Trauma Nation (part two)

I'm not going to try to get into the science of all of this. Seriously, it's just too much. Too much picking apart of every piece of information I want to talk about, and too much data to try to introduce in any kind of concise way, and I want to do this in one post, not 40.

The thing about trauma is that you don't always know you're suffering it. This is especially true if the trauma has been caused by a series of small incidents built up over time rather than one large trauma event. It's even more true if the form of abuse has been institutionalized so that the people around you are telling you that it's not really abuse.

So you don't like the way the old geezer in your church is always touching you? Putting his hands on your shoulders or, maybe even, patting you on the ass? "Oh, don't worry about him. He's harmless. He does that to everyone." Eventually, you do quit worrying about it because you get numbed to it, and who are you going to tell, anyway? Once your parents have dismissed the inappropriate contact as harmless, and your church leaders have as well, and your friends are all putting up with it, what are you supposed to do? Who do you tell? These are the people you trust, so you learn to ignore it no matter how it makes you feel.

When the message from the church is that women should keep their mouths shut and shouldn't be in leadership and it must be true because the Bible says so (and the Bible is NEVER wrong), who do you turn to? No one. You learn to keep your mouth shut because, if you don't, you face disapproval from everyone.

You wonder why your whole congregation is white, and the message that you get from the people you have grown up with and have learned to trust and who are your family is that White People are the chosen People-of-God and will be the ones to inherit God's Kingdom, you accept it and, without realizing it, you look down on black people and any other minority, especially Jews, because Jews were the Chosen People, but they spit on God and killed his Son, and the Bible says that they deserve all the punishment of the world for the rest of time.

But most fundamentally, you are a worthless piece of shit. You are a piece of shit who is destined for Hell where all of the pieces of shit go. This particular message is pervavise; after all, it is how the church survives. It needs to convince you of your shittiness before it can offer you the only chance you have of escaping Hell: Jesus (and $20 in the offering plate). This is the root of the trauma we face as a nation, the buy-in of "christians" that we are all pieces of shit and deserve to burn for it.

Of course, "christians" have their "get out of Hell free" card, but that doesn't change the fact that, at their core, they have bought into the idea that they are worthless pieces of shit. Only "Jesus in their hearts" makes them valuable at all. And, since they are worthless pieces of shit, everyone else, all of us heathen liberals and minorities and gays, are even more worthless pieces of shit.

I know how this works, because I grew up in this, with this belief that people are worthless and that it's only through "the precious blood of Jesus" that anyone has any value. Everyone else is just going to get heaped on the fire, so you need to save everyone you can. The problem is that it becomes so ingrained, this notion that people are worthless, that you can't separate it from your actual feelings and thoughts.

I grew up with this idea that the inherent state of people is one of depravity. I'm just going to say that middle school and high school may not be the best places to learn that that might not be true. By the time I was in college, my whole world view stemmed from this place of people starting in the negative position and not even being able to get to neutral without some kind of divine help, not even the very best of people.

Was this view mine? Or was it just ground into me at church? How do I separate out from that what my own views even are? Because, now, I know that people are just people. They may not be inherently good, but they certainly aren't inherently evil, even if people do tend toward being selfserving. I know this in my head, but I can't just pick out of myself the feelings around all of this. It means that I have to always be on guard against my own emotional reactions to things, because they may not be my emotional reactions, just the reactions implanted in me by the fucking church.

This is trauma. And, for at least some portion of my life, I visited this trauma upon other people by allowing my reactions to them be ones of suspicion and distrust or mere avoidance. During high school, I enmeshed myself with my church and my youth group and forsook, basically, all of my other social connections. Staying in your church group and not socializing outside of it is part of the paradigm. And you can't see or feel your own trauma while you're stuck inside of all of this.

This is the state of being for a significant portion of the US poplation, right now. They are living in the trauma that the church has buried them under and have no idea of what their own thoughts or feelings might be, because they have never known any other thoughts and feelings than those the church has given them. And, so, they visit this trauma on those around them because they don't know any other way.

Trauma Nation, it's what we are.
And we can't begin to heal the trauma until we can break the hold that the church has over the nation; specifically, the hold it has over the politics of the nation. This was never supposed to be the state of things in the US. The framers of the Constitution came from a country where religion cohabitated with government, and they knew how dangerous it was. It's time for us to, to co-opt the phrase of another moment, defund "the church." "christians" already think we are at war with them, just for wanting to live our lives in peace without them moralizing to us, but I think it's time for a real war against "the church," one in which we take an active stance and depowering the church and deprogramming the cultish thinking they're living with.

Because, make no mistake, "christianity" is, indeed, a cult. It is a cult that is bent on bringing about the end of the world (I'm not exaggerating, but I'll get to that in a later post) so, if we want a future, we have to start taking an active stance against "the church" and religion in politics. It's time to work on healing the trauma.

East of Eden (a book review post)

Once upon a time, I would have assumed general knowledge about the story of Cain and Abel. About most Bible stories, actually. But, then, I grew up in the Bible Belt where I was surrounded by people, whether they were church-goers or not, who had general knowledge of Bible stories. That assumption on my part was wrong. I've learned (and learned hard) to never assume knowledge by other people. Or, even, any kind of intelligence or curiosity or desire to know things.

So let's talk about Cain and Abel for a moment because Steinbeck believed that it was one of the most, maybe the most, foundational allegories from the Bible. He felt it was so important that he used it twice in the same book. Yes, twice. I'm not sure he's wrong. The sequel I'm working on to The House on the Corner is called Brother's Keeper and uses some of the same themes.

If you don't know the story of Adam and Eve, you'll  have to go research that one on your own.

Adam and Eve had two sons: Cain and Abel. Cain, the older, was a plant man, and Abel was an animal man. God asked them to make some sacrifices to him and, of course, they offered him the stuff they were each familiar with. Cain brought god the fruits of his garden, and Abel provided a barbeque. As it turned out, god was into meat and really liked the lamb chops Abel cooked up and left the salad untouched. God later died of a heart attack because he didn't eat his greens, but that was later. At the time, he snubbed Cain's gift and this, of course, caused Cain some amount of upset.

After god was gone, Cain and Abel got into an argument over the incident. I imagine that Abel was a bit smug about it all, though the Bible doesn't say that but, knowing how brothers are with each other, it's more than possible that Abel started the argument by taunting Cain about it. "Hah, hah! God liked my offering better than yours!" That kind of thing. The argument got heated, and Cain picked up a rock and smacked his brother in the head with it, killing him. I don't remember if the rock part is actually in the Bible, but that's how it feels to me at the moment.

Some time later, god comes looking for his new buddy Abel. Probably, he wanted to know if there were anymore of those lambchops or what he would need to do to get Abel to grill him up some more of them. Not finding Abel around anywhere, he went and asked Cain where his brother was, to which Cain replied, "How should I know? Am I my brother's keeper?" Of course, god, being god, already knew what had happened and got super pissed at Cain because he wasn't going to get anymore of those chops, and he didn't want any of Cain's salad, either, because salad is for sissy gods. He cursed and banished Cain and made it a law that from that from that point forward everyone had to make offerings of lamb chops to him.

Steinbeck explores this story through the character of Adam Trask who, in the beginning of the novel, plays the part of Abel and, at the end of the novel, plays the role of god. Along the way, he marries his "Eve" and attempts to create his own Garden of Eden, which is how he refers to it, but, as we know from the story of Adam and Eve (see, you need to know this one, too), Eden cannot last.

The story is seemingly told by Steinbeck himself. "He" is in the narrative as a boy through some of the action and uses his own family and family history as a backdrop to Adam's story. I don't know how accurate any of it is, but Steinbeck frequently based characters in his stories on real people from the towns he lived in. At any rate, the use of his own family history serves to pad the novel quite a bit, which isn't a bad thing. There are some humorous moments in there.

Like this one:

Samuel Hamilton, who is, in the book, the grandfather of young John Steinbeck, is one of the central characters once Adam has moved to the Salinas Valley. His teenage children are going to a dance and one of the boys, in an attempt to make sure he has a date, asks two different girls to the dance. They both say yes. Rather than tell one of them he overbooked, he decides to take them both. The problem, though, is that the buggy he's taking his dates to the dance in only has room for two. That won't work. So the boy takes a couch that his mother loves and puts wheels on it and hooks that up behind the horse instead. Problem solved. And his father, laughing, doesn't stop him or warn his son about all of the trouble he's going to be in when his mother finds out. He's too busy laughing and decides the boy should have to deal with the consequences himself.

