Today, as I write, the orange man (now blonde) who stole our election on behalf of the Russians held a meeting with Russian diplomats. He allowed only one press organization to cover and release photos. I asked some reasonably well-informed, smart people what press organization they thought it might be. They answered, Fox News.
Of course, their answer was nonsense. Fox News is clueless. It always has been. It’s run by a group of non-native Americans (their countries of origin are China and Australia) who have their own idiosyncratic ideas about what they want the USA to become. Their women parade around on camera half-dressed; recent lawsuits have disclosed that executives use many of them for sex.
They pretend to be patriots and Christians. Of course, anyone who isn’t deaf, dumb, and blind knows they are neither. They aren’t reporters either. Cheerleaders for GOP politicians is a better descriptor.
No, the correct answer is TASS, the Russian news agency, which is an arm of the Russian government. TASS made the press announcements. They released the photographs. And of course, life goes on. No one seems to care. On Tuesday, the FBI director — who led the investigation into ties between our leaders and Russian mafia-oligarchs — was fired.
On Wednesday (today), we learned that it was the president — he remains under investigation — who fired the FBI director; he celebrated by meeting with his Russian friends. They wore black suits, as if to highlight their bonds of power. The president lied, it turns out, about both the process and his reasons — according to members of his own staff, who leaked to major news outlets.
The president’s bodyguard, who delivered the FBI director’s pink slip. Note:on 20 Sept. 2017, the bodyguard left White House service. The Editors
The FBI director learned that he had been dismissed when he saw the announcement on television — the place where most folks get the news they trust most.
Director Comey thought it was a prank. He was preaching to a new class of recruits somewhere in southern California. He read the announcement on the scrolling news ribbon.
Later, the leader of the president’s civilian bodyguards hand-delivered the director’s pink slip. One report claimed that the FBI head hired a commercial aircraft to make his escape home. (ABC News reported that he was able to secure a government plane.)
Unless the Russians go door to door arresting people, no one will ever care — certainly no one in the GOP, it seems. The typical American lives inside a psychotic bubble of evil. Some act like they’ve lost the ability to assess realistic threats to their way of life; to the things they hold dear. They’ve watched too much television, too many movies, too much pornography; they’ve explored too many fake news sites — sites designed by experts to manipulate them into believing absurdities.
The typical American takes too many drugs — some wake up with caffeine and amphetamines; some struggle through stressful work days that last way too long; they sustain themselves by swallowing tranquilizers or derivatives of heroin like oxycodone; some put themselves to sleep with barbiturates or alcohol or both. Some drugs are prescribed; they’re necessary. Others are illegal.
It doesn’t seem to matter. The appetite for drugs is massive; Americans spend billions of dollars each year for drugs they might be better off not taking. They might more realistically assess threats to their freedoms with minds less anesthetized. Feeling good while living in a high-tech prison bult by billionaires is unnatural and, if anyone thinks about it much, sad and more than a little pathetic.
Howard Hughes (1905-1976) inherited the Hughes Tool Company. It became the nexus of a defense contractor empire worth billions of dollars.
Many Americans would strap syringes to their arms if they believed that no one would notice — as did Howard Hughes, the billionaire industrialist from yesteryear. Some readers may recall that our government confiscated his many businesses to make it easier to build and secure our country’s infamous war machine; the process drove Howard insane; he became dependent on drugs only they could reliably supply to keep him docile and compliant. He lived his last days wearing Kleenex boxes on his feet, because the tissues cushioned his arches and comforted him.
Howard Hughes watched movies all day long — movies he once produced; they often featured his long-lost Hollywood friends. When he felt sad, which was often, he tapped the end of the plungers in the syringes strapped to his arms. Sometimes he cried.
The Mormon FBI agents who baby-sat him allowed him to wallow. They left him to himself for the most part. He never traveled unless they took him. He never fled his gilded prison. His addictions made flight impossible. He might as well have been left to die on a sandbar in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He dropped off the face of the earth. Members of Congress, some of them, worried about him.
The public was asking, Did Howard Hughes die? He had vanished from view like a ghost. No one ever saw him. He must be dead, some argued. Others knew better. They arranged a phone call with his handlers — to allay the fears of those few who believed that bad actors held him against his will. Powerful congress members wanted to know the truth and share it with the public.
During the call — which was broadcast to the world via speaker-phone before a full congressional gathering — Howard said that he was OK. He was alive. Someone asked, almost as an afterthought, if he was happy. His reply stunned Congress into silence. He answered, No… I’m not happy.
