Tag: Christian Ethics

We Are Watching Another Catastrophic Iraq War Plan 3.0: We’ve Seen All This Before

As usual the US corporate media continues to march in lockstep with the atrocious lies currently spewed by the Trump administration in the aftermath of killing the Iranian leader Qassem Suleimani.

In this regard, President Trump is not the deplorable outlier that liberal pundits pretend him to be.  Rather, Trump is the latest in a long line of terrorist presidents whose actions have polished America’s reputation as the world’s greatest perpetrator of state-sponsored terrorism.

No, that title  does not belong to Iran, as the American public is repeatedly told. It actually belongs to the good old US of A, hands down.

Two key players in this latest terrorist outrage, besides Trump himself, are Vice-President Mike Pence and Secretary of Defense Mike Pompeo.

Both men claim to be Christians, evangelicals in fact.

Both men continue to flourish in shameful careers that bring disrepute to the church of Jesus Christ.

Both men make a mockery of the gospel and reveal in living color that they abandoned the Lord Jesus long ago.

Pence and Pompeo are living examples the failed “seed sown among thorns” described by Jesus in his parable of the sower in Mark 4:7, 18-19:

Others, like seed sown among thorns hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.

The arid, war-mongering, anti-Christian lifestyles of these men are openly revealed as they blatantly lie America into another tragic war of American aggression.

Craig Murray has written an important article detailing the inexcusable lies of Trump, Pence and Pompeo. Mr. Murray is a former British diplomat turned human rights advocate.

Craig Murray, former UK diplomat turned human rights advocat

I have posted an excerpt of his article below, but I encourage you to read the entire piece  here:

In one of the series of blatant lies the USA has told to justify the assassination of Soleimani, Mike Pompeo said that Soleimani was killed because he was planning “Imminent attacks” on US citizens. It is a careful choice of word. Pompeo is specifically referring to the Bethlehem Doctrine of Pre-Emptive Self Defence.

Developed by Daniel Bethlehem when Legal Adviser to first Netanyahu’s government and then Blair’s, the Bethlehem Doctrine is that states have a right of “pre-emptive self-defence” against “imminent” attack. That is something most people, and most international law experts and judges, would accept. Including me.

What very few people, and almost no international lawyers, accept is the key to the Bethlehem Doctrine – that here “Imminent” – the word used so carefully by Pompeo – does not need to have its normal meanings of either “soon” or “about to happen”. An attack may be deemed “imminent”, according to the Bethlehem Doctrine, even if you know no details of it or when it might occur. So you may be assassinated by a drone or bomb strike – and the doctrine was specifically developed to justify such strikes – because of “intelligence” you are engaged in a plot, when that intelligence neither says what the plot is nor when it might occur. Or even more tenuous, because there is intelligence you have engaged in a plot before, so it is reasonable to kill you in case you do so again.

I am not inventing the Bethlehem Doctrine. It has been the formal legal justification for drone strikes and targeted assassinations by the Israeli, US and UK governments for a decade. Here it is in academic paper form, published by Bethlehem after he left government service (the form in which it is adopted by the US, UK and Israeli Governments is classified information).

So when Pompeo says attacks by Soleimani were “imminent” he is not using the word in the normal sense in the English language. It is no use asking him what, where or when these “imminent” attacks were planned to be. He is referencing the Bethlehem Doctrine under which you can kill people on the basis of a feeling that they may have been about to do something.

The idea that killing an individual who you have received information is going to attack you, but you do not know when, where or how, can be justified as self-defence, has not gained widespread acceptance – or indeed virtually any acceptance – in legal circles outside the ranks of the most extreme devoted neo-conservatives and zionists…

…Let us now move on to the next lie, which is being widely repeated, this time originated by Donald Trump, that Soleimani was responsible for the “deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans”. This lie has been parroted by everybody, Republicans and Democrats alike…

..Those [Americans killed] were US troops killed in combat during an invasion. The Iraqi Shia militias – whether Iran backed or not – had every legal right to fight the US invasion. The idea that the killing of invading American troops was somehow illegal or illegitimate is risible. Plainly the US propaganda that Soleimani was “responsible for hundreds of American deaths” is intended, as part of the justification for his murder, to give the impression he was involved in terrorism, not legitimate combat against invading forces. The idea that the US has the right to execute those who fight it when it invades is an absolutely stinking abnegation of the laws of war…

The final, and perhaps silliest lie, is Vice President Mike Pence’s attempt to link Soleimani to 9/11. There is absolutely no link between Soleimani and 9/11, and the most strenuous efforts by the Bush regime to find evidence that would link either Iran or Iraq to 9/11 (and thus take the heat off their pals the al-Saud who were actually responsible) failed. Yes, it is true that some of the hijackers at one point transited Iran to Afghanistan. But there is zero evidence, as the 9/11 report specifically stated, that the Iranians knew what they were planning, or that Soleimani personally was involved. 

We Have an Empathy Deficiency

I tried listening to a conservative, call-in radio program last night.  Five to ten minutes was all I could take before my bleeding ears forced me to change the station.

The topic of conversation was the “invasion” of immigrants “flooding” across America’s southern border.