I'm not going to spoil any of the story for you by dropping into a philosophical discussion of personal choice. I'll just say this: Steinbeck focuses his look at Cain and Abel on the characterization of Cain and how he deals with his disappointment at not receiving favor. This is how the story has always been framed every time I've heard it my entire life. Cain sinned and deserved what god did to him. Actually, god was merciful to Cain in that he only banished him. Steinbeck does offer one very small twist to the discussion in his exploration of the word "timshel" and the contrast between what it actually means and how it has been translated in the Bible. He makes the story about personal choice. Now that I think about it, the above humor example feeds into this narrative as well.

I've never really bothered to question the Cain and Abel story as it was presented to me as a child and, then, throughout my life. Why would I have, right? Experts for thousands of years have dissected this story and presented their conclusions about it. Cain was overcome with jealousy and murdered his brother because of it. God, who could have taken Cain's life in exchange, was, instead, merciful and allowed Cain to only be banished, commanding him to "go and conquer sin" or, as Jesus later says, "Go and sin no more."

However, thinking about this story in a new way because of Steinbeck's presentation of it, now looking at the responsibility of the father in all of this, I'm going to come out now and say that it's god who is the villain in this allegory. God is a bad father. God pits one child against the other, alienating one of them in the process while showering the other with praise. Cain and Abel were children. The burden of Abel's death lies not on Cain but on god. God is the parent in the situation, and it's his responsibility to manage it, to show some sort of fairness, to treat his children equally. To make it worse, god, being all knowing, is doing all of this on purpose. He knows the pain he's causing Cain and knows what the outcome will be, yet "god" chooses to do it anyway. That's some fucked up shit, god. I'd say it's, at least, borderline child abuse. Reckless endangerment? Something...

But it gets better, since god then kicks Cain out of the house. And that is actually child abuse. It's not legal to kick your minor child out onto the street to fend for himself in the world. So, you know, god would get thrown in jail for that kind of behavior today.

What I'm getting at here is that this is definitely a book worth reading. Not surprising since it's Steinbeck.

And, just to mention it, one of the best characters in the novel is a character named Lee, an Asian servant. Lee starts out almost a caricature of the Oriental servant, something many people have called Steinbeck racist for doing. However, he begins Lee as this stereotype, really, to show us that he's not. As the story develops, Steinbeck turns Lee into probably the most well-rounded and real character in the book. He is no racial stereotype but a real human being, and I think Steinbeck wants us to see that. He wants us to see that you can't lump people into these racial categories and think that they're all the same. If you bother to try to get to know someone, bother to look past the clichés and the stereotypes, you will find real people with their own desires and struggles, likes and dislikes, hopes and dreams for the future. He explores all of it with Lee.

Having done a bit of reading up on Steinbeck, I'm going to go out on what is probably not much of a limb and say that Steinbeck was very against racism, to the point of his name removed from the writing credits of a film that he felt had racist undertones that his script did not contain.

I'm not going to lie and try to pass of Eden as an easy read, but it's not a difficult one. It's just a bit long and, at times, it's difficult to tell where the story is going. But, you know, I think it's going the same place that life goes. It just goes. It's sprawling. It would never get published today at the length it is. Whole sections would get cut out, and the book would be the worse for it, so I'm glad it was written when it was and that it came out the way Steinbeck wanted it to.
Go read it.

"Nothing You Can't Handle": Why "christians" Think They're Better

I don't know if this will come as a surprise to any of you, but the Bible is full of things it doesn't actually say. Things like
there were three wisemen
cleanliness is next to godliness
god helps those who help themselves
abortion is a sin

Also, god will never give you a burden you can't bear.

"What?" you say, "That's not in the Bible? How can that be? People ("christians") say that all the time!"
Because of course they do.

Some of the examples I gave above have no Biblical basis whatsoever (actually, none of those things have any Biblical basis whatsoever), but this one does -- sort of; at least, it has a root cause for the thought -- so let's take a look at the actual verse the thought comes from.

I Corinthians 10:13 NIV
"No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it."

This verse is specifically dealing with sin and temptation. So, like, you're walking through a room and there's a fat piece of chocolate cake on a table, and you're tempted to eat it. This verse is saying that "god" won't allow you to be tempted in any way that goes beyond you're ability to resist it. Or, if it is a temptation beyond your ability to resist it, he'll offer some kind of escape hatch so that you can get away without sinning.

Which begs the question: why is the chocolate cake a sin? And, of course, it's not, but try convincing a "christian" of that. [Look, the cake is a metaphor (or, if you prefer, the cake is a lie).] At any rate, whether the cake is a sin is a topic for another conversation (and one I may have had on here? I can't remember, but I'm not going to go digging around looking for it, right now). The point, right now, is whether seeing the cake on  the table is a temptation beyond which you can bear and how, exactly, you can get away from it if it is. I don't remember ever seeing a special cake trap door appear in anyone's floor so that a tempted person could escape, and I'm pretty sure that would have made the news.

However, a "temptation," which happens in the moment, is quite a different thing from a "burden," which is ongoing. So the saying goes that any burden you have in your life, you only have because "god" knows you're strong enough to carry it. But let's take a closer look at that, too.

I think (and this is entirely my thought) that the verse cited above from I Corinthians may be being conflated with the verse from Matthew about taking up your cross to follow Jesus. You take up this burden, and "god" will give you the strength to carry it.
BUT
Not even Jesus was strong enough to carry his cross (his burden). Someone else had to step in and carry it for him.

And a lot of "christians" will say, "See, he couldn't carry it, so "god" provided someone to help him out because it was a burden beyond what he could bear." And that's all well and good except that it means that everyone who is burdened beyond their ability to carry the load should have someone there to take it from them. Right away. As soon as it's too heavy.

But that doesn't really ever happen, now, does it.
[In fact, the general response in modern evangelicalism is to decide that any person who becomes "burdened" in some way is, in fact, being punished by "god" and, therefore, no one should help that person. They need to fucking learn their lesson! Goddammit!]
There's definitely a failing somewhere in this whole concept, the most likely being that "god" doesn't hand out burdens or have anything to do with them or keeping them from getting too... burdenful. "He" couldn't give a shit about any burdens you may or may not have, either because "He" doesn't give a fuck about individual humans (anymore than we give a fuck about individual ants or bees) or because "He" doesn't actually exist (something I know I've talked about, but I'm also not going to go dig up that link).

The other main option is that "god" does monitor all of these burdens and has "provided" people ("christians"?) who will come along, as Simon did for Jesus, and take up your burdens for you so that you can make it BUT these "people" have free will and, so, are doing shit about helping other people, which is entirely true. Being someone who spent decades working in churches, I know exactly how "christians" feel about helping people in need. If it's someone white and in their congregation who suffers some kind of catastrophe, they are more than happy to step in and help but, if it's someone poor, especially if they are of some shade other than Caucasian, "god" suddenly only helps those who help themselves and they can all go fuck themselves. It's their own fault anyway and, if they didn't want to be poor or hungry or addicted or whatever, they would and could certainly do something about it.

Because, see, it's all about choice and, because "god" always provides a way out, that means that at some point that person made the cognitive choice to ignore that option and do something to put themselves into the situation they're in. You know, they chose the temptation. Or the burden is punishment. Or whatever. But whatever it is, it puts the "christian" into a position of superiority because, you know what? The "christian" doesn't have some undue punishment or temptation that they're giving into (other than the pride and arrogance they will never see) so that means, must mean, that the "christian" is favored by "god" while the suffering person is not. It gives them carte blanche to shrug their shoulders and go about their business.

Personally, I don't know how they get around the verse in Philippians that says, "...in humility value others above yourselves," but I guess I'm not the only one who has a "fuck Paul" attitude because, as much as "christians" hold Paul up as their idol, they never seem to get beyond his judginess in their dealings with other people. Paul also said to make the rich sit at the back of the church in the bad seats, but when's the last time you saw that happen? Oh, yeah, never.

So... If you ever wonder how or why it is all these "christians" in the United States don't seem to care at all about helping the poor and the destitute and the burdened, well, this why. They aren't compelled to because, obviously, "god" would take care of it if they deserved it. It's their burden to bear and, if they aren't able to handle it, it's their own choice.

Is that a great way to get out of helping people?

Neil Diamond and America

Let's be a little Biblical, here, because there's nothing "christian" extremists like more than cherry-picking their Bible verses and misusing them while ignoring the ones that condemn their current actions.

Matthew 5: 13-16 describes the role of the Christian in the world. Be salt and light. Draw men to you. Specifically, "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden." Be a lamp that will share light with everyone because why? It's dumb to light a lamp and cover it with a basket. Seriously, what the fuck good is that?

