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God Has Nothing To Do With Trump Being President

From John Pavlovitz:

If I hear one more Evangelical claim that God chose Donald Trump, I’m swear I’m gonna rapture myself.

Christian Trumpers really need to stop spiritualizing the man, his campaign, and his Presidency.

It’s sinful.
It’s blasphemous.
It’s lousy evangelism.
It’s also just plain asinine.

The hypocrisy on display is historic: after spending the past 8 years straining to find infinitesimal specks in Barack Obama’s eye that they could condemn as dealbreakers—Evangelicals are now perfectly fine with Trump’s forest of Redwoods.

In fact, in the most dizzying display of theological spin doctoring, it is now precisely his ever-growing trail of personal toxic discharge that supposedly proves evidence of God’s hand in it all.

So Trump’s multiple marriages, his porn star affairs, his mountain of sexual assault claims, his verbal obscenities, his disregard for rule of law, his compulsive lying, his clear racism, his unrelenting attacks on marginalized communities (things these Christians would have figuratively and almost literally crucified Obama for) are now unmistakable signs that God is using this President.

This is nonsense of Biblical proportions; to try and draw some line between Jesus of Nazareth and Don of New York, is about as farcical as you can get without actually spontaneously combusting from the cognitive dissonance.

Dying to justify their own allegiances to Trump, Evangelicals have lumped him in with other famously flawed heroes of Scripture, suggesting he is actually  God’s anointed, imperfect tool of salvation—in the tradition of the Old Testament.(Well, God did apparently use the jawbone of an ass, so I guess there is precedent).

Seriously, this sanctified retrofitting of this godless President to any kind of Providential momentum is the height of absurdity. By that measurement, let’s find all the most reprehensible human beings we can, give them carte blanche in our seats of power—and see just what God can do!

No, Donald Trump wasn’t anointed by God.
He isn’t an instrument of Divine will.
He isn’t Biblically hastening Armageddon or Jesus’ return.
He’s just a hateful, indecent, predatory fraud who is destroying the environment, stripping people of their human rights, and making America a global laughing-stock.

His ascension is not prophetic but pathetic, the result of:

●   Russian interference
●   Fake News
●   Gerrymandering
●   Voter Suppression
●   Hillary Hatred
●   Obama Resentment
●   Fox News Brainwashing
●   Democratic Stumbles
●   The Votes of Bigoted Evangelicals, whites terrified of losing market share, and third-party voters—and the inaction of 100 million Americans who couldn’t be bothered to participate in one of the greatest responsibilities of living here.

That’s it.

No Providence.
No Divine messages.
No Biblical prophecies.
No spiritual movements.

Just ordinary human beings who chose really, really poorly when they should have known better.

This isn’t a mystery or a miracle—and it sure as hell isn’t God. Christians need to stop passing the buck to God, and just own the compromises and sick bedfellows they’ve been willing to make for Supreme Court seats, anti-LGBTQ legislation, weapon stockpiling, and a rapidly assembling white Christian theocracy.

Stop namedropping God.

God wasn’t generating fake news or showing up at his campaign rallies or stumping for him at nationwide crusades or using him as an expression of their misogyny.
God didn’t vote for the guy who said he could grab women by the genitalia.
God didn’t choose the guy who said protestors should be beaten.
God didn’t go with the guy endorsed by the KKK.
God didn’t excuse the bankruptcies and overlook the affairs and laugh off the racist remarks.

I’m pretty sure people did that—lots of supposedly Christian folks.

And God isn’t now taunting teenage shooting victims on social media, or ignoring thousands of lost immigrant children, or turning a blind eye to Constitutional crises, or celebrating LGBTQ discrimination, or laughing off collusion, treason, and human rights atrocities.

Again, Christians.

We really should stop pretending God is responsible for this fast food dumpster fire, when it’s clear whose hand is in it all.