The first thing I noticed was the ignorance on display about the average person’s living circumstances in Central American countries where the U.S. has toppled governments in the recent past. The second and most prominent factor was the hard-hearted lack of empathy or compassion voiced by both the bloviating host and his lynch-mob minded callers.

It was painful to listen.

The ability to empathize – that is, feel an impulse for putting ourselves in another person’s place, to understand their pain, to try to feel what they are feeling as they are feeling it – is an important trait for every human being to possess.  Some would say it is part of what makes us human.

Unfortunately, not everyone can do it.  Many don’t ever try.

Both sociopaths and psychopaths can be identified by their inability, or well-practiced disinterest, in feeling empathy.  So, they can skin cats alive and watch other people suffer without experiencing a twinge of concern or human kindness.

I can only hope that a high percentage of psychopaths make evening calls to conservative radio talk shows .  Otherwise, America really is in deep trouble.

Perhaps you have heard the old saying about empathy:  Before you criticize another person first walk a mile in his shoes.  Then when you do criticize him you will be a mile away AND have his shoes.

At least, that seems to be the American, conservative understanding of empathy nowadays.

These children came home from school only to learn that their parents had been arrested by ICE. ICE agents say they are not responsible for the children

The painful lack of public empathy that I witnessed last night is also glaring evidence that many Americans who call themselves Christians do not know Jesus Christ from a hole in the ground, no matter what their “testimony.”

Empathy is THE cardinal Christian virtue.

The incarnation of Jesus Christ was/is the supreme demonstration of divine empathy.  The Father’s empathy for us, lost sinners, motivated him to send

His parents have vanished and ICE made no allowances for what to do with him or dozens of other minor children

his one and only eternal Son into this world. Empathy for humanity moved the Son to become fully human; to experience all that we experience; and to stick with it for an entire lifetime.  He walked in our shoes, carried our burdens, suffered injustice, died our death, and finally experienced resurrection as our Precursor.

To know Jesus is to know empathy.

To be like Jesus is to demonstrate empathy for others, but especially for those who are the most “unlike” us.  The Son of God was UTTERLY unlike sinful humanity in every way. Yet, He set aside all privilege in order to rescue undeserving, ungrateful, self-destructive people like you and me.

The kingdom of God is a kingdom founded on empathy for others unlike ourselves.

It is a kingdom founded upon practical action to meet others in their suffering and to alleviate their distress, to bring practical solutions to human dilemmas, to save life, to make more room for those seeking safety, to share whatever we have with those who have lost everything.

Without empathy there is no such thing as Christianity.

Without empathy there is no discipleship.

Without visible demonstrations of practical empathy there is no Christian Church.

Without empathy there is no hope for the human race or the planet.

Today Is Always a Good Day to Stand Up for God’s Kingdom

The mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio happened within 13 hours of each other.  Together they leave 29 people dead and between 50 to 60 people wounded.

Police on the scene in El Paso

The El Paso gunman left behind a manifesto proclaiming his allegiance to white supremacy, decrying the dangerous hordes of brown immigrants “flooding” across our southern border.  I haven’t heard any details yet about the shooter in Ohio, his motives or political ideology.

At least, law enforcement has begun to describe these horrific incidents for what they are:  domestic terrorism.

The FBI continues to warn that the vast majority of these incidents are committed by right-wing political extremists who are, without exception, white men.  In most cases, their targets are people of color.  Nowadays, anyone who looks like they might be Hispanic or Muslim is scrutinized without mercy.

Look at YouTube to watch the many videos posted there showing the white vigilantes who have deputized themselves to harass people of color.  They call the police because they overheard someone speaking a different language, or saw a black person walking through the neighborhood and “looking suspicious while being black.”

No informed citizen with an ounce of common sense can deny the overt,

Survivors of the El Paso shootings

blatant, explicit encouragement that such anti-immigrant, white, racist extremism is receiving from the White House.

If you don’t understand or believe that previous sentence then, I am sorry, but you are lost.

You need to be converted.

Your conscience has been swallowed up by the swamp of moral relativism and outright evil that has taken hold of this country’s public life, especially within the comfortable parlors of political conservatism, Republicanism and establishment D.C. power brokers.

And, yes, that moral degeneration includes the Democrats as well as anyone else who remains silent while the newest wave of neo-Nazis, skin-heads, neo-fascists and every other stripe of authoritarian race-baiter feels that this moment in our nation’s history is their opportunity to resurrect the Confederate flag and wave a banner of white, racial superiority over the graves of innocent men, women and children whose skin-tone carries too much melanin.

But I reserve my strongest condemnation for conservative evangelicals who continue to endorse this president’s policies and turn a blind eye to the daily dose of hatred spewing forth from his puerile and filthy mouth.

He is the latest anti-Christ who has risen up to deceive the church; like a  false prophet crying, “Peace, peace!” while he sows seeds of hatred, lies and racial division.

Everyone likes to imagine they would have been a hero in Hitler’s Germany.  We all tell ourselves, “I would have resisted.  I would have hidden Jews in MY attic.  I would never have allowed the Nazi flag in MY church.  The Fuehrer’s censors would have never have been allowed to edit MY sermons.”

