Civil Commotion

No wonder the watching world shakes their head at Christians – – we can't even protect our own. We must protect women and children!

— Julie Anne (@DefendTheSheep) February 16, 2016

I’m quoting this tweet because it goes directly to my only serious disagreement with Julie Anne, The Wartburg Watch, Tom Rich, Jeri Massi, and all the others who have fought so hard to reform Christianity’s abusive behavior. I say: Christianity will not be reformed because its abuses inhere in what Christianity is, in its ontology. Christianity is innately abusive.

It’s easy enough to imagine a Christianity without a virgin birth, and it requires no imagination to conceive a Christianity without a resurrection; those can be dispensed with without much difficulty. Jesus could have been the son of god even if Mary had once ‘done it.’ Jesus could still be sitting in Heaven waiting for us without ever returning to the third rock.

But what does Christianity have on offer if we aren’t all born naturally depraved, unfit to exist, our very existence an offense against the cosmos itself — without Original Sin? Nothing — that’s what. Original Sin is Christianity’s only truly indispensable metaphysical claim; take that away, and there is nothing.

But Original Sin in innately unhealthy psychologically, a crippling sickness. To believe such a thing is to handicap oneself. Worse, it justifies abusing others with the rationalization that only when the spirit has been broken will the target be free of ‘self’ and ready to receive grace. It is an engine of abuse — and Christianity is empty without it.

So, yes — drag abusive clergy into the public square and make the bastards pay. Make them figures of odium, impoverish them, send them naked into the night; the world will be well rid of them. Just don’t deceive yourselves: The sickness is in Christian teaching itself, and it is that which must be defeated.

James Dobson has released a video encouraging evangelicals to vote for Ted Cruz, as close to an anointing as the evangelical right ever gets.

Ted Cruz is a Dominionist who believes Americans should live under Old Testament law. He is crazy.

But, then, so is Dr. Dobson.

Justice Scalia’s death makes this presidential election a battle for the future of this nation. If the president is allowed by the Senate to appoint a Supreme Court justice, America as we know it will be lost forever and immediately. A fifth liberal justice on the court will pass the socialist agenda of the president with lightening speed. Every person listening to this telecast should contact their senator and urge them not to consider any candidate to replace Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court until the next president has been elected by the American people. For once, let the voice of the American people make the call, not the political establishment in Washington, D.C.

John Hagee, Southern Baptist Holy Man

This is a remarkable statement, and it is a testament to the ignorance of the evangelical right that Hagee’s books sell in the bazillions when he ought to be a figure of frank public ridicule. He has been selling the imminence of the Apocalypse for decades, now, and how did that Blood Moons thing work out?

Seriously: The man should not be able to go out-of-doors without drawing a crowd of gawkers who point and laugh.

The court does not “pass the socialist agenda.” Nor does it “invent” rights or anything else; it decides which of two arguments advanced by others is consistent with the Constitution in those few disputes which remain unresolved in Circuit Courts and then Appeals Courts. And, of course, the American people did decide, freely, in 2012, who would be making Supreme Court appointments right up until January 20, 2017. Bah.

You cannot reason with the whores who peddle this kind of stuff to ignoramuses. They must be defeated.

Man Charged With Peeing In Wal-Mart While Shoving Trout Down His Pants https://t.co/mZ4bqQB9C6 pic.twitter.com/ZG8KlapJqo

— CrimeFeed (@IDCrimeFeed) February 16, 2016

Of the many millions of words already published about the late Justice Scalia, some of the most revealing come from Albert the Pious.

Christians must also remember that Justice Scalia’s understanding of the proper reading of the Constitution as a text is directly relevant to the church’s proper reading of Scripture. The same liberal theorists who propose reading the Constitution as a “living” and “evolving” text also propose that the Bible be liberated from its actual text and from the intention of its authors. Ultimately, this approach to the Bible, common to theological liberalism, denies the authority of God as the ultimate author of the Scriptures. It is no accident that liberal theology and liberal theories of the constitution emerged together in American public life.

Now, consider this passage from the New York Times’ report of Scalia’s death and summary of his career:

Justice Scalia also disdained the use of legislative history — statements from members of Congress about the meaning and purposes of laws — in the judicial interpretation of statutes.

The mindset here is clear: We are not to search for the ethical principle which informs the law, or the Bible, and then apply it to an ever-changing world. No.

In the case of Biblical ethics, then, we are handcuffed to a world which has ceased to exist because the Bible is sacred scripture and may not be updated. In the case of the Constitution, the direct action of legislators is required to respond to changed circumstances; the meaning and purposes of pre-existing law, and the principles which inform it, are unimportant.

In both cases, Mohler rejects reasoning forward from principles and applying them to new circumstances. Rather, we are to obey what has been written in the past by men who are dead … and that’s that.

There is no nice way to say it: That outlook is an evasion of adulthood, the outlook of the child who wants to be patted on the head and praised as a good little boy or girl.

That works, unfortunately, only when there are adults around to do the hard work of thinking and exercising foresight on his behalf. If Mohler had any sense, he’d be grateful for sinners.