Far Country (Part Two.)

 For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. ~Luke 19:10

Several years ago, an Episcopal church in North Carolina put up a statue of a homeless Jesus.

Some people understood and appreciated its meaning. Some people called the cops on Jesus, thinking the statue was an actual homeless person sleeping on a bench in front of the church.

Yep. You got that right, America is so Christian we'll call the cops on Jesus Christ...and then, I'm sure, fail to see the lesson in that.

As I've said before, I'm a former conservative mainstream Christian. This Episcopal church is a liberal church in a mostly-liberal neighborhood. I'd have still almost certainly have understood the message of this particular statue, even 20 years ago.

As a Baptist, I understood well the Protestant work ethic that, fundamentally, often leads to well-off churches that are not unlike this Episcopal house of worship. But for the same reason, I understood and was taught to have compassion for the poor and the downtrodden. Yes...pull yourself up by your own bootstraps if you can, but also be aware that not everybody has boots. We'll get back to that.

Jesus did not come in power and glory to subdue the nations of the Earth. He came as a humble itinerant Rabbi in a land occupied by an Empire so great, so enduring...that many elements of its system persist even today, the world over, in lands that the Roman Empire never heard of, and where the original inhabitants never heard of it.

Were He to show up today, I'd expect the Savior to be not unlike this statue of Him.

As a younger man, as a *Conservative* younger man, at that, part of my life history is that I spent fourteen months or so as a Walmart associate in 2000 and 2001. I worked in Electronics officially, as in that was the department to which I was assigned. I worked at the Cheboygan, MI Walmart store, then transferred over to the Petoskey, MI Wal-Mart. For part of that time in each location it was a second job.

But on a lot of days, I'd get bumped up to the front end to work the registers, or if it was slow I'd help other departments, and I often covered breaks for Jewelry or Sporting Goods.

I'd mentioned, when asked, that I was a Christian and if possible I'd like Sunday mornings off...but that I was more than willing to work afternoons. And so, I often did, because in the small Northern Michigan city where I lived and worked, despite the fact that at the time we got paid an extra dollar an hour on Sundays...lots of the older workers wanted to have Sundays off which created a bit of a staffing issue.

That said, somewhere along the way my supervisors figured out that I was an actual, serious, practicing Christian...and for that matter, having worked with them in previous food service jobs, that I got on fairly well with the Jamaicans. That is, seasonal workers from Mackinaw City who were frequent customers during the busy tourist season, which I'd hired in at the beginning of. Anyway, people figured out that the religious customers liked me, and that I was fairly adept at dealing with the seasonal workers and smoothing over issues and for that matter, I had absolutely no trouble understanding their accents.

This sort of thing fairly quickly got me a couple of raises.

I worked in Electronics, most of the Electronics people and photo-lab people were total nerds...as was I for that matter.

In that first store, Two of my co-workers were women that were outspoken liberal Atheists, close friends and roommates...one, Amber, was a former Jehovah's Witness...and as a Baptist I totally understood about the damage cults could do. I'd been taught that type of stuff and that the Jehovah's Witnesses were a cult. Nothing that lady ever said about her family or their ways did one damn thing to change that opinion.

The other one, Andrea, was in one of my classes at North Central Michigan College in Petoskey, where I was a student at the time. Fun fact: We once ended up on opposing sides debating for or against religion and no, we were not each on our own "team." Anyway, the verbal sparring and philosophical discussions we'd have during slow times became well known. Enough so in fact, that it drew in one of the managers eventually.

So quite often, while being generally mindful of company policies regarding such things, I ended up fairly often talking Bible stuff with one of my bosses. When I transferred, this came up, so the same patterns more or less continued in the new job. For some reason, the second store had more obvious religious customers...lots of Baptists from a nearby church, ladies that wore long dresses and little doily-caps that were some kind of Pentecostal, and the occasional Muslim student from the college.

After I helped a customer with serious ESL issues one day, thanks to my own language skills, my immediate supervisor at the new store (who was also the Pastor of a house-church) was immensely impressed when he found out I knew and could recite the Lord's Prayer...in Arabic.