We swear that we would have been a faithful Israelite, never to be counted among the idolaters that sent the nation into exile.

We would have been faithful disciples. Unlike Simon Peter, we would have spoken up in Jesus’ defense when the time came.

Well, folks now is the moment, another moment of truth.

Another opportunity for faithfulness to Christ is staring us in the face.  The question is – what will we, what can we, do?

I have a few suggestions:

  1. Every church, and every member of every church, located in a town, village, city or unincorporated township with a population of dark-skinned immigrants needs to walk door-to-door through those neighborhoods, shaking hands and offering hugs, help and resources while welcoming those people of color into your community. Listen to their stories. Ask if there is anything you and/or your church community can do to help meet their needs.  Then follow through, and do it. Make new friends. Have them over to your home; eat together and publicly testify to their humanity at every opportunity. Push for your church to become a more inter-racial community, if it isn’t already.
  2. Challenge all racist, white-nationalist types of conversation whenever, wherever you hear it – especially among Christians. Remind people that Jesus of Nazareth was a very brown-skinned, Palestinian Jew who had once been an immigrant himself seeking safety in a foreign land (Egypt). We worship a dark-skinned Savior.  Avoid fights, but faithfully and boldly represent the universal love of God for all people everywhere.
  3. Remind people that there is a difference between illegal immigration and seeking asylum. Asylum-seeking is perfectly legal. In fact, I believe that America owes automatic asylum – even citizenship – to anyone fleeing a dangerous situation in a country that has been destabilized by U.S. intervention, whether military, political or economic. THAT, my friends, includes the whole of Central and South America.  When the United States helps to destroy the social fabric of a nation by forcing it to adopt policies that serve American interests first, then we must take responsibility for the human fall-out. (Personally, I also believe that illegal immigration ought to be decriminalized.  We would still have border guards patrolling the southern border humanely, seeking to care for the people they detain and send back, but what is the point of jailing these people as felons after their second capture?  It serves no purpose but to enrich those who own America’s private, for-profit prison/detention system.)
  4. I haven’t touched on the many related issues such as the American gun lobby, gun ownership, etc. because I don’t want this post to become a book. We could also talk about the policy of separating children from their parents when detained at the border, and the fact that our government admits to having “lost track” of nearly 1,500 of these children.  Imagine if they were your children…
  5. Urge your pastor to talk about these issues in the context of obedient Christian discipleship. It is obvious and easy to “pray for the victims” of a mass shooting. Perhaps, it is the pastoral thing to do. But think about it: what good did it do for patriotic, German pastors to offer nice pastoral prayers for those who were being arrested and tortured by Hitler’s SS guards, while remaining silent about the immoral policies being implemented by those unjust arrests?  The church needs more than safe, pastoral prayers for victims. We need strong leadership and pointed Biblical teaching that identifies immorality and injustice in the public square; that gives direction to God’s counter-cultural ways of kingdom living in a nation wrestling with its own racist demons.

More Thoughts, and a Few Stories, on the Cultural Captivity of the Church

Years ago I came across a great book written by Douglas Hyde entitled Dedication and Leadership.  Hyde was a former Communist turned Roman Catholic who wondered why his Communist comrades had uniformly displayed deeper levels of commitment to world revolution than the typical Christian had for the gospel of Christ.

One of his suggestions for explaining this disparity focused on the church’s lack of anything resembling Bolshevik self-criticism. Recognizing that Communism required a complete reconstruction of the way people think about and interpret their world, the movement gathered members together into small groups for discussion and “self-criticism.”

Together these Communist study groups held each other accountable to purging old ways of thinking and behaving, while assembling, piece by piece, the renewed mind of a faithful, Communist ideologue.

Hyde laments that it is a rare church indeed that invests any deliberate effort into helping its members cultivate disciplines of healthy spiritual introspection, self-examination, and Christ-like self-criticism.  Yet, this is precisely what Paul expects every Christian to be doing as a part of their daily discipleship.  In Romans 12:2 the apostle says,

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is…

Fallen, sinful minds like ours (you will understand, dear reader, that I assume you too are a guilty sinner like me) do not renew themselves automatically.  Yes, every Christian has the Holy Spirit to turn the impossible into the actual, but personal effort is the required fuel for all personal transformation.

Thus, far too many folks who call themselves Christians fail to think or to behave like people directed by the mind of God.

I was reminded of this personally a while back when talking with a friend about my time visiting my youngest daughter as she worked in the Kenyan slums surrounding Nairobi.  I was struck by the near universal happiness regularly on display in the lives of these people living in the most squalid poverty imaginable.

I couldn’t get over the beautiful smiles and the hearty laughter that I saw spontaneously erupting from the poor and destitute.

My friend listened to me and then quietly asked – with a beautiful smile on his face – David, why is it surprising that the poor would be happy?

That sentence hit me like a ton of bricks.  Good question, I said to myself.  Why indeed?

I suddenly realized, with the help of a friend exercising some good Christian/Bolshevik self-criticism, that I harbored an unrecognized prejudice.

I had spent my entire life in Christian ministry teaching people that money cannot buy happiness; that the love of money is the root of great evil; yet burrowed deep inside my brain remained this hidden assumption that people who lack money certainly can’t be truly happy and content.

