tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116806262024-03-07T21:16:04.620-05:00The UmBlogMy thoughts on the Church and the world and their interaction.John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.comBlogger2235125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-83140624372318765522021-04-01T15:13:00.005-04:002021-04-01T15:13:56.632-04:00The near sacrifice of Isaac and bad religion<p>Bad religion asks parents to sacrifice their children. Bad religion is cultural. Bad religion looks for scapegoats. Bad religion always find scapegoats in those with less power. Bad religion kills kids. Abraham's story in Genesis 22 is a story of good religion prevailing over bad.</p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/wp-content/uploads/2003/04/Muse%CC%81e_national_message_biblique_Marc_Chagall_-_panoramio_-_Rokus_Cornelis-1468x900.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="source" border="0" data-original-height="490" data-original-width="800" height="246" src="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/wp-content/uploads/2003/04/Muse%CC%81e_national_message_biblique_Marc_Chagall_-_panoramio_-_Rokus_Cornelis-1468x900.jpg" title="image source" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-binding-of-isaac/" target="_blank">image source</a></td></tr></tbody></table> <br /><p> Abraham lives in a culture which not only approves of child sacrifice, but even encourages it for assistance from the deities. Abraham believes his deity wants him to also perform this act of devotion. But after he ties his son up, he has an encounter with God unlike any previous one. It appears God changed his mind. </p><p>More likely, Abraham changed his mind about God.</p><p><br /></p><p>Evangelical and fundamentalist christians also live in cultures where they think their deity asks them to bind their children, to not let them live in truth their sexual identity. Hence, <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/queer-youth-religion-suicide-study_n_5ad4f7b3e4b077c89ceb9774?fbclid=IwAR2MJJmdWQxHBCpizptSx79xEzs9XLDiK8pc32bFK1jq3_gWF9vZNLnFuBU" target="_blank">these children who normally benefit from the protective effects of religion on suicidal thoughts and tendencies actually experience it worse and suffer higher rates of suicide</a>.</p><p>A theology that increases a gay, trans, or queer kid's risk of suicide is demonic. It's bad religion. If God is love, then it's time for the evangelical church to repent and change their minds about God, because they so obviously got Them wrong.</p>John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-61899598389888195912021-03-13T13:35:00.004-05:002021-03-13T13:35:32.828-05:00The cost of making things right - reparations for African Americans <p>At times in its past, the United States of America has found money to make restitution for things gone wrong. For example, 9/11</p>"The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001, created by Congress, distributed $7 billion to survivors and victims' families. There have been 2,983 families of those who died and received an average of just over $2 million tax-free per claim, according to Kenneth Feinberg, former pro bono administrator of the fund." <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Business/september-11-victims-family-seeks-justice/story?id=14364251">ABC news</a><div><br /></div><div>The 9/11 memorial in NYC? "The foundation that runs the memorial estimates that once the roughly $700 million project is complete, it will cost $60 million a year to operate." <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna48960348" target="_blank">NBC news</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Americans are paying for this, not Saudi Arabia where the 9/11 bombers came from. But America wants to "never forget."</div><div><br /></div><div>When the US violated the constitutional rights of Japanese Americans on the west coast after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the entrance to the 2nd World War, it recognized the wrong and President Reagan signed into law a modest redress of $20,000 per survivor. <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/03/24/820181127/the-unlikely-story-behind-japanese-americans-campaign-for-reparations">NPR news</a>.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8rky0B34kqU5WUngynLfqVmPxxQA3HcNRR6ZsBzxFkHn0oK5R-kpnmjfkTEZUc1w7Oe-QR2v79_qxAkReqVCsvRZHQ-38zW-uH3pz-87DICqH94rt0VPKO9aTC3twCrodUJhk/s1000/1000x-1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="The National Memorial for Peace and Justice," border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1000" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8rky0B34kqU5WUngynLfqVmPxxQA3HcNRR6ZsBzxFkHn0oK5R-kpnmjfkTEZUc1w7Oe-QR2v79_qxAkReqVCsvRZHQ-38zW-uH3pz-87DICqH94rt0VPKO9aTC3twCrodUJhk/w400-h300/1000x-1.jpg" title="The National Memorial for Peace and Justice," width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The <a href="https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/memorial" target="_blank">National Memorial for Peace and Justice</a>, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-15/the-brutal-truths-of-the-national-lynching-memorial" target="_blank">source</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Enslaved African Americans were brought to America with the first anglos in the 1600s. They were not freed until 1865. Even after freedom they were robbed of their wages and labor by sharecropping land owners. They were not given their promised 40 acres and a mule. They were lynched daily, <a href="https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/memorial" target="_blank">4400 between 1877 and 1950</a>, across the country and a national <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-lynching_movement" target="_blank">anti-lynching</a> act first offered in 1935 still cannot be passed. They were forced into separate and unequal conditions such as housing and transportation and loans and education which continues to this day. But white americans can still not open their hearts to reparations owed to African Americans. They hide behind excuses such as "I didn't own any slaves," or "I'm not a racist," or "we already had a black president," or "black athletes make so much money already"...</div><div><br /></div><div>But since those same people do not say about the 9/11 memorial, "This is terrible, I didn't own any stocks, ... why do we have to remember the bad times?....or bin Laden is dead now, can't we move on?" I'm lead to conclude the real reason white americans do not want to pay our fellow citizens reparations is we are white supremacists and paying for that philosophy is too much on the nose. </div><div><br /></div><div>Instead of looking at <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-japanese-americans-received-reparations-and-african-americans-are-still-waiting-119580" target="_blank">the total cost of reparations</a>, start with the justice of it and let's work from there.</div>John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-37908599383931784302021-02-06T12:15:00.162-05:002021-02-06T13:50:14.146-05:00book report: The Galilee Episode by Goetz (2020)<div>Here is the quick summary. This book is a 5 star thesis with a 2 star execution. Great ideas benefit from great editors. I really hope <a href="https://biblethumpingliberal.com/about/" target="_blank">Ronald Goetz</a>'s book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/173386170X/ref=x_gr_e_nl_general_sin?ie=UTF8&tag=x_gr_e_nl_general_sin-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=173386170X&SubscriptionId=1MGPYB6YW3HWK55XCGG2" target="_blank">The Galilee Episode</a>, gets picked up by a real publisher with an editorial team to cut this rough gem into a thing of beauty it deserves.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1582813042l/51828995._SY475_.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="316" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1582813042l/51828995._SY475_.jpg" /></a></div><div><br /></div>Goetz's spiritual journey started at a young age, resulting in Bible college and 15 years in the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination then in the United Methodists for the past 30 years or so. At some point he saw this passage in Luke 17 with new eyes.<div><br /></div><div><span style="background-color: #fcff01;">34 I tell you, on that night two men will be in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. 35 Two women will be grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other left.</span><br /><div><br /></div><div>I have to say I never thought of these passages in their plain reading before myself, but in the fundamentalist goggles I inherited. Why are two guys sharing a bed at night? Maybe because they are gay partners. And did you know "grinding" is not slang for sex in just the urban dictionary, but is actually common across cultures ancient and current. Even the ancient greeks talked about the women on Lesbos "grinding at their mills" in a double entendre sense. I learned all this from Goetz's deep research. </div><div><br /></div><div>Goetz's research is its strength and its weakness. He dives into linguistic history, Torah studies, Josephus' Jewish histories and Q studies. All of this I appreciate but it confounds the book's identity and it's audience. An editor could help him write two books, a shorter, personal narrative, less technical and more popular book focused on the Bible and a longer, more detailed, dissertation level book. Unfortunately, he tries to do both and does not succeed in either. Take myself for example, I studied New Testament Greek for two years in seminary, so I can understand his Bible research and his Greek linguisitics, but everything he offers on Q studies and Josephus and contemporary Pharisees of Jesus according to the Talmud, I have no reference for, and can only assume his assertions are correct. Coming out of decades of fundagelical apologetics, I am averse to that kind of writing anymore. On the other hand, a doctoral dissertation would engage more than he does with contrary literature and assertions to provide a more rounded discussion around his thesis. </div><div><br /></div><div>What is his thesis? Jesus used examples of persecution of mixed gay couples in contemporary Galilee by zealous Pharisees who were allowed to snatch the Jewish "offender" but not the Gentile who was protected by Roman law and the Governor at the time, Philip the Tetrarch. When the story is told in Matthew's gospel (24:40), it is tidied up a little, men are in a field, not a bed, so as not to offend the conservative Jewish audience it is directed towards. The men could be in the field at night, when harvesting is not happening, but Matthew's gospel leaves out the time frame. The point being, Jesus does not take the opportunity to condemn gay coupling, but to beware of religious persecution, a rapture to jail and a stoning, not a rapture to heaven. Goetz also notes the two references to Sodom in Luke never condemn the homosexuality but the inhospitality which is even worse for Jesus' emissaries in Luke 10:11-13.</div><div><br /></div><div>Goetz does not do a good job boiling down his thesis like I did here. The details are overwhelming and their utility to the thesis are not always explained, but assumed or referenced later. His writing is strongest when he writes his personal narrative of discovery. His popular book, if he were to get it republished should focus on his skill in this area. Unfortunately, in a book collated from a blog written over years, a writing style changes as well, so the last chapter mentions "primates" frequently when referring to people. The use of primates is his style in his latest blog posts, but comes out of nowhere in the book. An editor would help with style cohesion. There are numerous typos and a few sentences that were missing verbs, not making sense. Obviously, poor editing bothers me, and it happens even in books by the big publishers. But one of his made me laugh out loud. Eschatological theology looks to the end of times. But on page 153 Goetz accidentally writes, "Christian scatologists simply harmonized..." I do not think there is a branch of Christian theology focused on shit. =)</div><div><br /></div><div>I want Geotz to rewrite this book with an editor. His thesis deserves a better package than what he's put together here.</div><div> </div>Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR,Part 255.</div>John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-3109205010204103872021-01-26T09:59:00.002-05:002021-02-06T13:50:41.771-05:00according to Jesus not all scriptures are literally true<p> I've written a couple other posts on this topic before, <a href="https://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2014/09/not-everything-biblical-is-christian_19.html" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="https://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2014/09/not-everything-biblical-is-christian_56.html" target="_blank">here</a>. Jesus and his followers, in the footsteps of the Jewish prophets before them, chose which writings to elevate and which writings to minimize. Jesus did this to Moses when he said an eye for an eye was not God's way in his sermon on the mount. But Jesus also does this in his temptation. His accuser shows up and says, "yo, you can get a lot of followers by doing this miracle based on the Psalms by jumping off this high place, because the Psalmist prophecies God won't let you foot dash against a rock. Maybe you'll levitate or something." And Jesus, who must have stubbed his toe multiple times in his life is like, "you is a fool, why you gotta take poetry literally like that, also the book says don't test God like that, Fool."</p><p>Jesus pointed out to my younger fundamentalist self that some things in the scriptures are more important than others. If you use the lenses of love is God's primary identity, then you'll be able to see which things are literal, which are poetical, which were not written in God's spirit and which were. If the writers were about taking care of our neighbors and turning the cheek instead of revenge, then you'll know they are the Jesus stuff. If they are about excluding gay people, or keeping down minorities instead of serving and elevating those weaker than ourselves, they are fully human.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://danutm.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/the-temptation-of-jesus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="679" data-original-width="709" src="https://danutm.