Civil Commotion

We’ve all been awash this past week in unimaginably cruel and stupid things said about the Orlando massacre by Godly people, and some of the worst remarks came from Pastor Roger Jiminez of Verity Baptist Church in Sacramento, California. He regretted that shooter Omar Mateen didn’t “finish the job,” and thinks gays ought to be executed by government firing squads.

Yesterday, hundreds of wicked and sinful people of “the world” showed-up to let Pastor Jiminez know how they felt about that.

Well … kind of. It’s true that Jesus never directly said that gays ought to be executed, but He did say — according to the Inerrant Bible, the perfect storehouse of His thoughts about everything, et cetera, et cetera — He had come to fulfill the law, and the Mosaic law says very definitely that gays ought to be executed. Theologically, I think, Pastor Jiminez has the upper-hand here. Mercifully, as I never tire of saying, most people have too much sense and decency to be good Christians; it’s the ones who don’t, like Pastor Jiminez, that you need to watch.

It’s time to stop politely nodding when ignoramuses get to rhapsodizing about how wonderful the Bible is, and say frankly that it’s full of ignorant sewage and we’re not going to live as it demands.

Our Heavenly Father Who Loves Us is some kind of pissed-off this Father’s Day.

God’s Wrath may be getting
started to fall on the gays

As I said yesterday — Keep it up, Please!

This goes directly to one of my pet peeves — one, ironically, that I touched upon in the comments of the post just below.

If there is any one book that I wish could be put in the hands of every Christian, it is Bishop John Spong’s Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism. It’s a good, one volume summary of the contradictions in the Bible, and what Biblical scholarship has established about the truth and falsity of its myriad claims.

Make no mistake: Every graduate of a legitimate, bona fide seminary — I exclude lay preachers, and the graduates of rural Bible colleges located in a few rented rooms over a laundromat — knows with perfect clarity that the Bible is a pastiche of myth, history, and politically-inspired make-believe with no more dignity than World Net Daily. When preachers howl and bellow and wave their arms and stamp their feet about the absolute truth of the Bible … most are just doing cheap theater and know perfectly well that they’re lying. L.Y.I.N.G.

I doubt that Bishop Spong could make a believer of me in any ordinary sense of the word, but I can listen to him without feeling that I’ve soiled and disgraced myself — unlike, say, the ordinary Southern Baptist church. It’s a refreshing talk, and worth your time.

A Hillsborough County, Florida, employee is distressed that the county is temporarily displaying a rainbow flag in front of its administrative offices; it creates, she says, a “hostile work environment.”

But just a day after it was raised, Commissioner Stacy White said it may be offending Christian employees and questioned whether it should be taken down.

In an email sent to the the county human relations director Peggy Rowe on Thursday, White said he received an anonymous complaint from a county employee that the presence of the flag was “nearly unbearable” for her to pass on her way to work and created a “hostile work environment.”

I know: You want to gag. You marvel: How is it possible for somebody to be so small, so mean-spirited, so self-absorbed, so … vicious.

Beats me. I do know this: Every nasty little display like this undermines just a bit more the Godly’s claim that they’re morally superior to ‘the world,’ and hastens the end of their influence in our shared public life.

So I say … let ‘er rip. Keep it up — Please.