Figuratively speaking (I hate it when people say “literally” when they mean “figuratively”), this moment of critical self-awareness blew my mind.

It also reminded me that cultivating the mind of Christ is a life-time process that demands daily self-criticism as well as good friends who are in the habit of similarly criticizing themselves.

Only such genuine disciples can make other disciples.

Getting together in small groups to socialize and hang out together is all well and good, but in and of itself, socialization it is a not an effective recipe for growing serious followers of Jesus.

I was thinking about this particular problem as I attended a Saturday morning men’s breakfast at a nearby church.

The speaker began by deriding what he believed were secular society’s efforts at emasculating, even feminizing, modern men. The church needed to help men to proudly reassert their masculinity.  Or so we were told.

(I found this a very strange thing to be saying in the age of the #MeToo movement.  But evangelicals have lived in a cultural ghetto for a long time.)

To facilitate the growth of masculine, godly men, the speaker announced that he was starting a new men’s Bible study for the church.  A handy video played on a big screen up front introduced the study’s content.

The 300 or so men present in the auditorium with me were all treated to a 5-minute action movie showing Navy SEALS fully armed, wading through water, jumping out of helicopters, and firing their weapons at (and undoubtedly killing) unseen enemies. A very masculine sounding narrator described how this new study (now available nation-wide) would teach us vital principles for godly manhood from the Navy SEALS handbook.

I groaned audibly and nearly regurgitated my breakfast.

I had spent my entire life thinking that Jesus of Nazareth was our perfect model for godliness.  Silly me!

Worse yet, I now discovered that my personal Bible study needed to be directed by a military training manual. Rats!

Those of you who know me will not be surprised to learn that it took all the self-control I could muster to remain seated.  Every fiber of my being wanted to stand up and loudly denounce the secular, unthinking, anti-Christian rubbish being shoveled out from the stage.

Sadly, I was witnessing another instance of American evangelicalism’s cultural captivity to the godless forces of social conformity. Political conservatism, militarism, patriotism, the myth of American exceptionalism, and gross nationalism had all conspired to trample the gospel of Jesus Christ into the ground, buried beneath the spit-polish black boots worn by “Christian soldiers” LITERALLY marching off to war.

And THAT is godly manhood?

We had been divided into groups of 10 sitting at circular tables. As the meeting drew to a close, we were encouraged to talk among ourselves about the morning’s lessons.

I believed that it would be irresponsible of me to say nothing. I had to speak my mind, fully convinced that I was speaking with the mind of Christ.

So, I grabbed the moment and told the other men at my table that this was a horrible example of un-Christian, anti-Biblical thinking infiltrating the church.  I will spare you all the details of my little speech condemning everything we had just been subjected to, but I will mention the response of a young man sitting opposite me at the table.

This young man in his 20s had accompanied his father to the breakfast.  As I spoke, his head began to nod heartily in agreement. As I finished, he said that he was glad I had spoken up. He told us all about how difficult it had been to grow up in Montana where everything in the surrounding society insisted that he become a tough guy, a macho-man, a fighter.

Not even the church provided any refuge from the cultural conditioning of a male dominated society where rugged individualism depended on a daily overdose of testosterone.

This young man, quite rightly, wanted to become more and more like Jesus, not a Navy SEAL.  He finds words of life in the holy Scriptures, not in a military training handbook.

He was fighting against his church’s cultural captivity, not surrender to it.

So, why was the “men’s pastor” employed by the church promoting a program developed by a nationally known evangelical media organization that will teach men to conform to American culture rather than stand against it?

We’ve Got “Clowns and Baboons in Washington” Threatening War

Those of you who have read this blog for sometime will know that I try to keep track of Lawrence Wilkerson, his interviews, lectures and writings, as

Retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson

diligently as possible.

You may recall that Wilkerson is a retired Army colonel, former chief of staff to Colin Powell during the Bush Jr. administration.  He is now a regular contributor to The Real News Network.

He is a rare breed.  As far as I know, he is the only member of that administration to have promptly admitted to the wrongheadedness, stupidity, deception, illegality, and wholesale systemic, political failure that led up to the disastrous and immoral Iraq war.

The United States is now teetering on the brink of a major conflict, perhaps even an outright war, with Iran.  Those of you who have followed the recent history of US relations with Iran will not be surprised to hear Col. Wilkerson describe this administration’s current anti-Iran saber rattling as a repetition of the horrific boondoggle that led us into the Iraq war.

I won’t take the time to rehearse that sorry story-line here, rather I will simply quote a few of the more telling words from Col. Wilkerson in the hopes that you will be motivated to watch the entire 17 minute interview available here and here.

Below are a few gems from Wilkerson:

“I wouldn’t doubt for a moment that we [the US government] would manufacture another Gulf of Tonkin incident…” [Remember, the Gulf of

Vietnamese children fleeing their village; it had just been hit with napalm.

Tonkin incident was a fictitious “attack” on an American ship that became the official excuse for US military action in Vietnam.]

We are being governed “by clowns and baboons in Washington…”

“The world now sees the US as insane…warmongers…”

I believe that every follower of Jesus is called to be a pacifist. Consequently, the Christian’s public posture must always be in favor of peace, combating war and violence whenever, wherever it tries to raise its ugly head.

