How many people did the Church kill today?

“They will know we are Christians by our love.” Jesus-inspired lyrics. Wonderful sentiment. If only.

And here we are.
        Before I get into this very far I want to stress up front that there are churches trying their best to do the right thing during this pandemic when it comes to keeping their congregants and community safe. Unfortunately those actions don’t grab the headlines like the churches that are hell bent on bringing harm to others in the name of worshiping Jesus.

First, do no harm! Too easy.
        Wear a mask. Protect other people.
        Something as simple as wearing a mask during a pandemic to protect fellow human beings was and remains beyond too many “Christians”. Wearing a mask to protect others is asking too much of some supposed followers of Jesus Christ, a man that led by example. A man that told his followers to spread the good news and to love one’s neighbors.
        I guess that I missed the part in the bible where Jesus said go forth and spread disease. It must have been in the same section where he said to gather in his name to endanger and kill one another. Followed by the ever popular “and make sure that the little children suffer too”.

It was a commandment not a suggestion.
        Love your neighbor. How complicated is that?
        Wearing a mask, if nothing else, is an act of demonstrating Christian love. But somehow it’s tearing communities and churches apart. They aren’t capable of caring enough for their own church members to wear masks and keep their physical distance let alone members of the community.

Typhoid Khristians.
        Since the very beginning of the current pandemic churches and church groups have been “hot spots” for spreading the plague to the rest of the community. Too many Christians have fought heroically to maintain this status. Let’s call them Khristians with a ‘K’ instead of a “C” in order to differentiate them from followers of Christ.
        Khristians are followers of the Liar. They are working for the Dark Angel. They are of the far-right Evangelical Party. Like the Liar they are perpetual victims. They are the Constitutional Khristians of the Amerika that they would recreate in their image. Their rights to endanger and kill in the name of Jesus come first.
        They are the death squads. They are directly responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. They work diligently to increase the body count every day—especially on Sunday.
        Like the Liar they accept no responsibility. Like the Liar they are victims. The Liar’s truth is their truth. It is the Liar’s vision that they spread. “We are Amerika!” is their guiding psalm.

The hoax that keeps on killing.

Ω How many people did the church kill, endanger or infect today in the name of Jesus?

Ω How many people in the community did the church spread the plague to today?

Ω How much damage to our Republic did the church do today in support of the Liar?

Ω How much economic damage did the church do today?

Ω What falsehoods did the church support and spread today in the name of Jesus?

        The above are not questions that should have to be asked at any time let alone on a Sunday morning yet here we are. Whether we like it or not these questions and worse are being asked by believers and non-believers alike.

Criminally negligent homicide.
        An ultra-conservative Christian group operates not far from where we live. Kanakuk Kamps has been in operation for decades. I copied the below statement from their web page.

“At Kanakuk, we live I’m Third—God First. Others Second. I’m Third. This foundational principle is integrated into each of our Kamp’s programming, equipping Kampers to be Christ-like examples who lead with responsibility and care.”

        They have been in the news because initially 40 of their “Kampers” and counselors tested positive for COVID-19. The number grew to over 80. In the end, the number of Stone County confirmed cases only went up one since all the rest were not from this area. They took the virus to their homes and communities across 10 states.
        In light of the above would you think that they stopped holding kamps at the outbreak? If you did you thought wrong.

“Others second” my ass.
        Holding a church camp for kids the middle of a pandemic should be considered criminal. (BTW their other camps are ongoing.) The kids and counselors interacted with others in the community. There is no way of knowing what the final toll or impact will be.

Leadership.
        How are pastors handling the mask question? How are they handling providing safe services for their followers? (I’m talking about the ones that aren’t openly flaunting their disdain for protecting others.) Are they going along to get along?
        Some aren’t. They are encouraging doing all the right things. Some are only having online services and holding meetings and studies using technology like Zoom. They’re using phone calls and emails and are wearing masks when necessary.

Others? Not so much.
        I’ve spent some time surfing religious sites and taking in some online services during pandemic time just to see what’s up. Pretty sad really. Some of the services that I watched are in areas where COVID-19 cases are increasing dramatically.
        If you think that I saw a lot of masks and people keeping a physical distance you’d be wrong. If you thought there wouldn’t be any singing you’d also be wrong.
        Why singing? What’s wrong with singing? Well, singing really projects the virus out there. It goes farther than 6 feet. It aerosolizes and hangs in the air longer and gets spread by the ventilation and movement in the air. It’s the churches’ way of really going the distance to spread the virus.

