The God-forsakin' Blog

Today is a holiday that isn’t really a holy day. It was invented by the government after the Civil War as an attempt at unity and peacemaking. (It failed - as any look at history, or at the conversation around most Thanksgiving tables, can tell you - but it was a nice idea). It’s not a religious holiday like Christmas or Easter or Hannukah – no origin in any religion’s scripture, no mandate from anyone’s god to celebrate it. But still, baked right into the name of the day is the assumption that we’re giving thanks to someone or something for what we have. And in this country, “giving thanks” means giving thanks to a god (and specifically the Christian god as worshipped by white Americans). Less so than in Lincoln’s day, but still very much so.   But why do it that way? Why thank an invisible friend who clearly did jack shit to provide any of the things we have? Why not thank the people who ACTUALLY made it possible for us to have what we have? Why not thank farmers (and all t...

Last night I attended the funeral of a homeless man, who we’ll refer to as Shane. My church (which, despite the theism, is a genuinely good group by anyone’s standard) was the place that Shane kept coming back to. Any time he showed up, we would do what we could for him – give him coffee, food, a safe place to be for a couple hours. We didn’t have the resources to get him a place to live, but we did what we could do. He sometimes camped on our lawn. We asked him not to, because we got tired of cleaning up his feces, cigarette butts, and used needles… but we didn’t actually MAKE him leave except on the rare occasion his mental health made him potentially dangerous. Most of the time, Shane was super-gentle and self-effacing. Shane had the kind of mental illness that caused him to communicate mostly in “word salad”. The words usually weren’t connected, either to each other or to whatever he was actually trying to say. Occasionally, though, he would be lucid, and you could tell at thos...

  A thought just occurred to me, and I’m surprised it never occurred to me before. Progressive Christians point to the 2000+ verses in the Bible that command people to take care of the poor and say that this means Christians should advocate for government programs that take care of the poor. Conservative Christians say those verses mean that individual Christians, and churches, should take care of the poor, instead of the government. However, Mosaic law assumes a theocracy*. It assumes that the priests are the ones governing Israel. So the thought that occurs to me is this: Money given to the temple/church IS money given to the government, under Mosaic law. 10% of the gross as a bare minimum, plus other offerings for holy days (which are numerous). And it's given primarily for the purpose of providing basic necessities for the poor. In addition, you're supposed to leave behind some of your harvest for the poor to glean - rather than squeeze ever...

 Here's another one I wanted to post under my own name but never did.  Back in January of 2017, this happened: https://www.wweek.com/news/2017/01/30/youre-going-to-hell-belligerent-men-screamed-at-portland-parishioners-outside-of-a-spanish-mass/  Here's what I wanted to say, should have said, but didn't: There’s currently a Westboro-Baptist-style group that calls themselves the “Bible Believers”, who are going to Latino churches to chant hateful slogans at the congregants and challenge them to fight. These are the same people went to the Portland Airport, grabbed a woman’s hair and dragged her to the ground, then acted like they were the victims of an unprovoked assault when someone punched their leader out cold. And it looks like they plan to continue the same shtick at churches around Portland. Many of you voted as you did because you feared that, if the wrong person got into office, Christians would start being targeted for harassment and persecution, and our freedom...

A Facebook friend who is Evangelical, and generally conservative politically, but despite that seems to not be the kind of conservative Evangelical who conflates Christian values with voting for Trump, posted this article: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/research-progressive-conservative-christians/ I have trouble believing some of this article’s points, and I'd want to know a lot more about their data and methodology before I would accept their conclusions. After all, if they HAVE used flawed or even fake science to support their point, this wouldn't be the first time Evangelical Christians did so (see: Young Earth Creationism, climate change denial, anti-maskers/ anti-vaxxers). But other points the article makes do at least make intuitive sense. The overall idea - progressive Christians being more prone to politicization and marching in lock-step - is difficult to believe. After all, 80% of Evangelicals voted for Trump twice... and I've never ...

  “Don’t let me stop your great self-destruction. Die if you want to, you misguided martyr! I wash my hands of your demolition. DIE if you want to, you innocent puppet!”   These lines are sung/ screamed by Pilate at Jesus in the musical “Jesus Christ, Superstar”. And despite my desire to be compassionate even to people that piss me off, I find myself feeling exactly this way about anti-vax Evangelicals.   Don’t get me wrong, I’m not for a moment saying that they are in ANY way like Jesus. If they were, they would have been the FIRST to do whatever it took to protect their neighbors from a deadly plague, even if it meant sacrificing their own freedom or safety or even lives (which it fucking DOESN’T, but that’s their perception). But I do feel these words apply to this situation. It’s like, all the sane people have shouted ourselves hoarse for a year and a half trying to offer them one chance after another to NOT die. We’ve tried everything we can thi...

 Apparently, Big Bird has a Twitter account. That's silly, but it's a thing, and not as silly as Ted Fucking Cruz being a senator. Apparently, Big Bird tweeted (haha) that he'd gotten his vaccine, and Cruz tweeted back that this was an example of government propaganda being aimed at kids. It's ridiculous, on the face of it, that an elected representative of our government, one of the most powerful people in the country, is picking a Twitter feud with A FUCKING MUPPET. But it's actually understandable that a prominent Republican has beef with Sesame Street. Because, let's be honest, Sesame Street has always promoted a value that is the single greatest threat to today's Republican Party: Learning. It's just a fact that the more educated people are, the less likely they are to vote Republican.  And no, this isn't because the colleges are deliberately trying to make your kids more liberal. I went to a conservative Evangelical college whose professors wer...