This reality is the rotten fruit of misogyny, racism, Nationalism, fear, xenophobia, and bigotry—all released by people who want God to consent to it all so they don’t have to deal with their own culpability or face their own repentance.

God does not consent.

Pray on that.

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Shower Thoughts

Maybe aliens are waiting for us to go one full day without us killing a member of our own species before making contact. If that’s the case, they’ve got a long wait ahead of them.

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Quote Of The Day

Light thinks it travels faster than anything, but it’s wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always gotten there first and is waiting for it.” ~ Terry Pratchett

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A Birthday Gift to Myself

I’d been missing these little buggers since I sold the last ones I owned to my friend John nearly ten years ago.

A bit of history:

I bought a set of these new back in 1979 shortly after they came out. I remember first seeing them while walking down the aisle at LaBelle’s and I did a double-take as I strode past. What the fuck were these?

There was no internet at the time where I could go look them up. Fortunately there was an print ad and a product brochure available that answered all my questions. The fire had been started. One way or another I had to get a set!

At the time the tuner and pre-amp each sold for $260 (approx. $950 in today’s dollars). The power amp was $360 ($1300 now). Not out of reach, but definitely not cheap.

And even though I was making decent money at the time and still living at home, I couldn’t afford to buy the entire set at once. (Like I couldn’t afford to buy the complete set all at once at today’s prices either, because using the same inflation calculator I used to determine today’s price, I made the very sad discovery that my overall wages have essentially remained stagnant for the last 40 years.)  So they came piecemeal over the course of about two months.

Brand new in 1979

At the time they were wonders of technology, packing the performance and specs of full-sized audio components into a very small form factor. Probably not all that surprising today, but thirty-nine years ago it was amazing. It was a trend followed by the entire industry, but Technics did it first, and in my humble opinion—even after all these years—did it best. The fit and finish of these components remains unparalleled. Each case was milled from a solid block of aluminum and everything from the adjustable feet on the bottom to the trippy LED power meter on the amp spoke attention to detail.

I sold the set a few months after I bought them because—despite their technological prowess—I’d been spoiled by the sound of my Sony V-FET amp, and despite its proclivity for self-destruction, maintaining that sound was (at least for the first few years) worth the expense of getting it repaired each time it happened.

I reconnected with the Technics Micro Series in 2000 via eBay. In fact, I picked up a couple sets, immediately reselling one for a slight profit. I held onto the other set until around 2008, when my desire for a shiny new DSLR outweighed my need to keep them, and off to John they went.

While I have thoroughly enjoyed the camera over the years and don’t regret having sold them in order to get it, every time I ran across a photo of these components online, I felt a little pang. Now and then I’d ask John if he’d be willing to part with them if I wanted to buy them back, and without fail he’d say he was “keeping them for me” and I could get them back any time.

That is, until a couple weeks ago, when I actually had funds available to do it. “I’d like to keep the set honestly.”

As luck would have it, however, two other sets were being offered on eBay, both of which going for substantially less than what I would’ve paid John to get my set back. The cheaper of the two eBay sets looked like it’d been ridden hard and put away wet. The other had only a few minor scuffs, and was definitely worth the $100 differential between the two. I threw caution to the wind, and clicked “Buy It Now.”

I had a milestone birthday coming up, y’know…

They arrived yesterday. The seller knew what he was doing with the packing, as they arrived in perfect condition. He even sent them Priority Mail (a friggin’ $79 expense) at no additional cost.

I haven’t tested everything yet, but they are connected to the television and believe me, to these 60 year old ears, they sound just fine.

And those power meters are just as trippy now as they were in 1980.

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Our Neighborhood Needs Mr. Rogers

From John Pavlovitz:

I got to visit with an old neighborhood friend today.

When I was a child, Fred Rogers always made me feel that his home was my home, and I gladly spent countless afternoons there learning and listening and dreaming.

Sitting in a packed screening of Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, a much older, much more cynical me traveled back in time to that place, and for an hour I remembered what it felt like to be so welcomed and so filled with hope.