Ripples in the water.
        And get the virus out there they do. Time and time again we can read in local and national news where the virus was spread out into the community from churches. Pastors have died. Their congregants have died. People in the community have died. People also got sick and recovered. Some will have ongoing medical issues for the rest of their now shortened lives.
        One church leader, no name provided, wrote 1588 words about wearing masks. Whoever they were they were pretty worked up about it. Cited all sorts of scripture. Talked about congregants fighting with each other and how un-Christian it all was.
        Never took an actual position. 1588 words and couldn’t say something as easy and simple as “Wear a mask: it’s the Christian thing to do.”

Fear.
        Regardless of what happens we’re going to end up with fewer churches and fewer followers of the real Jesus as this pandemic runs its course. There will be pastors who, whether directly or indirectly, lead their congregations to dissolution. Some smaller congregations will simply lose too many people to COVID-19 to continue financially.
        There are already Christians leaving churches over the mask issue. Their fellow Christians won’t even wear a mask for bible study. Such a small imposition yet it’s dividing churches.
        Like it or not, if a pastor takes a position either way on masks and physical distancing there will be supposed believers alienated. People have already switched churches in order to go to a church that doesn’t treat the pandemic seriously and vice versa. Some just leave.

        WWJD?

Jesus had the courage of his convictions.
        Unlike too many pastors of today Jesus wasn’t afraid to speak out and take a position to save lives. Now Jesus could bob and weave with the best of them when it came to politics but ultimately he took a position there as well, and died for it. Without getting into all of the theology, with that act he put everyone else first. That’s in keeping with the trinity. He put others before his own wellbeing.
        When alive he cured the sick, injured and lame. He didn’t kill people. He didn’t endanger people. He cured lepers. He didn’t spread leprosy. He wasn’t afraid of losing his church.
        Simply put, Jesus would have worn a mask. His followers would have worn masks as well. Jesus would have worn a mask even if it meant a personal sacrifice to his wellbeing. He carried a cross for us. Wearing a mask would have been easy.

Being thankful [RELIGIOUS]

        ^ I was up early this morning. As I headed down the hall towards the front of the house I noticed that the outside light that’s hooked up to a motion detector was on. I went to the front door and flicked on a section of porch lights as I looked out the window.

        ^ We have a LOT of porch lights since our porch goes around the entire house. Seriously, small planes could land in the field to the north of us we throw out so much light. There wasn’t anything on the porch, down the steps or in front of the house. Miss Winnie, a neighbor’s Beagle, will sometimes sit on the front porch steps until I come out and give her a treat. That would have been way early for Miss Winnie though. She doesn’t usually show up until the afternoon or at dusk. Her people don’t want me giving her too many treats since she has a bit of a weight problem.

        ^ There wasn’t anything there. The wind was blowing hard enough to be moving our wind chime and shade curtains that I was supposed to take down at the end of summer so much that the motion detector was responding. It was a cold wind too.

        ^ I was keeping a low profile so as not to disturb Kyra and Gadget.

        ^ If it’s technically morning and they’re up then they want to be fed and their feed time was still a couple of hours off. If we feed them early then that becomes their new feed time and they reset their little internal clocks. If I don’t feed them then I spend the next couple of hours avoiding eye contact with them as they try and use their doggie mind powers on me to guilt me into going ahead and feeding them since they haven’t eaten in days.

        ^ So I just sat down in my leather easy chair, got out the lapboard that I made for Dad when we were taking care of him and got my laptop from the table to do a little important work. After logging onto Facebook I read in a post where some friends lost a beloved pet. Immediately sad. Made me think of losing Old Fella and of course that made me tear up. Hey, I know combat veterans that cry when they lose a beloved pet like that. Shelley and I had just been talking about Old Fella last night before bed.

        ^ What I also noticed was that they gave thanks for the mercy extended by a stranger, knowing that their girl wasn’t suffering and that they didn’t have to always wonder what happened to her. Good times with their friend were also mentioned.

