The messy fluids on the floor
If one more person describes the murderer in Atlanta as a Christian, I am going to puke.
If one more person calls the murderer in Boulder a Muslim, or even “crazy” I am going to scream so loud the puddle vibrates.
Sorry about the graphic words, but we are dealing with graphic crimes in graphic times. Here is the biggest crime: when someone commits heinous acts, we quickly polarize to see what “team” that he* is on. That way, we can shirk all responsibility to create a safer world.
Two mentally ill people in recent times (but many more in private homes without mass casualties) committed murder. One has deranged thinking from mendacious programming, the other is all too easily called “crazy,” because it appears that he suffers from schizophrenic, paranoid tendencies. Both were tormented by “demons” of persecution that began outside their brains, in our society, that infested, and severely disordered, their thinking.
Calling people crazy does not help mental illness, it just stigmatizes people. A very, very small handful of such people turn inward until they explode. We then call them violent psychos.
I am all too familiar with both of these conditions. They are simply violent, predictable, extreme ends of what we normalize culturally: male violence and blaming of, rather than rescuing of, troubled males who can’t navigate patriarchy and rape culture.
That mine-field, and corpse-cluttered landscape, is even more treacherous for women, in case you didn’t notice. So, please, no comments about how the victims are not recognized or honored. At least half of the population already knows that women are not respected enough. We should not have to only pay attention to our plight while the bodies are still warm.
Some religions are ungodly
Religion is a tool. Like money. Or Sex. It can be used for good or evil, but most of the time we just mess around wasting it like we can’t figure out how to improve lives, nor find the sacred giving it requires.
Christians include Jesus Christ, St. Francis, Martin Luther King, Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter. There are a few others. People who are not inclusive of non-Christians are not Christian. Compassion and love — inclusion you might say — is the foundational tenet of that particular religion. A Christian is called to treat the oppressed including women, BIPOC, bats, butterflies, birds, bees, and planets — to name just a few of God’s children — with appreciation, love, and respect.
This is called creation care, and it includes helping oppressed and marginalized people who we need to help create a just world.
The Asians and others murdered in Atlanta were killed, at least in part, because misused religion taught a young man that women (often fetishized) are evil and seductive, guns are great, and sex itself is problematic.
Sex, a sacred gift of God, if not the MOST sacred gift, is not a problem. Misuse of what it is for is the problem.
Sex is for creating life and love.
Sex is not for exploitation, or sin.
When the Creator creates sexuality and a drive to use it, that is a sacred blessing. Those who exploit that blessing are sinning. Selling human bodies, for advertising or vice, is not the sin, although it can be argued that those indulging for the vice alone and not to make an honest living due to a sexist system, may be considered sinful by some.
However, exploitation involving oppression, is very clearly a sin. Without exploiting you cannot have enslavement, addiction (sugar, tobacco, gambling) racism, or sexism.
If you are going to thump with your bible, then, at least thump out the sin of misusing sacred scriptures. Then, go read a lot more Psalms.
Guns are not helping
Gun enthusiasts lie, which is another sin. They imply that those nations without easy access to guns have just as many murders. Not true. They also imply that your God-given right to your firearm makes you safer. If this were true, the thousands of women killed or injured by firearms in the increased domestic violence during pandemics would be safer, not in more danger.
Let’s talk about idols and fetishes.
Americans idolize guns, sexist systems idolize women as objects.
Both idolizing behaviors are against feminist, radical Jesus — and other prophets — advice to be fair, equal, and helpful to marginalized people.
The mind of God to which we should pay more mind
People who preach any suggestion that God hates fags, or “sluts” or anyone who looks different from you are sinners, let’s help them sin less. God is also likely upset at any suggestion that poor people are less deserving.
I can just imagine God’s outrage: “What the hell? I send a sacrifice that only your bloody, torture porn species could relate to and you turn my Beloved son into some intolerant A-word?”
It is not my place to put words in God’s mouth, but then we must recall that our understanding of that which is divine is contaminated by our free will and free speech that She has given us. Like the beauty and holiness of sex, language and the word — the ability to use words — must be gifted us for some useful purpose. Otherwise, why then am I writing this?
More guns, (always the answer for some)
Guns are worshipped in one country alone. That same country runs red with blood, white with Supremacy, and blue with sorrow.
True Christians and other good people who see this must demand safety regulations, an end to immunity for profiteers, sensible legislation for licensing, acquisition, and use. More than that, we must teach boys to express emotion rather than blast their anger into throngs of innocent bystanders.
Boys become men. We need them to man up and become protectors and respecters — much more akin to the kind of man that Jesus was among prostitutes and “sinners.” It is after all, no less than what He calls us to do.
Whether you pollute yourself with violence-loving lies, or if you dominate your air, your water, your soil, or your planet for profit, or, if you oppress any living being or lovely landscape to do so, you are not honoring your most Christian calling.
Let’s go solve this together. That is all — the true alpha and true omega.
*It’s almost always a he
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Previously Published on medium
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