TRUTHOUT OP ED
By William Rivers Pitt
I pulled into Nazareth,
Feelin' 'bout half-past dead,
Just need to find a place,
Where I can lay my head.
"Mister, can you tell me
Where a man might find a bed?"
He just grinned and shook my hand,
"No," was all he said...
- The Band
Feelin' 'bout half-past dead,
Just need to find a place,
Where I can lay my head.
"Mister, can you tell me
Where a man might find a bed?"
He just grinned and shook my hand,
"No," was all he said...
- The Band
It is brutally hard to be a Christian in America these days.
Yeah, I said it. It's true.
I'm a Christian. I was born and baptized, and then given First
Confession and First Communion wearing my little white suit with the
little gold buckles on my little white shoes. I learned the Bible at my grandmother's knee -
her way of teaching me to read - and went out into the world thinking
do-unto-others-as-you-would-have-them-do-unto-you and
that-which-you-do-to-the-least-of-my-brothers-you-do-unto-me was the
proper way of things.
In Bible study, I remember being impressed by a specific command from
Jesus from Matthew 6:5-6. Not a request, not a suggestion, not a hint,
but a flat-out command: "Whenever you pray, do not be like the
hypocrites, because they love to pray while standing in synagogues and
on street corners so that people can see them. Truly I say to you, they
have their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room, close the
door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father, who sees in
secret, will reward you."
And my Father, who sees in secret, will reward me. Well, thanks a
lot, Dad, for rewarding me with this hideous, necrotic 21st century
version of Christianity...you know, the version that has little if
anything to do with what You tried to tell us in those four friendly
books at the beginning of the New Testament. Do Unto Others has been
replaced with Do Others In The Throat, and as far as prayer in secret so
as not to be a hypocrite, well...have You seen CNN and Fox lately?
They're praying all over the place, all the time, around the clock...but
for war, death, punishment, and the castigation and flagellation of
anyone who dares to, as You said in John 13:34, "Love one another, as I
have loved you."
Yup, I'm talking about the "hommasexchulls" among us, the ones
deprived of The Light Of American Jesus because of their sinful, sodomic
ways. I can quote Exodus and Leviticus at you until your eyes bleed,
two books that are wildly popular with this country's curious breed of
Jesus-shouter...except Jesus came along to make sure four new books got
written, right? The ones with all the loving lessons I learned at my
grandmother's knee, right?
Those were the stories I was raised with. Maybe I missed a chapter.
Long-time Truthout readers know that I am a survivor of bullying.
Well, it turns out that some of the stars of modern American
Christianity have gathered their forces to blunt any state or local push
to stop bullying in schools.
Some of these festering, pestiferous frauds have even gone so far as to
craft a prayer to God, so that He will intercede on their behalf to
thwart laws that would keep LGBTQI kids from being harried to such an
extreme degree that they commit suicide rather than face another day in
the warm bath of American Christianity. Those kids kill themselves all
the time nowadays, thanks to the endless and barbaric harassment they
endure from Christians...just as Jesus intended?
Um...
The prayer:
May God help us to not to "bully" anyone, but to graciously yet urgently speak the truth in love to young people who are hurting themselves with the "LGBT" lifestyle. May believers across America not be "bullied" by our government's efforts to promote harmful and sinful sexual practices among our youth and instead determine to stand courageously against these misguided efforts which can only lead to God's judgment!
My favorite part of that is the way they put "bully" in quotation
marks, as if crucifying Matthew Shepard on a fence in Wyoming was only
kinda-sorta "bullying," instead of flat-out assault and murder.
According to those who crafted that abomination of a prayer, Shepard's
killers were just American Christians attempting to save a soul...oh,
and the exclamation point after "God's judgment" at the end of that
so-called prayer is just a nudge in the...um...proper direction.
Direction? I should have said Way.
It is brutally hard to be a Christian in America these days. Some of
us Christians take that bit about doing unto the least of us deeply,
deeply seriously. Some of us Christians think that it is wrong, sinful,
and in fact a brazen form of Apartheid to deny certain Americans the
rights enjoyed by other Americans based upon who they love. Mostly, some
of us think Christianity in America has gone barking-mad insane.
I am a Christian. I make no apologies for it. I'm not sure if I
believe that Jesus turned that water into wine, or if He raised up
Lazarus, or even if He rose from the dead. That all sounds like a lot of
magic nonsense from two thousand years ago when you think about it,
which is why they call it The Mystery of Faith.
But I believe that I am my brother's keeper, that I should worship
without bragging about it, that the poor will God-damned-right inherit
the Earth, and that what you do to the least of my brothers and sisters,
you do unto me. I believe that the first four books of the New
Testament are a wonderful blueprint for being a decent person on this
planet, and that's what I live by, as best I can.
I am an American Christian, and it is a burden to bear.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to drink some new wine, hang out with a familiar whore, and listen to the dead.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment