We have no more thought of using our own powers to escape the arm of authorities than had the Apostles of old. No more are we ready to keep silent at man's behest when God commands us to speak. For it is, and must remain, the case that we must obey God rather than man. ~Martin Niemoller
I wasn't going to write anything tonight.Hell, I still feel drained and scraped raw from writing yesterday's post and from being sick for three days.
But then I saw this. A church in Phoenix, Arizona giving a standing ovation when the verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial was announced.
But I saw this and hit the roof, I was irate.
Supposed Christians, cheering for a fucking killer.
I don't give a damn if you think it was self defense. That's nothing to cheer about. I don't give a damn what you think his victims did. It wasn't a capital crime. And even if it was it would not, in any nation on God's green Earth, merited being gunned down in the street by a kid carrying a weapon illegally purchased for him, that he wasn't old enough to have, in a place he wasn't even from.
Again, I'm going to ask you, Christians, whatever happened to "Thou Shalt Not Kill?"
No, don't try and dick me around on translations, or definitions of "murder." I started out as a King James Version Baptist. The Word as far as I'm concerned says "Kill" and that's all there is to it. Anybody who'll try and get past that point gets marked down as a deceiver. You can't show me something in the Word that countermands the Ten Commandments 'cause it ain't there.
And I say that as a veteran of the United States Air Force security forces. Unless you're a veteran, who is also not the kind of "Christian" who would cheer somebody's death, I doubt you'll understand. Bet your ass I've thought about this more than you have. That kind of life, combat, violence, insurgency, peacekeeping...it's not a fucking action movie. It's not fun, it's not glorious. It's hard work, it's training, it's action by muscle memory and rote and knowing what you're doing without looking because you don't have the fucking time. 'Cause in a real war, you won't. It's praying to Jesus every damned day when you wake up that you won't have to go out and fucking kill somebody.
And my own position and experience is precisely why I chose to quote Niemoller,..who was a World War I veteran of the Imperial German Navy's submarine service.
You wanna know why the Church has less influence and power now? Why people aren't going to church? Why fewer people...including people with deep church backgrounds like me...no longer identify as Christians?
This shit right here is why.
Christians, cheering something that Christ Himself would be against. Christians, cheering something that looks even to my old secular ass like the work of the damn devil. Christians, caring more about political power than the conduct or love or teachings of Christ.
And that only ends one way, if it goes on long enough.
Do you know what the very first thing the Nazis did when they came to power in Germany was? They took over the churches. The government took over the churches, down to the smallest level. They first downplayed and then actually advocated getting rid of the Old Testament, they instituted Germanic Pagan customs, They didn't make Germany Christian, they tried to remake German Christianity into their own perverse image, up to and including trying to push the idea of a heroic warrior Jesus.
A lot of German Christians hit the fucking roof, said no, and fought back as best they could. They formed what became known as the Confessing Church trying to stay true to the Word of God, which was in direct opposition to the remade "German Evangelical Church" where people were not taught sound doctrine and the Word, but whatever the Fuhrer wanted them to be taught.
We're not to either extreme yet. But I guarantee you, if these assholes get their way and break off a piece of America for themselves, some of us will be forced into that position, to have to accept a religion that bows not to the ultimate sovereignty of God over all matters of life, but to the State.
How that works with these people's atavistic non-state fascism, I'm not sure. But the truth is, there already has been a Kirchenkampf in America...and the Truth lost in far too many places, because there's too much money in lies like Dominionism and the Prosperity Gospel and false promises of miracles.
Hell, in far, far too many places even that's gone out the window and people get nothing but conspiracy theories and Q-Anon garbage and right-wing politics in church and they've even kicked Jesus out of the End Times narrative, replacing Him with Anti-vaxxer crap. Hell, some people even seem to believe Donald Trump is god.
Because they want to be the heroes of the End Times. They think it'll be like an action movie and give meaning to their empty lives.
How, according to Christian doctrine or tradition, or even just the Bible, does that save anybody?
More to the point, I've seen some shit, I'll take that boring job and empty life all damn day.
We need an American Confessing Church to start counteracting this shit, before it's too late.
Because I guarantee you, Christians, if the people you're supporting get the power they want...you ain't going to like how it ends up, and an awful lot of you will end up in concentration camps or prisons like Martin Niemoller and so many of the other Confessing Church members did, or just dead like Dietrich Bonhoeffer because the fanaticism, the demand for submission, this that and the other thing will never stop until the Leader or the State or the Great Caliph or whatever can just jam their hand up your ass and make you do or say only whatever they want, only for their benefit, not yours.
It's already starting and these fucking people not only don't have that kind of power yet, but they've lost just the regular kind once already. The fanaticism has jumped the shark.
We need to stop this and we need to stop it now.
Before it consumes us all.
It's not just that the fascists don't care about you, or even your God. They don't care about Kyle Rittenhouse or anybody else they manipulate to advance their shitty agenda of the for-profit destruction of America either.
They don't care, so you have to. 'Cause if you don't stand up now, whether you run afoul of the fascists or end up standing before a resistance Epuration Sauvage or a War Crimes tribunal...when you're at the gallows and you say "I die believing in God" like Adi Eichmann did when the Israelis hanged him...well there's a good chance God won't be listening and you're in for a warm afterlife.
The Bible says even the Demons believe, and tremble.
Think about that and think about your conduct. Think about a kid who'll never get to have a normal day in his life because of this fascist horse shit, and no I'm not the least bit sympathetic.
Think what you're doing.
Because you chose to cheer a murderer in His house...and as grotesque as that stadium bullshit looks to me that's still technically what it is.
His house, not yours. A place of spirituality, not worldly politics.
And don't you forget that.
You were just babies then!" she said.
"What?" I said.
"You were just babies in the war— like the ones upstairs!"
I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood.
"But you're not going to write it that way, are you." This wasn't a question. It was an accusation.
"I — I don't know," I said.
"Well I know," she said. "You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be portrayed in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs." So then I understood. It was war that made her so angry. She didn't want her babies or anybody else's babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by books and movies.
So I held up my right hand and I made her a promise: "Mary," I said, "I don't think this book of mine is ever going to be finished. I must have written five thousand pages by now, and thrown them all away. If I ever do finish it, though, I give you my word of honor: there won't be a part for Frank Sinatra or John Wayne.
"I tell you what," I said, "I'll call it The Children's Crusade." She was my friend after that.
~From the novel Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
Wow. Spot on.
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