Sunday 20 November 2011

Why Would Anyone Want To Kill Someone Like Jesus?

Because He basically kept standing up in church and in the middle of town (they didn't have TV or YouTube or newspapers) and saying this kind of thing (paraphrased into modern cultural references so people might feel it more deeply):

  Beware of the kind of Christians which love to go around wearing pointedly modest clothing, and love being recognized in public and sitting in the front rows in church and standing up and speaking at various events: which make long prayers for show and preach and post inspiring things on Facebook with pictures of the sun bursting through the clouds. These shall receive greater condemnation.
  When they tell you to do something that is from the bible, do that, but don't act anything like them, because they say one thing and then don't actually do it once they've said how important it is to agree that it is important. They paint unattainable images of supposedly ideal Christian life, though they themselves are making no real effort to live that way. Everything they do is to be seen as Christian by others: they dress in carefully understated business casual outfits (khaki and golf or rugby shirts) so as to seem affluent but classy. They love to sit in the seats of power and influence at church and at Christian gatherings. They like to be called "pastor," "reverend," "Father," "Sister" or "Brother."
  Do not let anyone call you by these titles, for one is pastor and reverend, and that is Christ, and you are all brothers and sisters. And don't call anyone on earth "Father Geoff" because you have a Father in heaven already, and neither be called pastors, for you already have a shepherd, and that is Christ.
  Do not be like the Christians who post things they are supposedly praying on Facebook or Twitter, showing off their contrite spirits and prayerful eloquence to a global audience.  They have their audience and God's not in it.  Do not be like the Christians who announce in person and on YouTube, their websites and the very t-shirts they wear that they support various charities.  They have gotten the recognition they seek from the group of people they have reached with their posters, bumperstickers and brochures.  And God's not part of that group.  If you make a donation to a charity, let not your Visa card know what your PayPal account is doing.
  And don't pray long, wordy prayers, superstitiously repeating the same supposedly magic phrases over and over again, hoping God will give you what you want if you throw enough words, repeated enough times, at Him.  Pray privately in your room where no one can see, and be brief and to the point. 
  But woe unto you, Catholics and Protestants, Evangelicals, Charismatics, Mennonites, Plymouth Brethren, Quakers and Emergents! You are all play-acting. You are locking the doors of Heaven, and are neither going in yourselves, nor allowing anyone else to go in, inviting them instead to vow to remember to commit to think about remembering to rededicate their lives to remembering to consider going in and then watching a PowerPoint slideshow and singing a song about it without having ever done it.
  Woe unto you, Catholics and Protestants, play-actors! For you travel to the other side of the planet to make one Christian convert, and when he is made, you make him twice as much the child of hell as you are yourselves.
   Woe unto you, blind pastors, which say "We place no real emphasis, and waste little time talking about our church building, because churches are made of people and not bricks, but let's talk for two hours about the money we've spent, the money we've raised and the further money we want to collect and spend on multimedia extravaganzas to pull in more converts, while people are sitting at home thinking of killing themselves or wondering how they're going to raise a baby, or if they're gay or not!"
   You fools and clueless: what's more important? The church as a corporation with money which is wholly invested in marketing itself, or the church as a group of people, many of whom need you not being afraid to "get real" with them?
   Woe unto you, Catholics and Protestants, empty infomercials for church living! You raise charity money but have omitted the weightier matters of Christianity: fair judgment, mercy, forgiveness, grace and faith. You think forgiveness is nothing more than a promise not to bother someone about a given shortcoming until the next time they annoy you!
   You blind people in important positions of church oversight, which gag at the idea of swallowing a mosquito, and swallow a moose whole.  Woe unto you, Baptists and Free Methodists, you piles of garishly coloured Jesus junk mail cluttering the doors of the nation! For you make clean the outside of the cup and the undersides of the plates, but inside they are full of moneygrabbing avarice, pride, trite self importance and insincere personal indulgence.  You blind church-goer, cleanse first that which is inside the cup and on the plate, that the outside of them may be clean also.
   Woe unto you, Vineyard people, Harvest House and River of Life Ministries, hypocrites! for you are like whitewashed burial crypts, which indeed appear beautiful outside, but are within full of dead men's bones, stench and rot.
   You also outwardly appear to be good churchgoing people to your neighbors, but within you are full of fakeness, insanity, rage, jealousy, competitive piety, deceit, self-delusion and corruption.
   Woe unto you, Presbyterians and Pentecostals, you actors in B movies! because you quote C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton and say "If we had been around when they were alive, we would not have gone on YouTube and made shrill, shrieking videos decrying ALL IN CAPS how they DENY THE TRUTH OF THE TRINITY!!! or ARE NOT CLEAR ON ETERNAL SONSHIP!!! DONT LISSEN TO HIM OR YULL END UP IN A LOST ETERNITY!!!  We would certainly not have stood up on our pulpits and at the dinner table and warned people not to read the past equivalents of The Shack or Blue Like Jazz because we were claiming, without reading them, that they were full of lies about God."
  Consider: You are the children of them which defamed and censored, called "commies" and sanctioned anyone who wasn't blindly supportive of the churches and their leaders and traditions, and of conserving your own error and of Republican politicians in general.  Go ahead and fill the blood-stained jackboots of your fathers. Conserve their legacy and the tradition of doing things their way in the name of being right, no matter the cost to others.
  You serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell? In light of this, look: I send unto you malcontents, objectors, authors, poets, songwriters, social workers and therapists. I send unto you earnest teenage girls who were molested by their pastors who then told them not to read Harry Potter. They are people and they have stories to tell. I send unto you bitter choirboys who were molested by their priests, who then told them not to play Call of Duty. They are people and they have stories to tell. I send unto you angry gay Christians who are ostracized and alienated by married church members who have committed adultery and paid prostitutes for blowjobs in the back of their SUVs and then "spoke out" against gay marriage because they felt it demeaned the institution of marriage. God has sent homosexuality upon your culture, as said the scriptures, and gay Christians are people and they have stories to tell, if they are not shoved into a dusty shoebox in the back of a closet in a church basement.
   You have brothers and sisters with you.  And some of them you will kill the careers of; and some of them you will publicly humiliate and defame in your churches and homes, and hound and badger and vilify on the Internet: that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from
Mahondas Ghandi to Martin Luther King.