The necessity of public, anti-war protest is especially urgent when our “leaders” agitate for war on the basis of lies, misinformation and propaganda.

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for the United States to see Iran as a hostile power, much less an enemy in need of a good bombing.

Know this: You and I are being lied to regularly by the MSM every time they discuss Iran.

I urge you to please do what I have done — call and/or write your elected officials and urge them to say NO to any and all efforts to attack Iran.

Only Congress has the Constitutional authority to declare war.  Tell your senators and representatives, at the very least, to insist on the enforcement of the War Powers Resolutions of 1973.

Why is Slaughter More Acceptable Than Nudity?

(This is the third in a series of posts addressing questions about the cultural captivity of the church.  You can read the previous posts here and here.)

During my last semester as a college professor, I came across a surprising article in the weekly student newspaper.  At least, I found it surprising; though in retrospect, I should have been known better.

It was a detailed review of a newly released computer game.  I didn’t pay any attention to the game’s title because I was so caught off guard by the fact that the student newspaper at a Christian college had no qualms about praising, and encouraging others to buy, the latest graphic game of military slaughter.

The reviewer described in bloody detail the game’s improved graphics, enhancements that depicted the bloodshed more realistically than ever. (I wondered how he knew what realistic blood splatter looked like.)  The game was the newest “first person shooter” game. (That is, a game where the player holds the computer gun in his/her hand, then points and shoots at human figures on the screen in order to survive and accumulate points).

All in living color, of course.

I initially considered writing a letter to the editor to express my dismay, but I thought better of it.  Why not wait to see if anyone else shared my dismay.

No one did, apparently.  Or, perhaps they were biting their tongues like me.  Several weeks passed with no response.

So, I devised a better plan.  I would submit my own article reviewing the latest version of my favorite sex game.  (No, I have never played any such thing, but I assume that they must exist.  My imagination was not strained at all by concocting one ex nihilo.)

My review would go on and on in effusive detail praising the graphic depictions of the female (or the male) anatomy – in living color, no less – and the many arcane, sexual positions available as the player scored more and more points by scoring with more and more sexual partners.

Then, at the end of my imaginary review, I would admit to my satire and ask a simple question:  Why, dear reader, are you preparing to write a letter to condemn my fictitious review when you had nothing to say about an earlier review glorifying a graphic, bloodthirsty game of war, complete with exploding bodies and crushed skulls?

What kind of moral calculus is that?

I wish I had gone through with my plan, but I didn’t.  It was my final semester before moving on, and I didn’t quite have the energy needed for another campus-wide controversy.  In my experience, many readers of that particular newspaper had difficulty recognizing, much less appreciating, the art of satire.  And my days as an educator were coming to an end.

But my questions remain.

Why is bloodshed and human slaughter, the kind of violent acts that our Lord Jesus explicitly prohibits, so much more acceptable to Christian people than images of nudity and sexuality?

No, I am not diminishing the destructive power of pornography.  But is pornography any more corrosive to the human psyche, any more more dehumanizing for those who participate in it than a blood-thirsty killing game that transforms a player into a butcher, that desensitizes him to the horrors of murder, pain and human suffering?

At least sexual intercourse was God’s idea, and He blessed it with the bonds of marriage.

But human violence arose from the sulpherous heart of original sin. Our Creator rendered his eternal verdict over this brand of wickedness when He cursed the first murderer, Cain, and banished his blood-stained hands from his presence.

Does the church think or act any differently than the rest of our violent society when it comes to this problem of casual, gaming violence?  Murder as entertainment?

I don’t know the definitive answer to this question, but I suspect that on average, we are no different than anyone else in the neighborhood who relaxes after school (or work) by watching a computer screen filled with atrocious, bloody acts of human carnage created by yours truly.

Lt. Col. Dave Grossman has written a fascinating and disturbing book examining the psychological effects of violent video games on children and adolescents.  It’s entitled Assassination Generation: Video Games, Aggression, and the Psychology of Killing (Little, Brown and Co., 2016).

Grossman excerpts the findings of a medical report presented to Congress in July 2000 by a coalition of 4 professional medical, psychiatric and pediatric associations.  Their congressional report concluded that:

“Well over 1,000 studies…point overwhelmingly to a causal connection between media violence and aggressive behavior in some children…[V]iewing entertainment violence can lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values and behavior, particularly in children. Its effects are measurable and long-lasting…[it] can lead to emotional desensitization toward violence in real life.” (10-11)

Grossman also compares first-person shooter games to the military training methods used to desensitize soldiers to killing on command.  He says:

“Violent video games teach kids to kill using the same mechanisms of classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and social learning employed to train soldiers.”

What happens when a depressed teenager who is addicted to violent video games and feels that the entire world has become his enemy grabs a family gun and walks to the local mall?

We all know the answer to that question.  We have seen on TV time and again.

Sadly, this is the kind of world we live in.

What are the people of God doing to address the social plague of daily violence traumatizing our school children?  Placing armed guards inside our churches is the devil’s own suggestion, though I have seen and read about many churches doing just that.

But surely, everyone can understand, that is not the way of Jesus.

