What If God Was... (Repent! Ten.)

[Kuiil and Mando have successfully repaired the Razor Crest with the parts recovered from the Jawas]

The Mandalorian: I can't thank you enough. Please allow me to give you a portion of the reward.

Kuiil: I cannot accept. You are my guest, and I am therefore in your service.

The Mandalorian: I could use a crew member of your ability. And I can pay handsomely.

Kuiil: I am honored. But I have worked a lifetime to finally be free of servitude.

The Mandalorian: I understand. Then... all I can offer is my thanks.

Kuiil: And I offer mine. Thank you for bringing peace to my valley. [leaves the ship and mounts his Blurrg; to Mando] And good luck with the Child. May it survive and bring you a handsome reward. I have spoken.

~From the Star Wars series; The Mandalorian, S1.E2 "The Child."

...

The clocks stopped at one seventeen. There was a long shear of bright light, then a series of low concussions. By day the dead impaled on spikes along the road. I think it's October but I can't be sure. I haven't kept a calendar for five years. Each day is more gray than the one before. It is cold and growing colder as the world slowly dies. No animals have survived and all the crops are long gone. Soon all the trees in the world will fall. The roads are peopled by refugees towing carts and gangs carrying weapons, looking for fuel and food. Within a year there was fire on the ridges and deranged chanting. There has been cannibalism. Cannibalism is the great fear. Mostly I worry about food. Always food. Food and the cold and our shoes. Sometimes I tell the boy old stories of courage and justice - difficult as they are to remember. All I know is the child is my warrant and if he is not the word of God, then God never spoke. ~The Man, from Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" (Film.)

...

I don't preach a social Gospel I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, "Now is that political or social?" He said, "I feed you." Because the good news to a hungry person is bread. ~Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

What if Jesus was a Palestinian child??

'Cause ya know, I've read the Lord's Word and it says exactly that in each of the four Gospels.

Jesus was a Palestinian child.

Sit with that.

'Cause they won't.

And I feel like it needs to be said.

That is the entire fucking point.

Jesus wasn't a Prince born in a palace who preached conformity and tried to "save" some ideology or other from a position of power. 

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. ~Luke 2:1-14

He was a poor kid born in a stable who grew up to be a carpenter (which in the way of the time meant working as much or more with stone than wood) and itinerant Rabbi who preached a Message that was extremely dangerous to Power at the time, and they killed Him for it.

Jesus was not a White, weak, long-haired hippie-looking man.

He was a brown-skinned, rough, strong-armed Working Man who knew His Torah and preached about anything but a Gospel of quiet conformity to the demands of Empire.

The Empire of His day, Rome...well, Rome was and still is pretty much considered the prototype both in and out of Christian circles for a debased Godless world-conquering Empire that can control others, but not itself, that can govern far-away lands, but cannot get its people to govern themselves and their own behavior. 

And it did not and does not even want to.

It's easy to control people when they are sozzled on drunkenness and sexual excesses and fear the Sword of the State more than the Judgment of the Creator.

Jesus did not preach obedience to that crap and don't you dare forget that.

And I'll note that nobody is trying to nail Mark Driscoll to a stick. I think there's a reason for that.

But ya know, Miss Rachel is getting a lot of crap from "Conservatives" for pointing out things that should be perfectly obvious.

There's a reason for that, too.

We've got to take the neighborhood back. We've got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It's right around the corner. It's standing on the corner. It can't speak English. It doesn't want to speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk. "Why you ain't where you is go." I don't know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with "why you ain't…". You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they're moving ahead on this? Well, they know they're not, they're just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you're just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out. ~Bill Cosby, the "Pound Cake" speech.

These fucking people been preaching the ideology of "Social" "Conservatism" (Which actually is neither if you really look at it. There's precedent, if you think about it too. Caesar Augustus was a social conservative (small "S" small "C" at that) and I don't think any of the Conservative Christian Republicans I grew up around would have claimed him as either, and my partner had a similar upbringing. But then that's why neither of us is MAGA now.

In their defense, I don't think the vast majority of those folks would claim MAGA or Trump or even want to, either. We had a fair number of idiots around back then that fit the type today, and my people didn't like those assholes.

But then most of those people had both the ability and the desire to read a history book and taught me to do the same. I literally know people who praised Jesus when Communism fell in 1989. Sure, there were people who were in denial about that, but they were considered kooks and losers and religious fanatics and the rest of us celebrated the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the revolutions of 1989 as the amazing events that they were.

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco

Being a bigoted, fearful idiot didn't used to be a thing that people celebrated or that got you political power. Willful ignorance used to get you looked down upon and forcibly corrected to your face.

When I started my last job in 2003, working at the casino, if you did something stupid and got yelled at by a coworker for it, and you went to the Chef, their first impulse tended to be "Well, what did you do?" Followed by "Well, don't do that again." People both governing their own behavior and policing their own was expected and pretty much normal.

As I've said many times RE: Cops being called on kids and shit, when I was coming up, the cops were not needed because I feared my parents, and pretty much everybody in my neighborhood knew my parents.

The Human Resources-ization of everything, over-reliance on the government, and yes, even to a great extent "Political Correctness" not to mention moral relativism and situational ethics, all things at least once pitched as being well-intended, have really just created a lot more spaces for bad actors and deceivers to hide and manipulate. Yeah, a lot of the shit Liberals did has helped create this mess too, and don't you forget it.

I mean, I remember when "Do the crime, you do the time" was also normal and bipartisan. 

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~George Orwell, 1984.

Now? Mike Johnson openly fearmongers that if Democrats win in the fall, they're going to investigate everything, use the Power of the State to impose accountability and consequences on people currently doing illegal acts, etc. It's almost like the motherfucker knows Republicans are doing something wrong.

Sorry, bud, but "Right" and "Wrong" are not contingent on Political Power.

And I take These Fucking People's attitudes about that as yet more proof that No, they really do not believe in God.

Except, perhaps, as a rationalization.

And that, my friends, is exactly how you Go To Hell.

[As the four newly-revealed Cylons aboard Galactica struggle to deal with the information, the call to action stations sounds]

Lieutenant Felix Gaeta: [over the loudspeaker] ...Inbound Cylon fleet! I repeat: action stations, action stations. Set Condition One throughout the ship. This is not a drill.

Tory Foster: Oh gods... what're we going to do?

Saul Tigh: The ship is under attack. We do our jobs. Report to your stations!

Chief Galen Tyrol: Report to stations?

Saul Tigh: My name is Saul Tigh. I am an officer in the Colonial Fleet. Whatever else I am, whatever else it means, that's the man I want to be. And if I die today, that's the man I'll be. ~From Battlestar Galactica (2003) S3.E20 "Crossroads, Part 2."

I was not taught that way, and you can like it or lump it.

Which is exactly why I'm making the point of calling out this bullshit in these people's supposed own language.

And you cannot make me believe this fucking garbage.

I'll die with a rifle in my hand fighting before it comes to that.

Some things are just wrong, period, and cloaking Wrong in fake "Conservatism" and a bunch of Fundamentalist talk does not make it Right.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

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When the men got up to leave, they looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way. Then the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.”

Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.”

The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

The Lord said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”

Then Abraham spoke up again: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, 28 what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five people?”

“If I find forty-five there,” he said, “I will not destroy it.”

Once again he spoke to him, “What if only forty are found there?”

He said, “For the sake of forty, I will not do it.”

Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?”

He answered, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.”

Abraham said, “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?”

He said, “For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.”

Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?”

He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.”

When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.

~Genesis 18:16-33

Nine

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev...Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
~Ronald Reagan

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. ~Matthew 3:2