Pilate then went out unto them, and said, What accusation bring ye against this man?
They answered and said unto him, If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee.
Then said Pilate unto them, Take ye him, and judge him according to your law. The Jews therefore said unto him, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death:
That the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he spake, signifying what death he should die.
Then Pilate entered into the judgment hall again, and called Jesus, and said unto him, Art thou the King of the Jews?
Jesus answered him, Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?
Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me: what hast thou done?
Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.
Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth hears my voice.
Pilate said unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and said unto them, I find in him no fault at all. ~John 18:28-38
I've been seeing these around, and last night I saw this one in particular.
I have a Church background, going all the way back to when I was a really little kid. My family...which is overwhelmingly Democrats and Liberals now...was then and still is mostly Christian. My Great-Aunt who is like 90 and herself a retired Episcopalian minister (And she's also LGBT and was "Out" long before it was cool) gave the blessing at my Grandma's birthday meal this last week. This is where I come from, yo.
I'm here to tell you, if I'd said something like what Madison Cawthorn said, 20 years ago when I was still in Church, comparing Jesus to ANY Man...much less one like Donald Trump...they'd have thrown me out faster than Uncle Phil threw out Jazz in about every episode of The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air.
And those church people were way more conservative than my family (and at the time, I was more conservative than the rest of my people.) But, some things are supposed to be more important than politics.
Idolatry being wrong IS one of those things.
And ya know, even after I left that church, I was blessed (and I use that word deliberately) to know people who believed in and taught the Truth, who didn't and for the most part still haven't fallen for this Trump bullshit.
Right or wrong, whether you believe in it or you don't believe in it...what's in the Bible speaks to the human spirit and is still to some degree relevant after many centuries.
Trump got convicted in his NYC Hush Money case and, as predicted, a bunch of his followers bailed.
After like, two days. The jig is up, the game is over, or at least it's not funny anymore. Or at least they don't wanna be seen with this crap, let alone get it on them!
And Trump wasn't the victim of some elaborate conspiracy. He was convicted by a jury of his peers, as the American system requires and it's We The People who are given that awesome responsibility and there's people throughout the world who would kill...who, indeed, have killed and are themselves willing to fight and die for the Right to have their fates or those of subsequent generations decided by a jury of common people rather than by some petty potentate. Why do you think the Ukrainians are fighting so hard against Russia?? They have an actual living memory of Communist show trials and predetermined verdicts.
We. Don't.
And most Americans know all that.
That's why MAGA is going balls-out to declare Trump their God now, so they can play the "God Card" like some kind of manipulative church girls and get people to vote for their fake god, who isn't almighty after all, or even useful to them without the Worldly Power provided by the Presidency of the United States.
Really, that by itself should show you just how Lost these fucking people are.
And honestly? I'm not a Born-Again anything anymore and I'm gonna tell you right now; If that's you, get back into the Lord's Word and rethink your life, while you still can. Do it while it's still a choice.
None of this is that hard, and no funny business, either. It's just What I Read.
Christ Is King.
But Christ Himself said His Kingdom is NOT of *This* World.
Sorry, but you have to know a little about the state of the World at the time (during the First Century CE) to actually understand how revolutionary of a statement that was.
You have to know that to know why an Empire like Rome would regard an itinerant Jewish carpenter and Rabbi like Jesus or the people that followed Him to be a threat. Rome had its on pantheons of gods, true enough, but a Roman citizen or anyone aspiring to be such was also required to make offerings to the Emperor as if he were a god. Rome was not the only such empire, but it's the one the story references and it's the one Christianity originally set itself in opposition to.
Revelation does not make any sense without understanding that.
And Emperors (Roman and otherwise) routinely deified themselves (and favored lackeys) or were deified upon their deaths. That's technically what that verse about the "Abomination Of Desolation" references. If you didn't believe it, great.
But what the hell could you do about it??
To these kind of people, Christianity is just an excuse to go around trying to force their ways on other people, that's all. If Atheistic Communism or the Cult of Moloch or shouting "Unga Bunga" while dancing around a fire gave them that Power...they'd do that instead.
It's the Belief, the literal ACT of Having Faith in Jesus Christ...that is the point according to Christianity.
And These Fucking People...Don't.
