In This Crisis and In Life — Keep the Faith But Question It Too
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By their fruit you will know false prophets
I have a journal in which I’ve been collecting quotes for decades. I came across this one recently — “Pray to God but row away from the rocks,” attributed as a Native American proverb. That seemed appropriate today. I am particularly bedeviled (thesaurus find that also seems apt — you’ll see why) by a sequence of articles about Christian folly that came to my attention on the news and via my feed.
Since I am a believer in context, I’ll quickly give you my “testimony.” (I crack myself up. In Jesus circles, this is a thing, sharing testimony on how you were saved.) I grew up a Christian, from being Southern Baptist in my teens, in my young adulthood I flirted with New Age Christianity and Unity, and then became a very active Episcopalian. I eventually left that church too, over a leadership issue. I have always been a seeker and a questioner — which is why I disavowed my first church when I started thinking for myself. I could never stand hypocrisy and man’s inhumanity to man. When my Sunday school teacher at the Baptist church refused to extend equality to blacks saying that the Bible was only referring to Jews and Gentiles, not to “negroes”, I knew at fourteen, that there was something wrong with that. I am skeptical and critical of any religious leader who spews hate and spreads fear, as I believe in a God of love. That’s my context, in a nutshell.
So the fact that evangelical Christians are our current president’s most ardent supporters infuriates me. I know, they think they’re saving babies (a topic for another post) but putting the issue of abortion aside, it just clashes. I mean, look at Jimmy Carter — he is a good man, a model Christian. He walks an exemplary Christian walk, with humility, love and service, as opposed to the current White House occupant, whose walk and talk is narcissistic, arrogant, and selfish. While Jimmy (JC, coincidentally) has been married to Rosalynn for almost 74 years, this other guy’s marital history is far from stellar, far from decent, far from what is considered admirable by Christian standards. And that revealing tape of him bragging about his proclivity to grab pussy? Christian? I think not.
