I have become a Ryan Bomberger fan. It appears that his October 7 post on townhall.com has been lifted without explanation from the archive so I cannot now adequately reference it; but the discussion concerned whether or not evangelicals should be supporting Donald Trump. Predictably plenty of the mainstream medias jabber-puppets have chastised the Christian community as a pious fraud for not denouncing a man so rude and worldlya hard pill to swallow when one considers that none of these self-anointed Jeremiahs has any faith beyond secular utopianism (or any recognition of moral stricture beyond leaving the bosss parking space vacant). One might as well listen to a jackass criticizing an eagle for not flapping his wings enough when he flies.
Bomberger was having none of itnor was he won over by the argument of his co-religionists that Trump is foul-mouthed and says (generally via Twitter) hurtful things. Naturally the standard reply to such protests is that the anti-Trumps are one and all in favor of very late-term abortions up to and including abandonment of a child mistakenly" born alive; that one and all promote the chaotic non-enforcement of our border which has produced a magnet for human traffickers child-molesters and other two-legged monsters; and that one and all therefore have a lot more to answer for than a crude Tweet.
This was Ryans approach to dismissing or diminishing the so-called Christian objection. I dont know why it left me unsatisfied: certainly I disagreed with nothing in the article. I believe I was rankled however by all the things left unsaid.
Such as... well weve been listening to a placatory Church now for most of my time on earth its hat in hand its head humbly bowed its lips murmuring Who am I to judge? Let him without sin cast the first stone. If two gay people wish to marry... who am I to judge? If two heterosexual people wish to cohabit and raise children outside the formal bonds of marriage... who am I to judge? And Im not going to judge our Muslim brethren by any means! Why should their faith be inferior to ours? I wish they wouldnt behead people... but those who do such things arent true Muslims you know. And then there were the Crusades where we behaved abominably!"
Oh. And now you dont want to dirty your hems by walking through the muck of Donald Trumps Tweets. Thank you for that suddenvery sudden one might say randomburst of moral enlightenment o ye beacons of the Christian faith!
I find myself wondering how these good Christians" would have received a marine who returned home in 1945 after surviving Iwo Jima. Would they throw him a parade down Main Street in Middleville USA? Excellentgood for them! Lets give the lad the key to our not-quite-city! But what would have happened if the church-every-Sunday town fathers had discovered that the returning hero had collected an ear or two from Japanese corpses? Would they pause to consider that the boy had passed several sleepless nights under fire watched several of his buddies have their guts shot out and seen his own young life flash before his eyes several times as he stormed machine gun nests in caves? Or would they stop at the reflection Oh! How brutal!"
Im betting that the parade would have been canceled if our good Christians" of today had lived seventy-something years ago. Fortunately they didnt. My grandfather wasnt that kind of simpering whiney safe-zone-seeking study in moral anemia. Neither was yours. They would understand that when you put a man through living hell hes apt to do a lot more than exceed the exclamatory limits of My goodness gracious!" when his pal from boot camp loses the right side of his head.
I didnt vote for Mr. Trump in 2016. I didnt like the Lyin Ted" lie one bit nor the insinuation that Cruz Senior had been implicated in the JFK assassination. Those remarks were Bush League (and no the namby-pamby Bushes would never have made them... which was one of the few things I liked about the Bushes: they didnt play in that league of cheap shots and behind-the-back trips). But Trump has swallowed his own medicine times ten times ten since his election. How many days weeks and months of 24/7 slandering by a pack of slavering media jackals could any of us put up with before we started shooting the bird at CNN? Oh Jeb would never have done such a thing under any circumstances (and he would never have needed to; he would have been busily tossing the jackals some carrion). Ted Cruz would have come back with a classier response... and he wouldnt have come back from Iwo Jima with Japanese gold teeth in his pocket either.
I can only speak for myself. I get madreally madwhen someone defames me. If someone were to call me a Nazi before the camera I wouldnt smile: I hope I could confine myself to William Buckleys You call me that again and Ill punch you in your goddam mouth."