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/the-temptation-of-jesus.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-68518290279876878182020-12-03T10:19:00.003-05:002020-12-03T10:19:40.170-05:00Your abortion was not murder, a biblical defense<p>I used to have an abundance of pro-life blog posts on here. I took them down because I no longer think my male opinion carries even the weight of electrons on this blog.</p><p>I do consider myself pro-life, not just pro-birth, and believe the church and the government should support not only pregnant mothers but post-natal mothers and children. Please see my post from last year. "<a href="https://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2019/06/policy-proposal-pay-pregnant-women-and.html" target="_blank">policy proposal: pay pregnant women and at home parents</a>". If you are an evangelical woman who has had or is considering an abortion and if wracked with guilt, I'd like to offer a minority report on the biblical exemption for abortion.</p><p>We start with <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+21&version=CEV">Exodus 21</a>. The first eleven verses fall into the category I've written about many times here under the label, "not everything biblical is Christian", meaning these slave laws are awful and not Christ-like at all. Starting at verse 12 though we get to the capital crimes. Again, I'm pro-life so I don't think a Christ follower should be in support of capital punishment either, so I also think these punishments are not christian either. Ironically, kidnapping is a capital crime yet those Western slave holders who were fine with verses 1-11, managed to skip over the equal wickedness of kidnapping of Africans or of whipping your slave to death, but I digress. But when the reader gets to verse 22, the death penalty is not something applicable to causing a miscarriage, AKA, an abortion. The woman's health is the only concern of the text.</p><p>Why is that?</p><p>I believe it has to do with the other origin story of humanity in Genesis 2. God took dirt and breathed into it and the man came alive. Breath and spirit are the same words in <a href="https://hozana.org/en/community/8776-ruah-breathe-through-me-holy-spirit" target="_blank">Hebrew</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneuma" target="_blank">Greek</a>, the languages of the Jewish and the Christian scriptures. Without breath there is no spirit. Without spirit there is no breath. Without breath, we are dirt. It's true at the end of our lives and it's true at our conception. Being knit together in the womb as the 139th Psalm says as the same as having clay being formed into Adam. Without breath, the biblical writers thought we were not human. According to the biblical writer's view of the world, abortion was not murder. Murder is the intentional removal of God's breath from God's creature in the biblical writings. This is why my pro-life stance makes me a pacifist as well. But your abortion did not take God's breath, God's spirit away from a fellow human. Without breath, your fetus did not have the spirit of God.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://store.crimsoncircle.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/600x/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/b/r/breath_spirit_square-large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="600" src="https://store.crimsoncircle.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/600x/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/b/r/breath_spirit_square-large.jpg" title="source" /></a></div><br /><p>I'm prolife for all who breathe, who carry the spirit of God. I am not pro-abortion, but I am totally pro-pre and post natal motherhood support. I do not consider my pro-life beliefs based on my religious upbringing to be the standard for anyone else, thus making me part of the pro-choice camp. I'm not even evangelical/fundamentalist anymore, although I still know my Bible inside and out. Dear reader, you may not have the ability to leave your conservative religious community to live out your truth publicly, but I hope this short essay will give you comfort in God's love and understanding of you and your situation.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-36477368028635824462020-02-28T10:34:00.000-05:002020-02-28T10:34:08.000-05:00erring on the side of mercy<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://mattanslow.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/shrewd-manager.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="317" src="https://mattanslow.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/shrewd-manager.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://liferemixed.net/2011/11/30/shrewd-manager-luke-16/">source</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Luke 16 The Message (MSG)
The Story of the Crooked Manager<br />
1-2 Jesus said to his disciples, “There was once a rich man who had a manager. He got reports that the manager had been taking advantage of his position by running up huge personal expenses. So he called him in and said, ‘What’s this I hear about you? You’re fired. And I want a complete audit of your books.’<br />
3-4 “The manager said to himself, ‘What am I going to do? I’ve lost my job as manager. I’m not strong enough for a laboring job, and I’m too proud to beg. . . . Ah, I’ve got a plan. Here’s what I’ll do . . . then when I’m turned out into the street, people will take me into their houses.’<br />
5 “Then he went at it. One after another, he called in the people who were in debt to his master. He said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’
6 “He replied, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’
“The manager said, ‘Here, take your bill, sit down here—quick now—write fifty.’
7 “To the next he said, ‘And you, what do you owe?’
“He answered, ‘A hundred sacks of wheat.’
“He said, ‘Take your bill, write in eighty.’<br />
8-9 “Now here’s a surprise: The master praised the crooked manager! And why? Because he knew how to look after himself. Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens. They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits. I want you to be smart in the same way—but for what is right—using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you’ll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behavior.”<br />
<br />
If you are a christian who thinks you have all your shit together, you don't. And since we don't, why try to hold people to our high standards when we make plenty of exceptions for ourselves? If we are in need of mercy, not just from God, but from our friends, our co-workers, the people we accidentally cut off in traffic, those who don't get the privileges of the system that we do for whatever part of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality">intersectionality</a> we walk, then why not be extremely generous with mercy with others? And not just with the guy who scratched your car in the parking lot and didn't leave a note.<br />
<br />
Jesus made a similar point.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults—unless, of course, you want the same treatment. Don’t condemn those who are down; that hardness can boomerang. Be easy on people; you’ll find life a lot easier. Give away your life; you’ll find life given back, but not merely given back—given back with bonus and blessing. Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity.” Luke 6: 37-38</blockquote>
<br />
I read two articles this morning that made me wish christians would be more generous.<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li><a href="https://abc7ny.com/5970500/#fireglass_params&tabid=a0dbcd35270bf717&application_server_address=pfizer4.prod.fire.glass&popup=true&is_right_side_popup=false&start_with_session_counter=1">Child with autism denied communion at church in New Jersey</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/feb/28/i-was-a-gay-conversion-therapist?utm_term=RWRpdG9yaWFsX0d1YXJkaWFuVG9kYXlVUy0yMDAyMjg%3D&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUS&CMP=GTUS_email#fireglass_params&tabid=a52b33991e332104&application_server_address=pfizer4.prod.fire.glass&popup=true&is_right_side_popup=false&start_with_session_counter=1">Experience: I was a gay-conversion therapist</a></li>
</ol>
<br />
Lord have mercy. May all of us understand mercy like the recovering ex-gay counselor. "My faith in God is just as strong, if not stronger, than it has ever been. I never believed that God was as harsh as everyone was telling me he was. I want to help the church to love and accept people, regardless of their sexuality, and to play a large part in ending conversion therapy."John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-42098287382116416572020-02-12T21:34:00.001-05:002020-02-12T21:34:50.355-05:00christians should be the biggest supporters of the trans communityI read with joy and anger the comments under Gabrielle Union's tweet introducing the world to her gender non-conforming child Zaya.<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
Meet Zaya. She's compassionate, loving, whip smart and we are so proud of her. It’s Ok to listen to, love & respect your children exactly as they are. Love and light good people. <a href="https://t.co/G2lLVdD2VT">pic.twitter.com/G2lLVdD2VT</a></div>
— Gabrielle Union (@itsgabrielleu) <a href="https://twitter.com/itsgabrielleu/status/1227310066254131200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 11, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
I wish every kid could have such supportive parents. But out came the bible verse quoting trolls among others. But don't christians believe in an immaterial soul? That the mind is greater than the brain? That there is a spirit as well as a body?<br />
<br />
If people are truly materialists, then certainly they can make the argument that chromosomes determine who Zaya is. But christians do not tend to be materialists. So if Zaya asserts her identity as distinct from her chromosomes, wouldn't this be a proof for christians to say, "there is something more to us than our materials and the trans community proves it."<br />
<br />
Can a soul be mismatched with its material? I think so. Let the church love her trans neighbors, trans children, trans members and bless them on their journey to alignment.John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-15049231957173838522020-02-09T18:41:00.000-05:002020-02-09T18:41:20.325-05:00book report: Jesus the Pacifist by Fleischer 2020<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1580620640l/50869075._SY475_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="315" height="320" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1580620640l/50869075._SY475_.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
Matthew Fleischer did a great job surprising me with his previous book, <a href="https://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2018/01/book-report-old-testament-case-for.html">The Old Testament Case for Non-violence</a>. He follows the same methodology of considering New Testament texts of violent nature in their context and against the explicit teachings of Jesus in this new book while fairly considering other interpretations and following them to their logical ends.<br />
<br />
I may have much in common with Fleischer especially being a big fan of Jesus. However, I'm no longer a fan of verse by verse argumentation. I used to do that. Not only am I tired of it but I can no longer ignore the humanity beset by time bound mores and prejudices wrapped up in these texts. Fleischer carries a burden I won't, which is every verse is God-breathed, even the terrible ones, while he tries to defend Jesus' pacifism. I arrive at the same conclusion, but my route is shorter than his. If the reader is of the "biblical christianity" background and persuasion, this is a book to wrestle with. If the reader is of the "mystical christianity" persuasion then this book may come across as tedious. Let the reader be warned.<br />
<br />
I love this observation.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
From the start, Jesus expresses a clear preference for nonviolent characteristics. Every one of those attributes is incompatible with using violence. He does not praise the powerful, the rulers of history, or the enforcers of justice. It is the humble, gentle, peaceful, submissive, sympathetic, forgiving, righteous, and persecuted who inhabit his kingdom, not those who wield force on his behalf.
</blockquote>
Stuff like this is why I'm still a fan of Jesus. The sermon on the mount is so revolutionary. Turn the other cheek...bless your enemies....serve those who abuse you! These are the teachings Gandhi employed to liberate India from England.<br />
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Flesicher starts from Jesus' foundational teachings to force the reader to re-evaluate some of Jesus' parables using violent characters and the call to acquire a sword and the cleansing of the temple. He then turns his focus to the John's Apocalypse with it's four horsemen, Jesus in a bloody cloak and a sword coming out of his mouth, and all sorts of catastrophes. He spends three chapters on the Revelation. They are a well condensed summary of many sources found in his end notes. I appreciate the effort he made in all his research and I hope his readers who have not considered pacifism on biblical grounds will be forced to reexamine their assumptions.<br />
<br />
I do have one area of disagreement with Fleischer. I do not know if he is anabaptist but the discussion of the Revelation does veer into participation in politics. I think it an unfortunate conflation of pacifism and political non-participation. Gandhi was pacifist and political. Martin Luther King Jr. was a pacifist and political. It's important to me to note these counter examples now as it is black history month in the US. If politics were not involved then black men would still be lynched to the cheers of white mobs. If politics were not involved then black children would not have made it into white schools if not escorted by armed officers of the law. I hope Fleisher will consider some of these examples in his next book.John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-53826064769924633032019-12-26T11:18:00.000-05:002019-12-26T11:18:08.682-05:00Not everything biblical is true - Hagar and SarahConsider this story about the founder of the Abrahamic faiths.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Genesis 16:1 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.”
Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.</blockquote>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/api/collection/v1/iiif/399036/779514/main-image" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="473" data-original-width="800" height="377" src="https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/api/collection/v1/iiif/399036/779514/main-image" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">from the <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/399036">Met</a></td></tr>
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A couple of things we know from later on in Genesis is that Abraham outlives Sarah and takes other concubines and has children with them. The story of Hagar and Ishmael is not direct from Sarah. It's hard to believe Sarah would volunteer her slave to be raped by her husband. In fact, it's much easier to believe Abraham got frustrated waiting on Sarah and, on his own initiative, impregnated Hagar. In fact, the relationship could have even been consensual, but by writing the history so that Sarah initiated the "surrogacy" it's also Sarah who become complicit in rape instead of Abraham being guilty of having an affair/raping his wife's slave and fathering her child.<br />
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If Abraham is going to be the founder of a new faith, his story needs a little cleaning up. Hence, Sarah gets the blame for Ishmael and is made to look bad for subsequently casting out Hagar and child.<br />
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In summary, I think the story is not biography, but hagiography, and the woman, Sarak, like Eve before her, is made the scapegoat of the story because of her gender.<br />
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Down with the patriarchy.John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-30218363878382731252019-07-28T19:05:00.000-04:002019-07-28T19:08:05.359-04:00book report: The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Cone, 2011<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1349011636l/12417679.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="274" height="320" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1349011636l/12417679.jpg" width="219" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.orbisbooks.com/the-cross-and-the-lynching-tree.html">Orbis books</a></td></tr>
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I've known about this book for a few years, but I have not been emotionally healthy enough to read it until now. I don't think I ever really began to understand the depths of white supremacy in the evangelical church until the <a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com/">Black Lives Matter</a> movement started. When I used that hashtag and advocated against police lynchings and found myself not only removed from my church's opinion in general, but actively pushed back against. <a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/herstory/">Michael Brown's lynching by a policeman in 2014 </a>was the beginning of my steep slide into depression and out of the evangelical church. Somehow, I was still surprised when 80% of white evangelicals voted for an fascist racist. I was surprised by African-Americans were not. African-Americans like James Cone, who grew up in Jim Crow Arkansas, were all too familiar with white christians who did not see the paradox of going to a lynching Saturday night and a worship service Sunday morning. The white supremacist christians did not make the connection with the bad guys in the gospel story who lynched Christ, torturing him and hanging him from a cursed tree. (See the similarity to <a href="https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/explore/texas/henry-smith">Henry Smith's lynching in Texas.</a>) Why would they? We are all the good guys in our own perspectives. It is why we need the minority report, who can see plainly what we in the majority are blinded to by our fragile egos.<br />
<a href="https://sojo.net/sites/default/files/images/100406-kkk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="189" data-original-width="297" src="https://sojo.net/sites/default/files/images/100406-kkk.jpg" /></a><br />
James Cone is not just a survivor of the Jim Crow south but also a theologian who wrestled all his life with following the same Galilean prophet as his oppressors. This is my struggle as well. My apprehension in reading this book stemmed from the dread I had of reading about lynchings in the 1900's. It's bad now, but it was so much worse then. However, part of healing involves an honest recounting of the injury. In Cone's book, this is not only encountering several lynched individuals, but also looking at the white christian leaders who remained silent in this era, particularly, Reinhold Niebuhr. His reaction to lynching, <i>give it time to exhaust itself</i>, strongly contrasts with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, <a href="https://www.samford.edu/news/2017/01/Bonhoeffer-Saw-American-Racism-During-Year-of-Study-at-Union-Seminary">visiting the US at the before the Nazi takeover</a> of Germany. Niebuhr did not spend much time with his fellow americans of african descent, whereas Bonhoeffer attended an historic black church while in New York City and witnessed racism firsthand when had a lunch companion refused service because of his color. This is one of Cone's key points, empathy is strongest when experienced, not philosophized about. From here, Jones dives into the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. King's own experience with racism led him to the action Niebuhr would not take. Cone writes,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Although Martin Luther King Jr. was strongly influenced by Reinhold Niebuhr, he had a different take on love and justice because he spoke to and for powerless people whose faith, focused on the cross of Jesus, mysteriously empowered them to fight against impossible odds. In contrast to Niebuhr, King never spoke about proximate justice or about what was practically possible to achieve...Instead King focused on and often achieved what Niebuhr said was impossible. "What do you want?" ..."When do you want it?"..."I am tired of fighting for something that should have been mine at birth," King often said. p.72</blockquote>
While King did so much, Cone finds the most powerful prophetic work among black artists. He quotes often from the writer James Baldwin,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I don't mean to say the white people are villains of devils or anything like that," but what "I do mean to say is this: that the bulk o the white Christian majority in this country has exhibited a really staggering level of irresponsibility and immoral washing of the hands...they're mainly silent people, you know. And that is a crime in itself." p. 54</blockquote>
King had a theology of the cross which enabled him to move further than Baldwin, because he believed in the redemptive power of Christ's sacrifice and was willing to join in in that, to save not only his friends but also his enemies. He said, "If physical death is the price I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from the permanent death of the spirit, then nothing could be more redemptive." (p. 82) Cone notes, "With the cross at the center of his faith, he could love the people he knew were trying to kill him, following Jesus' example on the cross, 'Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do' (Lk 23:34) p. 83<br />
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Cone quotes great black writers and lesser known poets, all of whom easily see Christ as a victim of lynching, experiencing the same grief they did when their family, friends, and neighbors were victimized by mob injustice and the system that permitted it, or turned a blind eye toward it, or kept silent and in denial, like Nicodemus or Peter. In the crucifixion, they saw one group of God followers, threatened by another God follower (God incarnate to the christian), needing to keep the outlier in line, by killing him, and making him an example to all the others who might challenge the status quo.<br />
Finally, Cone devotes much of his last chapter to the themes from the poem Strange Fruit (<a href="https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.uoregon.edu/dist/7/11428/files/2016/11/Strange-Fruit-29grfuk.pdf">PDF</a>) turned into a heart rending song by Billie Holiday.<br />
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In Cone's view, black women and black artists knew more than most American white churchgoers, conservative and liberal, about Christianity.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Black people did not need to go to seminary and study theology to know that white Christianity was fraudulent. As a teenager in the South where whites treated blacks with contempt, I and other blacks knew that the Christian identity of whites was not a true expression of what it means to follow Jesus...We wondered how whites could live with their hypocrisy - such a blatant contradiction of the man from Nazareth...White conservative Christianity's blatant endorsement of lynching as a prt of it's religion, and white liberal Christians' silence about lynching placed both of them outside Christian identity. p. 132</blockquote>
This is the answer to Cone's struggle. How can he be worshiping the same god as those who don't care about his people's suffering or even endorsed it? He's not. The same way the religious leaders did not recognize the God of love incarnated in Jesus. Over and over through all religions, the same teachings can result in different behaviors in accordance with their preference; violent retributive god or merciful and loving god? exclusive and vengeful or inclusive and prodigal? passive or active? The god we worship influences how we live out our faith. As regards the lynching of Christ on a cross, Cone says he still clings to the cross "because I have seen with my own eyes how that symbol empowered black people to stand up and become agents of change for their freedom." p. 145 He adds,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A symbol of death and defeat, God turned it into a sign of liberation and new life. The cross is the most empowering symbol of God's loving solidarity with the 'least of these,' the unwanted in society who suffer daily from great injustice. Christians must face the cross as the terrible tragedy it was and discover in it, through faith and repentance, the liberating joy of eternal salvation. p. 156</blockquote>
Anyone who has been bullied, oppressed, and cast down can find hope in the God who joins them in the gutters of society. "The cross, as a locus of divine revelation, is not good news for the powerful, for those who are comfortable with the way things are, or for anyone whose understanding of religion is aligned with power." p.156 Let the reader understand.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The lynched black victim experienced the same fate as the crucified Christ and thus became the most potent symbol for understanding the true meaning of the salvation achieved through "God on the Cross." Nietzsche was right: Christianity is a religion of slaves. God became a slave in Jesus and thereby liberated slaves from being determined by their social condition. p. 160</blockquote>
I am energized by Cone's book. I feel like the couple on the Emmaus Road, who did not recognize hope after the crucifixion. I have mostly felt despair, but Cone has surprised me and opened my eyes, like Jesus did to them on their way to Emmaus. Yes, racism is intractable in this country, and empowering to many white christians right now, refusing to repent, refusing to listen to the cries of their darker brothers and sisters, but Jesus who died for them too, will open their eyes. In the meantime, I can share a hope that miracles will happen in those hard white hearts, like it has in mine, even mine.<br />
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<br />John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-5182396844503748382019-06-17T14:57:00.001-04:002019-06-17T14:57:22.707-04:00policy proposal: pay pregnant women and at home parents<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs0vu0FZg-6DYCGkx5RcM9xm4EHOVqHjJ9evEFLxbR_4jEJR7hqq9Obpp3Ef5Zj-JEhTd4zZQh3alzloo2fzDe2VztBtjn6SBmdj7DdjPaiqvTV_TvU-3l84MTzYkZSJg_kNxO/s1600/pregnant+avocado.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="454" data-original-width="796" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs0vu0FZg-6DYCGkx5RcM9xm4EHOVqHjJ9evEFLxbR_4jEJR7hqq9Obpp3Ef5Zj-JEhTd4zZQh3alzloo2fzDe2VztBtjn6SBmdj7DdjPaiqvTV_TvU-3l84MTzYkZSJg_kNxO/s320/pregnant+avocado.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
This proposal comes from the intersection of Tish Harrison Warren's article, <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2019/june/abortion-politics-pro-lifers-arent-hypocrites.html">Pro-Lifers Aren’t Hypocrites</a>, at Christianity Today and Tori William Douglas's article, <a href="https://www.toriglass.com/personal/2019/6/2/how-i-became-radically-pro-choice">How I became radically pro-choice</a>, on her blog, with some assistance from Andrew Yang's <a href="https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-ubi/">policy proposal of universal basic income</a>.<br />
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Here is an important quote from William Douglas's piece.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The second was a quote, shared by my friend Jon, by Sister Joan Chittister, which you’ve likely read all over the internet by now. "I do not believe that just because you are opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, a child educated, a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is."
</blockquote>
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Harrison Warren's article speaks to this issue from a pro-life perspective.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Pro-life Democratic Governor John Bel Edward’s first act in office was to sign an executive order to expand Medicaid, providing more than 450,000 of the state’s working poor with health-care coverage. He has advocated for adoption and for a statewide living wage. He has worked to increase maternal access to pre-natal and post-natal care.
</blockquote>
This happens to be the only public policy Harrison Warren notes, but does point to many charitable works. The weakness with charity is it's inability to address more people. While neighbor to neighbor charity is important, by nature, it cannot reach those who aren't in the charity's orbit. Some of those neighborhoods are less limited by proximity, but are by religion, race, or class. Government policy, that is funded by taxation, and is supposed to be non-religious, has a broader reach.<br />
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"Why should the government get involved?" asks the libertarians. Because healthy children lead to a healthy body politic. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/americans-aren-t-making-enough-babies-replace-ourselves-n956931">An abundance of children reduce the need to import labor from other countries, which is a plus to xenophobic citizens</a>. Healthy children have fewer anti-social issues resulting in high costs in education and incarceration. Healthy children need healthy mothers. But mothers who are worried about the expense of health care, and losing their jobs, or not being able to provide for a child are likely to consider abortion.<br />
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Williams Douglas writes of her own experience, "I remembered my parents towering over me, fighting over how to pay for groceries. I remembered standing next to the couch while my mom tried to figure out if she could afford to take my brother, who was struggling to breathe, to the ER. I knew that no matter how I sliced it, bringing children into the world to suffer was not the intention of the pro-life movement but it would be the direct result of its success." When she got pregnant and suffered, she realized afterwards, this is not so black and white.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I did the math and pregnancy is the equivalent of working a full time, 40 hour a week job for three years.<br />If I demanded another person to do three years of free labor for me, I would be put in prison. My motivation would be irrelevant. I have no right to require another person do free labor for me, or for society as a whole, even if it greatly benefited society and myself.
