Showing posts with label Matthew 25. Show all posts

30 October 2018

Religious leaders interrupt Sessions with Bible quotes at 'religious freedom' event, get thrown out 29OKT18

MORE right wing religious hypocrisy from the drumpf/trump-pence administration. AG jeff sessions has been challenged by members of the United Methodist Church about his faith in the right wing's alt Jesus before. If anyone in America, and especially in the government, is waging war on religion in America it is the political / religious right wing in this country.
Religious leaders interrupt Sessions with Bible quotes at 'religious freedom' event, get thrown out

Monday October 29, 2018 · 1:15 PM EDT

A Methodist minister stands up to Jeff Sesions

Speaking at an event in Boston, Attorney General Jeff Sessions was interrupted by religious leaders, whom Sessions would go onto accuse of attacking him. A Methodist minister was the first to speak up, reciting Bible passages. “

“I was hungry and you did not feed me. I was a stranger and you did not welcome me. I was naked and you did not clothe me. I was a stranger and you did not welcome me. I was sick and in prison, and you didn't visit me. Brother Jeff, as a fellow United Methodist, I call on you to repent. To care for those in need. To remember that when you do not care for others you are wounding the body of Christ.”

And how did Jeff Sessions respond? By accusing the minister of attacking him. How is quoting the Bible, which Jeff Sessions says guides him, attacking Jeff Sessions? As police moved in to quickly escort the minister out, Baptist pastor stood and began defending the minister’s First Amendment rights. One big mouth in the room began shouting down the pastor, yelling for him to ‘Go home!’ Nevertheless, the pastor continued speaking out saying that he was exercising his rights to religious freedom and his right to express himself, loudly telling the crowd they were hypocritical to be throwing him out of an event for religious freedom while ‘throwing him out for that very work.’

As police took them out, Jeff Sessions had the power to tell police to let them be, instead he watched as they walked right past his podium before going back to his speech.

Watch this extraordinary moment.

1. ABC News Politics‏Verified account @ABCPolitics 22 hours ago
  
  Jeff Sessions responds to protesters: "I don't believe there's anything in my theology that says a secular nationstate cannot have lawful laws to control immigration ... not immoral, not indecent and not unkind to state what your laws are and then set about to enforce them"
  
  1:54
  
  82.8K views
  
  284 replies356 retweets742 likes

Will other religious leaders have the courage to stand up and speak out?

Personal Jesus

Depeche Mode

Reach out and touch faith
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who's there
Feeling unknown
And you're all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
I'll make you a believer
Take second best
Put me to the test
Things on your chest
You need to confess

I will deliver
You know I'm a forgiver
Reach out and touch faith
Reach out and touch faith
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who's there

Feeling unknown
And you're all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
I'll make you a believer

I will deliver
You know I'm a forgiver
Reach out and touch faith
Your own personal Jesus
Reach out and touch faith
Reach out and touch faith
Reach out and touch faith
Reach out reach out
Reach out and touch faith
Reach out and touch faith

Songwriters: Martin Lee Gore

Personal Jesus lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

19 June 2018

No, The Gospel Isn’t “Good News” For Everyone 19JUN18

I am posting articles about the Christian denominations and people of faith who are speaking out and organizing against the neo-nazi fascist policies and actions of the drumpf/trump administration. IT is a sad comment on the publicly declared Christian faith of those who instruct undocumented children to be separated from their parents and the children, mothers and fathers be kept in poorly supplied cages. I will leave the judging of their Christianity to God because I too am a sinner. BUT I am free to state that their Christianity, their gospel of greed, bigotry, hate, un-compassion and their alt-Jesus is not the Christianity and Jesus was taught and who I believe in. This from Formerly Fundie Benjamin L Corey.....

No, The Gospel Isn’t “Good News” For Everyone

Over the years I’ve been fond of saying, “if the Gospel isn’t good news for everyone, it isn’t good news for anyone.”

When I’ve said it, I believed it and said it with sincerity. I can also recognize that I said it in part to push-back against the faith of my youth which essentially proclaimed a gospel that is bad, bad, news for the majority of human beings who have ever lived. Pushing back on things that are wrong is good– but sometimes we can push too far in the opposite direction, not because it’s true or accurate, but for the sake of distancing ourselves from the alternative.

But today, I admit: I was wrong. The Gospel isn’t good news for everyone.

I have never been more aware of this as I have been this past week when reading stories of the Trump administration’s practice of separating children from their families at our southern border, and housing them in cages like animals at best– or handing them off to human traffickers at worst.

This feeling inside me has been building as I have read stories of children crying for their mothers. It’s festered as I’ve seen pictures of where the children are kept–pictures that look like my local dog kennel instead of a place for children. And it surely boiled over as I read an article by former First Lady Laura Bush, who reported that government officials who warehouse these children are instructed not to touch, pick up, or comfort children who are crying.

Hogar de Paul Harris, 2011. Benjamin L. Corey photo.

While I live in Maine and am about as far away from the southern border as one can get, these stories strike eerily close to home for me. You see, on the day I became a father it wasn’t in the delivery room of our local hospital. My first glimpse of my two wonderful daughters wasn’t as the nurse wrapped them in blankets, proclaiming “both girls!”

No, my first glimpse of my children was seeing them wave to me through the bars of the cage they were locked in.

I had no idea the first time I’d lay eyes on my children there would be a steel door with bars and a prominent lock in the middle separating us. I had always imagined our first moment would be filled with overflowing emotions of joy, but instead, as I saw my girls reach out between the bars to get our attention, the first emotion that filled my heart was absolute fury at the realization they had been waiting and locked in a cage all this time.

