June 25, 2008
Speak Truth in Love, and Carry a Big Ole Whooping Stick
My last two essays at World on the Web have concerned wisdom offered by Dorothy Sayers and Henri Nouwen. In each instance commenters raised the rumor that the writers were gay. It's disappointing that we continue, in the Christian community, to have this outsized, paranoid obsession with homosexuality. It's also fascinating that so many Christians will take a statement like the foregoing sentence and spin it into the belief that I am somehow departing from Christian dogma on homosexuality. I was surprised to learn that some readers, having read months ago my (unoriginal) claim that many Christians respond to homosexuals in an unchristian manner, thereby concluded that I am heretical on the topic. Find me the passage, you fussy Pharisees, where Jesus instructs you to hate homosexuals.
Warning: this will necessitate your setting down those stones and picking up your Bibles.
And speaking of disappointment, if Christian Republicans won't trouble themselves to read an economics book before opining on immigration, they might bloody well consider the Bible. If I hear one more of them trot out the obfuscation about legality, I'm going to scream. Find me one Christian using this excuse to support mass deportation of illegals — just one — who honestly supports legally opening our borders to considerably greater inflows of immigrants, and I'll eat my shoe. They claim they are up in arms because these people are coming across the border illegally, but the truth is that not a one of them supports any significant increase in legalized immigration. So this "they're breaking the law, which a Christian can't support" talking point is just a self-righteous cover-up of the unflattering truth, which is that they don't want those different-talking brown people here at all.
And aside from the neo-Nazis, World Net Daily is maybe the most shameful of the bunch, with its thoughtless fusion of pseudo-Christianity and pseudo-conservatism, replete with snake-oil banner ads, "Invasion America" headlines, and panegyrics to Tom Tancredo.
(New readers firing up their commenting pen might first consider my loving salvo at American Family Radio on this topic, along with a Thanksgiving-oriented response to many readers who disagreed.)
Posted by Woodlief on June 25, 2008 at 09:39 AM
Posted by: karen at June 25, 2008 9:54 AM
Get some salt for your Nikes. I am 100% in favor of deporting illegals, and am also 100% in favor of greatly increasing the numbers allowed to legally enter our country.
I think it is the immigration of the past that made this country what it is today. It was the hard working backbone of those trying to etch out a better life in the land of opportunity that created much of the opportunity and with what I see of the next generation of born-Americans...we need another backbone transplant.
However, the financial and security issues with the illegal problem are a huge mess, and there comes a tipping point where those who take from the system exceed those who contribute and the house falls with a great crash.
(However, I do agree 100% on the homosexual point - so many Christians are very unchristian when it comes to that one particular segment of society...it is very sad.)
Posted by: King of Fools at June 25, 2008 12:02 PM
Ditto to both comments above.
Your thoughts remind me of Jesus' instruction to remove the plank in one's own eye before removing the speck from our brother's/sister's eye. The so-called Christian community wants to point to homosexual behavior as wrong, but with hate in their (our - as I'm part of that community) hearts. Same for the immigrants. Surely hate is a plank we need to remove.
Posted by: Nichole at June 26, 2008 9:34 AM
Find me one Christian using this excuse to support mass deportation of illegals — just one — who honestly supports legally opening our borders to considerably greater inflows of immigrants, and I'll eat my shoe.
Hope you like leather. There are quite a few of those, they just get drowned out by the hysterics of others.
Personally, I complain about the border and illegal immigration for many reasons, but my position on immigration (more, less, whatever) is pretty much "fix the border problem FIRST so that we can keep people out if we would like, then we can decide how many to let in or keep out". Any discussion of how many we want to let in is academic unless we are ABLE to keep any out (and we aren't).
Open immigration? I don't have anything against it, really - I'm very open minded on the issue. The "funny speaking brown people" doesn't really apply to me at all... "funny speaking" some (entire areas where English is not even understood really is a problem), but color doesn't matter to me in the slightest.
Oddly enough, I work with several hispanics who came here from Mexico years ago, and they're pretty ticked off about the border thing, too, so I doubt that any racism is required.
Posted by: Deoxy at July 1, 2008 9:04 AM
Regarding the sexual proclivities of any one...
Any one can write words of genuine wisdom, even as they fail at achieving the fruits of that wisdom. If Dorothy Sayers and Henri Nouwen were homosexual, it does not revoke any truth they may have spoken. They may not be achieving the ideals set forth, but ideals are just that -- ideal -- and we seldom achieve such perfection. I think it was Bill Bennett who said, regarding his own frailties, that the road sign may point the way to Boston, but that does not mean that the sign itself will ever get there.
Posted by: J. Fielek at July 3, 2008 12:48 AM
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