        ^ The train of life thought reminded me of when my dad passed away at a young age. I said then that we could be sorry at every future holiday that he would miss or be thankful for the holidays and time that we did have with him. We could remember his laugh. We could do what we’re supposed to do and keep on going the best we can.

        ^ We’re believers so we give thanks several times a day in our prayers. But you don’t have to be a believer to give thanks. And when I say believer I mean believer of any faith.

        ^ I usually start my prayer off with “heavenly Father”. It’s a habit of assigning gender to God from my Southern Baptist days. (I’m still in recovery.) Creator or Creator God works just as well. It’s immaterial to me if you use heavenly Mother. I’m starting to wander again. Anyway, a typical prayer for me goes:

        ^ “Heavenly Father, thank you for the many blessings that you have given us. Thank you for this day. Forgive us/my/our sins. Guide us and watch over us as we continue on our journey. Help us make the right decisions. (Shelley will often say “illuminate our path”. I really like that.) Thank you for this food before us. Bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies. Let us be ever mindful of the needs of others. We ask these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

        ^ When I’m praying for myself I will usually ask to be a better husband, friend, father, to make the right decisions in life, to listen better, to act better, to be more understanding and tolerant. When I pray for the President, any President, I pray for the same things that I pray for myself.

        ^ There are all sorts of variations and things that we add in our prayers. We will often give thanks for friends and family, specific events or people as well as ask for something for a particular person or group in need.

        ^ I believe that the important thing it to look every day for things to be positive about and thankful for even if it’s just having a roof over your head, food to eat or water to drink. I remember being taught to be thankful even when we were poor and living in three rooms. I remember being thankful that my older brother passed quickly and without suffering too much. Being thankful just isn’t about the material things that surround us. Being thankful should start with the basics of life and working from there.

        ^ You don’t have to be religious to be thankful during the day. Set aside times to think about where you are and where you need to go to get to place where you can be thankful if you aren’t. If you’re with beloveds then be thankful with them. Take the time to tell someone that you’re thankful that they’re in your life.

        ^ Since I am a believer I am thankful for the love I’ve known and for the life I’ve lived that brought me to this good place. I’m thankful for Shelley, friends and family. I’m thankful for a God whose son taught us that Love is what is most important.

It just doesn’t matter [Politics]

There’s a scene in the movie “Meatballs” that I just love. It’s the “It just doesn’t matter” speech given by Bill Murray’s character Tripper. Some of you may remember the speech. You can Google those words and bring up the scene on YouTube to refresh your memory. It just lasts a couple of minutes so you should do it now if you don’t know what I’m talking about. In the movie there is a rivalry between a two summer camps. Tripper is a camp counselor at North Star, the underdogs. They are losing badly, as they have done 12 years in a row to the Mohawks. In the scene I’m referring to Tripper is giving a “pep talk” to rally the troops. In the talk he says that whether they win or lose the really good looking girls are still going to go out with the Mohawk guys because “they’ve got all the money.”  My favorite line from the scene is, “It just doesn’t matter if we win or lose.”

Social media is getting uglier by the minute whether a person has a few friends or a few thousand. There’s a reason that I’m bringing it up today as the doomsday election draws ever closer. As we fast approach the time when our earth becomes a burning nuclear cinder circling the sun it might be worth considering being a little nicer to one another in these end times. After all, anybody can be a jerk in difficult times. It might be harder, but shouldn’t we choose being nice(r) instead?

I’ve had to unfriend some people from Facebook because their posts were just too personally offensive. There are lots of posts of the nature of if you’re voting for ________(Fill in the blank.) you’re stupid or a special kind of stupid, or ignorant, or an idiot, or…oh, just fill in your favorite pejorative. Those are mild examples. There are posts that go way beyond mild. Being generic doesn’t make them any less insulting, offensive or personal.

At this point in time what we say or do, other than voting, really isn’t going to make any difference in the overall scheme of things other than to incite people to anger and/or cause hurt feelings. Whether people are interested in reaching out or not the point to consider is “It just doesn’t matter.” It would be wrong in the current atmosphere of extreme hyperbole, mistrust and incitement to make assumptions as to who friends, family or acquaintances might be supporting or what ideals they might hold.  The person being called a name may even be a loved one who knows better than to state their position openly because of the comments that have been made. It has EXACTLY the same effect if you post a generic meme that says “If you are voting for Hillary, you are a complete idiot” as if you posted on my timeline, “Keith, you are an idiot for voting for Hillary.” Next time you’re tempted to share one of those memes, think about the effect it may have on your Facebook friends.

