Dump That God Already!

You fathers--if your children ask for a fish, do you give them a snake instead?

Luke 11:11 (NLT)

John Piper, a prominent Calvinist pastor and author and one of the heads of the Neo-Reformed movement of Christians that includes luminous pastor-leaders as Mark Driscoll seems to believe in and speak for a misogynistic, bullying, monstrous God that if the Christian Church is his bride, as the bible says, we would need to divorce and put out a restraining order on. Being battered, bruised and subject to abuse is no way to live in a relationship. And it's hardly a way to live at all...

I've already written about Piper's excuses for a physically abusive spouse here, and plenty of prominent Christian scholar/writers (including Tony Jones, Rachel Held Evans, and Scot McKnight) have written about the problems of Piper's all-controlling, male-dominant god/supervillain before. And then this morning I saw that Peter Enns delved head-first into the swarm. And I'm thankful for that. Because this is the sociopath that Piper describes as God based on his reading of the genocides of the book of Joshua:

God is taking life every day. He will take 50,000 lives today. Life is in God’s hand. God decides when your last heartbeat will be, and whether it ends through cancer or a bullet wound. God governs….
If I were to drop dead right now, or a suicide bomber downstairs were to blow this building up and I were blown into smithereens, God would have done me no wrong. He does no wrong to anybody when he takes their life, whether at 2 weeks or at age 92.
God is not beholden to us at all. He doesn’t owe us anything.

This, courtesy of Heath March at marchingonandon

This is what we're supposed to believe about the Hebrew/Christian God. We are supposed to accept the image of (and cower before and accept the fate of) the God of Conquering, Genocidal Joshua over and above the God of Humble, Healing Jesus. I can't. I refuse to. I've seen enough abuse in my clients, in my friends, in my co-congregants, in the churches I've attended and been around, in my community, in my own life. I refuse to bow before a God who demands I love Him*.

via

I used to sing songs like this, in church, to this destructive, manipulative, abusive God. I used to pray to Him and try to find some solace among all the destruction and death surrounding me that He supposedly allowed and even willed. I used to sing lyrics about how He is greater and stronger and able to beat your god into a pulp.

Why?

Is this the kind of God that Jesus presents?

• The kind of God that has to force you to love Him?
• The kind of person that wants us to accept how beautiful He is, but tells you you're contemptible and ugly?
• The kind of lover who treats you like garbage and will only accept you when you realize that you are worthless without Him?
• The kind of husband who forces you to receive and accept His seed? (Does that sound like rape? Because, despite the counter-claims by the authors, it is)
• The kind of man who believes that His emotional needs are supposed to be first and, if there is any left over, you must give that to your other leaders?
• The kind of spouse who gives ultimatums and threats?
• The kind of lover who can only accept you as worthy of His presence when He hides you behind someone else's (His own?) image?

Is this the God of Jesus, or the God of our theology based on a man-centric, cold and cruel world? This kind of God/lover can't be trusted. He is abusive.

Or is Jesus and his God known as a wooer? As the ultimate in Truth. As a healer? Loving all? Creating all? Asking that we love our neighbors AS we love ourselves, and our wives as Christ loved the Church?


What kind of God do we believe in?


Any father who gives His children snakes when they're hungry needs to have His children removed, brought to a safe place far away from Him, and counseled and treasured.

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*I normally do not use gender-specific pronouns to describe God. But this is a different God, a patriarchialistic God, and so needs to be identified as such.

Daddy Warbangs and Mars

Prominent Evangelical and figurehead within the Southern Baptist Convention, Richard Land has recently protested against protesting against militant racism. In a sense, it shouldn't have been such a surprise, since several years ago he came out for other acts of violent racism and militantism in supporting the Iraqi War as being "Just".

