Tag: B.S.

Everyone will be the antichrist for 15 minutes

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antichrist history and destiny

Everyone will be the antichrist for 15 minutes.

A prominent feature of American evangelicalism is a theology called dispensationalism.  It was popularized by the Left Behind series and has become What the Bible Says when interpreting Revelation.  The antichrist is the beast described in Revelation 13:1-10, Satan incarnate, a ruler who will turn the world into a living hell before Christ returns to defeat him.

Nearly every pope, American president, and Russian (or Soviet) leader has been called the antichrist at least once.  Barak Obama got a lot of that.  Robert Jeffress, the senior pastor of Dallas’s First Baptist Church,  was careful not to say that Obama was the antichrist, but that he would pave the way for him, saying, “The course he is choosing to lead our nation is paving the way for the future reign of the Antichrist.” I heard another preacher give the standard dispensationalist script on the antichrist.  He said things are going to get so bad that we’ll turn over all our freedom to a dictator – the antichrist, Satan incarnate.

I don’t buy into this, but I could make a case we’re following that preacher’s timeline right now. Our current president said he’s inherited a mess and he’s the only one who can fix it. His followers seem to agree, or don’t disagree enough to speak up. He’s frustrated with the limits of presidential power. The narrative seems to fit that TV preacher’s scenario, but that preacher doesn’t think the president is the antichrist because they have the same politics. Jeffress has moved from a president paving the way to antichrist to a president as an instrument of God. He assumes everyone else will enable the antichrist, but not him. I’m not suggesting anyone is the antichrist. I am asking why a movement that preaches how Satan will emerge by way of politics is so careless with its loyalties.

We now have permission to give in to our worst selves. The president supported violence at his campaign rallies. The alt-right (and many others) interprets his weak condemnation of Charlottesville as support.  We’re free to demonize immigrants.  One of the core truths of the Christian faith is to recognize how we are our own worst enemies, how we oppose what is best for us.  The very people who should be reminding us of that are embracing it.

Maybe this is Jeffress’s 15 minutes. Not as the antichrist, but as another figure from Revelation 13, the one dispensationalists call the false prophet. According to the scenario, he’s the one who persuades us to worship the antichrist. To be clear, I don’t accept the dispensational scenario. But they do. And the way things are going, they seem to fit their own scenarios very well.

(Image is “Antichrist:  History and Destiny” by “Michael Coghlan” on Flickr.  CC BY-SA 2.0.  I didn’t go inside.)

Random Thursday for December 10, 2015

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Unrelated comments in no particular order.

Jerry Falwell, Jr’s concealed carry comments have been all over Facebook.  I remember when his father, near the end of his life, met with a group of gay Christian men to try to understand their point of view.  I believe Jerry was honestly trying to see things from another point of view.  I don’t think the later Jerry Falwell, Sr. would have approved of his son’s comments.

Everyone on each side thinks the other side’s crazies have taken over.

I have spent a long time on this blog trying to keep people from making comparisons to the Nazis.  Then Trump comes along to test my resolve.  Here is a flowchart that should help, courtesy of College Humor.

nazi flowchart

Trump is a mirror, reflecting our worst selves.  I think minorities don’t like him because they see how he views Muslims and figure he thinks the same about them.

I draft my blog entries in a Moleskine notebook.  I have a hard time passing up a good notebook.  Here are some alternatives to the Moleskine.  I’ve used the Mod notebook and liked it.  Check them out at http://gearpatrol.com/2014/04/09/margin-call-5-moleskine-alternatives-for-the-notetaker/.

best-moleskine-alternative-notebooks-gear-patrol-lead-full

Random Thursday for October 1, 2015

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Here are your random thoughts for this week.

Another day of people trying to convince me guns have nothing to do with shootings.

cow staredown

From my Facebook feed:

wade reck

Is ‘contestation’ a word?

We have fewer ways to communicate with teenagers.  They don’t do e-mail or Facebook.  I hear Twitter is on its way out.  Are Snapchat and Instagram all we have left?  What social medium is actually working?  We have so many methods to communicate, but it gets harder to reach someone.

I googled “man laws” and got a bunch of sites about how men are supposed to back each other up with women, how to figure out who rides shotgun, and when your buddy’s ex-girlfriend is officially dateable.  I googled “woman laws” and got a bunch of sites about equal pay for equal work and abortion.  Are there woman laws in the same way we have man laws?