And, you know, when I was growing up in the Bible Belt in the South, there was this idea that America was supposed to be that city on a hill for the whole world. That we were supposed to draw people to us because we were a beacon of hope. It was therefore unsurprising that Neil Diamond scored  a huge hit in 1981 with his song "America." We celebrated the fact that refugees of all sorts sought the shores of the United States.

Not to mention the Statue of Liberty right there for all to see and declaring:

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tost to me...

So here we are with this song that celebrates the immigrant and the refugee coming to America, and it's this huge hit. Not just is it a huge hit, but, in many ways, the song burrowed its way into the American subconscious. In a good way, because it's a good song. It's a song that epitomizes Matthew 5:14.

It's such a good song that it has been a traditional part of the fireworks show on the 4th of July here in Sonoma county. Not that we've gone every year in the last two decades, but we've been to an awful lot of them (because that's what you do when you have kids), and that song has been a major part of the music that played along with the fireworks every... single... year.
Until this one.

Okay, I'm not sure if this is the first year they left it out because we actually didn't go to the show the past couple of years, so maybe they cut it out last year. But I'm thinking it was probably this year because, suddenly, that song is... politically controversial.

And, you know, I'm sure they just did it because they wanted the event to be good fun for everyone so why include something that might get some people all twisted up and belligerent, right? Just leave the politics out of it. Like sports. Nothing that might raise the awareness of people.
(Because we wouldn't want people to bother to think.)

However, when you leave out something that has always been integral to your celebration in order to not appear to be making a political statement, you have, then, made a political statement.

At best, that statement is, "We're scared of Republicans and the GOP and what they might do if we play this song that is so obviously pro-immigrant and pro-refugee, so we're going to leave it out so as not cause any trouble."
At worst, you have someone in charge who is a Trump (#fakepresident) supporter who dropped the song so as to remove any and all show of support to the people being currently abused by the government.

It's probably the first because this is Sonoma county, but you can't completely rule out the second because Right-wing fanatical assholes seem to show up everywhere.

But going with the assumption that "America" was left out of the lineup because of cowardice, I have to say, C'mon! This is Sonoma fucking county! If you can't play a song that has always been in the show and give even that much support to the people that Trump (#fakepresident) and his goons are fucking over, then where can you play it? Where can you show support?

Needless to say, I was very disappointed that the song was left out and at the message, intentional or not, that was sent by its absence. We're way beyond coddling the Right at this point. They talk big about civility and how we ought to be being nice to them, but they removed all civility from the conversation when they started kidnapping children and putting them in concentration camps. We're way beyond "playing nice." Not because we are, because they are. They quit playing nice...

Man, they quit playing nice so long ago, it's difficult to remember a time when they were playing nice, but, certainly, all pretense at niceness went out the window when Obama was elected. That's when they really started letting their racism come out for all to see.

All of that to say that whoever put together the fireworks show in Sonoma county this year should be ashamed. They should be ashamed for not being willing to do something as simple as keeping a song in the show that has always been in the show. If you can't do something that small... well, if you can't do something that small...

And if it was a Trump (#fakepresident) supporter who pulled the song, well, that person should just be ashamed for being.

It's seriously time for the Left to start pulling themselves together and standing up to the Conservative fucks who are currently holding the reins of the country. In all the ways, small and big. Especially the small, because everyone can make small gestures of resistance, and we need to all be doing them all the time. The small gestures, even as small as a song, add up.

#resist

And they didn't even replace "America" with anything good. It was shitty big band music. Which sounds about like what Trump (#fakepresident) and his ilk want to replace the USA with.

What Does It Mean To Be Human? or The Question of Sentience

What does it mean to be human?
Most humans would say that being human is something that sets us apart from the rest of... everything. Being human is something that elevates us above the animals.
Even though we are animals.
"Christians" would say it's because humans have a soul, but what even is a soul? Some bit of "secret sauce" that makes us more than just a biological machine? I don't think I can buy that anymore.

I mean, there's nothing to say that animals aren't just as soul-full as man. Just because the Bible doesn't say it, doesn't mean it's not true. The Bible doesn't mention America, either, so maybe that's just a fantasy, too.

And there's nothing to say that a "soul" is what elevates humans. "Christians" have taken a lot of liberties and made a lot of assumptions about the phrase "breathed life into" Since man was last, there is nothing to say that God didn't go around breathing life into the "nostrils" of all the animals.

Personally, I'm tired of the liberties "christians" take. It's the definition of entitled.

However, it's not just "christians" who have long said that humans are elevated above the animals. Science has long held this to be true, too. And I get it. Man has done so much stuff that other animals have not: created art, built cities, murdered for fun. Man looks so much different than every other creature, not in physicality but in... accomplishment.

But what if it all comes down to opposable thumbs and a prefrontal cortex?

When I was growing up, what was said was that man is the only sentient animal. But what is sentience? Looking up the definition, now, it's pretty loose: the ability to think or feel subjectively. Basically, the ability to have a personal perspective.

So let's talk about my dog:

My dog doesn't like tall men wearing hats. There are few things that can make her flip out like a tall man in a hat walking by, well, other than the vacuum cleaner, but the vacuum cleaner is her nemesis. Now, it is objectively not true that tall men in hats wish her harm. My father-in-law is a very tall man who sometimes wears a hat, and she loves him, though she is giving him special dispensation. Clearly, something in her past (she was a rescue) has caused her to hate tall men in hats. It is her personal perspective. It is also her personal perspective that she doesn't hold my father-in-law to the same standard as other tall men in hats.

And, yet, dogs are not generally considered to be sentient.

So let's throw in one other factor that is often applied: the concept of "I am."

Humans like to think of themselves as the only creatures with a concept of individual identity, which is something I find highly amusing considering that most people spend their time trying to do nothing more than fitting in. And, while we're not sure if dogs have a concept of individual identity, we're pretty sure some other creatures do.

Take dolphins, for instance, who have names. They have fucking names just like we do as people, making it blatantly obvious that they not only have an awareness of their own selfhood but of other's selfhood as well, and I would be willing to bet that that extends to humans. They sound a little more evolved than we do, though.

I could go on with other examples, but I'm going to skip ahead to the part where I talk about elephants.

Elephants have a complex social structure, distinct roles and personalities, value the individual, and, even, some kind of funeral observance for the dead. Their brains are of a comparable size to human brains, and they are capable of complex tasks and, yes, building. Why don't they do it in the wild? Lack of interest? I don't know. What is clear, though, is that if there is any other land animal that qualifies as sentient, the elephant would be it. And, yet...

And, yet, Trump #fakepresident recently made it legal to once again bring elephant trophies into the United States. He might as well make it legal for ICE agents collect ears and scalps. Oh, wait... I better not give him any ideas.

Look, I'm not saying I have the answers about sentience and where or what that line is, but, then, I don't think anyone has that answer yet, What I am saying, though, is that if there is the possibility -- and there is EVERY possibility where elephants are concerned -- you should not be supporting the murder of said sentient species, especially when that species is already endangered.

But, then, Trump #fakepresident has a difficult time of recognizing the humanity of fellow humans (see Puerto Rico), so I suppose it's too much to expect that he would see anything beyond his own bloated sense of self-worth. And his gut and bucket of chicken.

The Rich Man Who Went To Hell

There was once a rich man. 1% for sure. In fact, if you're not the 1%, I don't think the term "rich" should be applied. The gap between the 1%, maybe 2%, and everyone else is getting so wide that there's not much left to be called "rich" among people not up there at the top.

So there was this rich man who liked to wear expensive clothes. The most expensive he could get his hands on. He was known for it.

He also ate pretty well.

There was also a homeless man. The homeless man was Lazarus, and he was suffering greatly from being homeless, so much so that he wasn't able to get around on his own anymore. He had oozing sores because he didn't have any healthcare, and he couldn't keep the dogs and flies off of them. The dogs because they like to lick gross stuff and the flies because... well, for the same reason, I suppose.

The homeless man had a few of his friends, if you could call them that -- people willing to give him a hand, at any rate -- drag him over and leave him in front of the rich man's house. Not right in front, you know, because that would be trespassing, but on the sidewalk near the gate. Maybe, just maybe, the rich man would allow him some of the leftover food from his amazing dinners, though, really, any food at all would have been amazing to the homeless man. To Lazarus.

Lazarus lived out his days there on the sidewalk in front of the rich man's house. I'm going to just assume that those days were not very many, though I don't know for sure. But we know that he was starving, that he was unable to seek shelter because he wasn't strong enough to walk, that he was suffering from oozing sores that wouldn't heal. None of those things bodes well for a long life. When he died, the angels came and carried him away. Or maybe those were just the first responders who showed up when they got the call about about a body.