Also, in that particular location I got very sick of the "Toy Story" movies because for whatever reason they were what was on the TV's in the electronics department. Just sayin.'

Long story short, it was a diverse environment, Sam Walton's policies were still in effect while I worked there and while the environment was decidedly conservative and slightly favored the religious including actively catering to Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians...it was pretty tolerant, too. Lots of associates adorned their vests with buttons and pins, and the store even issued one that was a Pride flag. They asked a lot of you, but also treated you good and rewarded initiative and skills. When I finally quit, due to stress from getting divorced, mostly, I was making just over $9 an hour. Not bad for almost 20 years ago. The Protestant Work Ethic very much went with the job, but so did the idea that good performance should be rewarded.

Toward the end of my time, things with the company began the slow slide to how they are now as the old man's kids took over running the company.

But...the point is, Walmart was and presumably still is a conservative company, that donates to Republicans, etc. Hell, Walmart has done its bit to shape the current mess we're in, too. They donated to Trump in 2016, for one.

But guess what?

None of that is good enough for the NRA. None of that will matter to Gun Nuts and Trump Supporters. None of that will matter to the fanatics.

Because every day in modern "Conservatism" is Year Zero.

Hell, the fucking Khmer Rouge had nothing on these people for cult mentality and willingness to forget or ignore everything that went before...save that which enables them to hurt people. It doesn't matter one bit that 19 years ago I could talk Bible stuff at work. It matters that Walmart has the sense to react to public opinion and oh, the fact that there have been a couple of mass shootings in Walmart stores.

If you haven't noticed, Capitalism and the Free Market seem to only be "Good" when they do what The Tribe wants. Thus, Walmart joins much of the corporate world and two-thirds of Americans, not to mention mist of the rest of the Earth...in being banished to the Outer Darkness of the Trumpist cosmology.

And I don't see anything conservative about that.

"So then because thou art lukewarm..." is basically where these people are at. If you criticize even once, or do even one thing that goes against these fucking people's assorted dogmas, they will spew you out.

As somebody said last night on Twitter, there is no "Just the tip" with Trumpism.

There's no "I don't do anal" nor "I only do anal because something-something virginity" No. Either you bend over and take it balls-deep from the orange schmuck in the cheap baggy suit, Peasant, or it's the Comfy Chair  Spanish Inquisition  National Razor  Gulag Outer Darkness for you, too.

Time was, a hell of a lot more conservatives would have objected to this on grounds of principle and personal boundaries alone...but time was that Trump was not considered a conservative, also.

Apparently if you accept the Orange Gospel of the Chosen One you have to submit yourself to the Dictatorship Of The Proletariat, the Hive-Mind, the Uber-Consciousness, the Howling Mob...and cease to be a rational, thinking person with your own needs that you have the guts to articulate openly and speak your mind about. This even seems to apply to corporations now.

"Oh, hey, the customers are saying they don't like these dudes walking around with rifles slung" is no excuse. You're supposed to light yourself and your profit margin on fire for the greater vainglory of Donald Trump. Hmm, can we ask the farmers in Iowa how well that's working out for them?

I don't get it, these fucking people think that everybody else is supposed to just let them do what they want and run wild all over everything and then suffer the consequences in silence?

Fuck all that. I got shit to do and I'm not going to wait around for them to shit all over me before I stand up for myself.

These people will throw anyone and anything under the bus for their "Chosen One."

This is exactly the kind of fake-"Conservative" theonomy, the exact sort of Christ-less Christianity, that I've been warning people about.

And it seems like I've written about this before.

It's time we start dealing with this problem. Be proactive, not reactive, as the corporate cliche goes.

These are the people who'd call the cops on Jesus, who are busy trying to throw their own former corporate icons to the howling idiot mob of Trump-worshiping lost souls.

Where do you think you stand, citizen?

Realistically, where do you stand?

Probably not in the place you wanna be.