The moment that familiar front door opened, and I saw those twinkling eyes and heard his soft voice singing me into his living room again—the tears came easily. Embarrassed, I tried to quickly wipe them from my cheeks, but it would prove to be futile. I looked around the room and also noticed it was unnecessary: I was in good, tearful company.

I always knew how much I loved Mr Rogers. I just didn’t realize how much I missed him, how much this world misses him.

His quiet gentleness, his profound reverence for diverse humanity, his willingness to embrace the outsider, and his absolute refusal to shout in order to be heard—they’ve never seemed so foreign or so urgently needed. 

I am finding myself terribly homesick for the neighborhood Mr Rogers built and made me feel a part of.

Hearing Fred Rogers speaking on screen nearly 50 years ago, his voice is prophetic, as if he was warning us of what we could become if weren’t careful. He lamented children being seen as consumers, abhorred people being treated as less-than, and he subversively resisted the bigotry that was so prevalent—and in all these areas, he gently but defiantly pulled us all toward a better way of being together.

Fred’s unspoken but very real Christian faith feels equally countercultural in these days of showy, empty religion and bullhorn-propelled damnation.
It was a beautifully unassuming presence, existing in the background, solely as a means of him loving his neighbor as himself.
It was a spirituality that didn’t need to announce itself loudly or impose its will on anyone; an ever-widening circle of inclusion that simply made room for everyone without caveat or condition.
It wasn’t defined by anything, other than leaving other people feeling seen and heard and loved—and it didn’t require a word to preach eloquently.

I don’t see these kinds of Christians very much in the neighborhood anymore and it too, grieves me.

I think that’s why I cried visiting with my old friend: because seeing him again reminded me of a world that could and should be, and one that seems so terribly out of reach right now. It reminded me of a version of myself that I miss; someone who believed the best about himself and about the people he shared this life with. I cried because I realized how fractured we are and how exhausting this makes us.

My country desperately needs people like Fred Rogers.
Our Evangelical Church does.
Our Government does.
Our President does.
I do.
We need to be reminded that our humanity shows up most clearly, as we see the humanity in those we so briefly share this planet with, and treat them with the dignity they deserve.

This planet needs more loving neighbors.

It needs people who will walk with us through the nightmares of our days, not afraid to name how terrifying they are—while never relinquishing hope that day will break and that the goodness of people will shine with radiant brilliance.

It needs people who see the inherent beauty in human beings simply because they exist; in all their flawed, original, beautiful difference; who linger with them long enough to really hear their pain and their longings and their dreams—and to see them all as sacred ground.

This world needs people who know that we are one another’s neighbors and that we are at our very best when we endeavor to welcome each other and to love one another well.

It needs people who realize that a loveless religion isn’t worth practicing; that a faith that damages or divides probably isn’t worth holding on to; that if it needs to loudly declare itself—it’s likely fraudulent.

Most of all it needs people who understand that such things are not hokey or old-fashioned or passé—they are the prophetic, bold, way forward. They are the only method of saving our shared humanity. They are the only chance we have to hold on to our souls in days that would threaten to steal them.

If you’re disheartened by the cruelty in this world, by the absence of compassion you see, by how weaponized religion has become, by how loud the dividers have grown—consider that sadness an invitation.

It’s probably a good time to imagine a world that could and should be, and to get about the work of making that world.

Let my old neighborhood friend Mr Rogers remind you how startling simple, yet how deceptively difficult that world-making can be: 

Open your door widely, see the very best in people, and unashamedly sing them into your presence so that they know they are loveable.

Be a loving neighbor.

Mr. Rogers appeared on the scene shortly after I might’ve been his target audience. My friends and I—entering our jaded pre-teen years in the tumultuous late 60s, knew it all, and found Rogers schmaltzy and his puppet kingdom side-splittingly hilarious in an awful sort of way. But now I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Pavlovitz above. We need a Fred Rogers today, more than ever.

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