Some time later, the rich man also died. I'm going to go ahead and assume that it was some years later, though I don't know for sure. After all, we don't know how old the rich man was, and we don't know what he died from. Maybe he lived decades because he probably had great healthcare or, maybe, he died the next day in a car crash. It doesn't really matter. What matters is that the rich man got sent straight to Hell. I imagine this rather like a game of Monopoly: He did not pass "Go" and he did not collect his $200.

Now Hell is a pretty awful place. Or so they say. Evidently, it's hot, or there wouldn't be a saying about it being "hot as hell." It seems there is also no water, because the rich man was dying of thirst. Okay, sure, he was already dead, but it sure felt to him as if he were dying of thirst. At any rate, he looked up toward Heaven (because you can see it clearly from Hell), longing for water, and, what do you know, there was Lazarus, the guy who died in front of his house, just hanging out and having a good time.

And drinking water.

The rich man wanted some, and he wanted Lazarus to bring it to him. The answer, of course, was no. Not just no, but, "Hell, no!" heh

Some of you may be familiar with this story. It's pretty popular in churches and comes from the book of Luke. Yes, that's in the Bible. So let's look at some things about this particular story, shall we? Yes, we shall.

Jesus was telling this story to the Pharisees because he liked to tell stories that were also lessons. That he was telling the story to Pharisees presents us with a small problem: The Pharisees were all rich, hyper-uptight, religiously educated dudes. Let me make one distinction, though: when I say they were religiously educated, that means they were educated in Jewish law. And they knew it backwards and forwards but, basically, it made them lawyers. They weren't actually interested in spirituality; they were interested in the law and how to keep the letter of the law.

So Jesus was speaking to a bunch of lawyers, experts, about an intersection of religious law and spirituality, and today's church-goers are hardly experts in, well, anything to do with the Bible at all.

Jesus was speaking to the 1%. When pastors are preaching this particular message, they are most assuredly not speaking it to the 1%.

Jesus was speaking to hyper-uptight... Oh, well, that's still the same.

But, really, pastors today are not delivering this message to the intended audience. Let's look at why that matters:

Jesus was delivering his message to the rich. Based on other things he said to the rich, like "give away to the poor everything you own," I'm going to take this story as a warning to the 1%. I think that warning is, "Don't be rich," which is a warning that rather flies in the face of the oh-so-popular prosperity doctrine. [For those of you who don't know, the prosperity doctrine says that "god" will make you rich if he likes you. Conversely, if you are rich, "god" likes you.]

Of course, pastors tell this story as if the rich man was being punished because he didn't do anything to help Lazarus, and I can see the temptation in telling it that way, but we don't know that that was true. The story Jesus tells says nothing about whether the rich man offered Lazarus food or not. Or what he did or did not do for the man. What I do find interesting, though, is that the rich man knew Lazarus' name, not something I would expect if he had taken no interest in Lazarus at all or if his interest had only extended to, "Get that wretch away from my gate!" In fact, we know that Lazarus lived in front of the rich man's house until his death. Maybe the rich man kept Lazarus fed all along but Lazarus was just too sick for it to do any good. We really don't know.

Pastors also tell this story to the poor of the world as a comfort story rather than to the rich as a warning. Not what Jesus intended if we look at the audience Jesus delivered this particular message to. No, the message pastors today want to deliver is this: Don't worry about being poor and sick and abandoned; you will get to go to heaven. As if Lazarus got to go to heaven because he was poor and sick. That also doesn't follow from the rest of the accumulated teachings ascribed to Jesus.

Basically, what we have here are two completely divergent messages.
The first, by Jesus:
Hey, you, rich people, watch out. You're going down.

The second, by modern pastors:
Hey, you, downtrodden people, be accepting of your fate. You'll get rewarded for your suffering after you die.

That second message is kind of sick if you ask me.

What I do know is this: No matter what you believe, the 1%, after they die, are going to end up in the same place as the rich man from the story. I suppose they better hope that "christianity" doesn't turn out to be true, because an eternity of nothingness has to be better than an eternity in hell.

The Hidden God

Let's imagine for a moment...

Imagine you're a young child. Your circumstances don't matter. They could be anything: you live in an orphanage and don't know who your parents are, you have an upper middle class family with a stay at home mom who devotes her time to you, you live in a single-parent home and your one parent works all the time so that you have enough money to eat and have a place to live. Really, it doesn't matter.

So you have this particular living circumstance, whatever it is, and, one day, someone comes along and gives you a letter. The letter is a little lengthy, especially for a kid, but the gist of it is that the letter is from your real father. He's sorry that he can't be there with you all the time like a good dad would be, and that he can't even come in person to meet you, but he wants you to know that he loves you and will be watching out for you. He will even do what he can during your life to make sure things go your way and that you're provided for, though he will never be able to be there in person to do any of those things or even let you know when he's done something. You just have to believe that he's there and that he cares for you even if you never see any proof of this. Never. The letter will have to be enough.

He does want you to know, though, that you are his living heir and, one day, his immense wealth will pass to you. One day. If you believe enough and have faith. Because he will always be watching and will know if you forget he exists. If you don't honor him, you get nothing.
Even though he wants above all else to have a relationship with you, his child.

As you grow up, you cherish the letter, reading it frequently and dreaming of the day when you might one day get to meet your father. Your real father. When you find a $5 bill on the ground, you know your father left it there for you to find. When your dog dies, you know it's because your father wanted you to get a new, better dog, so you shouldn't be sad about the old one. You see your father's hand in ever circumstance that happens to you. After all, if he's as rich and powerful as he says he is -- and he did say he would always be watching you -- you can't risk not attributing every good thing to him.

__________

Now... Imagine that this is not you but someone you recently met. This person talks about his "real" father all the time (let's just say it's a "he") and to everyone he meets... because he doesn't know who might be an agent of his "real" father. He has to make sure his "real" father knows he believes and that he's keeping the faith.

What would you say to this person? It's not like he doesn't have "proof" that his father is watching out for him. I mean, what about that time he found the $5 bill? And what about that time he got the awesome puppy when his dog died? His father was there for him. Right there. His "real" father. Watching. And, of course, there's the letter itself. Even though some stranger whom he has never seen again gave it to him.

It wouldn't matter how much you tried to talk about how there was no actual relationship involved in any of what that person had experienced in his life. You'd tell him that an actual relationship includes interaction and that if his "real" father really did love him and want a relationship with him then he'd show up. In person. Relationships aren't built on... let's call it what it is: fantasy.

Of course, the real issue in all of this is that the letter is a lie. Even if the letter is real, the letter is a lie. So, sure, there might be some real father out there somewhere who is exactly who he says he is, but all of that stuff about wanting a relationship is a lie.  And, well, if that one thing is a lie, then the rest of the letter is suspect, at the very least.

How do I know it's a lie?

Because if you want to have a relationship with someone who also wants to have a relationship with you and that mutual desire is known, then you do that. If you don't do that, then there is something else that one of you wants more than the relationship so, then, any "desire" for a relationship, any "wanting to be there" for someone, is just lip service.
Seriously, ask any kid who has a parent who never comes to his games, performances, or birthdays, or, even, just never spends any time with her.
Like the kid I once heard say in response to a comment about how much her father loved her, "No, my daddy loves golf." (I knew him. She was right.)

To be cliche, love is a verb. It's about what you do, not what you say. The same is true of "god." If "God," any god, wanted to have a relationship with you, "God" could do it. A real relationship with tangible proof. Tangible, verifiable proof.

It's like this:
Let's pretend that one day I just took off and left my family. I called and told my wife and kids that I had things to do but that I loved them and that they should just keep believing that I do. That might work for a little while but, eventually, they'd all say, "Fuck that guy." Why? Because it wouldn't matter how many messages I sent them saying "I love you" if I wasn't going to show up or offer any compelling evidence that I was somehow being detained.

In the same respect, the idea of a god who hides himself away from the world while demanding blind faith and unrequited love is absurd. By "his" own standards -- if you're going by the "christian" Bible -- it's absurd. Double standards, even for "God," aren't okay.

Now, I'm not saying that there's not a Creator, not necessarily, but I am saying that the one presented by "christians" is a lie. That god who wants to have a personal relationship with you...? Yeah, he doesn't exist. If that's what he wanted; he'd do it. For real. Anything else is just a letter from someone who isn't going to follow through.

The New Civil War

240 years ago, we fought a war that we say was a war for freedom. For independence. But it was only a war for white freedom and white independence. From other white men. At least, that's what it became because the Founding Fathers couldn't work their way through the issue of slavery.