</blockquote>
She goes on to speak of her agency as a human being, and I agree, but will not engage here. Because in this current conservative dominated political landscape, I want to find avenues to move forward, instead of yanking backwards like the current, unconstitutional anti-choice bills passed by some states at the moment. This is where Andrew Yang's UBI proposal fits in.<br />
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Republicans seem heavy on sticks and very little on carrots. It's as if they want to keep all the carrots among themselves and the plutocracy. This is a place their conservative religious base can force them to flex and replace sticks as anti-abortion motivators and replace them with carrots. I propose any woman in America who finds herself pregnant be given $1000 a month, tax-free, through her pregnancy and the first 2 years after birth. This money will not replace Medicaid for poor women. This is money that rewards women for bringing new citizens into our country by cushioning lost income and helping with the added expenses of raising a child, including child care, car seats, diapers, cribs, formula, clothes, etc. For wealthier women, this is only a token, but for poorer women who will bear the brunt of these draconian anti-choice laws, if the supreme court reverses itself on Roe, this restores some agency to them. There will need to be additional protections for these poorer women so this money is not fleeced from them, such as a pregnant woman's landlord cannot raise the rent for three years.<br />
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What if a woman decides to make making babies her job, asks the Reaganite raised on <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2013/12/linda_taylor_welfare_queen_ronald_reagan_made_her_a_notorious_american_villain.html">the myth of the welfare queen</a>. So be it. Twelve grand a year is not a path to wealth for the individual. On the other hand, the injection of funds into lower class areas, where abortion can be difficult to find, can help an entire community. Eventually leading to an increase in school populations and a larger workforce.<br />
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Of course, I believe school sex education is still essential to continue the decline on teen pregnancy rates as well as free birth control for all women, teens to menopause. I also believe a woman's right to agency over her actual life includes her agency over the potential life in her womb. Please read Williams Douglas's article for more on that.<br />
<br />John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-1982734182853103292019-04-26T15:24:00.000-04:002019-04-26T15:24:21.702-04:00Climate change is a pro-life issueMy blog has plenty of evidence to demonstrate I am a pro-life person. My twitter account will also show I am not anti-choice, acknowledging that the mother's circumstances and decision does not need to be explained or justified to me or any other man. I'm also pro-life in that I am against the death penalty. I'm also pro-life in that I think government should offer enough aid for the flourishing of children long after they are born medically, educationally, food security, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/23/americans-unsafe-air-quality-report">healthy living conditions</a>...sort of like "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."<br />
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Certainly getting rid of lead paint had a tremendous positive impact in the lives of a generation and likely led to the dramatic drop in crime in the 90's instead of the racially biased stop and frisk. But now we have a greater risk, climate change. The <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/global-warming/science-and-impacts/global-warming-science">build up of CO2 in our atmosphere</a> is directly correlated to the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/25/us-oil-gas-boom-climate-change-report">burning of hydrocarbons</a>, basically compressed forests from ages past, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/25/death-by-a-thousand-cuts-vast-expanse-rainforest-lost-in-2018">slash and burn agriculture</a> wiping out forests in this age.<br />
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The greenhouse effect of all this CO2 is being felt now in the increase of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/18/climate-change-mississippi-plantation-economy">100, 500, and 1000 year floods</a>, storms and fires. It is an apocalypse in its Greek meaning, an unveiling of our insatiable, unsustainable appetite. It will kill humans <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/16/health/climate-change-health-emergency-study/index.html">at the same rate or above</a> of abortions annually in the US. Something on this scale of slow moving disaster requires government action.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/images/2015/02/gw-infographic-climate-science-vs-fossil-fiction-840px.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="290" height="640" src="https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/images/2015/02/gw-infographic-climate-science-vs-fossil-fiction-840px.jpg" width="231" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/fight-misinformation/infographic-global-warming-climate-science-vs-fossil-fuel-fiction">source</a></td></tr>
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Unfortunately, evangelicals are the least likely to believe they have anything to do with climate change, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2015/10/22/religion-and-views-on-climate-and-energy-issues/">Pew</a>. Catholics, who are even more pro-life, are more likely to acknowledge the reality of man-made climate change. It's another leg of support in the belief that evangelicals are republicans first, then christians. Hence, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/06/02/why-so-many-white-evangelicals-in-trumps-base-are-deeply-skeptical-of-climate-change/?utm_term=.84b1f6226020">there was hardly an evangelical peep</a> when Trump pulled out of the Paris accords. Fundamentalist <a href="https://answersingenesis.org/environmental-science/climate-change/get-the-facts-hurricanes-and-global-warming/">creation scientists cannot agree more </a>with the denial of man made climate change even though petroleum companies such as ExxonMobil that used to be <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_controversy#Funding_of_climate_change_denial">a leader in climate change denial</a> <a href="https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/Energy-and-environment/Environmental-protection/Climate-change">has come around to admitting what the science is observing</a>. It's hard to get evangelicals to care about the end of the world as we know it if they are ardent fans of Left Behind theology, believing god himself will burn up the world after he evacuates them to heaven. This may be a minority position in historical theology, hence Pope Francis' call to environmental repentance is completely in line with Catholic eschatology, but since evangelicals make up a third of the US, and most of them are republicans, it is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/19/talking-with-evangelicals-about-climate-change-south">extremely difficult to persuade them</a> of this reality.<br />
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My hope is in re-framing climate change as a pro-life issue. But tactics must be different from abortion clinic protests. Standing in front of gas stations with picket signs and screaming "Murderer" at people doesn't work. What will work is a change in how we live. Here are <a href="https://www.theodysseyonline.com/celebrate-earth-day-right">seven things one can do,</a> as written by my daughter. None of these are threatening theologically or even expensive. Next level discomfort includes cycling instead of driving. If driving is a must go electric. Used 1st generation electric cars are very affordable right now, I know, I have one. If one can't do either of these, consider buying carbon offsets in the form of <a href="https://nativeenergy.com/our-approach/carbon-offsets/">trees</a> or <a href="https://www.terrapass.com/product-category/individuals">forest restoration</a> or helping the <a href="https://cotap.org/buy-carbon-offsets/">poorest of the poor</a> or just to account for the amount of miles you <a href="https://carbonfund.org/individuals/">drive and fly</a>. If one lives in a state which allows choice of electricity producers, choose wind and solar. If one lives in a state which allows solar panel leasing, do it! We need to sequester carbon dioxide again. Trees do this very well. When Europeans invaded the west and killed off the native populations, the subsequent <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47063973">forest regrowth caused the little ice age</a>. But one tree in our own yards won't be enough. Donate to an organization like <a href="https://www.trilliontreecampaign.org/">the trillion tree campaign</a>.<br />
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If one is an evangelical who believes abortions kill children, then an evangelical can also want the children who do make it to live in a healthy world. If God is going to come back, at least it we could clean up after ourselves a little bit.<br />
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<br />John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-41884950383191139542019-02-15T19:50:00.002-05:002019-02-15T19:50:46.485-05:00book report: She's my Dad by Jonathan Williams 2018<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51W6BL8ODyL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="324" height="320" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51W6BL8ODyL.jpg" width="207" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Shes-My-Dad-Transition-Redemption/dp/0664264352/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1550275999&sr=8-1">Amazon link</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
One reaction to a transgender person in my former fundagelical approach to the world is to believe such a person is deceived by the devil if not fully cooperating with Satan. In fact, it is such a demonic act that one should not even participate in using the person's new name. The observational, scientific understanding of sex, gender, genitalia, and brain structure are not yet allowed to disagree with Moses's binary assertion that in the beginning God created them male and female. Compassion is not allowed to overrule bronze age judgments, the very issue Jesus fought against in his interactions with his contemporary Bible-thumpers.<br />
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Experience forces us to reconsider the primacy of scripture. For Jesus, it was an <a href="https://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-gentile-woman-and-repentance-of.html">encounter with a Gentile woman</a>. For Peter it was a dream about <a href="https://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2014/09/not-everything-biblical-is-christian_97.html">eating non-kosher</a> food. For me it was the coming out of a family member. For Jonathan Williams, it was his dad, a successful leader of a large fundagelical church planting organization, admitting he's always known he was not a man despite his genitals. These guys knew their Bibles thoroughly. They had pastored churches. They had baptized disciples. They had preached the good news. But did the good news stop at a man in his 60's who had faithfully served the Lord for decades who was now attempting to align his external life with his internal life?<br />
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In 2012, I might have said yes. But like the author of this book, I've made a painful discovery, to believe that God is indeed love. It's a beautiful discovery, but painful when your religious community turns against you for believing this verse over all the others in the Bible. For Jonathan's father, Paula, it was being fired from the church planting organization she headed for 20 years, and losing all the friends made over that time frame. For himself, it was a loss of the father he thought he knew, and as his theology changed, the loss of the same church network.<br />
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Paula was born again when she transitioned. Jonathan's faith was born again when he embraced a theology of original blessing and inclusiveness and love. But new birth is painful and Jonathan writes honestly and unflinchingly about the pain. I devoured this book and I hope this book is a lifeline to those christians who are LGBTQ and in non-affirming communities.<br />
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Thanks to Netgalley and Westminster John Knox Press for a complementary review copy in exchange for my honest review.
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Please watch this excellent TEDtalk by Paula.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lrYx7HaUlMY" width="480"></iframe>John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-61194871469938327742018-11-04T19:04:00.003-05:002018-11-04T19:04:50.475-05:00Not everything biblical is Christian part 24: great, greater, greatestToday's gospel reading in the lectionary got me thinking about this problem I used to have with the Bible.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Mark 12:28 One of the religion scholars came up. Hearing the lively exchanges of question and answer and seeing how sharp Jesus was in his answers, he put in his question: “Which is most important of all the commandments?”<br />
29-31 Jesus said, “The first in importance is, ‘Listen, Israel: The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.’ And here is the second: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ There is no other commandment that ranks with these.”<br />
32-33 The religion scholar said, “A wonderful answer, Teacher! So lucid and accurate—that God is one and there is no other. And loving him with all passion and intelligence and energy, and loving others as well as you love yourself. Why, that’s better than all offerings and sacrifices put together!”<br />
34 When Jesus realized how insightful he was, he said, “You’re almost there, right on the border of God’s kingdom.”
After that, no one else dared ask a question.
</blockquote>
The problem I used to have with the Bible was trying to make all of it Christian. I was raised in a poor model of the Bible's relationship to Jesus. I was given an infallible, inspired-by-God, Bible which had to excuse God genocidal commandments and <a href="https://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2014/11/not-everything-biblical-is-christian_9.html">forced marriages of women</a> captured in battles. This model could have fallen under it's own weight earlier if I looked at how Jesus approached the scriptures.<br />
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First of all, Jesus ranked the scriptures. Not all verses are equal. Not all commandments are equal. In fact not all commandments are from God. If Jesus thinks these are the greatest commandments, then there are lesser commandments. <a href="https://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2015/05/not-everything-biblical-is-christian_6.html">Moses may have permitted divorce</a> but that wasn't God's idea. Moses may have commanded retributive justice, "<a href="https://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2014/09/not-everything-biblical-is-christian_19.html">eye for and eye, tooth for a tooth</a>," but Jesus doesn't.<br />
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On another occasion, Jesus and Satan had a memory verse competition. Satan encourage Jesus to jump off the top of the temple and see if God would keep his promise in Psalm 91 about not letting even his toe to get stubbed. But Jesus replied with another verse about not testing God. This is ironic because the prophet Malachi encourages people to test God's generosity in response to their generosity. Sometimes testing God is ok, sometimes it's not. The point is, when Satan pulls out rock, Jesus pulls out paper and won that round.<br />
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On another occasion, some religious men ask Jesus to judge a woman they caught in adultery. It was obviously her fault a friend of theirs had succumbed to her and needed to be rescued from her, so they kept him safe, but were <a href="https://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2018/02/god-is-love-lenten-series-4-compassion.html">ready to stone her to death</a> in obedience to Moses' iron age commandment. But Jesus adds an entirely new condition before enacting the judgment, they have to be without sin, God-like. Only one person is God-like in that story, Jesus, so he is the one who can enact the Mosaic punishment. However, he reveals God is merciful and frees the woman.<br />
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I hear of fundamentalists who want to stone gay people, because that's what Moses says. But Jesus has mercy. Jesus loves his neighbor. I read fundamentalists who write columns for right wing publications who say "if everyone is my neighbor then no one is" (Rod Dreher) in opposition to helping migrants seeking asylum in our country. But Jesus says, those in need are the neighbors we must help, and if we don't then we are not serving Christ himself.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Matthew 25:41-43 “Then he will turn to the ‘goats,’ the ones on his left, and say, ‘Get out, worthless goats! You’re good for nothing but the fires of hell. And why? Because—
I was hungry and you gave me no meal,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
I was homeless and you gave me no bed,
I was shivering and you gave me no clothes,
Sick and in prison, and you never visited.’<br />
44 “Then those ‘goats’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison and didn’t help?’<br />
45 “He will answer them, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me—you failed to do it to me.’
