I don't know how many of the 1/6 insurrectionists are criminally insane, but-- like the QAnon Shaman attorney-- I suspect many of them at least fit his "short bus retard" description. A judge ordered his client's mental competency examined. Alas, no one-- at least not yet-- can order north Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene's mental competency evaluated. Not even after she compared being required to wear a mask on the floor of Congress to Jews being shipped off-- by fascists like herself, I might add-- to gas chambers.
Last night Greene and Matt Gaetz performed their circus routine in Mesa, Arizona. The two anti-family values Republicans pretend to be Christians when they are, in fact, both devout Satanists, perverting the simple minds of their short bus followers.
This morning Rev. John Pavlovitz wrote that If MAGA Christianity is Christianity-- I’m not a Christian and neither is Jesus. And he's been a pastor for over two decades. He "spent decades studying and teaching, working in the church, leading retreats and mission trips, caring for the needs of people, and working to emulate the Jesus I found in the Gospels. I’ve tried to perpetuate the compassion of his teachings, his heart for the poor, his love for the vulnerable, his ferocity in the face of injustice. I’ve been burdened to expand the table of hospitality and opportunity to include more people. I thought that was the point, here. I was either wrong about myself or wrong about Jesus. MAGA Christians tell me so." He's been made well aware of the MAGA-Christians antipathy for everything he has to say.
I know that they are worried for and offended by me, because I’m trying to live out the teachings of a Jesus they no longer seem interested in listening to, because they’ve embraced the very kind of movement Jesus spent his life opposing.
They still read those Bible stories imagining that they’re the heroes, no longer seeing that they’d have really had a problem with Jesus.
They’d have despised his pigmentation, abhorred his calls to love their neighbors, and sickened by his socialist leanings.
They’d have lamented how “woke” he was.
They’d have justified his murder.
I know that the Jesus of the Bible would be least welcomed by these red hat-donned professed patriots out here waving their truck flags and thumping their Bibles and rattling their constituency-- for a bigoted theocracy that looks more like the violent might of Rome than the interdependent, generous community Jesus was building.
I see that they are living an inverted religion that is antithetical to his teachings and morally upside-down when compared with his example.
Now, I realize that whatever worldview they embrace isn’t something I have any interest in holding onto.
If being a Christian means embracing a man who boasted that he could grab women by the genitalia, I’m out.
If being a Christian means denying the votes of people of color or justifying their executions at traffic stops, I’ll pass.
If being a Christian means nurturing mindless conspiracies and shunning safeguards and stoking hate crimes, I’m gonna opt out.
If being a Christian means pretending a deadly terrorist attack on our Capitol was just a “group of tourists,” I denounce it as a my former religion.
I’m going to keep pursuing a life of goodness and meaning; one marked by love, one burdened to be helpful, one resembling the open-hearted compassion of the Jesus I read about.
But if this malignant MAGA hate-cult is practically speaking “Christianity” now, if this is by default what this religion is, then they’re absolutely right about me not being a Christian.
Then again, if they’re now the standard bearers, then Jesus wouldn’t be considered a Christian either.
Guess the two of us will be out here together fighting for a love they have no interest in.