So we had to have another war 150 years ago to finish the first war and state that freedom is for everyone. Freedom is for everyone, no matter their skin color.

Evidently, not everyone got that memo, so, now, here we are again in the midst of another Civil War, the New Civil War. Sure, this time it's not being fought on the battlefield with guns and bullets (yet) because this war is more like a spiritual war. Last time, the Civil War was fought with actual bodies, but, this time, it's being fought for the Soul of America and what kind of soul it will be, and it's mostly being fought in the information realm.

Will we be an America filled with hate and fear, or will we be an America filled with respect and tolerance?
The irony? Those who claim to belong to the religion of love -- and not just love, unconditional love -- are the ones preaching hate and fear the loudest. I suppose they think "god" is racist, too, just like them. I don't think you can come to any other conclusion if you look inside their churches.

Of course, the "Christians" tend to forget that it is the Jews who are "God's" chosen people. I don't seen anywhere in the Bible where it says "God" changed his mind about that, so, maybe, white people shouldn't be so stuck on themselves about how cool and important they are.
But I digress... [Actually, I do digress, because that's for an upcoming post. Sort of.]

But it sort of brings me to my point, and the point is this:
All of this is still about slavery and race. Still.
I mean, Fuck. What the fuck, people? It's been 150 fucking years since the Civil War. It's time to get over it and quit idolizing your fucking moments to racism and slavery. Tear that shit down.
Look, if Germany can do it, so can you.

And my other point, which is that you can't actually talk to those people, and it's time for liberals, those on the left -- whatever you want to call the people who aren't part of the 25-33% of the country who make up these hardcore Conservative GOP asshole Trump-followers -- to stop trying to reach over to the 25-33% of the country who make up these hardcore Conservative GOP asshole Trump-followers and convince them of the wrongness of their ways. They're NOT going to be convinced. Ever. You're wasting your time and, frankly, everyone else's time, too.

Look, these "people" know that Trump is a lying pile of shit -- which is an insult to lying piles of shit, but they don't make words that go low enough to accurately describe what Trump is (and my mind just isn't degenerate enough to make that kind of stuff up) -- and they have repeatedly shown that they don't care. They don't know or care anything about what "America" means or stands for (the fact that there were people who got upset about NPR's presentation of The Declaration of Independence on fucking Independence Day is proof enough of that). They have repeatedly shown that all they care about and, thus, all they know is some deranged fantasy where white people rule the world and they get to lay waste to it as they please without suffering any of the consequences. They are not going to be talked out of that delusion.

The truth is that this is a war. An actual war, and we on the Left need to start treating it as such. This is really not a time for debating. We're long past that. The world is teetering on the brink, a lot of brinks, actually... Maybe it's better to say that world is currently finely balanced on the head of a pin. Anyway, we're all teetering on the edge of destruction, environmental destruction even if there weren't other things, and we have to stop letting asshole idiots make the decisions. Decisions which have as their sole goal of making them more rich and damn the consequences because they won't be around to suffer them.

I'm not saying we need to arm ourselves and take to the streets or anything like that (though it would be disingenuous not to point out that a significant portion of those on the Right have been stockpiling weapons for decades), but it is time to quit pussyfooting around and trying to engage in conversations. Get the fuck out and do things like voting. It's not hard! [There is no reason that Ossoff should have lost in Georgia or that Measure C should have failed here in Sonoma county other than that Liberals didn't get out and vote. And that's just messed up. At that point, you're basically just -- and I'm going to be crude here, even for me -- bending over and taking it.]

Here's the deal:
If you're Liberal or anti-Trump or whatever you want to call yourself and you're whining about how things are going, but you're not doing anything about it, then shut the fuck up! Seriously, if you're not going to take action and do simple things like voting, then you don't have the right to complain. It's time to take this shit seriously. It's not a game.
For all intents and purposes, this really is a war. The New Civil War.

It's Come To My Attention

It's come to my attention that there are those of Trump supporters who wish I had never been born. To paraphrase what was said, "The world be a better place if you had never been in it." Which, you know, is ironically amusing coming from the side of the political line which wants to make abortion something that doesn't exist.

But the attitude is something I've come to expect from those on the Right, the Conservatives, the ones who believe that only they have the right to be full people. Yes, freedom of religion but only as long as everyone practices religion exactly as they do. Yes, freedom of speech as long as people never disagree with them. Oh, and if you have some other shade of skin than "white," you better be really rich and willing to contribute a lot of green to get to play in the club.

[A recent study has shown that insurance companies consistently charge minorities up to 30% more for car insurance than they charge whites within the same risk bracket. No, there is no reason for this other than that they are not white.]

For me, the thing that makes this situation so hilarious <he said, ironically> is that the person with the specific "complaint" that finally inspired me to write this post is someone who consistently came into my space to complain about the things I was saying. I wasn't going into his spaces and calling him names or saying bad things about Trump supporters at his house or anything like that. No, he was going out of his way to come to my place and, then, getting offended by it. Over and over again.

Because, you know, that's the way Conservatives like to do it: They like to get mortally (yes, mortally) offended by things that happen nowhere near them, have nothing to do with them, and will never affect them. It's like this:
When I was a teenager growing up in Louisiana (a horrible, Hellish place that I would never wish on anyone) [And I'm not just talking about the weather in regard to Louisiana or the mosquitoes. They have the highest incarceration rate of anywhere in the world! One of the worst education systems in the country. And the politics... Look, despite the fact that we currently have Trump as president, the politics in Louisiana are... well, I'll sum it up this way: Edwin Edwards, David Duke, and Bobby Jindal.]
But I digress... Let me start over:
When I was a teenager growing up in Louisiana, people used to fervently wish and pray for the day that California would suffer a catastrophic earthquake and fall off into the ocean. Why? Because California was filled with gays and hedonism and anyone who would live in California deserved... well, God's judgement, but God's judgement was always something along the lines of Sodom and Gamorrah, because Californians didn't deserve to live. When I was a kid, California was just about the last place I ever wanted or expected to live, not least because I didn't expect it to still exist the way people talked.

Of course, it was while I was a teenager that I started having... issues... at church because of my own views. Frequently, my own views had to do with my much more accurate interpretation of the Bible. Not even the youth pastor or pastor ever came away from a disagreement with me about the Bible in which they didn't at the very least say, "You're not wrong." And my other view which said, "Why does it matter what other people do in their own homes if it's not affecting you?" [This was something I most often said when someone was going off about homosexuality.] The response was always, "Because it's wrong!" And I would say, "So is adultery, but you're not advocating for cheaters to die." [That's kind of a personal pet peeve, that "Christians" spend so much time slamming people of other sexual orientations while mostly ignoring infidelity, which must be at least an equivalent kind of sin, and I would say it's worse.]

What Conservatives/Fundamentalists (of all types) need to learn is this:
The planet is not yours. You do not own it. You do not have control of it. You share it with other people and YOU (you fascist asshole) need to learn how to SHARE. That means you need to learn how to live with people who don't believe the same things you do AND you need to QUIT trying to control other people. Also, consider your actions before you take them: If they could hurt someone else (like, if, you're going to put an oil pipeline that could leak near someone's water source, DON'T do it), don't do that thing. Also, also, corporations are not people and shouldn't be treated as such. Also some more, reducing your profits when you are still making a profit is NOT hurting you, especially if it's making someone else's life better.

I could go on.

All of that to say this:
If Trump supporters are getting tweaked enough by the things I say that they are more than wishing that I wasn't saying them, GOOD! I'm going to keep saying them. Because, you know, at this point, if you are still supporting Trump, you're either just an outright asshole (uneducated, racist, -ist-ist) or you'r clinging to Trump out of stubbornness because you don't want to admit that you were wrong, which makes you an asshole. Either way, you're an asshole.
Oh, or you're a Republican congressman who has no spine or no morality. That also makes you an asshole.

And, sure, I get that if you're a Trump supporter that you, in all likelihood, think that I'm the asshole, BUT, you know what, you DON'T HAVE TO COME INTO MY SPACE. So, really, if you disagree with me, stop engaging with the things I say.

Playing God and the Fundamental Problem of Fundamentalism

Let's have a bit of a thought experiment, shall we?

If you espouse at all to Judeo-Christian mythology (because that is the correct term to use in this case, so don't go getting your undies all twisted in a knot and stuck in your bunghole) and, actually, to Islam, since it has the same roots, then there is a basic premise you have to acknowledge. Actually, it is the basic premise, the one without which there is no Judeo-Christian mythology, no Judaism, no Islam. That premise? Free will.

Yes, the basis of Christianity is the idea that God gave us choice. This is the fundamental concept of Christianity: God made man so that man could choose to love Him. Or not. Love has no meaning without the power to choose not to love.