</blockquote>
If I read the Bible correctly, I would have appreciated the Apostle Paul saying of faith, hope, and love, the greatest one is love. 1 Corinthians 13<br />
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If I read the Bible correctly, I would have learned from James 2:13 "For if you refuse to act kindly, you can hardly expect to be treated kindly. Kind mercy wins over harsh judgment every time."<br />
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Mercy wins, not judgment. Where the Bible does not show mercy, it's not at it's greatest. It is greatest, it is most God-like is when it is at its most merciful.<br />
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Yes, Jesus told the woman who was almost stoned to go and sin no more. But we do not know what sin he was referring to. We have to let Jesus speak to every individual. If she aborts her baby, let her work that out with God. Please listen to this story called <a href="https://themoth.org/stories/loving-grace">Loving Grace</a> to appreciate abortion in all its moral complexity before judging those women who choose it.<br />
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God is love and not everything biblical is loving. Not everything biblical is Christian.John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-74413669527763085082018-10-23T15:35:00.005-04:002020-12-03T16:17:18.980-05:00me the Pharisee and Trump the publicanThis story is the context for my thoughts on President Trump.<br /><br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Luke 18:9-14 (NIV)
<u>The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector</u>
9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
</blockquote>
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In the King James English, a "publican" is a tax collector. In Jesus' times, the Romans recruited locals to collect taxes for them. If one worked for the Romans as a publican, one shook down the locals to deliver the obligated amount to them, and shook down some more to finance your salary. They were not popular in general, but in the Jewish context perhaps more so as they worked for the idol-worshiping oppressors. The Romans were wrong theologically which compounded the distaste the faithful Jews had for their brethren who worked for them.<br />
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In short, the publicans worked for the enemy and profited handsomely. They did not lack in material needs and seemed to not suffer any punishment from the heavens. They kept getting away with it: robbing, doing evil, fornicating. But they still sought God. The only way the oppressed could exercise retribution against them was in religious judgment. In Jesus' story, the self-righteous Pharisee did exactly that. Praying loud enough to praise himself and condemn his neighbor, also praying, in humility. The publican asked God for mercy, and the self-righteous Bible scholar had none to offer. But God did, because love wins.<br />
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As I took a walk today and reflected on this story, I asked myself, a progressive, liberal christian, if I still had mercy for President Trump. He says awful things. His administration bullies the marginalized constantly. But I need to be self aware to not conflate my negative judgment of hateful policies with negative judgment of a hateful person. Just as the immigrant children detained at the border in Texas because of his inhumane white nationalist policies need mercy, he does too.<br />
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Mercy precedes the plea, because mercy is the nature of God. Mercy enables confession, but doesn't demand it. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1136/4188/products/Parable_of_the_Publican_and_Pharisee_icon__27556.1423444060.1000.1200_b6d57c03-75ef-4756-9bca-88a3dde31871_720x.jpeg?v=1455410246" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="604" data-original-width="450" src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1136/4188/products/Parable_of_the_Publican_and_Pharisee_icon__27556.1423444060.1000.1200_b6d57c03-75ef-4756-9bca-88a3dde31871_720x.jpeg?v=1455410246" /></a></div><br />John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-30539435571907594322018-10-10T14:39:00.001-04:002018-10-10T14:39:59.559-04:00a true parable about christian art and iconoclasm set in summer campI went to Christian summer camp quite a bit as a kid. We sang a lot of choruses with catchy melodies. They were fun and theological. One of my favorites when I was 12 started out with the line "Somewhere in outer space, God has prepared a place, for those who trust him and obey." Here is a cute video of some kids singing it.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Rh8N6JvVcr4" width="459"></iframe><br />
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I was a very enthusiastic singer of this song back in the day, though I'm not keen on its theology anymore. The song moved me so much I was inspired to draw a picture about it. I drew my cabin flying through space, including comets and moons and spiral galaxies in the background. I had my multi-color pen with me at camp so it was also a polychromatic picture and the cabin was drawn in perspective! I spent a lot of time on that picture, probably an entire free period. I was quite proud of it when I finished and showed it to my cabin counselor, who was nice about it.<br />
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I left it on my bunk and went to dinner and evening chapel. When I got back that night, my religious art had been torn up. Why would other boys do something like that, my own bunkmates? I never found out, but it may have been to bring me down a peg after seeing me get some faint praise from our cabin counselor. There was no inquisition. I did not receive justice. Confessions were not made. My religious art, as much as it can be called that by a 12 year old boy was desecrated by fellow christian boys.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://scottericksonart.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/forgiveothersmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://scottericksonart.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/forgiveothersmall.jpg" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="699" height="320" width="279" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://scottericksonart.com/forgivethyother/">Scott Erickson</a></td></tr>
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As much as that hurt back then, I had forgotten about it for 36 years until I listened t<a href="http://www.justinmcroberts.com/scott-erickson-1/">o a podcast yesterday by Justin McRoberts</a>, interviewing his friend, collaborator, and visual artist, Scott Erickson. Scott has worked with churches and WorldVision over his career translating religious words and ideas into visual art. His work is profound. Here is my favorite on <a href="http://scottericksonart.com/">his home page</a> which they chatted about on the podcast, <a href="http://scottericksonart.com/forgivethyother/">Forgive Thy Other</a>. He tells a story of him meeting someone who did not have a christian look about him and said to Scott, "I get that." There was no sermon. There was no essential Bible verses under the work. Sometimes people get art. Scott tells of other times when he creates during a church service as an invited communicator and church people will come up afterwards and tell him they don't get it. He doesn't hold it against them as they may not be familiar with less didactic and more obtuse themes of art. It's sort of like reading the Bible. It's not that simple...but I digress.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2KMzizqD3ZLPOILqworfWP5QvhvXN0DK_NzB2shoqAExwePQQd17UJNkqIoUcq0jG18FKeX3hVgvZ6P1mHN45Kf_fp3s5sI0Z0iMzCW7mPxNmB6HbCkhZZE-79G9cEemHQKHm/s1600/Piss_Christ_by_Serrano_Andres_%25281987%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="382" data-original-width="261" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2KMzizqD3ZLPOILqworfWP5QvhvXN0DK_NzB2shoqAExwePQQd17UJNkqIoUcq0jG18FKeX3hVgvZ6P1mHN45Kf_fp3s5sI0Z0iMzCW7mPxNmB6HbCkhZZE-79G9cEemHQKHm/s320/Piss_Christ_by_Serrano_Andres_%25281987%2529.jpg" width="218" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ#/media/File:Piss_Christ_by_Serrano_Andres_(1987).jpg">wikipedia</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This discussion also reminded me of the work by Andres Serrano, Immersion (Piss Christ). His work was also <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/18/andres-serrano-piss-christ-destroyed-christian-protesters">vandalized, in France</a>, by conservative Catholics. They didn't get it. It was too complex, too obtuse. Nor did they care what he said about his work. In<a href="https://melmagazine.com/conservatives-still-pissed-about-piss-christ-b3abeeca77bd"> 2004 he said</a>, <i>The only message is that I’m a Christian artist making a religious work of art based on my relationship with Christ and The Church. The crucifix is a symbol that has lost its true meaning; the horror of what occurred. It represents the crucifixion of a man who was tortured, humiliated and left to die on a cross for several hours. In that time, Christ not only bled to dead, he probably saw all his bodily functions and fluids come out of him. So if ‘Piss Christ’ upsets people, maybe this is so because it is bringing the symbol closer to its original meaning. </i>The iconoclasts in France mistook criticism for blasphemy. A visual exploration of the full humanity of Christ was too much for those who were unable to think about this creedal affirmation of the church in a creative way. Certainly one can argue about whether art is good or not, there is plenty of derivative Christian art, but mature art is supposed to challenge. And religious art can be prophetic, not in the future telling aspect, but in the challenge of social norms aspect. Basically, artists, like prophets, can call people in power on their bullshit. Serrano <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ">also says of this art</a>, "while this work is not intended to denounce religion, it alludes to a perceived commercializing or cheapening of Christian icons in contemporary culture."<br />
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His critics did not like the tone he took in his visual criticism. It's much like critics of movements like Black Lives Matter and Me Too, Colin Kapernick and Christine Blasey Ford. They are criticized for the means of the message so they do not have to discuss the merits of the message itself. In response to difficult art, I recommend starting with Scott Erickson's idea, Forgive thy Other.<br />
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John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-5938910333560699972018-08-20T14:15:00.000-04:002018-08-20T14:17:41.548-04:00church abuse by white men<span style="color: blue;">Pope Francis writes this week a letter to the People of God in response to the horrific abuse unsealed by the Pennsylvania Attorney General.</span><br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: blue;">It is essential that we, as a Church, be able to acknowledge and condemn, with sorrow and shame, the atrocities perpetrated by consecrated persons, clerics, and all those entrusted with the mission of watching over and caring for those most vulnerable. Let us beg forgiveness for our own sins and the sins of others. An awareness of sin helps us to acknowledge the errors, the crimes and the wounds caused in the past and allows us, in the present, to be more open and committed along a journey of renewed conversion.</span></blockquote>
