“Your one sick liberal. You are the enemy of the Wyoming
people. Baby killing, anti-energy, pro illegal immigration, climate change
a**hole, big government b**ch. Pastor? Your a f***ing joke. Your a liberal.”
Yes, my columns provoke reactions. Some supportive. Some
not. Some angry. None so angry as the fellow who sent that email, which is a
cut and paste of the original except for the asterisks. They are my edits.
After all, this is a family newspaper.
I’ve written nearly 450 weekly columns since first being
invited me to do so, voluntarily exposing my thoughts in the public arena,
voicing opinions outside of this state’s mainstream. I expect criticism.
Unhappy readers often argue that a
pastor should not use God’s Word to criticize public policy. One emailed,
“You twist, use and abuse God's word
to create your own fake news. Shame on you! But then you are an unbeliever and
remain in your sins.”
A gentler
needling came from a thoughtful young woman I’ve known for years through
church. “Where is your God, your Jesus in these things you have been doing?”
she inquired. “I thought Christians were even supposed to love their enemies,”
Responding
to her, I paraphrase Martin Luther King’s response to similar criticism he
received from fellow Christians, “Since you are of genuine good will and your
criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to answer in what I hope will be
patient and reasonable terms.”
The
answer? My God and my Jesus are in the Bible. You could say I was “radicalized”
by the Jesus of the Gospels and the prophets of the Hebrew Bible.
God consecrated
the prophets to speak the truth. A quarter of the Old Testament is devoted to
them denouncing the powerful. Read Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the rest. Read
their strident words condemning despots like Donald Trump who were immoral and
corrupt.
Early in the
Gospels, we meet John the Baptist and watch in horror as the man who baptized
Jesus is beheaded because he condemned a King for his immorality. Then there’s
Jesus who said we should love our neighbors, pray for our enemies, but never countenanced
silence in the face of injustice.
Talk about harsh.
Jesus called his adversaries “a brood of vipers” and was executed for what the
Romans deemed sedition when his criticism of the powerful for their treatment
of the poor was considered incendiary.
In our times, Dr.
King was killed because he courageously spoke against injustice. His “Letter
from a Birmingham Jail” greatly influenced my ministry and writings. King expressed
his disappointment with white clergy who gave cover to racists while condemning
him and his non-violent struggle for the rights of African Americans and others.
As a child, I was
staggered to learn clergy aided and abetted Hitler in the establishment of Nazism.
A pastor who resisted was martyred. Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned fellow
Christians, “If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the
corridor in the other direction.”
Today, some
Christians have boarded the wrong train.
If my words seem
angry, it’s because I am angry with Christians bartering the teachings of
Christ for the dogma of Trump; angry about those with political or religious
authority witnessing the vile treatment of asylum seekers and refugees and either
supporting unjust policies or remaining silent. I’m angry about resurging racism
and hate crimes against Jews, Muslims, and the LGBTQ community.
Ministers who are
not angry about those things should find a different vocation. They are
stumbling down the corridor in the wrong direction. Ministers shouldn’t hide anger
because they are ministers. They should show it because they are ministers.
The one whose
ministry we ought to emulate said we should not suppose he came to bring peace.
Jesus said he brought a sword. That sword was his words and his courage to use
them to make certain all knew that when it came time to take sides, he would
stand with the poor, the weak, and the oppressed.
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