Or to obey.

[I'm not offering this point as up for debate. This is my given, and I'm not going to enter a discussion in order to prove it. For one thing, that would be a whole other post. Also, it's been an accepted idea for... I don't know how long, so plenty of other people have already argued the point. If you don't agree with me, go find some of those arguments. Or offer your own counter argument, though I probably won't engage in some long, drawn out discussion over it. Not that I might not want to, but I just don't have time for that these days.]

The truth is that, on the whole, people are bad at "choice." We don't want to have them -- or, at least, not too many of them -- and we don't want other people to have them, especially if they are choices we feel like we don't get to make (because, you know, then that's not fair). We so much don't want to have them that we -- again, if you follow Judeo-Christian mythology -- demanded to God that He give us some rules to follow and, thus, we have the Law.

Conservatives love rules. I'm not being snarky. Conservatives tend to be rigid thinkers, and they like clearly defined boundaries and parameters. Rules. If you have a rule, you don't have to stop and figure out what choice you should make: It's clearly laid out for you. And, more importantly, it tells you what other people ought to be (or not to be) doing.

Also, if you are good at following the rules, that makes you better than everyone else.

Sound familiar Republicans?
(Now I am being snarky.)

Fundamentalists are the BEST at following the rules and doing what they're told. So good, in fact, that they come to believe it is their job to enforce the Rules, as they see them, on everyone else. In effect, they choose to play god.

How is this playing god, you might ask. What's wrong with making sure that people are doing the things they're "supposed to do"? What's wrong with enforcing "the rules," the Law?

[I'm going to use Christianity as my example religion here, but this behavior is by no means restricted to Christianity. Christians, however, seem to believe that they do NOT engage in these behaviors, so I think it's important, especially in the United States, to deal with this from the "Christian" perspective.]

Problem One:
You are choosing to enforce your version of "the rules," and those rules are not necessarily correct or moral. "But! The Bible!" Sure, I believe you believe your rules are in the Bible or are "Biblical," but, cherry-picking is an all too common occurrence with Christians, so it's quite likely that your rules are not going to match the rules of the denomination next door.

Now, I bet you think I'm going to get into that whole thing about who's rules are the correct ones and all of that, don't you? Well, I'm not. Because, you know what? No one is correct, because it doesn't really matter if anyone is correct. As soon as you try to enforce your version on someone else, even if it's 100% correct, you are in the wrong and it completely invalidates what you're doing. Yeah, crazy talk, I know.

Look, God gave us free will, gave us choice. Who are you to come along and take that away by trying to make me follow your version of the rules? We'll even go with the assumption that you are correct, but big deal. If God Himself as left it up to me, who the fuck do you think you are to come in here and tell me that it's not? God? Of course you do.

Problem Two:
Jesus.
Yes, really.
Jesus came along and said the Law didn't matter anymore. See, prior to Jesus, you proved you were "good" by following the Law, but Jesus said that wasn't going to work anymore. Well, it never worked to begin with because people followed the letter of the Law and tried to enforce it on each other without paying much attention to what it was all really about: being good to each other. So, Jesus (God) said, "No more Law." And, of course, what did everyone do? They double-downed on the Law.

What that means is that when anyone starts "Bibling" at you, they are saying that what they are saying is more valid than what Jesus (GOD) said.

Problem Three:
Paul.
And Paul is a problem. Paul is the reason so many "Christians" are still clinging to the Law.

See, people are pretty savvy, and people realized that since the Law was no longer valid (everything was grace) that there was no more sin. Paul's response? Well, Paul said, "You know what, you're right; there is no more sin. Follow the Law anyway."

Paul, with a full understanding of what Jesus said about having done away with the Law, said that people should do it anyway, then he went around exhorting everyone to keep following the Law.

And "Christians" for the last 2000 years have done all they could to follow Paul's example and make people do as their told. Because, you know, they know better than God what ought to be going on. Forget "love your neighbor" and shit like that; just do as you're told. So say the Republicans.

All Children

All children believe in feeding the hungry.

All children believe in taking care of the sick.

All children believe in clothing the poor.

All children believe in providing homes for the homeless.

All children believe in protecting the Earth.

All children want to save the animals. Especially the cute, furry ones. (Okay, maybe not all children want to save all the bugs, but, still...)

All children believe in the concept of sharing (especially when it means that someone else is going to share with them, but they also believe that they should share even when they don't want to).

I guess this means that all children are liberals.

Matthew 18:3 "Truly, I tell you," he said, "unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

Why There Is No Hope For Your "Christian" Friends

One of the most constant and consistent frustrations of those opposing Trump is with his supporters, especially with -- and this is most of them -- "Christians." The disbelief that non-Christians have with "Christians" who support Trump is completely justified, but discussions about the lack of compassion from "Christians" is for some other time. This time let's deal with the dismissal of facts and reality by "Christians" in their rabid defense of Trump and the things he's doing.

So let's deal with a hard truth:

There is no hope for your "Christian" friends, and it is a waste of your time trying to talk to them or convince them of anything fact-based or anything having to do with actual reality, even when it comes to things that might be directly affecting them (like the ACA) in the very near future.

Well, that's kind of doom and gloom, isn't it?

Maybe, but it's the truth, and here's why:

From childhood, "Christians" grow up being taught to ignore science, history, and archaeology for the greater truth that the Bible contains. See, sometimes what's in the Bible comes into direct conflict with the reality of the world. In those situations, "Christians" are taught that the Bible is always right and science is always wrong. Always. The Bible is infallible after all, so any fact that goes against something in the Bible is always suspect. It is only a "fact," meaning it is some piece of some liberal conspiracy to undermine the Church.

Let me give you a couple of real world examples that I dealt with over and over again as I was growing up.

See, dinosaurs were my first love. I spent a good 10 years of my life planning to be a paleontologist when I grew up (which is a story for another time). By the time I was four (yes, I said four), I was already neck deep in textbooks about dinosaurs (not little kid books but actual science books about dinosaurs and paleontology). To put it another way: Science was my thing. However, dinosaurs don't fit well within the "Christian" mythos. I mean, where are they even mentioned in the Bible? And how do they fit into that whole seven-day creation myth? "Christians" will go through all sorts of mental contortions to explain all of those very real bones sitting in museums.

Explanation one:

When God created the Earth, he created it with the fossils already in the ground. There were no actual dinosaurs, God just made giant bones and stuck them in the ground.

What the fuck?

Yeah, even as a kid, that was kind of my mental response even though I had no clue about the word "fuck."

I mean, why? Why would God, any god, do something like that? Just to fuck with us? I actually had to have a discussion with my mom about this when I was... oh, I don't know, maybe 12 or 14. Her question to me was, Is it possible? Is it possible that God could have just put the bones in the ground?

How do you answer something like that? Of course, it's possible. But why? I told her it didn't make any sense logically that God would do something like that.

And she said something like, Maybe God did it as a puzzle for us to figure out.

What the fuck?

Look, this wasn't my mom talking. She didn't come up with these ideas on her own. It was some unit or something they were doing in Sunday school and, since it was about dinosaurs, she wanted to talk to me about it. And it wasn't just from my mom I head this theory. But, you know, when it came from the Church, she wasn't ever much for questioning it. This was about as close as she ever got to doing that.

So, yeah, if it was a puzzle, how do you even figure that out? What, then, is the puzzle? If you come up with answers that the "puzzle" would lead you to -- that dinosaurs ruled the world for millions of years then died suddenly -- you are completely wrong. That doesn't make any sense, that God would deliberately mislead us like that, not to mention that there are no clues at all that God had just stuck bones in the ground, so you could never come to that knowledge from the "puzzle."

So she said, "It could be a test?" Like a test of our faith. To see if we would believe that they had been real when what we should be doing was immediately grasping that God had stuck bones in the ground even more proving that He is God.

A trick, then, I said. You're saying that God is trying to trick us. That's mean.

The conversation ended when I said I didn't believe in a God who would make bones and stick them in the ground for no logical reason. It was either stupid or mean. Then I walked away.

We never talked about it again, but that was how I dealt with that particular scenario any other time I heard it mentioned.

Explanation two:
Man and the dinosaurs lived simultaneously upon the Earth. Yes, despite any archaeological evidence, man and dinosaurs coexisted. Some people even believe that Noah had dinosaurs on the ark and that he saved them from the flood... just so that they could all go extinct some time just after that.

