Eric Garner is not a random victim. He is not going home because a police officer heard him plead for his life and pursued a murderous path.
Let us continue closing the door on hateful and callous public servants
Author: eejoseph
Kingdom life and righteousness
Just a minute with Dr.J
The big question
What faith is driving the agendas of the GOP and religious fundamentalism?
Crown Crowd Control
Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Luke 3:7
With a message like Luke 3:7 [“kept saying” is a better translation than “said”] it is a wonder of divine design that no hardline disciple of Moses lifted a stone or raised an allegation against John. Noone could touch John until the appointed time. John was, however, not a one-tune singer. He had several targeted themes in his repertoire.
- The baptism related to sin remission
- All flesh shall see God’s salvation
- Descent from Abraham was irrelevant
- Sharing with the havenots
- Public officials must be honest
- Military discipline demands no violence, no false accusations, and contentment with one’s wages
Immigrant crowd dilemma
Every time, the people of Israel take a stand for decency the State rubs its hands in western dung and plays the whore for applause. Banning people who are different is an Israeli-American pastime. John would definitely recognize them and ask them to be quite since a felled tree without roots will not rise.
Ranking Jokes
It is thought that godly people have no time for humour or recreation while some people think that time is running out and that everyone needs to shift into a kind of super-proselytization mode. Good fun is part of God’s design and to deny it amounts to dangerous extremism. Hearing God laugh at the people putting distance between themselves and God’s king should wake us up to divine humour.
Fig leaves wardrobe
The attempt to cover the their nakedness with fig leaves has to rank as one of the all time pathetic fixit ventures. In their ignorance of both good and evil God must have at least smiled. He had the answer to their problem!
Glory vistas
Moses had seen a burning bush, the Passover, the Red Sea Crossing and the fiery pillar and the cloud. As he was receiving the covenant he determined to see more of God’s person. “Show me your glory” he requested, only to be told “You’d die in the process”. There was nothing to see: God is invisible and lives in unapproachable light. God decided to humour him. “Catch a glimpse of my backside!”
Baal’s bowel movement
When Elijah cornered the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel he poked fun at their attempts to get an answer from Baal. “Perhaps he’s in the toilet!”, Elijah said.
Communion miracle
The communion is a memory exercise. There is no death-defying, physical healing in the elements, and remembering Christ’s sacrifice delivers nothing beside the building up of faith and the demonstration of our confidence in Christ’s return. It is evident that all some people know about God is that he gives gifts to his loved ones. God must have a wry smile as Catholics and charismatics pervert the communion.
All out in the open
Poor Mitch McConnell and his colleagues are no revolutionaries. The scorpion eggs they laid during the Obama administration are hatching. The lawyers angling for a constitutional crisis – which is the only route for oligarchs and plutocrats to have their way, and look like they are responsible. Americans should listen to one another. If atheists are tuning out the Christians, and Jews are tuning out the Palestinians the only debate left is malicious speech and weapons of mass destruction. Christian radio and ignorant demagogues have a hold, all out in the open, on greatness in the form of rape, papist attitudes, white privilege, and an oppressive health and wellness maze.
They have devolved from barking up the wrong tree to dumb dogs that do not bark. They will change all to Caucasian whenever it suits their bigoted plots. They will hold the population hostage with the threat of instant death by lost – not mentally sick – individuals. They are self-envenomated into paralysis. Flip a coin: will they [a] confess or [b] shut up and lose the next?
Famous Deportations
Cyrus, the Persian king who facilitated the return of the Jews to the province of Judea, was a man who had an interest in history. He ordered a search for the facts about the Jewish people. He ended up an unlikely hero, after seeing what had transpired between God’s people and the people who had power over them.
Restored by migration
If Cyrus read the imperial archives he learned about the Jewish people and their fortunes from the start. God stirred up his spirit to cooperate with the predictions about the Jewish people. God raises up all kinds, among them the Pharaoh of the Exodus, all the kings of Canaan, the heads of the four world-ruling empiresm and a host of heads of state in the modern era.
Rejected by deportation
When the Jews became aggressively assertive in Rome Claudius decided they should be shown the door.
Elitist and xenophobic interests should have died with the return of the Jews to Judea. They had lived and breathed in a foreign land, married, died and were buried in exile. Following their return the Jewish people were shaped by Greek and Roman powers, both of which had established cosmopolitan societies. Yet Judea plunged ahead with its orthodox priorities; barring women, excluding Gentiles from the worship designed for all peoples. Deportations of undesirables have helped shape many societies but no entity can expect to abuse citizens and residents and walk away with a feather in its cap. None. If one nation starts deporting your racist and white supremacists and it will be famous beyond imagination.
Saints are rare
David wrote Psalm 12 with intention to cry for help. “Save me , O Lord” he started and immediately pivots to complain about the neighbours.
To the director: With the sheminith. A song of David. Save me, LORD!
Psalm 12:1-4
- We can no longer trust anyone!
- All the good, loyal people are gone.
- People lie to their neighbors.
- They say whatever they think people want to hear.
The contribution of his neighbours to the help he expected from God is not clear. The recommended solution does not serve grace and mercy. The LORD should cut off their lying lips and cut out their bragging tongues? Really?
- Those people think they can win any argument.
- They say, “We are so good with words, no one will be our master.”
“Good with words” and “good with works” are familiar mantras. God is not buying it. We will find him unimpressed with our words and our works.