As head of the SBC's panel on Ethics and Religion, Land gave his sanctioning and blessing to the most obvious case of an unjust war in recent memory:

How do you reflect on the war as a Christian?
I believe in just-war theory, and the first item in just-war criteria is that it has to be a just cause. I believe our cause in Iraq was just; I think it was one of the more noble things we've done. We went to liberate a country that was in the grip of a terrible dictator who had perpetrated horrible atrocities and crimes against humanity, against his own people, as well as his neighbors...
The idea of American exceptionalism is not a doctrine of empire, it's not a doctrine of domination, it's a doctrine of responsibility and obligation. We have a responsibility and an obligation based upon the blessings that have been showered upon us as a nation and as a people to help others when we can.

While highlighting the atrocities of Hussein, he ignores the atrocities his own government committed on the entire populace of Iraq. But it's apparently okay for Americans to murder - we have a moral obligation from god (as we know based upon his financial blessings upon us), so bombing a few (quarter million at the least directly died from military action, mostly civilians) and displacing millions more is worth it to deliver American-style democracy to the grateful and expectant.

Of course, that good ol' American-style democracy is best when bloodily forced upon the people - not when they do it themselves, or speak up or demand their own fates on their own. They can't possibly be smart and civil enough for that. They are, after all, an inferior people, right Richard Land?

You're welcome, Iraq! And for that privilege, we just expect a little payment, a moment of generosity for our hard work on your behalf. We'll just take some of your oil. Thanks!

Brown people, according to the Christian War Patriarchs, can't fend for themselves 'cuz they're like little children. Better let the White Man do it. This is why Land was so upset when all this noise was happening on behalf of Trayvon Martin. Stop making a fuss; Let the White Man take care of this issue on our time. Just trust us.

But the Christian War Patriarchy is nothing if not resourceful. Not only is it abundantly racist, it's also overwhelmingly sexist. Not only is it defending and upholding war, it's glorifying it in church, making it the normative process of worshiping our new god, Mars.

A Pastor After God's Own Heart!

Equating love of God with having a hard-on for war are apparently also essential elements of Sunday morning worship (via iMonk). Douglas Wilson starts with the presuppositions (like his colleagues in homophobia and patriarchialism, Mark Driscoll and John Piper) that contemporary American churches are effeminate and that being inadequately testosterone-run is bad. Rather than suggest that both female and male voices need to be listened to, appreciated and welcomed within the church (well, it is a gender Apartheid after all), rather than suggesting that women would feel most appreciated if they were actually included in the decisions and leadership and direction of the church, Wilson believes they would be best if they would just let the Man decide.

[I]t includes them, brings them along, and makes them feel safe. If you reach the men, you will reach the women.

Those women-folk will appreciate it if we tell them what they need to hear. They'll be safe if only men, and men alone, were running the show. Little girls can't fend for themselves! Better let the menfolk handle this! Gird yourselves, men, we are preparing for war! And if she disagrees with this aspect of seeking for god and being protected, well she wasn't worth our attention in the first place. Only hot, confused, scared girls for the True Christian Church!

Moreover, you will find yourself reaching the worthiest of women, the true mothers in Israel.

Oh, I'm terribly sorry. Folks, we've been reaching the wrong kind of women. The kind that apparently, aren't worthy of the love of Jesus and our good protection. Being subversive and having an opinion automatically disqualifies the ladyfolks. As if having ladybits wasn't bad enough, when you have a vagina AND you talk out of turn, you're clearly unworthy.

But you know you're going to a sissy-ass church when...

2. Your music minister is more concerned that the choir trills their r's correctly than that they fill the sanctuary with loud sounds of battle.

Yeah. Real men, the type of men who subdue and subjugate women like property or little children or animals or something else they obviously don't respect protect their womens, are the type who love them so much that they're willing to kill unnecessarily for them. They love their women so much, that it's impossible to imagine anything else but killing and maybe even being kilt - I mean, of course, silly me, kilts.