The phone called ended, and that was that. A few years later, Howard died. The coroner said that he found broken needles embedded in the bones of Howard’s arms and legs. He weighed less than ninety pounds.
Erich Fromm published the book Escape from Freedom in 1941. It was a required read in my high school during the 1960s, which was a long time ago — for some people. It seems like yesterday to me.
Fromm was a German psychoanalyst who argued that true freedom, if it ever came, would scare people so bad that they would embark on an unhealthy search for security; for certainty. The search would be a kind of escape; a frantic fleeing from the painful dissonance that the dissimilarity between people with disparate values can induce.
This discord intensified inside the USA during the past decade or so. Does anyone really want to go through the list of things that Americans hate about each other? Must I mention gay marriage, abortion, liberal politics, civilian access to weapons of war, religion, race, ethnicity, politics, viewing habits, Facebook rants, Twitter smears, and on and on?
People follow; they unfollow; they block; they unblock. They flip channels. They jump from Facebook to Instagram and back again. Nothing works; nothing helps.
Erectile dysfunction, for example, is a subject that has been thrust into everyone’s faces; into the deepest recesses of our subconscious minds. It’s relentless. It’s been discussed with commercial intensity on every media channel. People who watch sports programming can’t escape it.
No one can turn off the voices that are driving us mad, because the people who manipulate the public don’t agree with our points of view; with our sense of life. Do I suffer from erectile dysfunction? No; Hell no! I wish I never heard the term.
Do I yearn for a leader; a guide; someone to stand things up; to set things right? Yes. Of course I do. But it seems like Christ Jesus is not going to visit anytime soon. Maybe a Second Coming is fantasy. Maybe we’ve been stood up. Maybe we need a Führer. Yeah, that’s it.
I said earlier that I borrowed this essay’s title from the book of the same name published in 1941 by the German-born psychoanalyst, Erich Fromm. I don’t know if the book is required reading today or not; perhaps it should be; better books might have replaced it.
I considered a different title; I did. Maybe the Stockholm Syndrome would have been better. It’s about the ten percent of hostages who take on the values of their tormentors. I thought and thought. No; Escape from Freedom was best.
At least for now.
Billy Lee
Note from the Editorial Board:The details of the life of Howard Hughes included in Billy Lee’s essay are based on his memories of events as recorded in press accounts written and televised in real time as they were unfolding. Billy Lee’s memories do not in every case align with current historical accounts, because the history of Howard’s life has been reconstructed and fictionalized by many sources — according to Billy Lee. Billy Lee believes current accounts are revisionist, and in some particulars may in fact be inaccurate. Billy Lee witnessed the congressional interview with Mr. Hughes as it occurred.
This essay is Billy Lee’s rewrite and revision of a politicaldig.com blogpost written by Ron Delancer, which circulated widely on social media and Facebook.
Billy Lee used it with permission it turns out — the post ends by encouraging readers to copy, paste, and share it on their Facebook timelines — but he revised it extensively, mostly for formatting, but also to make it readable for his thin slice of the web-reading public who, it seems, suffer from, among other things, personal problems related to the understanding and processing of complex ideas.
In defence of Billy Lee (who pays our salaries), he claims that his version is a parody of the original; a satire, really — a controversial satire at that. As parody and satire, his essay is sufficiently differentiated and is not intended to infringe or undermine any copyright protections of the article it satirizes.
The last ten paragraphs are original work by Billy Lee alone. We sue people who copy, duplicate, publish, or possess hard-copy of Billy Lee’s original work, so don’t do it. Links that take readers to our site are fine. In fact, we encourage it.
Here is a link to the original article: Poor Suffering Trumpsters
The BillyLeePontificator Editorial Board
A Trump supporter told a Hillary/Obama supporter whose initials are S. M., We suffered for eight years. Now it’s your turn.
S.M. wrote a brilliant response asking how exactly his “friend” suffered under Obama. Our readers will find below Billy Lee’s fractured mess — his version — of S.M.’s reasonable and respectful inquiry.
It is satire, people. Supporters of our nation’s newest president can click on the word satire to learnthe definition. It’s fun to learn new words — especially those with more than one syllable. The Editorial Board
Dear Trump supporter,
I am surprised you would wish suffering upon me. You know, you always hurt me when you are mean and insulting. Of course, it is your right under our Constitution, I suppose. I’ve never wanted to hurt anybody. I really don’t. You seem to hold an “US versus THEM” mentality.
Do you like to fight?