(That's why people wanted him killed.  Because he sounded like that to them, a whole lot of the time.)

5 comments:

Shurfutted said...

Just asking ... What does real look like (in terms of not being a "fake" person)? Usually when you hear someone talk about being "real" it's because they reveal their inner thoughts. Maybe even some of those ugly ones that you don't even want to let yourself know you actually thought (or did). What if someone starts to get a handle on those thoughts and no longer has anything to get "real" about? Or, are they fake if they have to fight down the "old" (real) thoughts trying to shake off that way into a new way (making you a double person inside)? Or, what if they still tell their friends the way they think is right even if they themselves cannot achieve that ideal? It's good to hide behind modest clothing - it keeps all the perverts away. It's good to share the Word no matter how close you can actually be to God. It's a commandment. I like being called a "sister." It makes me feel like I belong to God's family. That makes me feel closer to people than hearing them tell me their dirty secret childhood. Yesterday, my pastor walked by and said, "Glad you could make it this week." That's all he said, but it felt good to know he noticed I was gone last week! How does one remember those kind of details in a church with probaby two or three hundred members?

Gandolf said...

"It's good to hide behind modest clothing - it keeps all the perverts away."

Really ?. Personally i doubt it.The same just remains hidden away within these modest clothed groups too.A fellow called JT jnr, being only one of plenty that exist within such groups.

Gandolf said...

"I like being called a "sister." It makes me feel like I belong to God's family. That makes me feel closer to people than hearing them tell me their dirty secret childhood."

If all humans are all supposed to be among Gods family. Why would they even need to be called sister. Are you saying ? those not being called sister this way ,are thus not to also feel included among Gods children.

You don't like hearing about some peoples dirty secret childhood. But does this help you to make the dirty secret childhood, just disappear? if it existed.

How do us humans ever learn more about some issues, what might even need some changing. If people dont even like to hear about any dirty secret childhood.

"Yesterday, my pastor walked by and said, "Glad you could make it this week." That's all he said, but it felt good to know he noticed I was gone last week! How does one remember those kind of details in a church with probaby two or three hundred members?"

That's where Jesus was evidently different. He made his church out among all the people. Sinners and all.

While your church might have an ability to know how certain church members didn't arrive to their church that week. Jesus was more interested in building many bridges and widespread personal relationships, between all human beings. Such relationship allowed him to create a wider connection among so very many peope of all different types. That his church ,also had built an extra amazing ability to begin know better how all other people are keeping each and every week. Im thinking maybe , this sort of ability Jesus had, would still leave your own churches ability, for dead

Shurfutted said...

Hi. You wouldn't believe how much my choice in clothing affects getting hit on. My clothing doesn't represent anything other than what I can afford and keep me as low profile as I can. I don't think being called "sister" is necessary. I just personally like it.
I see where you are coming from about dissecting the past. I was only trying to point out that I don't require needing to know the past to give and accept someone's love and friendship in the now. I don't consider it a fake relationship because they don't tell me everything (unless of course it is being avoided). There's a verse that says God does not hold on to the past.

I seriously doubt my preacher remembers everyone, every week. He just happened to surprise me the day I wrote that. He/we support missionaries that walk the streets doing "what Jesus did." His building just happens to be the place we meet to talk about God rather than joining hands in front of the IGA. Yes, there may be some that do not know God there. But, I can name atleast a handful who I am positive are saved. Between us maybe we can say or do the right thing in company to give direction.

Gandolf said...

People are very different.Some people will find it helpful to disect the past.While others may prefer taking a far differnt type approach too.

How can either be thought of as being either right? or wrong ?, if indeed we also know that none of us humans are really ever exactly the same type beings anyway.

When we try and lay out any guidelines thats far too narrow for us. Sure enough, soon enough, somebody just wont be able to find a way to feel like they too are able fit in anyware properly.And thus how we humans tend to create ourselves a planet with far too many loose-ends and misfits.

So surely we also need to learn how to try and celibrate some of our differences more and more if we can.

I dont mind what clothes people might choose to wear.What a person might wear, only tends to make up a very small part of the persons picture for me anyway, as a whole being . And how a person "looks" can still sometimes tend to be very misleading to us at times too.

Ive met people who dressed conservative, who sadly might even care to try and rip-off their own grandmother if it ever became half possible.And yet ive also met some of those people who dressed like the real scum of the earth too, who happened to also posess very kind hearts of gold.

I dont much mind the folks whos liking calling each other sister and brother etc, either. But maybe the ones who will always use these sorts of words, but yet dont really ever honestly mean-it.Is where using such words might tend to become kind of a little tacky and sort of "unreal" and commercial.

There is plenty still calling each other brother and sister within this world, who really honestly wouldnt even tend to care how their brother or sister was actually doing.


Sadly thats what tends to happen when such words begin to lose their real meaning.

I think this kind of stuff is what Mike was likely to be thinking about.