Random Sunday Ramblings

I owe longtime readers a series of concluding posts on Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy.  I will try to write another post in the series within the next week or so.  But today I'm feeling a bit lazy and I have the challenge of trying to rein in a schedule that has recently become less manageable than it ought to be.  So I'm chillin' in my backyard right now.  (My cat Koshka is chillin' also next to my right foot.)

I normally shop for groceries twice a week, although I hope to cut that down to once a week as soon as the veggies in my garden start producing.  However, last Thursday I forgot to catch up on some items that had run out, so this morning I made a run to a supermarket.  Along the way I passed three churches and noted the cars in the parking lots.  Those parking lots have had Sunday cars for the last few months, and whenever I've thought of people going to church during a pandemic like that caused by COVID-19, I have wondered at the craziness of some humans.  I haven't been to church (or coffee shops, libraries,  restaurants, etc.) for over a year.

The percentage of people who have received at least one vaccine shot in my state is high enough that a few days ago, the governor's office removed the requirement for people to wear masks in most public places.  That means that one of my biggest excuses for not attending church may go away.  Yet I still feel a curious reluctance to resume my churchgoing.  Part of the reason is that I have become used to taking what I consider to be lifesaving precautions.  In this I am not alone.  Today, for instance, I noticed that perhaps a majority of people in the supermarket I visited were still wearing masks, including store staff.  I feel a bit like the Willie Keith character in The Caine Mutiny after WWII has ended and he's steaming back to the United States - still observing personal blackout practices at night aboard his ship and unable to get used to steaming with the sonar turned off or having his ship's lights brightly blazing.

But another part of my reluctance stems from the fact that the pastors and members of many churches in the United States have shown themselves to be thoroughly, nauseatingly disgusting during the Trump era and especially during the last year and a half.  That stinking disgust burst into my consciousness again just a few minutes ago, as I was reading the Gospel of Luke, particularly Luke 3:15-17:

Now while the people were in a state of expectation 

and all were wondering in their hearts about John, as to whether he might be the Christ,

John answered and said to them all, "As for me, I baptize you with water; 

but One is coming who is mightier than I, and I am not fit to untie the thong of His sandals; 

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.  

And His winnowing fork is in His hand to thoroughly clear His threshing floor, 

and to gather the wheat into His barn; 

but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

This passage struck me precisely because John describes Christ as a coming Judge.  It must be noted that Christ, when He came, did not refute or alter anything that John had said about him.  Nor did Christ alter any of John's exhortations to people to prepare for the coming of Christ by repenting - and by bringing forth fruit in keeping with repentance.  This is seen clearly in Luke 19:1-10, when after meeting Zaccheus the tax collector, Zaccheus announces to the Lord that he is giving back to people everything he stole or cheated out of them.  The Lord responds by saying, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he [Zaccheus] too, is a son of Abraham."  In other words, if a person has really repented, it will show in the way they treat others - especially in the way they treat the powerless, the poor and the oppressed.

Now the white American evangelical/Protestant church (and those Stockholm Syndrome-affected pastors of certain nonwhite churches) will enthusiastically preach Christ as a coming Judge - especially as a Judge who is coming to destroy all dark-skinned infidels.  Thus the white American evangelical/Protestant church continues to insist that "Blue lives matter!" and that we need to pray for our men in uniform who continue to use State-sanctioned violence in order to maintain both white privilege and white supremacy.  And their pastors continue to try to validate both themselves and the politicians who are backed by them by appealing to a "culture war" which is being waged to "purify" our society from deviant elements.  Never mind that these "culture warriors" continually prove themselves to be as deviant as the sins they condemn, or that the appeal to "culture warfare" is itself simply a ploy to garner more political and economic power for a privileged minority.

A funny thing happens, however, when anyone dares hold up a truth-telling mirror to the eyes of these people.  When they are forced to look at their own sins, they are suddenly all, "Well Jesus is full of grace!  The wonderful thing about Christ is that He died for our sins!  You're being judgmental for pointing my sins out to me!"  It gets even better if you dare to point out to them the Biblical mandate for social justice and the practical love of one's neighbor.  In Luke 16, for instance, the story of the rich man and Lazarus is routinely misinterpreted by these evangelicals to mean that the rich man went to hell simply because he refused to accept a 90-second catechism from a "Gospel tract."  (Somebody forgot to give that rich dude a leaflet explaining the Four Spiritual Laws!  After all, we're justified by faith apart from works of the Law, aren't we?!)  Many of these evangelical/Protestant types now going so far as to say that anyone who says that Christians are mandated by the Gospel to practice social justice is guilty of "legalism."  (See this, this, this, and this for instance.  And when you say "legalism", say it with the same sinister hiss that you would use when you say the word ssssocialissssmmmm...)

But the best of all whoppers I have ever heard were the assertions by evangelicals during the Trump years that Trump was somehow a Christian.  In order to say such a thing, these evangelicals had to deny almost all of the Biblical teaching on Christian character.  And when it was pointed out that Trump was not even a good example of sexual purity (almost the only purity that evangelicals seem to care about), we heard drivel like "Well, Trump is just a baby Christian" and "If God could use a wicked king like Nebuchadnezzar or Cyrus to accomplish His will, we can be sure that God is using Trump!  So we must support him!"

But what if Christ, when He returns, turns out to be what many evangelicals would call "legalistic"?  What if, moreover, many evangelicals wind up getting incinerated by unquenchable fire?  What if, when the Judge comes, He's coming for you?  Lemme tell ya, it makes me a bit uncomfortable to write this, knowing that for every finger I point outward, there are three pointing back at me!