A bunch of these Trump Gang motherfuckers went down to El Salvador for Nayib Bukele's inauguration, including Donald Trump Jr. and Kimmy Gargoyle and none of them look too bent out of shape about Donald Trump's current legal predicament.
It's no wonder these assholes don't believe in Jesus Christ.
They can't even be bothered to give a shit about Donald Trump and he's pretty much their meal ticket.
Yeah, I said it, and you can just go ahead and think about that for a second.
Like I said, I have a church background and out of respect for my own upbringing, if nothing else, I'M not going to make no offerings to these fucking people's Bullshit Emperor or to anybody else who wants to claim that kind of label whether it's Ayatollah Cockamamie or Vladimir Putin or some petty strongman like Nayib Bukele or whatever, I don't give a damn.
You either believe there's something on the Other Side, or you Don't.
I mean, think about it. There's some real shit going on in the world right now.
Including the war in Ukraine and a fair amount of other things, like the Gaza/Israel war, that should be right up Republicans' collective alley if they were the people they said they were for all those years, or if they really opposed the things that they said they opposed or supported any of the stuff they said they supported, and the next thing is probably going to be China threatening Taiwan and/or MAGA attempting to secede from the USA. (And don't tell me we won't get sucked into one or more of these fights, I know how things work.)
But these fucking people inevitably side with the Enemies of America, including with people who refuse to believe in ANY god (like that Communist KGB Agent, Vlad Putin) let alone Jesus Christ, or who (in the case of Radical Islam) embrace an interpretation of God the Father that's so extreme as to not even be recognizable to most Christians.
Because being the enemy of America, and of Civilization as a whole, is their real beliefs.
Anything but America.
Anything but "Love Thy Neighbor."
(And the idea of loving one's neighbor, or at least of peaceful coexistence, is common to all of the Abrahamic religions and to most others.)
Anything but what already works, why else would a narcissist like Elon Musk have embraced this entire damned nihilistic thing so closely?
And here's the thing; When Trump goes to jail or dies, they'll just go find another Idol.
It's not really Trump in particular they want, in general, anyone will do. All them MAGA high-ups was telling on themselves going to El Salvador. They just want somebody who will sanctify their bad behavior and make them feel like they're getting away with something or somehow getting one over on their fellow Humans.
If Trump goes down, as he certainly will now, you watch and see if some of these motherfuckers don't shift their loyalty to Nayib Bukele and go into business helping him or lobbying for him in the US, or something.
Nobody cares if you're gay, least of all God. Hell, Tuesday evening my cousin and her wife clasped the hands of the people seated next to them and bowed their heads for my great-aunt's prayer the same as all the rest of us.
God did not reject them or slam down the phone. It's really that damned simple. He still made His Presence be felt.
God does not hate them, Man does, and Man wants his Hate to be holy.
But that hate is the total opposite of the message of Jesus Christ or any of the other Prophets, which is Love. And not only are "Love your neighbor, and love your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your might" the core message of the Bible...all the other holy books say basically similar things.
These people don't want that.
They want an Unholy Book that blesses their perversions (like their Worship of a Man) and their desire to hurt other people.
But like I said, regarding Gravity, it's not the fall that kills you. It's that sudden stop at the bottom.
Making the choice between Heaven and Hell is kind of the same way, except we make the choice here whether we know it or not.
But ya know, those who've gone before and who have greater insights than I'll ever have, they left us guide books and signposts and warnings along the way, snippets of the Divine Conversation.
And maybe it's just me, but it seems like if you wanna worship Donald Trump, that points you towards Hell and its fires...and it's been my personal observation that the more people do this, the more literally Hell-Bent they become.
And I think there's a reason for that.
The Truth is simple. God don't ask that much of us.
Man makes it complicated because he does not want to obey it.
But just because you choose to reject the Truth in favor of your Golden Idol doesn't make it not be True.
And it's the nature of Idols that they will be cast down, what about your eternal soul??
Do you wanna stake your shit on Donald Trump, on blowing the narcissist forever, really??
What if you're wrong??
Man cannot save Man.
Remember that, because it's going to be on the test later.
Слава Україна!
My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning.
I turn this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson; I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.
~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran
When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco
For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
And why behold thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but consider not the beam that is in thine own eye?
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