#RevThread # 85b
Ah, what the heck….
1/ I tried being really nice in the last thread. Everybody yawned….so…
Ah, what the heck….
1/ I tried being really nice in the last thread. Everybody yawned….so…
2/ WANTON!
3/ The word means “evil that is undeserved and unprovoked”. Here’s a partial summary of some highlights of wanton behavior in the past 24 hours in Trumplandia, the former USA:
4/ Jeff Sessions, Attorney General of Trumplandia, set up a podium and microphone on the southern border and announced his eagerness to imprison any brown-skinned people, especially those “smuggling” their own babies, who dare come into Sessions’ country.
5/ He also promised to take the children away from their mothers.
6/ In case you thought that would be the most wanton of the life-hating acts of the day, hold on, there’s more:
7/ Donald Trump, having earlier in the day threatened to close down the government unless he got lots and lots of money to wall us in and wall Hispanics out, chose to have Trumplandia unilaterally break a treaty and thus pave the way for Iran to develop and use a nuclear bomb.
8/ Trump fecklessly and recklessly threatened life on earth.
9/ In case you thought that would be the day’s main story on wanton violation -- hold on, there’s more.
10/ Just before midnight, Eric Schneiderman, the attorney general of NY, acknowledged a story of him committing savagely violent acts in drunken rages against four women and then threatening them...
11/.. with the full force of the law if they reported him. They bravely did; now he’s out of office, and his victims are safe, praise God.
12/ In case you thought this Democrat’s betrayal of his office would be the main story of wanton traitorous violence and oath-breaking of the day, hold on, there’s more.
13/ This evening, at about the same time as the Schneiderman betrayal was announced, we began learning that Michael Cohen raked in millions of dollars in his “Essential Consulting LLC” from a Russian Mobster close to Putin...
14/.. and a few corporations like AT&T to use in paying off Stormy Daniels and to provide access to the President. Cohen’s greed led not only to collusion but to treason.
15/ Meantime the publicly pious leaders of the Evangelical movement keep defending and adoring our gleefully wanton goomba of a president.
16/ Paul says, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) Yup. Wisdom for a human being begins by owning the reality that inside myself I contain the possibilities of glory and of shame...
17/.. I experience the pull towards folly as well as the desire for wisdom, that I have both helped others and hurt others.
18/ What do Trump, Schneiderman, Sessions, and evangelicals like F. Graham, P. Robertson, & J. Falwell have in common? They project a complete self-righteousness--a self-righteousness which masks, both from us and from themselves, a God-defying violence and greed.
19/ A sacrament is an outward & visible sign of an inward & spiritual grace. Self-righteousness is an outward mask hiding an inward death. Jesus said of the wealthy clergy of his day that they were like whitewashed tombs--all fancy on the outside, but just dead bones within.
20/ Here’s the thing: unless I know and acknowledge that I have sinned, can now sin, and most likely will sin again soon, I do not know myself and am a clear and present danger to everyone around me.
21/ It's not the only truth about me. We are a compound. I’m also capable of compassion and insight and generosity. “Do you think people are good OR bad?”
No. I think that people are good AND bad. Every one of us. Welcome to humanity.
No. I think that people are good AND bad. Every one of us. Welcome to humanity.
22/ Therefore I need to be careful. Being religious does not deliver me from my humanity, nor does it raise me above my fellow humans who are not religious.
23/ As a Jesus follower, my calling is to awaken to God’s presence, to my own mixture of grace and guilt, to care for the amazing blessings God has granted me, and to serve.
24/ The Apostle Paul knew that. He was already passionately pious -- BEFORE HIS CONVERSION. Paul’s conversion occurred when he was knocked off his high horse while traveling to Damascus to arrest the followers of Jesus.
25/ What Paul had hidden from himself was that he had suffocated his soul with pettifogging righteousness and had become a furiously sinful and violent man.
After Paul was delivered from that sense of his superiority, he became the great champion of inclusion...
After Paul was delivered from that sense of his superiority, he became the great champion of inclusion...
26/.. of people of every tribe and nation. Can you imagine Paul, who welcomed the world of his day into a new community, standing at the border and raging against the arrival of “lesser races”, threatening to tear infants from their mothers?
27/ To Trump-supporting White Evangelicals:
In your self-righteousness, you have encouraged the following:
leaders of transnational organized crime; domestic racists; misogynists, champions of greed.
In your self-righteousness, you have encouraged the following:
leaders of transnational organized crime; domestic racists; misogynists, champions of greed.
28/ In your self-righteousness you have become agents of evil, and you are simply blinded to the terrible dangers to democracy this administration represents.
29/ This hour of horrific official misbehavior - - the bribery, the wanton dishonesty, the abuse of women, the rampant greed, the disastrous indebtedness, the march to war, the scapegoating of Hispanics -- is partly on you.
30/ Putting this monster in office was a mistake. What is far more sinful is continuing to support him after his behavior is in full view.
31/ Change. Oppose him. Help us save democracy for our children. For their sake, for your own sake, and for God’s.
