A Prayer for American Christians

Father, pity your Christian children in America.
Have mercy upon us when don’t do your will.
Have sympathy when we don’t do what you tell us to do.
Do not punish us; be lavish with the gift of your Spirit.

We are not Christians because we are better than others.
We are Christians because you moved in our lives.
We are not virtuous because we were born virtuous.
Our virtue is a gift of your Spirit.

You teach us virtue.
You teach us, by Paul, that we must not boast.
You teach us, by Jesus, that we serve you when we serve the weak.
You teach us, by Jesus, to love our neighbors as ourselves.

But we don’t love our neighbors as ourselves.
We may despise our neighbors, as if we could judge them.
We treat our Muslim neighbors badly.
We stop their architecture of worship.

Lord, I trust that you cherish our Muslim neighbors.
You are the Maker; you made us all.
An artist loves his art, and you love the work of you hand.
And Ishmael, like Isaac, was made by you.

Lord, precept by precept, day by day, etch your Word upon our hearts.
By your spirit, put your image upon our souls.
Teach us to love what you love, cherish what you cherish.
Teach us to cherish our Muslim neighbors as you cherish them.

But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. [Isaiah 64:6.]

Have pity, Lord. Remember that we are leaves in the wind.

In Jesus’s name, Amen.

When Christians are Assholes

I know an  old woman. She’s 92 years old and frail. She had a tidy sum set aside for her comfort in old age. But one day she owed a property-tax bill, and a snafu created a kink in her cash flow.

To her it was horrible to think that she might pay a tax bill late. So she went to her rich, rich daughter for help. The daughter is rich because of seed money supplied by her mother - the woman I'm talking about. To the daughter’s credit, she had managed that seed money shrewdly.

The daughter didn’t act out of gratitude to her mother. She didn’t lend money to her mother to spare her mother the embarrassment of paying a tax bill late. Instead, she coerced her trusting mother to put all of her property in an irrevokable trust controlled by the daughter. That meant that Mother lost control over her own property. She also lost the power to will the remainder of her property after she died to whom she chose.

Mother sued to regain control over her own estate. The rich daughter hired an expensive Orange County law firm to keep her money away from her. The daughter has wasted her elderly mother’s estate to keep it away from her mother. She has wasted her mother’s hundreds-of-thousands of dollars to do this.

The daughter has done this because she resents her brother, whom the old woman loves. She won’t be satisfied until the brother is ruined, and until her mother gets her nutrition out of a dumpster behind a doughnut shop. I am not being figurative. I mean this literally.

The daughter is "born again".

So I know up-close about Christians who are feces-flecked assholes.

I’m not a castaway in this knowledge of the deceitfulness of outward piety. Whoever knows scripture knows of this, too.

Jesus’s enemies drove nails into him and hung him to die in public in agony on cross-bars of timber. Before they did that, they spewed religious grievances against him. Their complaints were pious - too, too pious. He had grievances against them, too - he called them hypocrites.

Hypocrite comes from the Greek hupokrites. The Greek word means "actor, dissembler, pretender". (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Sixth Edition.)

Look at Psalm 55. The afflicted and tormented Psalmist speaks of his tormentor. His tormentor was his pious friend:

For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it: neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me; then I would have hid myself from him: But it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked unto the house of God in company.

Which brings us to the subject of today’s tirade.

Rick Perry makes it known that he wants to run for president. Then, suddenly, he is moved to hold a huge prayer rally, prominently featuring his pious, pious self.

Rick Perry IS Matthew 6:5:

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

I piss on the piety of a man who holds a rally nominally to promote God, but really to promote himself. I piss on the piety of a man who clothes himself in love of God, who really wears his own ambition.

With this rally, Perry has made himself a Christian leader. Christian leaders take for themselves one of two Biblical texts. One or another of these texts is written on their souls. Imprinted on a Christian leader’s soul, one is good; the other is evil. I don’t need to tell you which is which. These two texts are:

He must become greater; I must become less. (John 3:30 (NIV).)

And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. (John 12:32 (KJV).)

A man who decides to run for president and immediately features himself in a huge prayer rally has one of these written on his soul.

Guess which.

A man like that always has a few nail in his pocket, ready to pierce Jesus with them. This is true whether the public knows it or not. It’s true whether he knows it or not. Predators, hypocrites, fool themselves about their own piety before they fool others. And the more the public is fooled, the more the hypocrite fools himself.

Dread the prospect of a powerful hypocrite. Dread the prospect of a hypocrite ruling the country from the White House.