The election is over. Isn’t it time to put the political campaign behind and look for ways to work together as fellow Americans instead of lunatics?
There will never be a president who does everything to everyone’s liking. There are things President Obama (and President Clinton) did that I do not like and on the other hand I can point to stuff President Bush did that I actually agreed with. Notice I said “some.” Bush destabilized the Middle East and almost bankrupted our country. I didn’t much care for that part.
If you’re like me you owned a 401K retirement account in 2008. I lost about forty-grand bailing out Wall Street bankers. How did your 401K do? I lost my job when my company was forced to downsize; they couldn’t borrow to make payroll. How did your employer do? Did you keep working?
The United States was hemorrhaging close to a million jobs a month when Obama got elected. A person would have to be strung-out on meth not to remember. You do remember, don’t you? It was an economic free-fall for everyone. Billionaires did OK. That was the good part. For them, anyway. They not only survived, they prospered.
So let us recall that almost ALL of America was suffering at the beginning of Obama’s presidency. You get that, right?
Of course you do. But I wanted to look back over the last eight years and ask you a few questions. The hayseeds in your pant cuffs and pig manure on your rubber boots tell me that you might not know much about economics, but you do know what pig-shit smells like.
Well, here’s some shit. People said Obama was a Muslim from Africa who lost his birth certificate. He was gonna impose Sharia Law, Take Away Guns, Create Death Panels, Destroy the Economy, Impose Socialism and worse — his wife was a terrorist.
Some evangelicals insisted Obama was the anti-Christ.
Does your wife allow you to track pig poo-poo into your house? I didn’t think so. You have too much class to track yucky-stuff everywhere. So I was wondering: Why do you always say that you suffered so much under the Obama presidency?
I’m going to guess why and ask leading questions, you know, to sort of help you think up some answers. Maybe you’ll do me the kindness of answering a few of them, so that my readers can better understand why you choose to think and act like a moron. Hope you’re ready. Here they come: Gays and Lesbians can now marry and enjoy the benefits of freedoms long denied. Has this caused your suffering?
When Obama took office, the Dow was $6,626. When he left, it had tripled — to $19,875. Has this caused your suffering?
Obama gave us eighty-two straight months (nearly seven years) of private sector job growth – the longest streak in the history of the United States. Has this caused your suffering?
Think about the economy when Obama took power. The economy was in free-fall. President Obama created 11.3 million new jobs (far more than President Bush). Has this caused your suffering?
Obama dropped the unemployment rate from 10% to 4.7%. Has this caused your suffering?
Homelessness among US military veterans dropped by half. Has this caused your suffering?
Obama shut down our overseas black-site prisons, where people were tortured — in some cases to their deaths. Has this caused your suffering?
President Obama started the policy to pay travel expenses for the families of fallen soldiers. Grieving families, for free, can meet the returning planes that carry the remains of their loved ones. Has this caused your suffering?
We landed a rover on Mars and expanded our exploration of the cosmos. Has this caused your suffering?
The percentage of folks with no health insurance has fallen below 10%; 90% now have it-–an increase of 20 million people. Has this caused your suffering?
People are now treated for pre-existing conditions. Poor people with heart disease or cancer can buy good insurance at discounted rates. Has this caused your suffering?
Insurance premiums increased 58% during the Bush administration. The growth of premiums was far lower during the Obama presidency. Has this caused your suffering?
Obama added billions of dollars to mental health care for our veterans. Has this caused your suffering?
Consumer confidence grew from 38% to 88% during Obama’s tenure. Has this caused your suffering?
His bi-annual Nuclear Summit helped to convince sixteen countries to dispose of their loose nuclear material, so it could not be acquired by terrorists. Has this caused your suffering?
He saved the USA auto industry. American per-year car sales doubled during his presidency (to nearly 18 million vehicles). Has this caused your suffering?
The deficit as a percentage of the GDP (gross domestic product) fell from about 10% to 3%. Has this caused your suffering?
The total deficit dropped $800 billion. Has this caused your suffering?
Obama preserved the middle class tax cuts. Has this caused your suffering?
Obama banned solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons. Has this caused your suffering?
He enacted credit card reforms so that your interest rates can’t be raised unless you are warned first. Has this caused your suffering?
He outlawed government contractors from discriminating against LGBT persons. Has this caused your suffering?
He doubled Pell Grants. Has this caused your suffering?
Abortion is down. Has this caused your suffering?
Violent crime is down. Has this caused your suffering?
He protected Net Neutrality. Has this caused your suffering?
