Civil Commotion

The Donald’s major address regarding the border and the shutdown has been delayed an hour, but CNN and some others are reporting that Trump will offer a temporary reprieve for DACA kids in exchange for the $5.7-billion he has requested for border security.

So the GOP has gone from Ronald Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” to “I’ll temporarily stop abusing DACA kids if you give me money to build a wall.”

And I frankly doubt that the GOP base has any idea how it has debased itself by its support for this cheap demagogue.

Apparently, a Catholic school in Kentucky sent its students to D.C. participate in an anti-abortion march and, while there, the kids decided it would be more fun to harass the Indigenous People’s March.

The resolute ignorance of religion is an evil; the Pious are the Dark Side. Bah.

More.

Seriously: If you don’t feel the impulse to smack these kids, there is something wrong with you.

What do you know? The states of Michigan and North Carolina, where the GOP attempted to neuter the governor’s office as soon as a Democrat was elected, have offered the First Felon their capitals as venues for delivering the State of the Union address.

The GOP House Speakers of two states have invited President Donald Trump to give his State of the Union from their respective state capitols.

“Due to the unavailability of the United States House of Representatives for your State of the Union address, I would like to extend to you an official invite to deliver your address in the House chamber in the Michigan State Capitol,” Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield said in a letter also posted to Facebook.

As longtime readers know, I am now a resident of North Carolina, was reared in Detroit, and educated in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, at Michigan Tech.

Though I avoid having anything to do with Detroit, as much as possible, I made reservations at a favorite Upper Peninsula motel just a few hours ago for the Fourth of July. If you’ve never been to the U.P., you’ve missed one of America’s loveliest, most friendly places.

My advice: Stay out of North Carolina if you can, because the natives are mad — as in angry, and unhinged — and stay out of Michigan’s industrial southeast, because it appears they’re losing their grip, too.

Michael Hamar points toward the story of a mother who left her church rather than abandon her lesbian daughter.

After 20 years in an evangelical church, the mother of five “believed that being gay was somehow wrong.” . . . . But she knew their family would never be the same in the church again. The advice from her Bible study peers was clear: “Homosexuality is a sin and we can’t accept it.”

So she had a choice to make. And in a tearful moment onstage she said, ” I realized I was being asked to choose between the two most important parts of my life: my child and my church. I chose my child.” And the audience stood and applauded.

Good for mom! The takeaways:

1. ‘Family values’ is a marketing lie. The 1^st-Century Christian church was a cult, and the New Testament is the literature of a cult. Christianity is, necessarily, anti-family — because healthy marriages and families undermine the authority of the cult.

2. Most people, like this mother, have too much sense and decency to be good Christians. Those people who don’t tend toward the conservative denominations, such as the Southern Baptists.

3. Stay the hell away from people who don’t, because they will betray you for the glory of Jesus without a second thought; put them as far out of your life as you can.

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is hurting financially.

As of 7/31/17, the situation before SWBTS was absolutely challenging. But with the help of the Lord through faithful trustee and administration leadership, I’m hopeful for the financial future and kingdom impact of this theological institution in the days to come. In the meantime, pray for wisdom for the trustees as they continue to search for a new president who can lead the school through, and far beyond, these days for the sake of the gospel.

Yeah, well … ho-hum; it seems that the school has been living on borrowed money a long time, and a lot of notes will soon come due. It is far more likely that seminaries will continue to decline and fail, because the Christian narrative is false and they’re running out of people to fool.

It so happens that a prominent local Southern Baptist pastor is a Southwestern grad, and among the dumbest people I’ve ever met. I’m not going to say the dumbest because civil engineers spend a lot of time on construction sites, and you meet a lot of substandard minds there. But the pastor I have in mind believes the earth is less than 10,000-years old, that pleasing The Invisible Wizard is more important than parental and marital obligations — the whole fundy schtick. If he’s a typical representative of the sort of morons that school produces, it would be a good thing if it failed and were sold.