.

The next time you suspect that the news is reporting on stupid crap so they can get you upset and get better ratings? Turn it off.

We're never going to get out of this recession that's not a recession until we stop crapping our pants as a nation and get back to work. We can do it! This is the United States of America, for God's sake, not some sniveling pile of self pitying some or other whining about bygone former glory.

Disassociation

I try to spend as little time as humanly possible thinking about politics. I try, but then I remember that I want to be a good citizen, poke my head out of the sand and immediately regret it. The mid term elections this year seemed to have a theme and the theme was disassociation.

I was driving away from the polls after having voted for our current Insurance Commissioner to be re-elected (I've heard nice things about her from customers.) when I heard an ad that "hadn't been approved by any candidate" telling me all about how Kim Holland "stood up to Obamacare even though she's a Democrat" among other things. My heart sank. My head almost got laid on my steering wheel before I realized I was driving.

I knew she did that. I did. I knew there were people in Oklahoma involved in trying to pass an unconstitutional law allowing people to "opt out" of the health care bill. I knew Governor Henry vetoed it. I also know stupidity prevailed on the issue as the thing passed a State Question. I just didn't expect to hear it on the radio. I was hoping that someone would have enough integrity not to try and run away from their party that night.

Heck, she didn't even have the guts to put her name on the ad. It was disappointing. I see it all the time though. It's not just the Democratic party. McCain was doing everything he could to distance himself from Bush during the 2008 election. I know Episcopalians who do everything they can to distance themselves from the national church. "Oh yeah, they have that gay bishop in New Hampshire, but we don't have anything like that here. We didn't send a gay man to seminary out of this parish or anything like that. No that wasn't us. "

Sure! Of course it wasn't you. You had nothing to do with it.

I understand that it's hard being an Episcopalian conservative these days. I know it's hard to have your clergy afraid to hurt your feelings because you donate lots of money to the church. I know it's hard to have entire groups of liberals and moderates get all teary eyed at the thought of you maybe leaving because they gave in to their conscience and decided to stop pretending it was okay to make certain folks feel unwelcome. I know it's hard when people leave because they feel like they're embarrassing "the pastor" because of YOU. I know. It's hard to hear that socialist tripe (Also called the Sermon on the Mount) spouted from the pulpit. I know it's hard to have your friends call your church the 'gay church'.

You know what you need to do about it? You need to stop being embarrassed. You need to say, well, no, there's just the one really. As far as I know the rest of our congregation is straight. You need to tell the clergy that you're an adult and you realize that there are people who disagree with you and that's okay. You need to let everyone know you're going to stick around even if you are going to be a pain in the ass and speak up when you don't like how things are being run. The Sermon on the Mount? I recommend good old fashioned evasion if you don't want to tackle that one head on.

In exchange, I promise to speak to you when I see you in the liquor store. I promise to say, why YES, I go to church with SEVERAL of the people you're talking about and I wouldn't be surprised if they ARE tea baggers. I don't like that they're doing that, but I like them! I promise to sing in the choir every week. I promise to smile at you. I promise to claim you in public. I promise not to invite people I wouldn't take to a restaurant because of their inappropriate behavior to church solely to make you uncomfortable. I PROMISE.

Because here's the deal: We all need to quit pretending we don't have anything to do with each other. That's crap. I'm an Episcopalian. It's more important to me what I do believe in than what I don't believe in. What about you? Do you waste too much time defining yourself by what you're not?

Here's an exercise for everybody. I want you to answer the following questions in a comment or just think about them for a while.

What do you do because you are a Christian?

On a daily basis?

On a weekly basis?

A monthly basis?

Yearly?

What do you believe?

I'm hoping those answers are more important to you than things you don't do because you're a Christian. I'm assuming that's an easier list to compile for most Americans. Why? Because we are OBSESSED with defining ourselves by what we are NOT.

The Democrats spent the entire mid term election running on "standing up to Obama" and not having anything to do with that health care bill. What would have happened if they'd run on the fact that now children can't be denied health care because of a pre-existing condition? What if they'd run on the face that the combat troops have left Iraq? What if they'd run on the fact that people can keep their kids on their insurance until they get off their butts and get a real job---or at least until they turn 26. What if they'd run on that? What if they'd run on what they did do instead of LOUDLY telling everyone what they DIDN'T do?

They might not have gotten their butts whipped quite so soundly, that's what.

How refreshing would it be to have someone tell you what they believe in instead of what they don't?

I think we'd all find out we have more in common than we think that way.