Romans 8:38-39 King James Version
38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I went to Wal-Mart this morning, with my roommate. As luck would have it, the line at one of the actual cash registers (as opposed to the self-scan units that have replaced most of them) was short, just one guy, so I got in line behind this old dude. I was more than a little surprised to see this guy, easily 20 years older than myself...pull out his cell phone and use an app to pay for his groceries.This amused/interested me, but it also got me thinking. If somebody would have told me 20 years ago that this would happen, let alone be so routine...End Times Prophecy Movement member, moderate-but-strident-on-a-few-issues conservative Christian me would have cited chapter and verse from Revelation.
The wheels must've been turning pretty obviously, because the Cashier, who knows me a little, asked what was on my mind. I said "Ya know, I think the Bible and all those End Times preachers were kinda wrong. We don't need no 'Mark of the Beast' no computer chip implanted in the right hand...we carry a whole bunch of them around in our hands willingly, without even thinking about it." She didn't disagree.
Why do I bring this up?
I saw this, yesterday.
It made me so angry that I swore I was going to take a day before I wrote something about it, else the content of said post might simply have been an unending stream of profanity.
"I’m a Christian and my Christian beliefs are you don’t do interracial marriage. That’s the way I was brought up and that’s the way I believe...I have black friends, I hired black people. But when it comes to all this stuff you see on TV, when you see blacks and whites together, it makes my blood boil because that’s just not the way a Christian is supposed to live."
As I've said, I used to be a Christian.
I've read the Bible. I still own several of them. For most of my life I believed in the Bible. Jesus had no such belief and the Bible records no such teaching.
This dude has effectively made a god in his own image.
Jesus was a brown-skinned Middle Eastern Jew. The only people in ancient Israel who were "white" as we would define the term today would have been *Some* of the Romans. ALL of the Romans (along with Hellenized and Romanized Jews) were considered anathema by observant Jews in Israel, which during the early part of Jesus's life was a Roman client kingdom under armed occupation, becoming a Roman province during His life.
Then, as now, the Middle East and the people therein were none too thrilled with what it had seen of "Western" civilization, given that such as it was, it was forced upon them with Gladius and Pilum just as today it is forced with Abrams tanks, M4 Carbines and Predator drones, and the local response was pretty similar, though delivered with sling and sword and hurled stone (rather than today's IED's and Kalashnikovs) as was the language of shouted invocations of divine favor and victory shouted by armed zealots who fought an insurgent war against Rome, that would turn conventional for its time some 30 years later.
Aramaic is the precursor-language to Arabic, and Aramaic was the vernacular speech of much of the Middle East in Jesus's day.
But, "Whiteness" as we know it was not even conceptually a thing yet. For Rome, bigotry was a matter of culture. You were either culturally Greek/Roman, or a barbarian.
Race is a social construct, even in the time-frame over which the Bible was actually written, up to when its basic form was finalized after the Council of Nicea...the modern concept of race (which dates from the Atlantic Slave Trade) had not been constructed yet. Jesus Christ would have known no such concept. In point of fact, there's a substantial body of theology...the Gnostic gospels...that suggests that Jesus was married, and that Mary Magdalene was His wife.
There are a number of theories on the part of the alt-Christianity, Holy Blood, Holy Grail crowd that suggest that Mary Magdalene was Ethiopian, you do the math.
The Bible doesn't tell the whole story, given the aims of Constantine and his priests, it can't. See, for one thing as not only an observant Israeli Jew, but a Rabbi...Jesus would have been expected to be married. For Him to be considered Sinless in the context of His own culture and place...rather than the Platonic asexuality forced upon Him by Constantine and Rome...Jesus would have had to be married. Jesus would have drank wine. Jesus would have worked for a damned living and for fuck's sake, Jesus would have fought the power rather than tried to become it.
His Kingdom is not of this world. The Bible says this, in each of the Gospels.
If you'd have told me 20 years ago, that this would be happening, and told me about that Georgia city councilman: I'd have cited chapter and verse, though more likely from Matthew than from Revelation. A few years later, I'd be quoting Bruce Chilton, John Shelby Spong
Do you understand what this means? Do you understand why Trump should not have pardoned this man? He committed murder. In or out of Uniform, it's the same fucking thing. It's one thing to kill somebody in a firefight, and it is completely another to kill a helpless prisoner, especially when command authority has directed you not to.