We need to examine ourselves and confess to the many ways in which we have eagerly conformed to a godless society. We are unable to find wisdom in the mind of Christ because we are too busy entertaining ourselves (for hours and hours) with the latest version of Call of Duty and Modern Warfare 2.  So, we turn to armed guards instead of the Spirit of compassion.

Ask yourself this question.  Can you imagine Jesus sitting for hours in front of a computer screen, laughing with glee and giving himself high-fives over his rising body count as he plays Call of Duty: Black Ops?

How many throats could Jesus slit?

The question answers itself.

It is long past time for God’s people to return their eyes to Jesus, the lamb of God, prince of peace, our suffering servant who came not to kill but to be killed.  What does he ask of his church today?

What is So Threatening About the Equality Act?

Last Wednesday, Nancy Pelosi reintroduced the Equality Act for the Congressional Democrats.

The Equality Act is a bill that aims to eliminate discrimination against LGBTQ people in the same way that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination against African-Americans.

Predictably, the Religious Right is up in arms denouncing the bill as another assault upon religious liberty in general, and Christianity in particular.

But is it any such thing?  Personally, I don’t see it.

I am old enough to remember the 1950s and 60s.  A southern block of religious conservatives then described Dr. Martin Luther King as a communist tool of the devil.  They fought to kill any hopes of passing the 1964 Civil Rights Act.  Furthermore, they staunchly defended racial segregation as an expression of their Christian faith, just as so many religious conservatives are now condemning the Equality Act as an attack on their Christian views of human sexuality and marriage.

Andrew T. Walker of The Gospel Coalition has an article entitled, “The Equality Act Accelerates Anti-Christian Bias.”  He warns that “the bill represents the most invasive threat to religious liberty ever proposed in America.”

Monica Burke at the Daily Signal writes that the bill will cause “profound harms to Americans from all walks of life” under the heading “7 Reasons Why the Equality Act is Anything But.”

But even if some judicial tweaking is required as our society navigates the social effects of this new legislation, I have yet to see anyone explain away the fundamental parallels between African-Americans in need of the 1964 Civil Tights Act and gay/transgendered Americans in need of similar protections in 2019.

Christianity in America was not destroyed in 1964, despite the explicit warnings of Christian racists.

Neither will American Christianity come to ruin if gay, lesbian and transgendered human beings are granted similar civil rights protections in 2019, despite the apocalyptic warnings coming from the doomsday, propaganda mills of the Religious Right.

Instead, what this debate reveals is something much more dangerous now deeply rooted in the heart of American evangelicalism/fundamentalism: an insistence that the Christian religion (as defined by highly politicized, partisan, social conservatives) deserves preferential treatment in America; indeed, that this politicized, culture-warrior view of Christianity must become normative for acceptable social behavior in the public square.

I discuss this misunderstanding of Christian citizenship at length in my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans, 2018). This country’s politicized brand of Christianity is a tangled mess of confusion over what is required from citizens in the kingdom of God living as citizens in a secular society.

Mr. Walker throws out the predictably fawning, meaningless sop intended to distract his critics by saying, “To be clear, Christians reject all forms of invidious discrimination. We believe all persons, including those who identify as LGBT, are made in God’s image and deserve respect, kindness, and neighborliness.”

Well, good for you, Mr. Walker.

But pledges of personal affection are no substitute for legal guarantees.

The entrenched racism of the Jim Crow south also declared, ever so kindly, that they loved their black folks and always treated them with nothing but love and kindness, often insisting that their contented “Negroes” were just fine with the status quo.

Then the Civil Rights movement came along.

Turned out that African-Americans weren’t as contented as the white people imagined.

Unfortunately, the conservative Christian church has lost its ability to speak  with any moral authority on issues of justice and equality, because its pronouncements are generally selfish and self-centered.

The misguided case of the Masterpiece Cake Shop (for more thoughts on that debate, read my “Wedding Cakes, the New Testament and Ethics in the Public Square“) exemplified all the problems of the current Equality Act debate:

  1. Conservative Christians confuse the church with the world and the world with the church – which is odd given their tendencies towards intellectual and social isolation. New Testament morality is directed at kingdom citizens filled with the Holy Spirit, not the world at large, however beneficial its approximation would be. (I discuss this issue at length in I Pledge Allegiance.)
  2. Too many would-be Christians simply do not want to love (not really, not with actual tolerance and loving-kindness in person, face-to-face) the people they don’t like, or don’t agree with, or see as the unclean enemies of their beloved Christian civilization. Let’s get real – many evangelicals are homophobes (though I do not like that term). They don’t want anyone telling them that they must accept gay/transgendered people as equally human with the same dignity as anyone else, whether in the workplace, at school or anywhere else.
  3. They fail to distinguish personal preference from public accommodation. The Equality Act addresses issues concerning “public accommodation.”  Read the entire bill here.  The core of the legislation simply requires equal treatment, saying:

The Department of Justice (DOJ) may bring a civil action if it receives a complaint from an individual who claims to be:

  • denied equal utilization of a public facility owned, operated, or managed by a state (other than public schools or colleges) on account of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity; or
  • denied admission to, or not permitted to continue attending, a public college by reason of sexual orientation or gender identity, thereby expanding DOJ’s existing authority to bring such actions for complaints based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

The bill revises public school desegregation standards to provide for the assignment of students without regard to sexual orientation or gender identity.

