There’s something strange in the air. Do you smell it? Can you taste it? Christianity is changing, my friend. Well, maybe it’s more like a regression than anything else. The death god is making a comeback. Goodbye newly revealed understandings of the divine! Hello, Dark Ages!
Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama is scheduled to speak at Invesco Field in Denver when delegates at the convention affirm his nomination. I guess Focus on the Family is starting to see the writing on the wall — there’s hardly a chance they’ll get to have much say at all this election season.
What’s a radically conservative, fundamentalist Christian group supposed to do when all their hard labor of crafting a tidy, American theocracy goes to the crapper? Pray for rain. Yes, the answer is pray for rain. Lots of it. In fact, pray for a “rain of biblical proportions.”
On Aug. 11, Focus on the Family and its political action wing, CitizenLink, pulled from its websites a video asking its millions of blind sheep to pray for a deluge to prevent Obama’s speech from taking place.
In the video, host Stuart Shepard asked, “Would it be wrong to pray for rain?”
Uh, yeah! God isn’t your personal revenge master, Shepard. You can’t use him to harm other people. Wow, your Sunday school teacher definitely missed something.
Shepard clarified that he wasn’t talking about “flood people out of their houses rain, just good ole swamp the intersections rain. We’re not asking for hail the size of canned hams…just rain.”
I fail to see how his mild description of this heavenly rain request jibes with his later request for a “rain of biblical proportions.” Images of the great flood of Genesis, survived only by one family mind you, come immediately to my mind.
Welcome to the new and improved Focus on the Family: Divine Death. Divine Destruction. Doing our best to ensure the wrath of Almighty God comes down upon you and all your kin.
For some unknown reason the stupid, death-worshiping antics of the fundamentalist Christian right keep popping into my life and into my news feed. Whether we’re talking about Focus on the Family and their prayer requests for the flood to end all Obamas, the ignorant non-Baptists who want to “save” and baptize my eight-year-old sister or ex-gay quacks like Anthony Falzarano who believe God will cause your loved one to die of breast cancer if He disapproves of your lesbianism, my mind goes crazy with all the things I wish I could say but know I can’t.
Can someone please give me any kind of reasonable explanation why a man working for a “Christian” organization is praying for a flood on fellow humans? How about praying for an end to war? How about praying for an end to famine and disease? Oh, that’s right — they like the taste of death.
Maybe someone can tell me what an eight-year-old is supposed to be saved from or clue me in on what mortal sins my precious baby sister has committed thus far in her short, innocent time on earth? Maybe someone can tell me how Falzarano sleeps at night, knowing he’s terrorized the survivor of a lost loved one and defamed her memory and the couple’s love?
Sadly, our fundamentalist Christian brothers and sisters have become so wrapped up in their warped fantasy world of death and eternal destruction they can no longer see the beauty of a God who gives life, love, mercy and healing.
Their false idol — their death god — commands them to use tales of eternal damnation and hellfire, worms and maggots and walking, rotting corpses to scare the bejesus out of little children. Their god of annihilation commands them to pray for an encore act of the Great Flood. (I guess they skipped that part of the Bible where God promises Noah it’ll never happen again.) Their false idol tells ex-gay quacks that it’s a-okay to contact survivors of ex-gay therapy abuse and blame the death of their loved one on God’s supposed judgment and wrath on their “lifestyle.”
You can’t help but be so pissed at them and, at the same time, so sympathetic of their obviously sick and twisted states of mental insanity. I think we should pray, too. And if I were to ask you to pray, I’d encourage you to ask your divine inspiration to guide these obviously misguided people to the help they need so they can live better, more fruitful, happy and productive lives.
Dobson’s prayers were heard
I am sure many of you heard of the Rev. James Dobson’s request for people all over our country to pray for rain last week on Barack Obama’s outdoor speech.
He was looking for a sign from God to show support for Christians around the country in opposition of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.
Well Mr. Dobson, God heard your prayers.
Only thing is the answer you got was not the one you were looking for.
Seems last week the weather stayed clear in Colorado and Barack Obama was able to deliver his speech on hope and change to the largest crowd ever gathered at a nomination speech, without the fear of rain.
However this week is the scheduled Republican convention and what do we have, a hurricane bearing down on our country with another one looking to be right behind it.
Maybe, just maybe, this is God’s answer to your prayer. We are warned of making prayers on hate and bringing bad to others, or to express someone’s prejudice.
Maybe, just maybe, God is sending you a message, Mr. Dobson, that it is the Republican leadership that needs to see the rain. Maybe, just maybe, God is telling all of us that, yes, raining on certain leaders might be a way to show himself, and he choose the Republican leadership to make his point. Maybe, just maybe, it is the Republican leadership that has God angry and is going the wrong direction.
Personally I see this as a direct answer to Mr. Dobson’s prayer. We are not to pray to wish ill on others or for our own personal gain.
Instead we are to pray for hope and change to the direction of our country. One where our government puts children, elderly and those in need in front of corporations and the wealthy.
Change to the leadership of our country to listen to God and ask themselves every time before they vote, speak, act in an inappropriate way, “What Would Jesus Do?”