One of my youth pastors when I was in high school believed this, that Noah loaded the ark with dinosaurs. Baby dinosaurs where the really big ones were involved. We had... disagreements... about this frequently. So much so, in fact, that he did two separate units about Creationism (in the same year!) with the whole dinosaur/human coexistence as the central point. For one of them, he brought in some outside "expert" on the issue who had a film and various "proofs" that dinosaurs lived with men. The most famous of these being this fossil of a dinosaur footprint with a man's footprint within it. That was the proof.
[If you're interested, this is known as the Paluxy dinosaur/man track controversy and has been debunked by science, though there are still plenty of young-Earth Creationists who believe in the coexistence of man and dinosaur.]

Mostly, "Christians" tend to ignore the dinosaur question or take up the more liberal view that maybe the word "day" where it's used in the creation myth didn't mean a literal 24-hour day.

The point, though, is that "Christians" are taught from a young age to ignore empirical evidence when it contradicts the Bible and that they will fabricate all sorts of stories to get around conflicts.

AND they think they are smarter than you while doing it, because, in the end, they believe that their "foolishness" is greater than your "wisdom":

I Corinthians 1:27 -- But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise...

I Corinthians 1:19-20 -- For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate." Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

I Corinthians 3:18-20 -- If any of you thinks he is wise in this age, he should become a fool, so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight. As it is written, "He catches the wise in their craftiness." And again, "The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile."

These are not the only examples of this kind of philosophy from the Bible, so you might be able to understand why some of these people espouse the view that you don't need to have "any learning but what's in the Bible," something I've been told numerous times by numerous people all the way into my 20s when I was going to college. There's a reason why they pride themselves on their ignorance; it's because they've been raised to believe it's a virtue.

Their ignorance makes them "smarter" than you, and you're just not going to talk those people out of that. You can't argue with stupid, especially when it believes it's pulling the wool over your eyes.

The Creepy Days of the Man with No Eyes (a FREE! book day!)

He's been called many things during his days walking the Earth.
"Priest"
"Father"
"Padre"
"Master of Shadows"
"Shadow Walker"
"Soul Eater"
But the thing he is most often called is the Man with No Eyes.
For obvious reasons.

What happened to his eyes, you might ask?
Well, that is a tale for another time and one you might be sorry to have asked about once you've heard it. So that you understand:
"And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out. It is better for thee to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell..."

You won't find out what happened to his eyes today, but you can get "The Man with No Eyes" for FREE! today and tomorrow! Spread the word.
But don't trust the shadows.

Since When?

Facebook has a lot of things going on that we don't know about. It's not that facebook is actually trying to hide this stuff, it's just that it's not right out in the open, and, well, no one ever really looks. Of course, we all agree to it by being on facebook to begin with, so it's not like you have any right or grounds on which to complain. If you don't like it, don't be on facebook.

But I digress as all of that is really beside the point. Or behind it. Or something. I only bring it up because what I'm about to talk about came out of one of those "hidden" facebook things.

Unsurprisingly, facebook labels you in different ways based on the kinds of things on which you click through and all sorts of ways. A lot of it has to do with advertising so that their advertisers can target you so that they're sending ads to people who might actually be interested in them rather than just whatever to whomever and hoping something sticks. One of the labels they attach to you has to do with how you lean politically.

Yeah, I checked  my label.

It said "machine wash, hot."
Oh, wait! Wrong label.

Oh, yeah, I know what a lot of you out there are thinking: "We don't need you to tell us your label. We all know you're one of those crazy, hippy liberals." Well, as it turns out, not quite. See, there are three categories: liberal, conservative, and moderate. Makes sense, right? And I fully expected to get pegged in the "liberal" category. But, no, my label... You want to know my label? "Very liberal." Not just liberal but "very liberal."

It's funny, because I don't feel "liberal." What I feel like is someone who believes that all people; independent of their race, sex, sexuality, financial status, whatever; ought to get a fair shake. What I wonder is this: Since when did that idea become "liberal"? Because I have a hard time with the idea of people being treated fairly and equally being a liberal idea. Not today. Today, that ought to be the norm.

Why?

Because we use the Declaration of Independence as one of our founding documents, I'd like to point out a few things. All men (mankind) are created equal, not just white men and not just rich men and not just rich, white men.

All men have the right to life, which does not include being shot dead by people working for the government, especially not for walking down the street or driving your car.

All men have the right to liberty. I'm going to say that as freedom. People have the right to choose how they want to live. As long as you're not hurting some other person, you should get to live the way you want to. And, honestly, I don't understand why this is even a thing. What you do in your own house is your own business (as long as it isn't beating your kids or your spouse). Or it ought to be. I don't want you coming in my house telling me how to live, so I shouldn't be going into your house telling you how to live. That's a metaphoric "I," people.

All men have the right to pursue happiness. Again, as long as it doesn't mean harming someone else or denying someone else their right of life or liberty. You get to decide what makes you happy and pursue that thing and, just because that is not a thing that makes me happy, it doesn't make it okay for me to tell you that it shouldn't make you happy.

These do not seem like "liberal" ideas to me. They seem like fairly decent human ideas. But let's take it back some more. Now, if you are a Bible believer, you have to get the whole part where God created man to be free. See, the angels were not free, and God wanted some piece of creation that would have freedom of choice. The freedom to live as that piece of creation would choose to live. So it seems to me that the people who should be most invested in protecting the right of choice for individuals would be Christians. Or "Christians," if we're speaking politically.

Not to mention that it should be Christians most in support of social programs that help the poor. Seriously, what do they think it means when Jesus said, "Feed my sheep"? But that's really a different topic.

The point is that I don't feel liberal, certainly not "very liberal." Which is not to say that I feel conservative, because I don't feel that, either (although I think I did actually feel conservative when I was young and growing up in the South). I don't think of myself in those kinds of terms.

As I said, I do think of myself as someone who believes that people deserve and should receive equality. Equal opportunity. Equal pay for equal work. An equal chance at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. My wife frequently says I'm the best feminist she knows, but I don't think of myself that way, either. I'll say equalist. I believe in equalism.

And, again, as the title says, since when did that idea become liberal?

Flat Earther for President

We have this common misconception that before Columbus everyone believed the Earth is flat. It makes perfect sense that we believe this false thing since it's generally presented that way in school. Hey, it makes for a good story!

"The intrepid explorer, Christopher Columbus, despite warnings that the world was flat, set out in his ships to prove everyone wrong by going around the Earth to establish new trade routes! He faced constant threat of mutiny as all of his crew feared they were going to go over the edge of the world! But he persevered and finally landed in a brand, new world!"

Something like that, anyway.

The truth is, though, that educated people didn't believe that. The Greeks figured out that the world was round well over 1500 years before Columbus stepped foot on a ship. It had been accepted knowledge for a long, long time before the Middle Ages began. Accepted by the educated, that is. The "common" people were a different story.

There were exceptions. Every so often, someone (educated) would come along, usually on religious grounds of some sort, and declare that the Earth was flat. Anyone could look around and see that that was true. Plus, you know, "The Bible!" No one should listen to "science"!

It made sense to the uneducated masses. Sure, look around, because anyone can clearly see that the Earth is flat and all this "science" talk of a spherical planet is part of some rigged system trying to take advantage us!

The truth was that the common people, being uneducated, couldn't understand the science. It took explorers going out and sailing around the world, all the way around the world, before the idea of a flat Earth became a thing of the past.

Mostly a thing of the past, since there is still a Flat Earth Society with people in it who cling to this idea that the science is a fraud and the Earth is actually flat. Or that the science is just wrong, or the scientists just aren't smart enough to decipher the information correctly. Obviously, the Earth is still as flat today as it ever was.

The rest of us, though, don't give these people much credence. It's an idea that doesn't deserve much more than an eye roll and a "Oh, you're one of those people" responses. Because, you know, there's more than just science to back up the fact that the Earth is a sphere. People have been up there and out there and seen it.

Can you imagine if a Flat Earther ran for President?

I can, because we have that going on right now.

We have the science that shows that man-induced climate change is happening. Educated people who understand the science virtually all agree that this is what is happening. The problem we're having with that is people looking around, much as the uneducated masses did during the Middle Ages, and not seeing the curve of the Earth. Or the larger picture. Whatever.

They're seeing things like what I saw posted on Facebook recently, "What climate change? It's 51 here in [place withheld]!" They're seeing the arctic vortexes and, well, whatever it is they're seeing is not the pattern. They're still grasping onto "global warming" and allowing harsh winters to mask "climate change."

And, then, we have someone like Donald Trump come along and say things like, "There is no drought in California." He's the religious nut (not that he's religious) from the Middle Ages coming along and saying, "The Earth is flat!" He doesn't know or understand the science, and he doesn't want to. It wouldn't actually surprise me if the next "wacky" thing to come out of his mouth was actually, "The world is flat!" It would fit right in with his statements that climate change is a hoax and that the science is bullshit.