The bill prohibits programs or activities receiving federal financial assistance from denying benefits to, or discriminating against, persons based on sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

Most of the protests I have seen are in reaction to the protection of transgender rights and its various implications for public space/accomodation.

On this score, the conservative church must get to grip with two problems.

One, we have to enter the age of modern research science and recognize that many (a majority?) of gay people are born gay.  For them, there is no therapeutic cure. Insisting otherwise discredits us and guarantees that we will never really understand the struggles of our gay friends and neighbors.

Two, there is a good chance that similar genetic issues are in play for people suffering gender dysphoria.  I have no idea how it must feel to spend my life tormented by the sense of being trapped in the wrong body.  I doubt very much if anybody decides or chooses to live such an existence.  There is obviously a great deal yet to be discovered in this arena.  The church needs to stop prejudging such people, their histories, situations and motivations while accepting that transgendered people merit the same legal protections as everyone else.

The Equality Act will not affect the policies or operations of churches and other religious institutions unless those facilities accept federal funding.  The obligatory cries of religious persecution, or the loss of religious freedoms are actually laments about the possible loss of federal dollars.  It’s about the money, folks.

Losing one’s tax exempt status is not anti-religious discrimination.  Actually, I have long believed that the tax exemption for churches is actually discrimination against the surrounding community.  Why should the church’s neighbors be required to pay more for their community services (which is what happens) in the way of a public subsidy for the tax-exempt churches, which most of them don’t attend anyway?

The same logic applies to religious schools, colleges, hospitals, etc.  These types of institutions will only be affected by the Equality Act if they accept federal financial support.  Far too many of these groups want to have their cake and eat it too.  They want to benefit from public money (supplied through our tax dollars) while enforcing their own, private sectarian policies.

That is hypocrisy.

You can’t have it both ways and hope to remain anywhere within the ethical ballpark.  Remember when Bob Jones University went to court because it insisted on collecting federal money while continuing to refuse admission to black applicants? (I don’t know why any African-American would want to go there.  But, to each his own.)

I do.

If a religious institution believes that it cannot abide by the Equality Act, then let them surrender their federal grants, subsidies, or what-have-you.  Yes, this will also mean that students receiving federal scholarships or other tuition assistance will either lose their grants or be required to look for another college.  This is one of those arenas where details would need to be worked out in the courts, perhaps.

Let’s face it.  Way too much of the energy invested in these types of fights by Christian social organizations basically boil down to a fight for comfort and/or money.  Christians want to relax in a culture that accommodates itself to them.  We don’t want inconvenient types, like gays, or lesbians, or transsexuals, the kinds of people who challenge our conservative expectations in the moral, social order to raise questions or challenge the status quo.  A status quo that allows us to remain relaxed and in control.

It is long past time for American politicized Christianity to stop acting as if (a) fighting for a Christianized public square were the same thing as (b) being an faithful citizen of the kingdom of God in public.  The two are not the same thing.  In fact, they are two very, very different things.

How Can Anyone Claim to Believe in Jesus When They Don’t Understand The First Thing About Him?

A newly discovered 4th century papyrus contains a number of Gospel sayings (e.g. pericopes) that present a shockingly different portrait of Jesus.

Scholars are uniformly surprised that such widely divergent alternatives could possibly exist.  For example:

Blessed are those who resort to violence to defend themselves, for they will control the earth.

Blessed are those who carry a loaded Colt .45 Peacemaker, for they will be called Sons of the God of War.

When someone hits you on the right cheek, turn your snub-nose .38 upon  them and shoot with accuracy.

Do not resist the urge to overpower an evil person, with deadly force if required.  Use all means necessary to ensure that you and your lovely ones never feel threatened in any way.  For your life is more valuable than anyone else’s.

It should be obvious that no such papyri exists.  Just to be crystal clear, this is a spoof.

Sadly, in this age of infantile evangelicalism, we can no longer take it for granted that the average church-goer understands either New Testament teaching or the gospel portrait of Jesus.

Another perfect example of the dire, debilitating condition of conservative Christianity in this country appears in the NBC news story below.  It’s called “Armed Volunteers Train in Hopes of Protecting Parishioners Against Potential Attacks.”  Take a look:

The interviews speak for themselves.  It’s all oh-so American.  It’s also as contrary to Jesus’ model, his ethics and the Kingdom of God as one could possibly imagine.

How the New Captain Marvel Illustrates Both Toxic Feminism and Original Sin

Michael McCaffrey has an interesting op-ed on the RT Question More

The next generation’s Captain Marvel

website entitled, “Toxic femininity: ‘Badass’ US women demand right to torture and kill for Empire… just like men.”

McCaffrey provides a good analysis of where and how mainstream feminism has gone wrong through its blind endorsement of America’s cultural/economic status quo.

I have copied an excerpt below and encourage you to read the entire piece.

First, however, I want to add what I believe is a more fundamental problem that has always dogged the heels of secular feminism — the Biblical doctrine of original sin.

