This & That

I was watching TV the other day with Norah. We were watching The Dinosaur Train. (Grandparents learn about all kinds of TV shows and cartoons they never heard of before.) I was shocked! The whole program was about dinosaur poop! That's right--dinosaur poop. It had a scientific orientation--a didactic cartoon. But poop? Of course pooping is a big part of a toddler's life experience.

May you heard about our new governor in Alabama. He shot off his mouth the other day about his faith, saying that anyone who was a Christian was his brother or sister, but if you weren't a Christian you were not his sister or brother. Well, not a politic thing to say. He was swiftly reprimanded by the media and had to meet the next day with several rabbis and ministers to apologize. In politics you can't alienate a whole group of people. But the dirty little secret of Evangelical Christianity is that 'born again' Christians do not see non-Christians as brothers and sisters in the family of God. Most people in Alabama belief just that. But to say it out in the open like our Governor did was shocking to non-born-again folk. One of my seminary professors told us that in the Bible the Fatherhood of God is proclaimed on two levels: All people are children of God according to creation; but only those who trust in Jesus are children of God according to redemption. Our Governor forgot about (or didn't understand) the relatedness of all people by the fact of creation. The Evangelical Christian stance is logically exclusive--it fences people out who don't believe the same way. It speaks out of both sides of its mouth. Yes, we are equal in the sight of God, they say. But we are more equal than you. That is, we have a closer relationship with God than non-Christians. In the end (the Evangelicals say), we will end up in eternal bliss and you will be water-boarded with fire forever. When the Governor apologized he said he didn't mean to disenfranchise anyone. But Evangelical theology is a theology of disenfranchisement. 

Something else on my mind: This guy that shot the Representative. He is a white, heterosexual, citizen, non-alien, non-immigrant. Don't you see the problem? Why hasn't Fox News demanded that we get rid of all those white, heterosexual, legal citizens? 

That's all.