<span style="color: blue;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: blue;">I think this is a good example for other churches to follow as Evangelical churches are facing it's own #metoo and #churchtoo scandals, e.g. Bill Hybels and Willow Creek.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: blue;">If only churches would get ahead of these before they become public scandals. If only the church could proclaim, "we heard complaints, we believed the victims, we turned it over to the police, the victimizer will not have the opportunity ever again" instead of payouts after payouts and letters of sorrow like these <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2018/documents/papa-francesco_20180820_lettera-popolo-didio.html">from Pope Francis</a> and from <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-willow-creek-elders-step-down-20180807-story.html#">Willow Creek</a>.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: blue;">Their is a much better opinion piece than mine written by Daniel José Camacho at Sojourners, <a href="https://sojo.net/articles/catholic-church-patriarchal-crisis-bill-hybels">Christianity is experiencing a patriarchal crisis</a>. Writing about the same two crises he writes, "the abuse took place in environments dominated by men with inordinate power and little accountability." It does not help when supporters can only split hairs, like claiming it's only <a href="http://www.joemygod.com/2018/08/16/catholic-league-debunks-pennsylvania-molestation-scandal-its-not-rape-when-the-child-isnt-penetrated/">rape if there's penetration, not when there's groping or fondling</a>, completely ignoring the forest for the weeds in front of it. Then there is the attack against women who want to bring a pastor down, even though they tell a similar story over decades, or that children are easily confused, or <a href="http://www.joemygod.com/2018/08/20/catholic-league-continues-whataboutism-crusade-nobody-is-going-after-hollywood-perverts-and-mtv/">it's not as bad as outside the church walls</a>.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: blue;">Christianity is supposedly a representation of the man who said "Don't stop the little kids from getting to me" and who treated women with more respect than his contemporaries. But men keep doing a terrible job emulating Christ. I don't think women are better, but I do think those leaders who were formerly the systematically dominated are more likely to lead with compassion.Nevertheless, absolute power corrupts. I agree with Mr. Camacho that patriarchy is the crisis in that patriarchy is a system of maintaining power despite qualification and without checks and balances. I can assert that if it were a matriarchy, we would not be hearing much about sexual abuse of children and men.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: blue;">The church needs to lead in self-policing and justice for victims, not follow up behind when caught. The church needs to tear down its systems of prejudice for/against gender or skin color or sexual orientation or education. Give the opportunity for all to qualify, and only lift up those who do qualify as good shepherds. In the short term, facilitate this for all non-majority aspirants.</span>John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-40962212610494876142018-07-27T11:03:00.001-04:002018-07-27T11:03:46.414-04:00Not everything biblical is christian - raspberries<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtm1Gh2ucykfMltEWuPPA6MjFgTOzORLXIoPFBGihHazU215dxxHboGn0DNkr40Nue15oZTABX1lx_ae9jscTO7PXzvXfPhRPL7gJI9sMtu2AYovtlbn_syaXTKjdbPm-nxTbe/s1600/raspberries.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtm1Gh2ucykfMltEWuPPA6MjFgTOzORLXIoPFBGihHazU215dxxHboGn0DNkr40Nue15oZTABX1lx_ae9jscTO7PXzvXfPhRPL7gJI9sMtu2AYovtlbn_syaXTKjdbPm-nxTbe/s400/raspberries.JPG" width="300" /></a>The wild raspberries in my yard are in full flourish! We've been picking them for the past couple weeks, but have not pulled in a haul like this one last night! I could have picked more if it were not 90% humid, if the mosquitos were not picking me, and if I had more than shorts on to protect me from the thorns. I do have a few scratches because the delicious fruit kept beckoning me. If I could just stretch a little further...each scratch from the thorn was worth going in a little deeper into the hedge.<br />
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But what if I cut off a bunch of the thorny raspberry canes and sent a picture to Instagram with the caption, "can't wait to eat these raspberries, stems, leaves, thorns, and fruit" #itsallgood #allfromGod #nopartwasted #highfiber? People would think I was nutty and may even be concerned with my health, risking perforation of my esophagus, stomach, and on down. On the other hand, people who were part of the #eattheentirecane movement would cheer me on. They would defend me. It would almost be like one of those christian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_handling">snake handling cults</a> in which people do die every year from snake bites. I'm sure most of them are truly wonderful people, but they took <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_handling#Beliefs_and_practices">a few verses in the Bible</a> literally too far.<br />
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As I picked, I thought about Jesus and the bible. The psalmist writes, "Taste and see the Lord is good." Psalm 34:8 What was not written is taste and see the bible is good. The bible is full of good stuff and horrible stuff. But from those dirty roots, woody canes, and painful thorns, comes the sweetest fruit. Jesus, who models and teaches <a href="https://www.episcopalchurch.org/way-of-love/invitation">the way of love</a>, is the fruit. The rest is the support for that fruit. There are thorns such as <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2015/03/a-long-form-book-response-to-disarming.html">genocide</a>, <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2014/09/not-everything-biblical-is-christian_0.html">vengeance on enemies</a>, <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2014/09/not-everything-biblical-is-christian_0.html">vengeance on descendants of enemies</a>, <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2014/09/not-everything-biblical-is-christian_5.html">slavery</a>, <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2014/11/not-everything-biblical-is-christian_9.html">forced marriage</a>, stoning of rebellious children or <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2018/02/god-is-love-lenten-series-4-compassion.html">adulterers</a>, <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-gentile-woman-and-repentance-of.html">racism</a>, etc. There are dirty roots, like <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2014/09/not-everything-biblical-is-christian_25.html">very specific laws about nocturnal emissions</a>!?, but they are not edible and attempts to swallow them should not be made. The fruit is not the plant. It comes from the plant, but that does not mean the entire plant is to be eaten as well. Certainly, the fruit comes from the plant, but it's the fruit we eat.<br />
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<a href="https://peteenns.com/what-is-the-bible">Inerrancy </a>is a belief that God inspired every word of the Bible. Inerrancy insists that commands to kill non-combatants were commands from God or that commands to take an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth were divine in origin, despite the fact <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2014/09/not-everything-biblical-is-christian_19.html">Jesus says otherwise</a>. Inerrancy insists the believer eats it all, takes it literally, insists on the "plain reading". However, this is a recent assertion among protestants in the church's history. As Martin Luther said, the bible is the cradle that holds Jesus, but is not the same as Jesus. There is a three part series by Toronto pastor Bruxy Cavey on the anabaptist explanation of the bible in relation to <a href="http://www.bruxy.com/anabaptism/radical-christians-the-word-of-god-part-3-of-3-application/">Jesus</a>, the <a href="http://www.bruxy.com/anabaptism/radical-christians-the-word-of-god-part-2-of-3-inerrancy/">church</a>, and <a href="http://www.bruxy.com/theology/the-word-of-god-part-1-authority/">life</a>. Brian Zahnd of the pentecostal persuasion <a href="https://brianzahnd.com/2018/07/christianity-vs-biblicism/">writes </a><a href="https://brianzahnd.com/category/bible/">similarly</a>. Bible professor Pete Enns, also from the evangelical spectrum of the church also <a href="https://peteenns.com/?s=inerrancy">writes on this</a>. And that's 3 white dudes...learn also from a <a href="http://www.wilgafney.com/">black woman</a>, and a <a href="https://www.buzzsprout.com/140108/731487-scripture-tradition-reason-and-experience">black man</a>. And those are just the americans. There is so much out there from the church explaining how the berries are good and sufficient for eating. Believe me, it feels so much better not eating the thorns anymore.<br />
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<br />John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-56550743585625157592018-07-17T08:41:00.001-04:002018-07-17T08:41:49.117-04:00The parable of the wicked immigrantIn the early 1600's religious separatists fled their country from fear of persecution. The location was known to other explorers, but an epidemic had left the native population decimated and weak. The immigrants considered the epidemic and the stores of food left behind as God's blessing. However, they suffered terribly adjusting to the new world, nearly half of them died. The indigenous people had mercy on them and helped those remaining.<br />
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Other immigrants came and joined the struggling outpost. They made treaties with the people who owned the land and cared for it for hundreds of generations. Then they violated those treaties, over and over and over. Not one treaty was kept. Natives were captured and sold into slavery in the sub-tropics where they died. Since they were no good as agricultural slaves, african slaves were imported. The natives were continually pushed out of their land, even the ones who converted to the immigrant religion.<br />
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Natives were promised an entire territory and forced to move there, until the immigrants wanted to farm that land. Natives who were used to free movement up and and down the west coast and the Rocky Mountains were suddenly divided by a political border they had been given no input.<br />
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Yet these natives continue to volunteer for the immigrant foreign wars. Their native tongue served as an unbreakable code. The immigrants divided over slavery. They paid for their sins with a million white souls. Both sides called on their gods to forgive them and grant them victory.<br />
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Forgiveness was granted. God always forgives.<br />
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Over the decades, immigrants arrived in a great surge of humanity. Mine came from Germany, fleeing famine and war. They came through Texas ports, signed their names, and moved up to Iowa to resume farming. They did not have green cards or immigration papers, like all the Europeans who immigrated. Mexicans moved freely between the border, helping the farmers during harvest time, then returning home. But they were sick of being exploited and unionized, demanding better treatment. The government responded by imposing restrictions on their movement over the border. Now when they come, whether to work, or because they are fleeing persecution or atrocities at the hands of their government, just like the separatists 400 years ago, they are denied. They are separated from their children. They are imprisoned. Their basic human rights are denied, human rights affirmed by the descendants of the immigrants who repeatedly dishonor their treaties.<br />
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How does the immigrant's god feel about this?<br />
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<a href="http://www.wikigallery.org/wiki/artist59048/%28after%29-Pieter-Coecke-Van-Aelst/page-1" style="background: none; color: black;"><i>Pieter Coecke Van Aelst</i></a></h2>
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<br />"So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him, saying, 'Have patience with me, and I will repay you!' He would not, but went and cast him into prison, until he should pay back that which was due. So when his fellow servants saw what was done, they were exceedingly sorry, and came and told to their lord all that was done. Then his lord called him in, and said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt, because you begged me. Shouldn't you also have had mercy on your fellow servant, even as I had mercy on you?' His lord was angry, and delivered him to the tormentors, until he should pay all that was due to him. So my heavenly Father will also do to you, if you don't each forgive your brother from your hearts for his misdeeds."
— Matthew 18:21-35<br />
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Their God wants to be known for mercy, but they want to be known for rigid law keeping, which is the same attitude that resulted in their God being killed on a cross. Irony is dead.John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-12758289697023275962018-05-30T14:40:00.000-04:002018-05-30T15:18:57.210-04:00I'm an ex-vanglical but not an ex-christianThere is a lovely chap on Twitter, <a href="https://twitter.com/brchastain">Blake Chastain</a>, who I first heard use the appellation "exvangelical." He even has a <a href="https://exvangelicalpodcast.com/">podcast </a>about it. I find it a helpful term and want to explore it in my own experience. This has been a long evolution and I will use my blog to look back on my spiritual journey out of white american evangelicalism.<br />
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I have written 359 book reports. I have read more books than I have written about, but I read a great deal on genocide, inspired by the atrocities recorded in the bibilical story of Joshua, conqueror of Canaan. In his story, his god tells him to have no mercy and kill men, women and children. This was explained to me by my evangelical leaders that it was more merciful to kill the kids then raise them as their own.<br />
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<u>Lesson learned, evangelical cognitive dissonance is real.</u>To be widely read is dangerous in a small minded theological construct. Studying genocide makes such absurd explanations even harder to swallow. Even then I found the disconnect between Jesus and Joshua's god disturbing, but I was not willing to embrace <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism">Marcionism</a>.<br />
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I wrote 160 essays about LGBTQ issues. Until 2012 they were all against homosexual practice among christians. Then on August 2012 I wrote an essay, <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2012/08/church-where-gluttons-point-fingers-at.html">church: where gluttons point fingers at gays</a>.<br />
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I noticed the hypocrisy of my church's tolerance for one of the 7 deadly sins, but not another. This extended to it's tolerance of divorce and remarriage despite Jesus' strong words about the subject. The claim to be biblical was undermined with compassion when people they knew were affected. <u>Lesson learned, evangelical cognitive dissonance is real.