Would I be less of a Christian for registering such a reaction? Is that really what weve boiled our Christian faith down to: an insipid pabulum that amounts to never hurting" anyone? Ive struggled for years with this bloodless invertebrate morph of the faith in seminaries and at national conferences. I thought we stood for truth; I thought we acknowledged our incapacity to grasp ultimate truth in our present state but also accepted the direction of inner imperatives that forbade us to make peace with the self-serving prevarications of men. I thought we humbled ourselves in confessing our passionate excessesbut that we also scorned death itself when ordered by despots to stand passively by and witness brutal abuse of helpless innocents.
I do not recognize my faith in the creed of our castrated male leaders and of our testosterone-charged females. I will not apologize because my abiding by the rules of grammar makes you feel the oppressive fingers of the patriarchy" or because my recipe for tacos smacks of cultural appropriation" to you. Im not sorry" that you feel hurt" or offended". On the contrary: your decision to feel hurt when you know nothing of my motivesor know damn well that they were not malevolentoffends me. What kind of friend says to another friend I never want to see you again! The way you said Hey there old boy! reminds me of my fathers greetingsand he used to beat me!" Youre insane if you mean that seriously. As a Christian Ill tell you as much straight up and help you work through your problem if you like. The one thing I wont do is help you pretend that you dont have a problem.
I will most certainly vote for Donald Trump in 2020 foul mouth and all. And I will do so as a Christian because the campaign of incessant slanders and legalistic bullying launched against him by whited-sepulcher political hacks and prostituted propagandists sickens me to my stomach. Just as indigestible to me are those who piously whine that a good man never hurts" anyone. I have no fraternal affinity left over for them: not any more. If you wont slap in the face a man who wants to leave babies unprotected to surrender young girls to kidnappers and pimps to deprive people of the right to self-defense to brainwash schoolchildren into thinking that all sex is good sex to invite unvetted adventurers from terrorist breeding grounds into quiet communities to give mega-corporations free access in bidding wars to buy his patronage as he dangles restrictive legislation... if you wont scream scoundrel!" in that mans face because it might hurt his feelings but neither will you support the man who would stand up to him because the language might turn foul... if thats where you are in your faith" brother then youre an empty fraud and quite possibly a pompous idiot.
I have become a Ryan Bomberger fan. It appears that his October 7 post on townhall.com has been lifted without explanation from the archive so I cannot now adequately reference it; but the discussion concerned whether or not evangelicals should be supporting Donald Trump. Predictably plenty of the mainstream medias jabber-puppets have chastised the Christian community as a pious fraud for not denouncing a man so rude and worldlya hard pill to swallow when one considers that none of these self-anointed Jeremiahs has any faith beyond secular utopianism (or any recognition of moral stricture beyond leaving the bosss parking space vacant). One might as well listen to a jackass criticizing an eagle for not flapping his wings enough when he flies.
Bomberger was having none of itnor was he won over by the argument of his co-religionists that Trump is foul-mouthed and says (generally via Twitter) hurtful things. Naturally the standard reply to such protests is that the anti-Trumps are one and all in favor of very late-term abortions up to and including abandonment of a child mistakenly" born alive; that one and all promote the chaotic non-enforcement of our border which has produced a magnet for human traffickers child-molesters and other two-legged monsters; and that one and all therefore have a lot more to answer for than a crude Tweet.
This was Ryans approach to dismissing or diminishing the so-called Christian objection. I dont know why it left me unsatisfied: certainly I disagreed with nothing in the article. I believe I was rankled however by all the things left unsaid.
Such as... well weve been listening to a placatory Church now for most of my time on earth its hat in hand its head humbly bowed its lips murmuring Who am I to judge? Let him without sin cast the first stone. If two gay people wish to marry... who am I to judge? If two heterosexual people wish to cohabit and raise children outside the formal bonds of marriage... who am I to judge? And Im not going to judge our Muslim brethren by any means! Why should their faith be inferior to ours? I wish they wouldnt behead people... but those who do such things arent true Muslims you know. And then there were the Crusades where we behaved abominably!"
Oh. And now you dont want to dirty your hems by walking through the muck of Donald Trumps Tweets. Thank you for that suddenvery sudden one might say randomburst of moral enlightenment o ye beacons of the Christian faith!