Here’s the deal though and I think this is important. How we interact in our social circles big or small isn’t really going to make any difference in the big picture. Shelley and I have already done our homework and know how we’re going to vote. I believe this to be true for the majority of the voting population. The smaller number that haven’t made up their minds, the undecideds, regardless of their affiliation are the ones to whom people should really be reaching out on behalf of their candidate. I don’t believe that insulting people is the way to put a best foot forward for the candidate being supported.

Our vote is just a grain of sand amongst others (which is not to say it is not important). But how we act with each other is important and has consequences. We are examples to others whether we like it or not. How we express ourselves speaks to the ideals that we hold. If we say that we’re of the faith or people know that information about us then they will view us through that filter. With that in mind I believe that we should be able to justify what we do and how we act, especially to the younger ones. I think that we should be able to do that without insulting people who aren’t the main characters in the show of life that we’re watching.

The two Great Commandments [Religion/Homosexuality]

          I don't want to start a war of scriptures here. I'm just sharing my guiding life verse, Matthew 22:34-40. "But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." For the quoted text I used the King James Version bible that my grandma gave to me so many decades ago.

If I hold to the above scripture it keeps life and what I'm supposed to do much simpler. Otherwise we quickly descend into interpretation, definitions, context and then what did the original Greek word mean. It just never ends. Scripture is hurled back and forth like word grenades. No quarter is given.

As an example, would it be neighborly or loving of me to call a gay neighbor an abomination? If that neighbor is a "None" (No religious affiliation) that I would like to talk with about Jesus, being saved and Christianity? That really wouldn't be a good way to start a conversation let alone build a neighborly relationship. The problem we have in building the faith is that MILLIONS of Christians are SHOUTING from the rooftops and the World Wide Web that gays are an abomination before God as well as citing any number of other hateful, non-loving scriptures to anyone that will listen.  

Churches are being busted up and/or closing over the issue of homosexuality. People are leaving the faith. Families are being torn up. In the United States, the Christian faith, based on the bible, declines in numbers with each passing year. People have made an idol of words. They worship the words.

There are some hard words in the bible. Real. Hard. That’s the truth of the matter. We have to live with that. But we do have the example of Jesus before us as well and those two great commandments. So would gay people be an abomination before Jesus? No. No, they would not.

Do we as Christians fulfill the second great commandment if we deny our neighbor a service like baking a cake for their wedding? Jesus would have baked them 2 cakes.  People will argue with that. People will argue with any number of simple acts of kindness and love. In the final analysis Jesus had a servant’s heart and encouraged the same in us.

We reduce arguments to niches, clichés and often make it personal. I read a comment that said if we want our nation to be Christian (I'm paraphrasing) then we need to stop voting for Liberals. Then we place people in niches as being conservative, right wing, left wing, liberal or some mix thereof.

If we’re going to use clichés and niches then Jesus would qualify as a bleeding heart liberal with the things that he says. At least that is what the Pharisees would say.  He put the poor waaaay before the rich. It seems I remember him telling some rich young guy to sell all his stuff and give it away. He didn’t. He liked his stuff. What would Jesus tell the “one percenters” of today to do with their incredible wealth?

I'm old enough to remember the time when people who were divorced were looked down upon by the church. (Some still do.) If Christianity hadn't loosened up as to the treatment of divorced couples the numbers of church members would have been decimated even further.

People can't talk me out of my faith. Even for the four decades that I didn’t go to church I never lost my faith. It’s like that for some of us.

The Nones may not even want me trying to talk them into the faith. That’s their call. That’s the way it works. But if I do try, I don’t plan to insult or vilify them first.

 So as believers we're stuck in a Catch 22 because we're supposed to talk about our faith; bring people to the faith. We certainly aren't supposed to deny it. That's why our actions, how we behave and what we say are so important. We have to look like we have something that people want, something that they can apply to their daily lives that will have relevancy; that will make them want to talk to us. Whether they talk with us or not we have done what we are supposed to do. We have served humanity and a higher purpose by looking past ourselves in the service to others.