Yes, woman are and always have been as sinful as men.

That means that women are as prone to selfishness, violence and destruction as men continually show themselves to be.  They may pursue their goals by different means, at times.  But the corrupted ends remain the same.

The oft repeated refrain, “If only women were in control of the world, THEN we would see the end of war, famine, and all manner of evil!” has always been a patronizing Utopian dream, as ignorant as it is blind.

Didn’t these feminist champions pay attention to the presidencies of Golda Meir in Israel, or Indira Gandhi in India?  How about Hillary Clinton’s gleeful laughter over the brutal murder of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi at the hands of an angry mob?

Have they willfully ignored the current debacle of president Aung San Suu

Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Prize winner turned patron of Rohingya genocide in Myanmar

Kyi in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) as she blesses her military’s Rohingya genocide?

Below is the excerpt of McCaffrey:

“Thanks to a new wave of feminism and its call for equality, it isn’t just toxic men who can kill, torture and surveil in the name of US militarism and empire, women can now do it too!
“This past weekend was the third annual Women’s March, which is a protest originally triggered by Donald Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election that encourages women across America to rise up against misogyny and patriarchy.

“As sincere as these women are in their outrage, in their quest for power they are inadvertently reinforcing the immoral and unethical system that they claim to detest. This is most glaringly apparent when this new feminism boldly embraces the worst traits of the patriarchy in the form of militarism and empire.

“The rise of #MeToo, Time’s Up and the anti-Trump Women’s Movement, has brought forth a new wave of politically and culturally active neo-feminists. This modern women’s movement and its adherents demand that “boys not be boys”, and in fact claim that the statement “boys will be boys” is in and of itself an act of patriarchal privilege and male aggression. The irony is that these neo-feminists don’t want boys to be boys, but they do want girls to be like boys…

“…Other toxically-masculine women in government are also being hailed as great signs of women’s empowerment.

“Gina Haspel is the first female director of the CIA and women now also hold the three top directorates in that agency. Ms. Haspel proved herself more than capable of being just as deplorable as any man when she was an active participant in the Bush-era torture program. No doubt the pussy-hat wearing brigade would cheer her “competitiveness, dominance and aggression” when torturing prisoners… most especially the traditionally masculine ones.”

Tell Your Elected Officials You Want Peace in Venezuela

The Alliance for Global Justice is leading a world-wide campaign for Peace in Venezuela today, Feb. 7, 2019, in coordination with an international conference occurring in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Their letter begins:

“Today in Montevideo, Uruguay, nations from throughout the world, hosted by Uruguay and Mexico, are meeting “to establish the basis for a new dialogue mechanism that includes all the forces in Venezuela, in order to help restore peace in that country.” Shamefully absent is the Trump administration and its ordained “interim president” Juan Guaido. Instead, the Trump administration is threatening to invade Venezuela and Guaido is calling on the military to betray their oath to the Constitution. The number of voices in Congress raised against Trump’s illegal regime change policies is insignificant.”  (emphasis mine)

This link will take you to the webpage that allows you to contact your elected officials to let them know that you oppose the US backed regime change in Venezuela.

Please write your Senators and Representatives today.

The same link also reproduces an excellent article by Michael Weisbrot at The Intercept entitled,  “Trump Sanctions, Regime Change Strategy in Venezuela Can Only Cause More Violence and Suffering.”

Below is an excerpt highlighting the degree to which American imperialism serves the purposes of class warfare around the world.

Case in point:  the forces now working to unseat Maduro are primarily white and well off.  Whereas, Maduro’s supporters are overwhelmingly brown,  Indian, poor and marginalized:

“Venezuela is polarized along political lines and has been ever since Hugo Chávez was elected president in 1998 and launched his Bolivarian Revolution. The opposition’s attempt to overthrow Chávez in a military coup in 2002, aided and abetted by officials in the George W. Bush administration, as well as the opposition leadership’s vacillating willingness to accept the results of democratic elections in subsequent years laid the groundwork for many years of distrust.

“Venezuela’s political polarization, however, also intersects with a great chasm that permeates most of Latin American society: a division by class and race. As in most of the Americas, the two are correlated. In the opposition protests that have occurred over the past decade, one could see these differences in the clothes worn by pro- versus anti-government protesters and in their skin tones. The opposition crowds and their leaders have been considerably whiter and from higher income groups than Venezuelans who supported the government. In the most recent protests, there has been an increase in anti-government actions in working-class and poor areas in Caracas, but the class and racial divide between Chavistas and opposition has not gone away.

“Another line of Venezuelan polarization is the belief in sovereignty and self-determination. The Chavistas have made independence from the U.S. a centerpiece of their agenda, and their government, when it had money, pursued policies in the hemisphere that sought more independence for the region as well. The opposition and enemies of the Chavista governments, by contrast, have worked closely with the U.S. government for the past two decades — as can be seen in the coordination of this latest attempted coup. Washington’s intervention aggravates the polarization along the lines of sovereignty, and opens the opposition to charges of alignment with a foreign power — and a power that has historically played a terrible role in the region. To appreciate the animosity that this would create, think of how much ill will has been generated in the U.S. by Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential election, and multiply that by a few orders of magnitude.”