I find myself wondering how these good Christians" would have received a marine who returned home in 1945 after surviving Iwo Jima. Would they throw him a parade down Main Street in Middleville USA? Excellentgood for them! Lets give the lad the key to our not-quite-city! But what would have happened if the church-every-Sunday town fathers had discovered that the returning hero had collected an ear or two from Japanese corpses? Would they pause to consider that the boy had passed several sleepless nights under fire watched several of his buddies have their guts shot out and seen his own young life flash before his eyes several times as he stormed machine gun nests in caves? Or would they stop at the reflection Oh! How brutal!"
Im betting that the parade would have been canceled if our good Christians" of today had lived seventy-something years ago. Fortunately they didnt. My grandfather wasnt that kind of simpering whiney safe-zone-seeking study in moral anemia. Neither was yours. They would understand that when you put a man through living hell hes apt to do a lot more than exceed the exclamatory limits of My goodness gracious!" when his pal from boot camp loses the right side of his head.
I didnt vote for Mr. Trump in 2016. I didnt like the Lyin Ted" lie one bit nor the insinuation that Cruz Senior had been implicated in the JFK assassination. Those remarks were Bush League (and no the namby-pamby Bushes would never have made them... which was one of the few things I liked about the Bushes: they didnt play in that league of cheap shots and behind-the-back trips). But Trump has swallowed his own medicine times ten times ten since his election. How many days weeks and months of 24/7 slandering by a pack of slavering media jackals could any of us put up with before we started shooting the bird at CNN? Oh Jeb would never have done such a thing under any circumstances (and he would never have needed to; he would have been busily tossing the jackals some carrion). Ted Cruz would have come back with a classier response... and he wouldnt have come back from Iwo Jima with Japanese gold teeth in his pocket either.
I can only speak for myself. I get madreally madwhen someone defames me. If someone were to call me a Nazi before the camera I wouldnt smile: I hope I could confine myself to William Buckleys You call me that again and Ill punch you in your goddam mouth."
Would I be less of a Christian for registering such a reaction? Is that really what weve boiled our Christian faith down to: an insipid pabulum that amounts to never hurting" anyone? Ive struggled for years with this bloodless invertebrate morph of the faith in seminaries and at national conferences. I thought we stood for truth; I thought we acknowledged our incapacity to grasp ultimate truth in our present state but also accepted the direction of inner imperatives that forbade us to make peace with the self-serving prevarications of men. I thought we humbled ourselves in confessing our passionate excessesbut that we also scorned death itself when ordered by despots to stand passively by and witness brutal abuse of helpless innocents.
I do not recognize my faith in the creed of our castrated male leaders and of our testosterone-charged females. I will not apologize because my abiding by the rules of grammar makes you feel the oppressive fingers of the patriarchy" or because my recipe for tacos smacks of cultural appropriation" to you. Im not sorry" that you feel hurt" or offended". On the contrary: your decision to feel hurt when you know nothing of my motivesor know damn well that they were not malevolentoffends me. What kind of friend says to another friend I never want to see you again! The way you said Hey there old boy! reminds me of my fathers greetingsand he used to beat me!" Youre insane if you mean that seriously. As a Christian Ill tell you as much straight up and help you work through your problem if you like. The one thing I wont do is help you pretend that you dont have a problem.
I will most certainly vote for Donald Trump in 2020 foul mouth and all. And I will do so as a Christian because the campaign of incessant slanders and legalistic bullying launched against him by whited-sepulcher political hacks and prostituted propagandists sickens me to my stomach. Just as indigestible to me are those who piously whine that a good man never hurts" anyone. I have no fraternal affinity left over for them: not any more. If you wont slap in the face a man who wants to leave babies unprotected to surrender young girls to kidnappers and pimps to deprive people of the right to self-defense to brainwash schoolchildren into thinking that all sex is good sex to invite unvetted adventurers from terrorist breeding grounds into quiet communities to give mega-corporations free access in bidding wars to buy his patronage as he dangles restrictive legislation... if you wont scream scoundrel!" in that mans face because it might hurt his feelings but neither will you support the man who would stand up to him because the language might turn foul... if thats where you are in your faith" brother then youre an empty fraud and quite possibly a pompous idiot.