Civil Commotion

The @BethMooreLPM tweet in the preceding post inspired some pushback because it is, you know … crazy.

Shirley Taylor recalled some similarly crazy stuff she had heard from a different “spiritual leader.”

To her credit, Shirley renounced that teaching.

But others, just as I said, are made to feel inadequate by the tweet.

I repeat: The 1^st-Century Jewish sect that became Christianity was a cult, and the New Testament is the literature of a cult — and the Jesus-first teaching, and the flat-out bizarre Jesus-is-my-sex-partner schtick, are the teachings of a cult. No less than Charles Manson or Warren Jeffs or Bhagwan Rajneesh, the Jesus-cult is threatened by healthy marriages and families — and so its teachings connive against them.

Do your spouse and your children and the dog a favor Sunday morning and go to the park instead.

A reader sends along one of the most moronic, and vicious, tweets that I’ve seen in a while.

I love my husband. Oh man, I love my children & my grandchildren. Way beyond words, I do. I love my friends & co-laborers in Christ so deeply. But the love story of my life has been with Jesus of Nazareth, whom I have never once seen & whose voice I’ve never once heard out loud.

— Beth Moore (@BethMooreLPM) January 25, 2019

As I never tire of saying, if you think that pleasing an Invisible Wizard In The Sky is more important than your wedding vows, then you are a fool who is defrauding your spouse and not actually married at all.

Moore has close to 1,000,000 Twitter followers; doubtless, many of them are women who look to her for guidance living a Christian life. And few of them will recoil with disgust when they read that tweet and mutter, “What is this insane bullshit?” No. They will blame themselves for not feeling the same way, for being inadequate, for not ‘getting’ it — for centering their lives on their spouse and children.

This harms marriages and families, and benefits only the pious predators.

According to the campus weather station, the Michigan Tech Huskies walked to class in -3°F weather this morning, and NOAA says that it’s going to get a lot colder during the next few days.

This is miserable stuff, and it is worse when the wind is pouring in off Lake Superior at 50-miles per hour; there isn’t enough wool and down in the world to keep you comfortable. There is an upside, though: The awful winters, and the designation of the south side of Lake Superior as a National Lakeshore, assure that Michigan’s Upper Peninsula will never be Disney-fied and overrun with t-shirt shops and kitsch made in China.

In fact, one of the di rigeur tourist stops in the western U.P. has a distinctly 1950s, Rock Hudson/Doris Day-ish sensibility.

Back in the first half of the 19^th-Century, one of the U.P.’s best-known figures was Bishop Frederic Baraga, known as the “snowshoe priest” because showshoes were what he used to get around in the winter — and I’m not talking about between his cabin and his church. No. Bishop Baraga walked across the entire U.P. on his snowshoes, and took several trips to the Lower Peninsula as well.

Today, there is a shrine to Bishop Baraga, and a serious effort afoot to get him canonized.

That’s Bishop Baraga in the clouds, with snowshoes handy just in case the Boss has a bad day. For a sense of the scale of this thing, notice Dawn standing w-a-a-a-y down below.

The shrine is operated by Sister Maria, and we somehow ended-up on her mailing list; three or four times a year we get a chatty letter (and money beg) from her. Just yesterday there came a letter with this uplifting tale:

In the fall of 1847 Father Baraga was visiting Fon-du-Lac (near Minnesota) and instructing his beloved Natives. He was told of a very old blind pagan lady hwo had requested the “Blackrobe”. Immediately he proceeded to her lodge with the Christian woman who had been attending her and who had brought the message to him. The old woman, who had been abandoned by her own famiy, but taken in by the Christian woman, was feeble and nearing death. Upon Father Baraga’s arrival, the poor woman stretched out her hands and pleaded with him to have pity on her. In his deep love and compassion, he instructed her in the most essential points of our Christian faith, and because she desired it, planned to baptize her the following day. As he took leave of the lodge, he felt an inspiration to return at once and baptize the woman. He did so. How great was his joy upon hearing the following morning that the woman had died peacefully in the night, having fallen asleep in the Lord, literally!

The story is hokey, and unintentionally humorous at the end, and I’ve heard close variations of it in Protestant churches all my life; with people dying all the time, though, and an infinity of busybodies from sea to shining sea … who knows? Maybe it’s true.

What I do believe is that Sister Maria believes it, and rejoices; she is sweet and sincere and, however ridiculous I think it is, I’m kind of rooting for Bishop Baraga’s canonization before Sister Maria checks out, because it will give her a lot of pleasure.

Geography shapes culture, and those miserable winters are an indispensable part of the U.P.’s gentle and likable culture. I hope it survives global warming and the associated climate change.

What do you know? Albert the Pious is opposed to allowing transgenders to serve in the military, arguing, basically, that it’s always been that way. Unfortunately, this is in a The Briefing episode, and no transcript is available; you’ll have to listen. Ironically, the segment is entitled Why the concept of ‘lethality’ must be considered when it comes to military policy — exactly the point I made here:

No one, including the lawyers for the Trump administration, has been able to show that inclusion of transgender service members or providing care to them has had any measurable negative impact on morale, readiness or unit cohesion. The chiefs of staff of all four service branches of the military have testified to Congress that there have been no issues.

This goes directly to the only licit question: Does the presence of transgender troops impair the ability of our armed forces to fight?

If the judgment of the people I have to trust to know is that it does, I would hold my nose and support Trump’s ban. If it does not — as seems to be the case — then transgenders who wish to join the military should be able to do so.

Unfortunately, Mohler does not consult the people who are competent to judge whether or not our ability to fight is impaired. If Mohler is unwilling to trust the Joint Chiefs — The Inerrant Bible! The Inerrant Bible! — perhaps he is willing to trust the judgment of a great many of America’s allies which allow transgenders to serve openly?

• Australia

• Austria

• Belgium

• Bolivia

• Canada

• Czech Republic

• Denmark

• Estonia

• Finland

• France

• Germany

• Ireland

• Israel

• Netherlands

• New Zealand

• Norway

• Spain

• Sweden

• Thailand

• United Kingdom

Mohler will doubtless be comforted to learn that Iran, at least, treats transgenders as second class citizens.

As of 2017, Iran requires all male citizens over age 18 to serve in the military except for transgender women, who are classified as having mental disorders. New military identity cards listed the subsection of the law dictating this exemption. This practice of identifying transgender individuals put them at risk of physical abuse and discrimination.

Birds of a feather, looks like to me.

UPDATE:   A transcript of Mohler’s remarks is now available. The important quote:

The argument that the Trump Administration is making is one that is backed up by centuries. You could even say millennia of military experience and that is that when you bring into the confines of a military fighting force extraneous issues or even complications that do not belong there you subvert and you diminish the lethality of your own defense forces. To get to the bottom line on this issue, the policy does not say the transgender persons would not intend to serve the country well even bravely and courageously. It is simply a reflection of the fact that when you insert gender confusion, gender dysphoria, transgender identity into the unique confines of a fighting force in the context of training and of deployment you are reducing the lethality. You are confusing the very purpose of your military.

By the way, that is a modern problem. Confusing the purpose of the military for many especially on the cultural left in this country the military is a way of bringing about social change, not a way of defending the country and its national interest.

Mohler’s argument here is, basically, transgenders have always been outsiders. That’s true — but it’s not evidence that bears upon fitness. And, again, the commanders of almost 2-dozen countries’ fighting forces, the people most competent to make the judgment, profess unconcern. That’s good enough for me.

Oh … one more thing: Does Mohler really not know that he sounds, almost word for word, like the smug racist morons who had conniption fits when Truman ordered the integration of the armed forces?