7. The minister wears a robe, but the effect is not that of being robed for battle. If that same minister were to wear a kilt, everybody would think it was a skirt from a nearby all-girls private school. But, contrariwise, if the minister were able to wear a kilt in such a way as to terrify sinners with the imagined sound of skirling bagpipes, and the sounds of a small version of Armageddon across the misty moors, and the sermon text were a claymore whistling over their heads, then that kind of man could think about a robe if he wanted;

Wearing a robe is girly and femminy and queer. If you're going to wear a robe, it should be made out of leather and be in camouflage, or it should be an homage to Braveheart, the most Jesus-y of all the godly movies every made.

Trust us, it is. Don't worry about why. That should be obvious, silly girls...

The New Bullies: Grandma Peace Activists, Christian Feminist Bloggers, and Consumer Advocates

photo © 2007 Simon | more info (via: Wylio)Did somebody say Wookie?

There's a cynical and ironic phenomenon that I've noticed most glaringly in US foreign relationships in the Middle East and is now manifesting itself in the financial / political world as well as the Evangelical social media world in the States: Bullies like to call anybody who holds them accountable a bully.

Israel does this any time her stranglehold on Palestinians is challenged. Likewise, WORLD Magazine (a Neo-Conservative Christian bulwark) called Rachel Held Evans a slanderer for calling out mega-pastor Mark Driscoll's irresponsible, homophobic, and trans-phobic behavior (with a bit more civility than I would probably afford him). And now House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, (R-CA) and spokesmouth for corporatocracy, is calling Elizabeth Warren, consumer advocate, a bully who would target the poor, little, downtrodden banks and loaning institutions and give them swirlies and wedgies and all that mean stuff.

Small pockets of men and women (and most recently, grandmas) try to get into Gaza, armed only with senselessly banned material - including harmless school supplies. At one point, they are gunned down at point-blank range by Israeli soldiers. At another point, Greece enforces Israel's rules for them, in the hope of international aid favor from the US. Illegal settlements are being sprouted up on top of Palestinian homes, bulldozing and setting ablaze homelands, groves, and families that have resided there for hundreds and thousands of years. The Palestinians are denied pencils, buildings, and jobs in their own homeland.

And yet, it's the international, hippy grandmas that are the bullies...

Author and blogger Rachel Held Evans demonstrated occasion after occasion of Mark Driscoll's dehumanizing taunts towards women, feminists, "effeminate" males, and queersteh gays. And then she asked her readers to address their concerns to the board of elders at his church. While Driscoll (of a large church in Seattle named Mars Hill) offered some sort of apology, WORLD Magazine writer Anthony Bradley belittled the criticisms and offered his amusing perspective that, "There is nothing loving about calling a pastor a “bully.“"* The rest of the paragraph sends a message that this male writer can only interpret as, "Woman no talk to manly man such way." (Considering that - without any evidence - Bradley calls her a liar who spreads false testimony, I'm left to believe that the problem isn't the testimony itself, but the testifier. After all, in biblical times, woman no important.)

So, it isn't the influential, authoritarian pastor who, once again, ridicules so-called effeminate men who needs to be corrected. It is the woman who dared stand up to him...

Issa is a bit of an extreme example in an extreme time of extreme extremities. It's common (though often ignored by pro-corporatists) knowledge that the recession is a direct result of predatory lending, borrowing and all means of deceit by big banks and other financial institutions - much at the hands of the poor and middle class. Warren, who has a proven track record of looking out for that important buffer - the middle class - as well as for those on the margins, is trying to protect the rest of us from the horrible practices that make a few very wealthy, very fast, on the backs of the rest of us who are left with fewer and fewer options. But she, not the banks that foreclosed on millions of hard-working Americans, is the bully? Because she would rather that these institutions not eat the poor and devour the middle class?? Really?

I suppose Orwell is shaking in his grave. It got awfully chilly.

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*Obviously, nobody has informed Bradley of the practices of spiritual abuse rampant in fundamentalist churches, specifically. I'm sure that if he were dealing with questions of his own sexuality in such a church, his perspective would change.