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.

There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.

The job of the First Lady is thankless, of course. I'm not sure how busy it is or needs to be, but it's probably the closest to American royalty-with-cause since Elanore Roosevelt laughed at Jackie and nodded at Betty, I'm sure.

Who's your favorite first, and why?

* The title is both an homage to Gil Scot Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" and to Michelle and my alma mater, Whitney M Young Magnet High School.

Local Mechanisms

I've begun to spell out some of the reasons we need to begin to localize - energy and raw material usage, education, access to healthy food for all, medical and health purposes, environmental, refuse, etc, etc. These are all vastly important and cannot be misunderestimated (did I just pull a George W?).

However, on the flip side, we must be careful to not continue in the ways in which a few people have benefited over the vast majority - or that the vast majority have benefited over the few - that have been practiced and practiced since before Hamurabbi's Code was set to stone. Basically, they're ones of tribalism.

The questions that need to be wrestled with going forward are not so much, "Do we need anti-racist, feminist, anti-tribalist, peace-making, components?" Rather, the question is, "How do we implement these components so that we are not constantly at war with other countries for cheap labor, so that we do not kill others for resources - let alone possessions and property? How do we whole-heartedly involve the entire community into inclusiveness so that everyone's voice and spirit is equally valid, but in such a way where we do not ward off strangers? How do we build on communication and trust internally as well as inter-communally?"

These would be the questions I'd like stabbed (is this also an unfortunate word choice?) as we go along here.

Lazy Sunday Readings: Trading away our rights

From the summary for Trading Away Our Rights: Women working in global supply chains

Courtesy of http://www.kewwedo.org/rights-to-women-workers-denied/

* (translated into American English from the British variety)

“As a casual worker, I do not get a bonus, or paid holiday or severance pay. I am looking for a place to stay so that I can collect all my children to stay with me. To be a mother with all my chickens under my wings.”

• Rage, picking fruit in South Africa for export to UK supermarkets

“We have to do overtime until midnight to earn a decent income. I am afraid of having children because I wouldn’t be able to feed them.”

• Nong, 26, sewing underwear for Victoria’s Secret in Thailand

“We don’t have the right to be sick. One day when I was not well and I took a doctor’s note to my employer, he gave me a written warning.”

• Zakia, 36, sewing garments for Spain’s El Corte Ingles in Morocco

Globalization has drawn millions of women into paid employment across the developing world. Today, supermarkets and clothing stores source the products that they sell from farms and factories worldwide. At the end of their supply chains, the majority of workers – picking and packing fruit, sewing garments, cutting flowers – are women. Their work is fueling valuable national export growth. And their jobs could be providing the income, security, and support needed to life them and their families out of poverty. Instead, women workers are systematically being denied their fair share of the benefits brought by globalization…

The harsh reality faced by women workers highlights one of the glaring failures of the current model of globalization. Over the past 20 years, the legal rights of powerful corporate entities have been dramatically deepened and extended. Through the World Trade Organization and regional and bilateral trade agreements, corporations now enjoy global protection for many newly introduced rights. As investors, the same companies are legally protected against a wide range of governments’ action. Workers’ rights have moved in the opposite direction. And it is no coincidence that the rise of the ‘flexible’ worker has been accompanied by the rise of the female, often migrant, worker. The result is that corporate rights are becoming ever stronger, while poor people’s rights and protections at work are being weakened, and women are paying the social costs.

Exploiting the circumstances of vulnerable people – whether intentionally or not – is at the heart of many employment strategies in global supply chains. Of course vulnerable social groups desperately need employment as a means of escaping poverty and inequality. But it is no escape at all if the way that they are employed turns their vulnerability into an opportunity for employers to pay them less, work them harder and longer, and avoid paying their rightful benefits. ..

• In Chile, 75 per cent of women in the agricultural sector are hired on temp contracts picking fruit, and put in more than 60 hours a week during the season. But one in three still earns below the minimum wage.


• Fewer than half of the women employed in Bangladesh’s textile and garment export sector have a contract, and the vast majority gets no maternity or health coverage – but 80% fear dismissal if they complain.


• In China’s Guangdong province, one of the world’s fastest growing industrial areas, young women face 150 hours of overtime each month in the garment factories – but 60 % have no written contract and 90% have no access to social insurance.

The impacts of such precarious employment go far beyond the workplace. Most women are still expected to raise children and care for sick and elderly relatives when they become cash-earners. They are doubly-burdened, and, with little support from their governments or employers to cope with it, the stress can destroy their own health, break up their families, and undermine their children’s chances of a better future. The result: the very workers who are the backbone of wealth creation in many developing countries are being robbed of their share of the gains that trade could bring.

I walked into a local hipster coffee shop the other day, saw the cover, had a cursory glance and knew how important this was. I started transcribing it right away, oblivious to the fact that it's already fully on the interwebz in full color. Please read with me here.