And so when I read stories of children being ripped from their mother’s arms, when I see images of cages that have little humans in them instead of dogs, and when I hear reports of children crying and needing comfort– but those tasked with caring for them being prohibited from picking them up, touching them, or soothing them, I realize I have been beyond erroneous in saying the Gospel is good news for everyone.

No, no, no– it is not.

The Gospel is not good news for those who rip children out of the arms of their mothers as they flee from places of poverty and violence.

The Gospel is not good news for those who toss these children in cages, subjecting them to additional trauma.

The Gospel is not good news for those who prohibit touching or comforting crying children, nor is it good news for those who obey such immoral directives.

For those who make these unjust policies, for those who carry them out even in the name of keeping their jobs, and for those who support the oppressors who enact these policies that destroy families and traumatize children, the Gospel is actually no-good-very-bad-news.

Regardless of theological position or nuance of what does or does not happen in the afterlife, what cannot be denied for anyone who claims to follow Jesus is that he clearly and articulately warned of a coming judgement. In fact, he laid it out in Matthew 25 so there were no questions: at the final judgement there will be two groups of people, and one will face divine punishment.

As much as I hate to spoil the surprise for those who haven’t gotten to this part of the Bible yet, it’s not “the gays, fake news media, and ‘godless progressives'” who get separated from the pack in order to receive their punishment.

Those who face the wrath of God, Jesus said, are those who did not welcome the immigrant, who did not clothe the naked, or feed the hungry. And specifically regarding harming children, let me remind you, is an act where Jesus said it would be better to have a rock tied around your neck and be thrown into the deepest ocean.

No matter which way you spin it, the Gospel is not good news for everyone if you believe Jesus.

No… it’s actually no-good-horrible-news for those who enact, support, or participate in the Trump administration’s unconscionable actions of ripping children out of the arms of their mothers, and then locking these children in cages.

05 March 2018

Jesus Didn’t Tell Caesar What To Do? The Religious Right’s Most Confusing Claim 1MAR18

ANOTHER attack on Christianity in America, this one carried out by jerry falwell jr in defense of the gospel of greed and the alt jesus the evangelical right wing worships. falwell's tweet should be condemned as apostasy, he is attempting to justify christian sharia law being imposed on the nation while rejecting the teachings of Jesus Christ in Matthew 25. Christ himself warned of false prophets Matthew 24:4-5 "4 And Jesus answered and said unto them, 'Take heed that no man deceive you. 5 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.' " So a clearer rendering of what Jesus meant in Matthew 24:4-5 would be: “Take heed that no one deceives you. For many shall come claiming to represent Me, saying that I [Jesus] am the Christ, yet shall deceive many.” That is, they would proclaim Jesus as the biblical Messiah and would claim to be His representatives—but they actually would be part of a massive religious deception. This from Benjamin L Cory / Formerly Fundie and there is much more on religion in America here......

Jesus Didn’t Tell Caesar What To Do? The Religious Right’s Most Confusing Claim

March 1, 2018 by Benjamin L. Corey

“Jesus never told Caesar what to do” is the confusing new battle cry of some leaders among the Religious Right.

While there’s plenty of things my former tribe have said and done over the years that have left me scratching my head, nothing is more confusing to me than their use of this claim:

image: http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/sites/385/2018/03/Screen-Shot-2018-03-01-at-10.19.28-AM.jpg

Saying “Jesus never told Caesar what to do” is a way of stating the correct claim that Jesus never told the formal government how to operate.

That’s entirely true, but for a few reasons not germane to this post. This point on Jesus and Caesar does get used in Christian circles from time to time, but it’s typically an argument that’s used by my fellow Anabaptists as a partial reason for why some Christians don’t believe in voting or participation in government at all. It could also be used to support an argument if one wanted to claim that we should refrain from imposing Christian values or principles on government entirely, but those are the only two possible uses for this term I can come up with.

But for a Religious Right leader to use this argument to support their position that some biblical principles need not apply to government because “Jesus didn’t tell Caesar what to do?” The premise itself is a living contradiction to the entire purpose of the Religious Right.

Day in and day out, the religious right tells us that our nation needs to turn to God—not just individually, but corporately. We are told that we need “Godly leaders” who will stand on “God’s word.” When choosing between two candidates, we’re always told to vote for whoever is committed to running the country on “biblical principles”.

In fact, even the entire past presidential election was based on this: the Religious Right’s number one selling point for Trump was convincing people he’d appoint conservative Christian judges who would steer the nation’s laws in a more “biblical” direction.

And those laws that Christians on the right think are unbiblical? They’ll not only condemn them all day long, but the Religious Right as a movement was established for the purpose of changing laws they find unbiblical.

First it was abortion. Then it was same sex marriage. Who knows the next issue they’ll rally around, but the undeniable truth is this: everyone knows the Religious Right is a movement that exists to change or establish laws in accordance with (what they think are) biblical principles.

Folks like Franklin Graham even traveled the country encouraging Christians to run for any elected position they could find, so that Christians could influence government and laws on every level possible.

Let’s put it this way: their entire purpose for existing is to tell Caesar what to do.

So why would someone like Jerry Falwell even use this term?

The key is in context: they use the term when it would come at a cost to them.

They’re fine with telling Caesar what to do when it comes to their favorite issues—because in these cases, what they’re really doing is telling other people what they can or can’t do.

But when it comes to biblical principles about caring for the poor, the sick, and the hungry?

Well all of a sudden when we get to that principle, they realize the same hand that points a finger all day long… now has four pointing right back at them.

And in that case?

Well, all of a sudden “Jesus never told Caesar what to do.”

Dr. Benjamin L. Corey is a two-time graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and holds his doctorate from Fuller Theological Seminary. He is also the author of the new book, Unafraid: Moving Beyond Fear-Based Faith, which is available wherever good books are sold. www.Unafraid-book.com

You can also follow him on Facebook:

NORTON META TAG