I had a nickname from 6 wks after birth. It was always used at home. It was me. I had teachers (in Virginia, bless it’s bigoted heart) who refused to call me that, and used my birth certificate name instead (which I hated). Finally in my 20s, I was able to attach the nickname to the front of my other names legally.
Screw VA. I’ve always considered it a (possibly recovering) stinkhole.
This is so true. I have had someone nicknamed “Butch” (Old boomer) pull things like this. It’s disingenuous and is just a vehicle for their shit.
Yes sir, I am.
Careful with that, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was in fact cool with that.
I’ve found that too many monotheists have created God’s nature in their own angry and vengeful image, especially the part insisting that ‘God hates ______’, etcetera. (I personally picture Jesus as being one who’d enjoy a belly-shaking laugh over a good, albeit clean, joke with his disciples, now and then.)
I sincerely wonder whether there is any real hope in a furious God who requires pain-suffering sacrifice? I sometimes wonder whether collective human need for retributive justice — regardless of Christ (and great spiritual leaders) having emphasized love/compassion and non-violence — be intrinsically linked to the same terribly flawed aspect of humankind that enables the most horrible acts of violent cruelty to readily occur on this planet, perhaps not all of which we learn about.
Meanwhile, it seems, when a public person openly fantasizes about world peace, a guaranteed minimum income and/or a clean, pristinely green global environment, many theological fundamentalists immediately react with the presumption that he/she must therefore be Godless and, by extension, evil and/or (far worse) a socialist. This, despite Christ’s own teachings epitomizing the primary component of socialism — do not hoard morbidly superfluous wealth when so very many people have little or nothing. That’s just how upside-down (I’m sad to say) so much of institutional Christianity has become.
P.S. I’m a believer in and find hope in Christ’s unmistakable miracles as well as his fundamental teachings and nature.
Reminds me of this scene from Yours, Mine, and Ours:
That reminds me of a work my dad had, and was proud to have:
It’s still around the house somewhere, and I intend to hold on to it. I’m pretty much agnostic these days, but I love the art, and I still appreciate the Message: be kind, help others, respect and love everyone for who they are.
Jesus hung around with those who were looked down on by the society of his day. He reserved his wrath for those who held power-- moneylenders, religious zealots-- who mistreated others and considered themselves more “righteous” than the rest.
I can’t help but wonder if the people who cite Christianity as an excuse for bigotry ever read a single line of the New Testament, because it doesn’t justify their hate-- it condemns it.
Religion is about control. It’s ironic that the anti-maskers (who are by and large religious), are so concerned about the medical advisory for covering their face, but dont seem to notice that an alien extraterrestrial (being that “God” is neither human nor from Earth) controls almost every part of their lives and lifestyle.
Easy, now. We have swung this southern state reliably blue, after all. There are bigoted assholes in every locale across the country. Writing off large geographic swaths is not a good move.
Cause my Jesus bled and died for my sins
He spent His time with thieves and sluts and liars
He loved the poor and accosted the rich
So which one do you want to be?
Who is this that you follow?
This picture of the American dream
If Jesus was here would you walk right by on the other side
Or fall down and worship at His holy feet
Holy, yeah…
Cause my Jesus would never be accepted in my church
The blood and dirt on His feet might stain the carpet
But He reaches for the hurting and despises the proud
and I think He’d prefer Beale St. to the stained glass crowd
And I know that He can hear me if I cry it out loud
Evangelicals are just today’s Pharisees. Same as it ever was.
They aren’t even that. The Pharisees were reformists who wanted change from the conservative priestly caste but not as much as Jesus, they were more like Democratic moderates complaining about The Squad. The Evangelicals are more like the Sadducees.
There is some speculation that Jesus was also a Pharisee, but was too revolutionary and scary for the moderates.
From my understanding, the people insisted on a messiah whose nature is of the unambiguously fire-and-brimstone angry-God condemnation kind of creator that’s quite befitting of our Old Testament, Torah and Quran. Judaism’s version of messiah is essentially one who will come liberate his people from their enemies, which logically consists of some form of violence, before ruling over every nation on Earth. This fact left even John the Baptist, who believed in Jesus as the savior, troubled by Jesus’ version of Messiah, notably his revolutionary teaching of non-violently offering the other cheek as the proper response to being physically assaulted by one’s enemy.
All that rejection, regardless of his unmistakable miracles — inexplicably healing crippling ailments, the lifelong blind, and most notably defying death with Lazarus — that were quite unlike the many present-day fraudster faith-healings performed.
Yeah, I shouldn’t do that. Sorry. Having lived there while I was a kid and teenager back in the 60’s and 70’s has colored my outlook. It was a real redneck place to live back then, e.g., with schools informally segregated by gerrymandered school districts. I had a few bigoted teachers, including one who will live forever in infamy for calling me “fat” in front of the whole class.
There are a lot of “Christians” who, if you showed them a picture extrapolated from drawings of Middle Eastern men of Jesus’s time and showed them some of His statements from the New Testament (without saying where they were from), would call Him a terrorist and not just reject His entry into their churches but also reject His entry into the U.S. from the Middle East.
I love those kind of mafia-like Christianity where God is basically The Capo for christians