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In September 2012 I wrote about Brian McLaren's officiating at his son's gay marriage, and I asked <u>"</u><a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2012/09/whats-loving-dad-supposed-to-do.html" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">what's a loving dad supposed to do?</a><u style="text-decoration-line: underline;">" </u>Although I had much criticism about McLaren, I fully supported his Christ-like response to his son and son-in-law. He loved them. But the church he came from did not love him or them. Lesson learned, evangelical cognitive dissonance is real.<br />
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In December 2012, the teachers and children in Sandy Hook were massacred. I was sent "false flag" conspiracy videos by my pastor, as part of some evil Obama plan! Despite the conspiracy mindset, the church still rallied to provide aid and comfort to the families in Sandy Hook, about 90 minutes from here. <u>Lesson learned, evangelical cognitive dissonance is real</u>.<br />
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Over Christmas break 2012 I finally read my first <a href="https://twitter.com/rachelheldevans" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">Rachel Held Evan's</a> book, <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2013/01/book-response-year-of-biblical.html" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">The year of biblical womanhood</a><span style="text-decoration-line: underline;">. Her point is, as a kid raised in evangelicalism, there were plenty exceptions to being biblical in the evangelical church.<u>Lesson learned, evangelical cognitive dissonance is real</u>.</span><br />
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During Lent of 2013, I read and blogged through the Bible. But it left me hung up on that <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-angry-bloody-god-of-bible-part-3.html" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">angry bloody god in the OT</a>. He seemed to be mad or approve of the same things depending on the situation. Kill your brother bad...drown the earth good. Kill all the firstborn sons of his enemies...good.<br />
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I discovered <a href="https://twitter.com/MAGuyton" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">Morgan Guyton</a> at this time on Patheos. He is totally my kind of blogger. But I did not have a way out of the cognitive dissonance, even with the grace I allowed myself. In the same season I read <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2013/04/book-response-gods-gay-agenda-by.html" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">God's Gay Agenda</a><span style="text-decoration-line: underline;"> and had my mind blown. Here was a Pentecostal, tongue-speaking, YWAM missioner, who was leading a church into the love of God and was married to a woman. In the Acts of the Apostles, the Jewish believers were not convinced non-Jews could really be Christ followers until they witnessed them all speaking in tongues. Glossalia was the way they knew the Spirit of Christ had definitely included them. But my religious tribe could not do likewise because of a few poorly interpreted verses in the Bible about homosexuality.<u>Lesson learned, evangelical cognitive dissonance is real.</u></span><br />
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In November 2013 I wrote a post about being <a href="https://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2013/11/open-handed-posture-personally.html" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">open handed personally, politically, and theologically</a>. This post liberated myself from believing I could know things with absolute certainty. There is just too much I do not know, so why not treat everyone with grace.<br />
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In 2014, I started writing more about the cognitive dissonance. <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2014/01/american-evangelical-chaff.html" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">American evangelical chaff</a>. Officially losing a belief in biblical inerrancy and the cognitive dissonance it brings in the essay <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2014/01/jesus-changes-everything-in-bible.html" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">Jesus changes everything in the Bible</a>. My <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2014/04/fear-not.html" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">break with the fear mongering</a> of the right wing machine. My l<a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2014/04/flies-in-ointment.html" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">etter to a new young pastor</a> wishing he could see the dead end of biblicism it's taken me decades to see. I started seeing the social gospel <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2014/05/defending-needy-or-not.html" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">to care for the poor as the priority of Jesus</a>, not peddling tickets to heaven. I wrote about loving our enemies and <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2014/08/your-enemies.html" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">not dehumanizing them</a>. Then <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2014/08/murder-in-ferguson-mo.html" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">the lynching of Michael Brown happened</a> in Ferguson, Mo. This really precipitated a faith crisis for me.<br />
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While non-white Americans were begging us to acknowledge that black lives matter or that tribal land rights matter, evangelical christians were responding with blue lives matter and all lives matter or oil pipelines matter more than clean water. They were refusing to join the oppressed African American or Native American communities and usually blamed them. Yes, Christian charities did show up to provide food and water for those affected by riots, but did not, at the same time call out the oppressors.<u>Lesson learned, evangelical cognitive dissonance is real</u>.<br />
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Then I started my re-imagining a path out of contradictory views of God in the Bible and Marcionism with the series, <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/search/label/not%20everything%20biblical%20is%20Christian" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">Not everything Biblical is Christian</a>, using Jesus as the glasses to look backward and forward through the Bible. This helped me so much. I read some great books too. <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2015/03/ch-10-long-form-book-response-to.html" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">Disarming Scripture</a> by <a href="https://twitter.com/therebelgod" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">Derek Flood</a> and <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2015/04/ch-7-long-form-book-response-to-bible.html" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">The Bible Tells me so</a> by <a href="https://twitter.com/peteenns" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">Pete Enns</a>. I changed <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2015/11/my-crazy-re-visualization-of-hell.html" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">my view on hell</a>.<br />
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In 2016 I learned the founder of Calvary Chapel, the evangelical stream I swam in, h<a href="https://phoenixpreacher.com/oakland-hijacks-the-truth/" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">ad an affair in the 70's and it was hushed up</a>. It explained his bizarre behavior of continually letting pastors who broke sexual boundaries back into ministry. This <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/calvary-chapels-tangled-web" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">rarely worked out well</a>. One CC pastor, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Coy" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">Bob Coy</a><span style="text-decoration-line: underline;">, with one of the largest churches in the US, in Florida was found out to have had multiple affairs while ministering over the years and resigned in 2014. Worse allegations have come out since. And parishioners still want him to come back.<u>Lesson learned, evangelical cognitive dissonance is real</u>.</span><br />
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Then the 2016 election cycle started. I wrote an essay titled "<a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2016/10/i-love-donald-trump.html" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">I Love Donald Trump</a>." Unsurprisingly, in hindsight, any DT essays on my blog <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2016/12/how-to-get-russia-interested-in-your.html" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">drove traffic from Russia</a><span style="text-decoration-line: underline;">. After the election I realized I had not learned the lesson, <u>evangelical cognitive dissonance is real</u>.</span> <br />
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My fellow evangelicals, the ones who took me on missions trips to the black side of the railroad tracks in Mississippi, who sent me to Haiti to work alongside my brown brothers and sisters and sponsor children in need, who sent missionaries to Israel and Spain, apparently love non-white and non-English speaking people a lot more when they do not come to our country. They believe the fake caricatures of the African American, the muslim, the illegal Spanish speaker like they did of the gay agenda warrior. They say they love babies but won't support them post-birth. They say they love their neighbor but won't support with their taxes health care for them. They won't acknowledge that the pro-choice president Barack Obama, by funding contraception, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_statistics_in_the_United_States" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">reduced the abortion rate to the lowest it's been since Nixon</a>. All they cared for was another supreme court justice, not caring that the technique to hold up a nomination by the Senate can easily be turned against them. Delirious in malicious politics, the power of empire; compelling their neighbors instead of persuading them with love. Lording over neighbors instead of serving them. Ignoring the testimonies of their non-white brothers and sisters. My evangelical people lost their way. They left me, not me them.<br />
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In my crisis of faith, I almost lost Jesus. But I had fused Jesus with white, american, evangelicalism. I wrote in <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2015/02/descent-from-cross.html" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">Descent from the Cross</a>, "I mourned for the church. I mourned the ugly parts of the church prevent me from seeing the good parts, from seeing the body of love, from seeing Christ." I asked myself, <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2015/03/am-i-still-christian.html" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">am I still a christian</a>? The thing is I was no longer an american, evangelical in Calvary Chapel. I found a refuge in the <a href="http://www.stjamesnl.org/" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">local Episcopal church</a>. It's open and affirming to the LGBTQ community. It's bishop is African-American (see his royal wedding sermon below. It's focus on the love of God is music to my ears). It strongly supports a social gospel. It prays for our political leaders every week. It reads more Bible every service than any Bible based church I was part of. It's songs are ancient and also from the margins. We'll sing something from St. Francis and something from the cotton fields of the antebellum american south. It preaches the love of Jesus and practices his grace to all comers. It helps me pray when I've run out of prayers. It's not threatened with my questions or the books on my kindle. It doesn't care if I practice yoga or pilates. It practices care for the only planet we've got. We recite the creed every week, sometimes believing it for ourselves as well as others, sometimes letting others believe it for me when I'm doubting. I know it's not perfect. But ti doesn't claim to be the best. It claims to simply be another part of the Jesus movement. A lot of humility should come with a few centuries of history.<br />
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I still believe in good news. I believe in <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2017/11/good-news-for-evangelicals.html" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">the good news of the way of love</a> and not fear. The good news of afterlife insurance in american evangelicalism is so small in comparison in my view. Call me exvangelical, post-vangelical, or heretic. I call myself a <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2016/11/compassionate-christianity.html" style="text-decoration-line: underline;">compassionate Christian</a>, and I worship with the Episcopalians in New London.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5gonlKodrmk" width="480"></iframe>John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-17611626995023358412018-05-21T13:47:00.001-04:002018-05-21T13:47:42.291-04:00"you brood of vipers!" - JesusThe gospel of Matthew has this well known tirade of exasperation against the religious leaders who opposed Jesus. It's sometimes referred to as the "seven woes." He's furious with their religious duplicity. We get famous metaphors from this like "straining a gnat and swallowing a camel," and "you all are like white-washed tombs, pretty on the outside, full of rot on the inside." One of the outstanding admonishments is, v.23 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others." In other words, the religious leaders were too busy with weighing out their spices for the church to be bothered with justice, mercy, and faith. Their priority was retaining the power they enjoyed over serving others, as God's representatives. Jesus calls them actors (the translation of the greek word, hypocrite) and blind guides and fools and then let's fly with this one, v.33 "You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?"<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.cbc.ca/sevenwonders/images/pic_wonder_narcisse_snake_pits_sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.cbc.ca/sevenwonders/images/pic_wonder_narcisse_snake_pits_sm.jpg" data-original-height="293" data-original-width="220" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.cbc.ca/sevenwonders/wonder_narcisse_snake_dens.html">Narcisse snake den, Manitoba</a></td></tr>
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This seems to be a plaintive question, not rhetorical. Jesus goes on to say,<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
32 Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. 33 You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? 34 Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, 35 that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechari'ah the son of Barachi'ah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. 36 Truly, I say to you, all this will come upon this generation 37 "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! 38 Behold, your house is forsaken and desolate.</div>
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Jesus foretells the hell coming to Jerusalem a generation later <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_(70_CE)">when Roman armies besiege it and destroy it</a>, evicting the Jewish people for the 2nd time in their history. Why did this happen? They rebelled against the Romans. The gospel <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Matthew">written after the fall of Jerusalem</a>, seeks to warn it's readers against the idea of God's kingdom being about land, but rather about hearts. The religious leaders in Jerusalem wanted to retain the property and lost it and hundreds of thousands of lives of their people in the siege.<br />
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The topic I want to come back to is the use of the insult, "snakes." Jesus' cousin John the baptizer used the same insult a few years before Jesus. Yes, the religious leaders were accusers and liars like the Satan of their origin story in the garden of Eden. But is Jesus dehumanizing them? I don't think so because he speaks of his desire to gather them together and protect them in v. 37. The sentence alone, without context, is dehumanizing. In context, the exasperation flows out of a deep love and its rejection.<br />
<br />
