Attention, Glenn Youngkin:
”For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the gentiles do the same?”
And, in a non-bizarro world, Christians, who in theory follow a messiah who spent his ministry caring for the outcast and oppressed, would see trans kids just trying to be who God made them to be not as enemies but as beloved.
In the wake of two Republican governors dehumanizing asylum seekers as a means of scoring political points, I offer Psalm 14 as the appropriate prayer for the Christians who overwhelmingly support their party:
“Fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt; they do abominable deeds;
there is no one who does good.
The Lord looks down from heaven on humankind
to see if there are any who are wise,
who seek after God.
They have all gone astray; they are all alike perverse;
there is no one who does good,
no, not one.
Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers
who eat up my people as they eat bread
and do not call upon the Lord?
There they shall be in great terror,
for God is with the company of the righteous.
You would confound the plans of the poor,
but the Lord is their refuge.
O that deliverance for Israel would come from Zion!
When the Lord restores the fortunes of his people,
Jacob will rejoice; Israel will be glad.
So, who was actually Jesus today? Ron DeSantis and his band of evangelicals cheering on his owning of the libs, or the people of Martha’s Vineyard, many of whom were probably not Christian at all, who stepped up to help? Who ends the day justified in the eyes of God?
The entire evangelical concept that you can pray a prayer and then live your life as a complete asshole and go to heaven while people who actually love and serve people but haven’t prayed that prayer go to hell is ludicrous on its face. And it’s not what Jesus taught either.
Don’t worry though, asshole Christians. My Jesus is going to make you new as well, although it may hurt a little bit when you find out you spent your entire life investing in things that won’t last.
From the Department of They Who Have Ears Let Them Hear, a rare post from my “serious” blog.
Apparently, it’s Christians Behaving Badly Thursday here on the blog.
First up, we have the Kansas teacher who misgendered one of her transgender students, was suspended, and then was rewarded with a $95,000 ruling against the district. And then she had the audacity to blame Jesus:
“Ms. Ricard is a Christian and holds sincere religious beliefs consistent with the traditional Christian and biblical understanding of the human person and biological sex,” the lawsuit said. “Ms. Ricard believes that God created human beings as either male or female, that this sex is fixed in each person from the moment of conception, and that it cannot be changed, regardless of an individual person’s feelings, desires, or preferences.”
Apparently, holding “traditional Christian” beliefs is code for treating people like shit. No one asked you to change your theology, ma’am, although your theology does deny modern science as well as fail to read scripture in light of the context it was written. But what does it hurt you to call someone what they want to be called?
Also, Ms. Ricard, love your neighbor as yourself is a traditional Christian and biblical understanding, but apparently you don’t like that one.
Secondly, there’s this:
“The Indiana Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that religious freedom rights protect the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis from being sued by a teacher who was fired from his job at a Catholic high school for being in a same-sex marriage.
Joshua Payne-Elliott argued in his lawsuit that archdiocese leaders wrongfully forced his firing in 2019 from his job of 13 years as a world language and social studies teacher at Cathedral High School in Indianapolis by mandating that all Catholic schools under its purview enforce a morality clause barring employees from entering into same-sex marriages.”
Traditionalists are going to continue to see their churches hemorrhage people until their theology catches up with the science. Families will continue to be forced to choose between their church and their gay kid, and increasingly will choose their kid (which is the correct answer, both from a human standpoint AND from a Jesus standpoint).
By the way, approximately 1 in 6 Zoomers (AKA Gen Z) identify as LGBTQIA+, which means that the average family will have at least one queer member in a few years. So you either end up with that LGBTQIA+ family member getting pushed out of the church, or the entire family deciding they’re going to support their kid and leave en masse. The math is not in the favor of the “traditional understanding.”
I have every confidence that in the end, when the church finally reads the scriptures through the lens of love rather than the lens of legalism and tribalism, it will finally come to the conclusion that like with geocentrism, the crusades, the Doctrine of Discover, slavery, patriarchy and so many other ways it was wrong, it was wrong on the issue of LGBTQIA+ inclusion and affirmation. I just wonder if there will be any people left in the church by the time it realizes that.