What incentive do our various enemies, opponents and rivals around the world now have to respect the Geneva Conventions and the rules of war when it comes to American prisoners? Do you really think Trump pardoning a murderer...a murderer, mind you, that I've not seen one single veteran speak out in support of...and obviously I don't support him either. Dude disobeyed a lawful order, then committed murder. He served five years...don't ask me why it wasn't longer...and Trump just pardoned his ass.
You tell me what reason somebody like Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi or whoever's running the Taliban these days...not to mention Ali Khamanei, Kim Jong Un, Nicholas Maduro, Vladimir Putin, or Xi Jinping (and mind you, many of these people are at least technically allies against us) would have to expect that their own soldiers could reliably expect safety if captured by American troops? Or to provide for such safety in turn? I mean, all it takes on either side is one angry dude, a few minutes, a bullet or two and an eventual pardon from the leadership, right? Oh, sure, the rules fully apply and all relevant conventions will be observed...until some yahoo with an ax to grind against the world gets elected or lies his way into power and decides that they don't.
You see, America's word has to mean something...or at the end of the day our nation has no power.
We can't just bomb somebody every time we want something...not unless we want the rest of the world to put an end to us and our willful ignorance real quick...and probably without ever firing a shot. All they have to do is cut off our trade, call in our debts and sit back and watch as our economy crumbles, our society collapses, and the conservatives and rich people are the first ones to try to head for the door...but, based on our own logic, what other country would have to take them?
Everybody else could just as well start treating us like we've been treating them for the last few years, and that'd put an end to our shit real quick.
But ya know, it's more than that.
"The Word became flesh..." With a picture of Trump? That's basically saying that Trump is Jesus.
Evangelical Christianity in general, and the various forms of the Prosperity Gospel in particular...seem hell bent on becoming the Cult Of Trump. But Trump is just a man.
Show me, in the Bible. Where does it say that Man can Save Man? Do these people even understand what the Christian concept of Salvation even means?
Go ahead, show me in the Bible where Anti-Blackness and the worship of one Donald J. Trump is described as being righteous. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Go ahead and show me where Jesus exhorts his followers to cruelty and hate toward their fellow humans. I'll wait, I promise. I work third shift, I can do this all day.
Calling Angela Merkel "Hitler's daughter?"
Hey, wait, aren't these alt-Right Nazis the people who think Hitler did nothing wrong? Back the truck up here a minute...
Look, fundamentally this bullshit can be killed with a calendar. Hitler committed suicide in 1945. Angela Merkel was born in 1954. The where's and whens of this stuff are all documented fact. It literally makes no damned sense to me why anyone would try to pretend otherwise...let alone why anybody would want to live in that kind of world.
Oh, right, to a one these goddamned fools believe that conspiracy theories, fascist bullshit and racism magnify their own importance and make them feel powerful because something something gazpacho.
You want to feel powerful? You can start by getting a job and moving out of your mama's basement, you fucking losers.
You cannot reason with unreasonable people. Do you think, if these people ever get the level of power that they want, that even the most abject submission will be abject enough? These fucking people are already never happy with anything!
I'm serious.
People need to quit arguing over policies and get behind whatever Democrat can get the most people behind them, and maybe give conservatives who don't like Trump something to vote for...and right now that person looks like Joe Biden.
We can enact the policies we want once we clean up this mess. But we have to show up, we have to do the work. You have to be responsible and do your homework before you get an "A." Ya'll gotta eat your vegetables before you get the ice cream. It's not a choice. This has to be done.
Because if it isn't?
Do you really think that if Trump were to declare himself a god, pull some random number out his ass and demand that his followers take it upon themselves in some way so that they could eat or engage in commerce, do you really think they'd say no?
They'd be lining up 'round the block for that gold-plated "666" and you and I both know it.
It gets worse.
Our civilization and our world face an existential threat here. We'd best start thinking and acting in those terms. Vote the sons of bitches out, all of them, and then be prepared to defend yourself.
I feel certain that this bullshit is going to end with Americans shooting at each other. That's what these people want, it's what they advocate for among themselves, it's what they threaten daily on social media. It's what they whack off to at night.
There's no shining Savior, no unicorns, just us...but we have the power to stop this shit if we just come together.
They already have, and they've chosen their god. A weak, small, petty and venal god to be sure, but he's theirs and they're welcome to have him.
But we live in a nation where a person gets a vote but their God doesn't. We don't have a God, we have a Constitution. We are supposed to be WE, a body politic, not a bunch of atomized little groups fighting over who gets what while the ship is sinking.
It's time we start acting like it.
Things ain't great, but the alternative is worse.
Revelation 13:16-17 King James Version (KJV)
16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
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