Obamacare extended the life of the Medicare insurance trust fund (it will be solvent until 2030). Has this caused your suffering?
He banned torture. Has this caused your suffering?
He negotiated with Syria to destroy their chemical weapons. Has this caused your suffering?
Solar and wind power usage is at an all time high. Has this caused your suffering?
High school graduation rates rose to 83% – again, an all time high. Has this caused your suffering?
Corporate profits are up. Bankruptcies are down. Has this caused your suffering?
Obama started the process to normalize relations with Cuba. We share embassies now. Has this caused your suffering?
Reliance on foreign oil is at a 40 year low. Has this caused your suffering?
US exports are up 28%. Has this caused your suffering?
President Obama appointed the most diverse cabinet ever. Has this caused your suffering?
He dramatically reduced the number of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. He avoided war with Iran and stopped their nuclear bomb program. Has this caused your suffering?
Obama decimated Al Qaeda and recovered a treasure trove of intelligence during the raid in Pakistan, which he directed and approved to apprehend its legendary leader. Did this cause your suffering?
Enough questions, already. Reasonable people should be able to agree that Obama pulled the USA out of a financial collapse and kept our country safe from attack by foreign terrorists.
Things are not perfect. A few dozen Americans went postal and shot up some places with weapons of war that no civilians should ever own. A lot of children got killed by crazy people.
It seems to me that our newly elected leaders are bonafide lunatics. I heard one psychiatrist say, no; it’s unfair to people who struggle with mental illness to equate their suffering with the behaviors of wicked people. Bad people don’t suffer. They are not debilitated by hurting others. They are energized.
It seems to me that people didn’t suffer during the Obama years; they hated, some of them; there’s a difference. Nasty people posturing as patriots hated on a black man who managed to become president of the most powerful slave-state in human history. He won a Nobel Prize for it; no one believed a country with a reputation for racial-cruelty would ever permit such a thing to happen. But it did.
I was 20 years old before a black man could sit at a counter and drink soda at a drugstore. Because of Barry Obama, most 20 year old kids today don’t remember a time when a white man was president. They were 12 years old and not paying attention, many of them.
Our new president is white and rich. He has over 5,000 times as much money as Obama. It’s one reason why he doesn’t respect our former chief executive. Lack of respect is one reason his family won’t live in the White House.
It’s not the only reason.
If he and his family colluded with foreign crime bosses to take control of our beloved America, well, everyone is going to suffer except those who choose to become collaborators.
When the nightmare ends, maybe years from now, the collaborators will suffer too. We live in the land of the free and the home of the brave — remember it, people — despite the low opinion some of our leaders might have of us. We will find new leaders.
Readers who dislike reading opinions they don’t share might want to consider reading something else. The essay below may not be suitable for rigid thinkers. Readers who enjoy rallies where angry crowds chant lock her up! lock her up! and USA! USA! are doubly cautioned.
Billy Lee believes that all religions and all governments — including our own — are crafted by elites to enhance their power. Religion and government sometimes work together like good cops and bad cops to maintain the order of society by both reassuring and intimidating those few citizens who may sometimes feel reluctant to cooperate.
Billy Lee thinks that all economic systems, whatever label they may carry, are nothing more than variations on slavery. One possible exception is democraticcommunalism — a system that has been thoroughly discredited.
Systems where wealth is shared more or less equally are no longer taken seriously, at least in the United States, because our elites want nothing to do with them. It’s a reason why our leaders have strangled Cuba with an embargo for 55 years with no end in sight.
Income equality is not one of their core values. Everyone knows that alpha-males don’t share well; they fully intend to take everything they can until the end of time. Billionaires rule. They always have. Some historians say that Alexander the Great was worth 304 billion in today’s dollars. Alexander reigned in 330 BC when a billion dollars was considered real money.
Fortunately, this essay isn’t about economics. Who wants to get all depressed about stuff they don’t understand and can’t do anything about? No, this post was written to address a much deeper problem — the takeover of our country by lunatics.
Billy Lee is suggesting that the conservative evangelical church in America is infested with men who are pushing a political agenda that might very well be opposed to the vision of Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who they say they serve; indeed their aim seems to be to acquire political power; some prominent males have recently bragged that they made a deal with our newly elected president to help them better impose their will on America and the world.
According to Billy Lee, these leaders hope to guide the citizens of the United States into accepting a Christian form of what has all the appearances of a kind of Sharia Law. The president-elect promised Jerry Falwell Jr. and Franklin Graham that he will help them; he is on-board.