I think the same holds true when the people are referred to as sheep, God as their shepherd, and those who come among them to take advantage of them as wolves. It's not like calling people sheep is a compliment either. It's in a context of demonstrated love and concern.<br />
<br />
I wrote earlier about the time Jesus reconsiders his use of a <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-gentile-woman-and-repentance-of.html">slur against a Gentile woman here</a>. He was changed by love for her full humanity. He learned obedience from his sufferings, according to the letter to the Hebrews.John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-7147158295621449472018-05-17T21:55:00.004-04:002018-05-17T21:55:54.301-04:00how to respond to dehumanization<blockquote class="tr_bq">
On Thursday, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders endorsed this interpretation of Trump’s remarks, saying that “I don’t think the term the president used was strong enough...it took an animal to stab a man 100 times and decapitate him and cut his heart out,” referring to a particularly gruesome murder committed by MS-13 gang members. - <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/5/16/17362870/trump-immigrants-animals-ms-13-illegal">Vox</a></blockquote>
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We once kept runner ducks in our backyard. I woke one morning to let the ducks out of their overnight shelter and found the plywood and cinder blocks shoved aside. The ducks had been killed but not eaten. It was possible a fox, a fisher cat, or a bobcat. It's as if the ducks were killed for fun by the predator. What the predator did not do was arrange a display of the victimized ducks.<br />
<br />
Unlike MS-13, their hearts were not cut out. Unlike some Mexican cartels, the victims were not hung on an overpass as a warning to others. Animals are not intelligent enough to "send a message" to rivals or snitches.Animals do not keep body parts of their victims as trophies or financial rewards as was done by white settlers against <a href="https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/history/traditional-societies/scalping-in-america/">indigenous people</a>, as they <a href="http://listverse.com/2017/07/16/top-10-horrific-facts-about-scalping-on-the-american-frontier/">did to each other</a> both in north America as well as in Europe. Animals do not torture other animals so that they may extract information from them, but call it "extraordinary rendition" because those words do not trigger a legal response in violation of signed treaties. Animals do not torture a minority as part of an extra-judiciary lynching then invite thousands of majority population members to view the execution...etc.<br />
<br />
No.<br />
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What MS13 gang members do is entirely human. The same hands that can carve out a heart can also cradle a baby. We humans are able to selectively deny the full humanity of one person and embrace the full humanity of another. When dehumanization is met with dehumanization, a cycle of vengeance and violence starts. It ends wither with everyone dead or when everyone gets tired. The Hatfields and the McCoys kept it going in Appalachia for decades. The Palestinians and Israelis have kept at it for decades. The Irish and English did it for centuries.<br />
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The founders of this country knew how important it was for a citizen to be guaranteed basic rights that attempt to preserve the citizen's full humanity. When a judge denies those rights an appeal can be made and another trial held in a higher court. When the executive of said country speaks of criminals as less than human, he sets an example of opposition to those rights. Even non-citizens are guaranteed basic human rights by treaty. The problem with dehumanizing one group is that the dehumanization doesn't stop. Eventually the name caller is also called a name. The de-humanizer is equally vulnerable to dehumanization. It's a self-destructive cycle. We are all of the same blood.<br />
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The answer to this is to name the crime of the human, honoring their agency, assigning their culpability. Bring these humans to court, affording them the rights that are due to them, a fair trial, a fair defense, a conviction by evidence of reasonable warrant, then start the process of rehabilitation, building up the positive humanity, weakening the violent and terrible aspect of our nature.<br />
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But calling gangsters animals, no. Pre-judging people by their skin-color (caravan of rapists), country of origin (shit-holes), or theology (ban all Muslim refugees), is to deny their full humanity in all their complexity. There is good and evil in all of us, let's affirm the good, and not resort to the bad we don't want others to be.<br />
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I have spoken as an American citizen. But now I want to speak as a follower of Christ, who teaches me to love my enemies, to love my neighbor as myself, who affirms all of us as children of God made in their image. Christ's story is the story of Roman occupying forces torturing him alive and his response to ask for their forgiveness. It's a better way, acknowledging the full humanity of another human being, regardless of their behavior. In doing so, one of Christ's persecutors, a soldier, changed his opinion about Jesus, as he died. There is a better way.<br />
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The president's spokesperson is wrong, just as he is wrong. They are not animals. Animals are not as cruel as humans. They are fully human, made in the image of God just like they are.<br />
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<br />John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-13322977411218193852018-04-13T07:00:00.000-04:002018-04-13T18:10:20.598-04:00He's come to set the captives freeJesus said. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Luke 4:18<br />
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The United States is known as a Christian nation.<br />
The united States has the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate">highest incarceration rate in the world</a>.<br />
<b>Both of these statements cannot be true at the same time.</b><br />
<br />
Cuba and Russia and China have lower incarceration rates than the US.<br />
Post genocide Rwanda has a lower incarceration rate than the US.<br />
Racially-divided South Africa has 1/2 the incarceration rate of the US.<br />
Post-Christian Europe, the bogeyman of fundamentalist preachers has 1/6 the incarceration rate of the US.<br />
Muslim Egypt has 1/6 the incarceration rate of the US.<br />
Muslim Indonesia has 1/6 the incarceration rate of the US.<br />
Non-religious Japan has 1/10th the incarceration rate of the US.<br />
Muslim Pakistan has 1/15th the incarceration rate of the US.<br />
Hindu India has 1/20th the incarceration rate of the US.<br />
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The American ethos seems to include the part of Isaiah's prophecy which Jesus intentionally left out. Isaiah 61:2 "to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
<b>and the day of vengeance of our God</b>." I think America's preference of theology focuses on what Jesus leaves out which results in a punitive penal system which costs Americans <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-high-price-of-americas-incarceration-80-billion/">80 billion dollars a year</a>, but more than money threatens the God given right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness expected by too manyAmericans.There is also <a href="https://www.prisonpolicy.org/visuals/race_and_ethnicity.html">a racial component to the American penal system</a>. One-third of African American men can expect to be incarcerated in their lifetime. A Christ-following nation would be seeking to release captives and freeing the oppressed. It would have good news for the poor who are disproportionately jailed as well.<br />
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It does seem for some Americans, hell cannot come soon enough for others they fear, especially others of a different color. If we lost this religious threat of eternal damnation, punishment, and vengeance like the rest of the world, maybe America would be a more Christ-like country.<br />
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Here is a 1 hour explanation from the <a href="https://ccda.org/">Christian non-profit Christian Development Community Association</a> for more than I can provide here. This post was inspired by a podcast interview of board member <a href="https://dominiquegilliard.com/">Dominique DuBois Gilliard</a> by <a href="http://www.justinmcroberts.com/dominique-dubois-gilliard/">Justin McRoberts on the @Sea podcast</a>.<br />
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<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cntrVuk-SZ0" width="560"></iframe>John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-44653149868244860792018-04-12T10:06:00.004-04:002018-04-12T10:06:53.212-04:00conditional unconditional love??Three of the things I'm really grateful for from my experience in the Vineyard churches was the emphasis on the unconditional love of God, the grace of God, and the loving, fatherly heart of God. These principles undid a lot of the spiritual damage I had acquired in my upbringing. However, one of the things I had to hold with cognitive dissonance was the condition placed on God's unconditional love. Here are a few analogies I was told to explain this.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmywDZugjkrSpQpYUe8AL4-6we9z_T7hFkIyh3Nlb1Th2i-vw9tOOSBhurMzro_ghZ-DNiuCB0BCWCfz13MTkuafCx4Gz7HS9XdSQnJjbRHLsguPvaWvhRul23BxvROs2Z-ix-/s1600/freegift.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmywDZugjkrSpQpYUe8AL4-6we9z_T7hFkIyh3Nlb1Th2i-vw9tOOSBhurMzro_ghZ-DNiuCB0BCWCfz13MTkuafCx4Gz7HS9XdSQnJjbRHLsguPvaWvhRul23BxvROs2Z-ix-/s320/freegift.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<ul>
<li>It's a free gift, you just need to unwrap it.</li>
<li>It's a blank check, you just need to sign it.</li>
<li>Will you consent to be loved?</li>
</ul>
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I turned to Calvinism for a while to break this log jam in my brain. Today's Calvinists will say something along the lines of, God knew I would unwrap/sign/consent from eternity past so I really had no choice it was all God's work. But Calvinism creates so many more problems than it solves and I eventually dropped it.<br />
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One of the pushbacks from non-Calvinists is the analogy of divine rape. "If we do not give our consent, then isn't God forcing his love on us a form of spiritual rape?" It is a horrifying metaphor, but I do not think it applies in this situation. <br />
<br />
The better analogy, used repeatedly in the scriptures is that of God the Father, and we as God's children. <b>We already and always are children of God</b>. Realizing this is not an action on our part, but an awakening from sleep, a healing from blindness, or deafness, or a resurrection from the dead. All of these are the physical actions used in Christ's stories to elucidate spiritual realities. God's love is unconditional for everyone, and everyone will encounter the loving Father after death who will welcome and celebrate each child who comes through the other side, just like the story of the prodigal son. How can I assert this? I'm agreeing with St. John's epistle.<br />
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<i>1 John 2:1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; 2 and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and <u>not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world</u>.</i><br />
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Why convert or become a Christian if everyone is saved from our sins? I wrote about that here, <a href="http://umbl0g.blogspot.com/2016/09/you-are-royal-priesthood.html">YOU ARE A ROYAL PRIESTHOOD</a>, based on the Epistles of Peter.John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11680626.post-81088577185904760892018-04-02T16:47:00.001-04:002018-04-02T16:47:20.487-04:00stock markets and global warmingToday is April 2nd and 5 inches of snow fell in my yard today. At least half of it has melted away this afternoon. An April snow storm does not mean that global warming is a hoax, played by mean scientists on poor Americans. But I think an analogy would be helpful for dubious Americans.<br />
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The Dow Jones Industrial Average is used as a representative gauge of the economy over many decades. Today the DJIA fell 458 points. However, that is only a 2% drop. In ten years the stock market index has grown over 300%. The impact of 2% on one day is massive for someone just starting out, but for someone who has been invested over 10 years, it's merely a hiccup.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQzyUqR-Y0FJOOTNFnr8xLH2C0ulmxRXSiXsytkBFdO92QYZPMm47UnFo2Yi3E42K36sm3lJZdoKW96wUxkAoW5y4wJsWNqw7qGClcAJzDeBh7TEsFuJPM9silvVw05F5KKfXS/s1600/Screenshot+2018-04-02+at+4.23.15+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="916" data-original-width="1600" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQzyUqR-Y0FJOOTNFnr8xLH2C0ulmxRXSiXsytkBFdO92QYZPMm47UnFo2Yi3E42K36sm3lJZdoKW96wUxkAoW5y4wJsWNqw7qGClcAJzDeBh7TEsFuJPM9silvVw05F5KKfXS/s320/Screenshot+2018-04-02+at+4.23.15+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Today's spring snowfall is like today's drop in the stock market. The temperature of both fell, but the upward trend is undeniable.<br />
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<a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/images/2017/05/GlobalTempNOAA_1880-2016.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="570" data-original-width="800" height="228" src="https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/images/2017/05/GlobalTempNOAA_1880-2016.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
A heated up stock market can be a good thing for most people. A heated up planet can be a good thing for a few people. But for most people a hotter planet will be a bad thing. And it's not just rising land temperatures where this is seen; <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/science/ten-signs-global-warming-and-climate-change-are-happening#.WsKO9Knwbik">here are nine more</a>.<br />
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Global temperature rise will hurt poorer people harder first. The US has the economic strength to rebuild multiple times a year after hurricanes, floods, fires, and blizzards. Smaller nations do not have this ability. Global warming could make the global refugee crisis even worse. We do have the ability to slow this trend, by reducing our CO2 output. Imagine if all the forests in the world suddenly burned up. That would put a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere. Did you know oil and gas and coal are ancient forests compressed into energy-dense hydrocarbon chains? When we burn these fuels, we are burning up ancient forests, with less smoke, but more CO2.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZuzzd3v778I_4-YtdyN-kTJTw6Rds1vPUkGxRrxgdIEjQYiJZ7zuvzyxrT-0VF8kFfc4s16x5hQtI0SFBgKp4_jpox77WFMTxwXA_-PGSBleTGaeIUaKR1OzDBW119-f2AJbL/s668/AllTop.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZuzzd3v778I_4-YtdyN-kTJTw6Rds1vPUkGxRrxgdIEjQYiJZ7zuvzyxrT-0VF8kFfc4s16x5hQtI0SFBgKp4_jpox77WFMTxwXA_-PGSBleTGaeIUaKR1OzDBW119-f2AJbL/s668/AllTop.bmp" data-original-height="621" data-original-width="640" height="310" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://hydrocarbonchains.blogspot.com/">Hydrocarbon chains</a> </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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As oxygen reacts with these chains, it releases energy and combines with the C atoms, making CO2. This gas retains heat in the atmosphere, just like a greenhouse does. Geologists have studied what has happened during earth's previous big climate shifts. Dramatic cooling by an massive asteroid impact while the massive Deccan lava traps were erupting in India created such a change that resulted in my dear readers being mammals instead of intelligent reptiles with favorite college teams and smart phones. If our current climate change continues, it could be octopuses taking over sooner than they expected.<br />
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We only have one planet. It's time to take responsibility for our actions and demand our government not kowtow to hydrocarbon based wealth and turn to Carbon reducing practices. One snow storm in late spring will not fix anything.John Umlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06403644529498645914noreply@blogger.com0