Things I Think…
1. God, in response, has said;
““I hate all your show and pretense— the hypocrisy of your religious festivals and solemn assemblies.
I will not accept your burnt offerings and grain offerings. I won’t even notice all your choice peace offerings.
Away with your noisy hymns of praise! I will not listen to the music of your harps.
Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous living.”
(Amos 5:21-24 NLT-SE)
2. “Rededication” assumes a prior dedication…an event that evades real historians…
3. All of this performative faith has not changed this country one iota…except for making Christianity noxious to more people…we are not a kinder, gentler, more Christ like people …
4. I follow a lot of people who have “deconstructed” and basically left the faith over a variety of legitimate issues. I have great sympathy with much of their reasoning, but I have one major objection.
They rarely ever wrestle with the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Despite the rot that has invaded the institutions in his name, Jesus is Lord.
He is God and He is good…reconstruct with Him as the foundation…
5. I’ll end this abbreviated list of thoughts with this.
We’ll hear of more abuse in the church in the next five years than in the twenty preceding years…because Trump and the religious right have institutionalized and baptized authoritarian abuse by those in power. The Moses Model has been blessed by those with power and their sycophants have agreed to the ground rules…those in power can do as they please…
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen (Muslims); and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan (Mohammedan) nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
—John Adams from the Treaty of Tripoli (1797) —
It carries as much weight to declare a rededication as to proclaim an end to racism in America or that the moon is, indeed, made of cheese…Swiss Cheese. Those performing this nonsense are getting their fifteen seconds of fame, but it will be up to the rest of us to remember them and mark them from now on.
Since their real God is their Orange Dear Leader, maybe they should bring his gold statue up from Florida so they can bow down and genuflect in front of it. Damn them all.
Will the Christian right be having a UFC combat event as part of their rededicating shindig? Wouldn’t surprise me in the least if they did, not in the least.
For me, the phrase performative faith says it all. Didn’t Jesus warn against this?
that Amos passage though….
Woe to you who long
for the day of the Lord!
Why do you long for the day of the Lord?
That day will be darkness, not light.
19 It will be as though a man fled from a lion
only to meet a bear,
as though he entered his house
and rested his hand on the wall
only to have a snake bite him.
20 Will not the day of the Lord be darkness, not light—
pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?
Robot will not let me comment.
In regards to #5, I wholeheartedly agree with it. Which is why I find certain other blogs/pastors/etc that deal with church abuse that refuse to see or acknowledge or dismiss this connection and intersection to be hypocritical to say in the least.
r/t #2: Yeah, as I was reading #1, I was thinking, “Does David Barton have anything to do with this?”
They (MAGA fundagelicals) don’t want a Democracy, they want a Dictatorship.
Trump played golf today instead of going to the “rededicate” shindig. What a surprise — not.
Robert F,
Not only did he not show up, his video message was a repeat of one he did some time ago.
The bigger question is did Trump leave the $2 on the nightstand for all these Evangelical “Christians” before he left?
The good news in this whole Nuremberg meeting is that the turnout was quite lame.