“The Jewish sages also tell us that God dances when His children defeat Him in argument, when they stand on their feet and use their minds. So questions like Anne’s are worth asking. To ask them is a very fine kind of human behavior. If we keep demanding that God yield up His answers, perhaps some day we will understand them. And then we will be something more than clever apes, and we shall dance with God.” ― Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow

(Image is “cow staredown” by Ray Dumas on Flickr.  CC BY-SA 2.0.  They think shootings involve guns.)

Random Thursday for August 13, 2015

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Once again, Random Thursday is on a Friday.

I wasn’t going to give Trump any more time, but then Mark Davis, someone I don’t agree with often, wrote this in the Dallas Morning News (Tuesday, August 11, 2015)

“Every once in awhile [sic], we all need an inner voice that says:  ‘I shouldn’t say that.  It’s over the line.’  If we ignore that voice and mouth off anyway and get roasted for it, we should not whine about political correctness.  Maybe we should look in the mirror and learn when to shut up.”

Someone else (not sure where I heard this) said, “The opposite of political correctness is not vulgarity.”

That’s enough of that.  Here’s a couple of great songs I want to pass along:

lucius

Two of Us on the Run by Lucius.  Here’s the video.

  • “There’s no race, there’s only a runner, put one foot in front of the other”
  • “And we’ll one day tell our story of how we made something of ourselves now”
  • I served communion at a worship service this week and the band sang this song.  As someone on the road to being a second career pastor, I thought about the story I’d tell one day.

Divisionary (Do the Right Thing) by Ages and Ages.  Here’s the video.

  • This song came about as the band went through a lot of changes:  the deaths of parents and birth of children.  Great chorus.
(Image is Lucius – Greek Theater – May 2, 2015 by starbright31 on Flickr.  CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.  Starbright31 didn’t invite me to the show.)

Apparently not just talking to Donald Trump

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By now everyone has jumped on Donald Trump’s remarks, but I want to add to a comment I made on my last Random Thursday post, based on a Facebook comment.  I wrote this:

“It used to be that saying “I’m not politically correct” was a way to try to communicate an uncomfortable truth.  Now it’s a lame excuse to give in to your dark side.  I’m talking to you, Donald Trump.”

Here’s why I wrote it:

During the Fox News presidential candidate debate, Megyn Kelly brought up the names Donald Trump has called women he didn’t like and asked him if that was the right presidential temperament (here’s the video).  Trump’s reply was that he was not “politically correct” and if Megyn Kelly had a problem, she’d have to get over it.  Trump’s problem is not a lack of political correctness, but a lack of common courtesy.  At one time, people who were not politically correct used terms like, for example, “illegal aliens” instead of “undocumented workers,” because they wanted to communicate the uncomfortable truth that these people were violating immigration laws.  Trump wants to broaden the term to allow being rude and crude.  If I call a woman a “slut” and then say, “I’m not politically correct, that’s how I am, so if you don’t like it, it’s your problem,” does that excuse my behavior?  Trump thinks it does.  I think it doesn’t.

I set a low bar for my expectations of Trump’s debate performance and he managed to go under it both in his exchange with Megyn Kelly at the debate and his tweets afterwards.

By the way, here’s something I didn’t make clear at the start.  Random Thursday is a collection of observations and thoughts that do not necessarily go together.  A Facebook comment linked two of the items, which I thought was a very clever observation, but any link I don’t explicitly spell out is unintentional.  Starting and ending with a Trump comment led some to believe this was a post about Trump, but it was not my intention to write a whole post about Trump.  Until now.

campaign in poetry

(Image is “politically correct” by Brett Jordan on Flickr.  CC BY 2.0.)

Random Thursday for Aug 6, 2015

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No matter how low you set the bar, Donald Trump finds a way to go under it.

In the midst of the outrage about the outrage over Cecil the lion’s death, there was an insightful comment in the Dallas Morning News, in a letter by Don McElfresh, published on August 3, 2015.  Cecil’s death represents a loss of innocence, because “. . . most people, down deep inside, want to believe that not everything is for sale.”

cow staredown

Jon Stewart ended his run on The Daily Show with a lecture on three different kinds of B.S.  “If you smell something, say something.”  Words to live by.  I’ll do my best.

An impressive article by James Fallows in The Atlantic (Jan/Feb 2015 issue) called “The Tragedy of the American Military” gives words to feelings I couldn’t express:  “Reverent but disengaged” and “we love the troops, but we’d rather not think about them.”  Doonesbury had a good one, too.

It used to be that saying “I’m not politically correct” was a way to try to communicate an uncomfortable truth.  Now it’s a lame excuse to give in to your dark side.  I’m talking to you, Donald Trump.

(Image is “cow staredown” by Ray Dumas on Flickr.  CC BY-SA 2.0.  Don’t look them in the eye.)