And the Violent Bear It Away

There is no place for violence. But violence has no mind, so it doesn't mind. It makes its own spot and throws everything else to the ground. It is the ultimate parasite, feeding and growing and bloodying itself while sucking the world dry. The Great Impaler. The Alpha and Omega of vampires.

Violence is unremittingly evil. It is a scourge, and it doesn't matter who commits it nor whom receives it nor whether or not the recipients "deserved" it or not in this regard: It is always an evil.**

Always. Every time.

Violence shows itself unremittingly and unforgivably in every battle field, through each bomb, in each bullet, via each threat or word or war.

But war is not the only form of violence.

Rape is violence.*
Poverty is violence.
Subduing is violence.
Child abuse is violence.
Apartheid is violence.
Prison is violence.
Rape culture is violence.
Emotional abuse is violence.
Police brutality is violence.
Racism is violence.
Sexism is violence.
Verbal abuse is violence.
Patriarchialism is violence.
Segregation is violence.
Apartheid is violence.
Pollution is violence.
Hitting is violence.**

Can we agree that, whether or not violence should ever happen, that when it does happen, it is wrong and evil? Can we come to terms that violence should be avoided as much as possible? Can we at least agree that we need to reduce violence, that our children should not have to be subject to repeat violence and that the effects of violence upon us and particularly our children is damaging to individuals as well as in social functions?

Can we see to it that violence is mitigated? Can there be a social force rising from deliberate and vigilant groups and communities of people to meet and turn these forms of violence on their heads? Who will rise? What will our answer for violence be? Who has the answer? And what does that answer look like?

Seriously. I wanna know.
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*This includes any form of non-consensual, coercive sex between an adult and another adult. Child molestation, bestiality, date rape, and - to a certain extent - forcing your spouse/significant other to have sex with you or risk incurring God's wrath. I'm looking at you, Mark Driscoll and any fellow Complementarian Christians who teach this.

**I want to make a very important distinction here. The effect of violence needs to be accounted for in terms of power, and that is what I wanted to get to here. The power that a colonial/imperialist nation commits over tribes or adults over children or men over women or police over civilians, etc. Defending oneself from a clear and present danger - unless done in a lethal manner - should not be construed a form of violence in itself and - when it causes less overall violence than what would or could be done without defending self (or neighbor), then it is a good. But this gets more complex and may need some more clarification and nuance throughout. More than I can give here. The rape victim should never feel responsible - for instance - for not being able to prevent her or his own rape - yet that is often what the victim hears when such arguments are aired. So... I would like to continue this conversation in the comments section. Please, let's continue this conversation.

When Your God Hates F*gs

This, this is why I sometimes consider leaving Christianity all together. (The points addressed here are from Jesus Needs New PR, aka Matthew Paul Turner. The responses are from JP Moreland. Both are in response to Chick-fil-A Day of Support organized by professional hater Mike Huckabee)

POINT #2
[Regarding the Chick-fil-A Day] People felt hate and we ignored that. At the end of the day, regardless of whether or not your Christian understanding of scripture harbors hate or not, a large group of people felt hated..  

RESPONSE
Regarding his point about people feeling hate, this is the other side's issue, not ours, and to be quite honest, they may need to search more deeply within themselves if they, in fact, felt hated.  Very few went to CFA with hate; they were angry about the other side's hate, but they were not hateful. Matthew confused hate with the hard virtues of confrontation of moral evil and standing for what is right, and he confuses real hate with the feeling of hate.  The feeling of hate was not the protester's fault; it was a projection of the other side onto the protesters and probably reveals a need to be more discerning about those who disagree with you and not to react emotionally.  Such an emotional reaction is often narcissistic (I and my feelings of acceptance are all that matter; the issue, and people’s right to disagree with me are not the issue)....

Because, Moreland, when marginalized people feel hatred directed at them, there is often some validity to it - whether or not you feel that is the case. It is not the victim's job to turn off their Abuse Meters just because you say you're not directing abuse at them.

 How can you even know, love and care for people without truth and knowing “issues (alleged truths) about people and how they think?  One of the most loving things one can do to someone is to stand up against their harmful behavior.

It takes all sorts of mental gymnastics to think that standing against LGBTQ people isn't standing against LGBTQ people.

We [prove we don't hate gay people] by warmly inviting them to attend church, to receive love and healing and so forth.

It takes a sort of fortitude to conclude that LGBTQ people or their allies would ever want to step foot in a church that demeans and ridicules them. Or that those same people are supposed to feel loved when their request to be treated as equal human is scoffed at by those who claim to love them.

Or that anybody wants or would benefit from whatever kind of "healing" they're offering.

My favorite version of this meme, as envisioned by a friend of mine,, Terry R.

I'll close out the quotes with this right here:

[H]ow about loving the CFA people and all those on their side?  Don't they need love, mercy and support?  Yes they do, and people chose to express that love and respect
Wednesday.  That was a very Christian thing to do.

Did he mean the employees at CfA? The hourly wage earners? The people who get by with fast-food wages and were constantly told, on that fateful Wednesday, "Thank God. I stand with your company against the gays!" The homosexual ones who were subjected to that kind of "support" all day long. Or the ones who are barely getting by while conservative American Evangelicals like Moreland politically fight any notion of fair wages and accessible health care for the working poor?

Or does he mean, by "CFA people," the family owners of the company? Because that's who the CfA Day people were supporting. With a few, outlying exceptions (the wad who started yelling at employees, or the people who spray painted a franchise were being ignorant and hurtful. But they were roundly denounced by most LGBTQ activists anyway...) the employees were not being targeted by protesters and boycotters - at least not directly. The family company was. Was it really "a very Christian thing to do" to support the corporation? Did they need to know that they were getting Christian love that day? Was that what Jesus meant by comforting those who mourn?

It makes sense that Moreland is a "distinguished" professor of philosophy in that he doesn't have to make his profession relevant to the real world - just make up a system, a different world that makes sense within its own cloistered system, and apply it on top of this one. In his ontological world, God is a hateful monster, but He can be a monster and yet love those He's being monstrous to. Those the Monster God hates can and should (must!) accept the fact that Monster God is a loving God because the Monster God is the true arbiter of love and truth.Therefore, what Monster God - as represented by Moreland and his co-priests - says is Real and True and Good.

And if you can't accept that Monster God and his Monster Priests absolutely love you while they're telling you what a horrible person you are for being different and wanting to be respected as a human being, well, that's your problem.

All these accolades, however, don't, in the least, mean that Moreland is a distinguished person, or even a distinguished scholar or teacher, really. Nor a distinguished follower of Christ. But the fact that he has so much pull and claims a mantle at Christian schools like Biola or Liberty and even a fellowship at something called the Wiberforce Forum* says that there is serious, fundamental problem with Christian scholarship.

That a man like this has any influence over today's pastors, that he is part of their training process, that what he does in any sense passes for real-world scholarship is a fundamental problem and speaks to a fundamental disorder within the American Christian church. I can testify with story after story after story about how, exactly, pastors who follow the Monster God that Moreland speaks on behalf of are the real threat to the traditional family.

Or any other family.

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*William Wilberforce. Yes. THE William Wilberforce. While most American Evangelicals were busy arguing that slavery is a good force from God and that Africans were designed to be subservient to white male leadership, Wilberforce was a leader in a movement to shame the English into abolishing slavery in their territories. Contemporary conservative Evangelicals like to claim Wilberforce's legacy, though he was every bit the radical that, say, Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison were for their times, but without the colorful language that could condemn much of what conservative Evangelicals like Moreland stand for...

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.