The sad part is that I'm not sure if he did come out and say that the Earth is flat if that would dissuade his supporters.

Fallacies of the Church (part two) -- All You Need Is God

Maybe you've heard the joke:

There was a man caught in a flood because he didn't leave his house when he was told to evacuate. Rather than leave, he put his faith in God to save him. The waters rose higher and higher until he was eventually forced to climb out onto his roof. Once there, a man in a small boat came by and offered to carry him to safety. The man replied, "No, thank you. God will save me."

The waters continued to rise until he was sitting on the very top of his roof. A couple of men came by in a fishing boat and offered to carry him to safety. The man replied, "No, thank you! God will save me."

The waters continued to rise until he was forced to climb to the top of his chimney to sit. A helicopter came by and lowered itself and dropped a rope. The man replied, "No, thank you! God will save me!"

The waters continued to rise, and the man was swept away and drowned. Upon entering Heaven, he said to God, "God, I put my faith in you. Why didn't you save me?"

God answered, "I sent two boats and a helicopter. What more did you want?"

** ** **

Unfortunately, this joke is the perfect example of one of the greatest lies of "the church": God is all you need. And, hey, I get it; there are plenty of verses you can point to in the Bible that seem to say that, plenty of verses that talk about how God will supply your needs. Your physical needs. Except, the problem there is that those needs, with the exception of manna in the desert, don't magically appear. People provide them.

The thing is this: This is one of the most harmful lies of the church, this idea that God is all you need. It's always delivered in the context of someone needing help, which is what makes it so destructive. Are you going through an emotional upheaval, like a divorce? Don't worry; God is all you need. Are you going through a financial difficulty, like you just lost your job and can't make your house payments? Don't worry; God is all you need. Did you just suffer a physical trauma, like you found out you have cancer? Don't worry; God is all you need.

This line is always delivered in an effort to get the human(s) saying it out of any responsibility to be of assistance in the situation. "Oh, you don't need me. God is all you need." Then, if that situation doesn't turn around and end up in a positive manner? Well, there's definitely something wrong with the individual who had the problem. That person didn't "trust" God enough or, maybe, and even worse, God didn't like that person to begin with.

"All you need is God" is a cop out from "the church" and its members delivered on a weekly basis to people "the church" doesn't want to associate with.

What's worse (and it's worse because it's more insidious) is that it teaches people to not accept help, just like the guy in the joke. Accepting help from other people is some twisted kind of weakness and proof that you're not trusting God to... what? Who knows. Materialize a stack of money in your living room? "Fix" the spouse who is initiating the divorce? Heal you over night of the cancer? I'm just going to say this: If you're in need and someone offers help, fucking take the help! That's what people are for. Because God is actually not all you need.

What I know from experience from the use of this statement against people (and, yes, I do mean "against"), either from getting out of needing to offer help or people refusing to ask for it, is that when things don't work out, people feel abandoned by God and, therefore, abandon "the church," which, actually, might be for the better. However, destroying someone's faith is never for the better. And "the church" was put here to help people, not to tell them that they only need God and everything will be okay.

Look, I'm not going to get into a tit for tat verse argument about the validity of the statement; that would be pointless. Instead, I'm going to look at one particular event in the Bible, a foundational event, you could say. It doesn't even matter if you take this event as literal fact or some sort of metaphor, the truth that comes out of this is the same either way if you believe that God created man as a being meant to be in a relationship with Him. Let's look at Adam:

God is sitting around up in Heaven and, evidently, being a bit bored. All He has are Angels who don't have "free will," whatever that means considering a third of them rebelled against Him. Whatever the case, God decides to make a man, and He does. For a while, everything is great. God comes down to the special place He made for the man, Eden, and hangs out with him every night. Maybe they played poker? Or, maybe, they had a long running game of Monopoly going? You know with just two people that game can go on for ages. Or, maybe, they just skipped stones on the lake. I don't know.

What I do know is that, after a while, God realized that He, He being God!, was not enough for Adam. Adam was lonely and bored and couldn't handle all of the work of taking care of Eden all by himself. God was NOT all Adam needed. The end result of that is... well, people. Social people that need to depend on each other and cannot get by on God alone, as it were.

And I could go on and on. God appeared to Moses and told Moses that He would be with him, and Moses said, "Nope, I need a person." David had Jonathan. Paul had Barnabas. Jesus had his disciples! God, as man, needed people! Obviously, God is NOT all you need.

That the current iteration of Christianity is full of this message, "All you need is God," from the pulpit and pews to Christian music, is, well, it's horrible and destructive and a lie. In fact, it's undermining to the whole message of true Christianity. Of course, what we have in the United States today is more of a political movement, not a faith, and that message fits right in with that. A church that is preaching the "all you need is God" teaching is, more than likely, not a church you should be attending. Unless, of course, you're already bought into the same idea as a way of avoiding helping people.

Fallacies of the Church -- An Introduction (part one)

As I've talked about before, I grew up in "the church;" specifically, I grew up Southern Baptist. Beyond that, I've worked in "the church," across several different denominations. The difference between me and most people who grow up in "the church" is that, from a young age, I began exploring Christianity on my own. What I mean by that is that I did not rely on Sunday School or the pastor or the youth pastor or whomever to teach me what's what about what's in the Bible and anything and everything related to that. I studied on my own.

My tendency to do my own studying (I was the only one in my youth group when I was a teenager who had read the Bible (even worse, when I got to college, I knew ministerial students who had never read the Bible (that, actually, was more than 90% of them))) led to many disagreements between me and authority figures at my church when I was a teenager. They would say something like... Let's use a great Southern Baptist example! "The Bible says it's a sin to dance." And I would reply, "No, it doesn't." Then, there would be some complicated rationalization about how all these other things the Bible said arrived at the conclusion that "dancing is a sin." It's very clear that God thought it was excellent when David, so overcome by joy and praise for God, danced naked through the streets. I'm sorry, but it's hard to get past that.

The thing is, whenever I would get into one of these disagreements with an authority figure in my church (and remember, I was only 16-17 years old), they would always have to concede to me that I was right. Because I was. They had just accepted things because of the tradition that the church had that the Bible said these things (like "God helps those who help themselves," and "Cleanliness is next to Godliness"). The only one of these I didn't get a full turnaround from the other person had to do with the rapture and when that will happen (in relation to the other events of Revelation, not what year it will happen). He couldn't bring himself to tell me I was right, so he came back with, "I'm not saying you're right, but I will say that I was wrong."

Now, you might be thinking right about now, "Why does any of this matter? I don't care about the rapture or what Baptists think about dancing," and I get that. Totally. I don't care about what the Baptists think about dancing, either, even if I can't do it (and you can ask my wife, even after lessons and more lessons, I just can't dance). However, some of these things "the church" teaches are damaging to people, including what it teaches, mostly, about the rapture. I don't mean damaging in a little way, either. I mean damaging in a big way in that it becomes damaging to society in general.

Now, I am not setting out to be offensive, but I am sure that some, if not all, of what I say will be found to be offensive by at least some of the people who visit my blog. I'd like to care more about that, but I kind of don't. If I did, I wouldn't do this series to begin with. People in "the church" tend to believe too much and trust too much what pastors say just because it is a pastor who is saying it, pastors who have never read the Bible all the way through or ever bother to learn the historical context of what they were reading. I have had people tell me, "You don't need no schooling to be a preacher, all you need to do is have a Bible." And that attitude explains the abject ignorance of at least 80% of "the church." [Yes, I pulled that figure out of my butt, but I expect it's more like 95%, so I was being extremely generous. Remember, I spent decades around people in "the church" and found very few of them to be any kind of enlightened. About anything.]

Anyway... back at the beginning of the year, I promised to be more offensive, and this is just another of the ways I intend to do it. I don't have an issue with tackling difficult topics.

All of that being said, I am a Christian, but I am only a Christian in that I believe in the Kerygma (as I talked about here). I am certainly not the current iteration of cultural "Christian" who is so far removed from anything that Christ taught that if Jesus walked into their church, they would turn Him out. Or barely tolerate his presence in hopes that He would leave on His own. I'll put it like this: I find "the church" to be offensive. I find a significant number of right-wing nutjobs supporting their actions by waving the Bible around (like Kim Davis) to be offensive. I find the people who hold rallies for those people and wave the Bible around as an excuse (I'm looking at you Mike Huckabee) to be offensive. Well, it's time for you to own up to what's not actually in the Bible and to start treating people the way Jesus said to: with love.