Falwell, who attended the recent GOP convention, described during his speech a deal he made with Trump to repeal the 1954 law that forbids tax-exemptions to church groups who finance the campaigns of political candidates aligned with their pet projects, favored laws, and constitutional preferences. In return, Falwell promised to help deliver the presidency.
The Editorial Board
(The Board wants our readers to know that the churches pictured in this essay were designed and built by members of Billy Lee’s family.)
DISARMING CHRISTIANS
Let me begin by saying my hope is that the Bible verses below will provide readers with some context for the observations and insights that will follow.
Politically conservative evangelical leaders believe that every word in the Bible is literally true; the Bible is inerrant and doctrinally pure; anyone who doesn’t bow before the concept of biblical inerrancy is a heretic and opposed to God.
Evangelical pastors cannot be ordained in almost every denomination in the United States unless they sign legal documents that swear allegiance to inerrancy as one of their core beliefs.
Yes, many who sign these documents have their own definitions of what inerrancy actually means. Pastors argue with one another all the time about it. Some sign what they call “conscience clauses” to keep them out of trouble with meddling denominational titans and even their own parishioners.
But enough inside baseball.
The fact is, I too believe the Bible is inerrant. Just to make sure readers understand, I’m not a theologian; I’m not a pastor or an elder or a deacon either; I’m a pontificator — a lowly pontificator. I don’t even belong to a church. I go to church. My wife makes me.
But I haven’t signed any dotted lines. I once wrote — a couple years ago when I actually was a communicant member of a church — about the subject of inerrancy, which I hope readers will revisit. In it I asked this question:
Where does this idea about ”inerrancy” of Scripture come from since the Bible was written by men and gently hides mankind’s many prejudices and ignorant ideas about history and science? If Scripture is inerrant—and I believe it is—its truth must come from God alone. God makes Scripture true, even when human logic, common sense, and evidence seem to speak otherwise.
I would argue that my support of inerrancy gives me the right to challenge other Christians; to argue that the separation of church and state is necessary and essential if we are to protect our freedoms from conservative politicians posing as clerics, who are busy seizing control of churches and denominations in backwoods America.
It’s not just the backwoods. These political fights are going on in cities and college towns, urban centers and sophisticated suburbs. I side with reasonable people who don’t believe they have all the answers. I side with tolerant, open-minded thinkers who are kind to people who have been ostracized and hated because they don’t fit certain stereotypical molds that conservatives seem to favor.
I certainly don’t think of myself as a heretic or a trouble-maker. In fact, I would like to believe that I am in submission to the will of Christ Jesus; I know I have experienced the forgiveness of my sins and the healing power of God’s love. God has given me gifts, which I treasure.
Anyway, it’s time to get on with this essay. Is there a better way to start than by quoting Bible verses? As is the convention in many Bibles, words in red represent the spoken words of Jesus. Sometimes I use the color purple to call attention to Scripture I hope readers won’t overlook. Hold on tight, everyone. I am about to take readers on a wild ride. Here goes:
Leviticus 17:10 I will set my face against [anyone] who eats blood, and I will cut them off from my people.
Leviticus 7:27 Anyone who eats blood must be cut off from their people.
Leviticus 19:27 … Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord.
Deuteronomy 25:11 If two men are fighting and the wife of one […] seizes [the other] by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.
Psalm 118:11 They surrounded me on every side, but in the name of the Lord I cut them down.
Isaiah 9:17 …everyone is ungodly and wicked, every mouth speaks folly.
Isaiah 29:20 The ruthless will vanish, the mockers will disappear, and all who have an eye for evil will be cut down — those who with a word make someone out to be guilty, who ensnare the defender in court and with false testimony deprive the innocent of justice.
Isaiah 53:12 … he poured out his life unto death and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors.
Daniel 2:34-45 While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. … It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands…
Hosea 6:5 …I killed you with the words of my mouth…
Luke 22:33-38 But [Peter] replied, Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and death. Jesus answered, I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me.
Then Jesus asked them, When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?Nothing, they answered.
He said to them,But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. For it is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’, and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.
The disciples said, See Lord, here are two swords.
That’s enough!Jesus replied.
John 6:53-59 Jesus said to them,I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. … He said this while teaching in the synagogue….
John 6:66 From this time forward many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
John 12:47… I did not come to judge the world, but to save it.
John 16:2…the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God.
John 16:8When [the Holy Spirit] comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because people do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and about judgment, because the prince of this world [Satan] now stands condemned.
I have much more to say to you, more than you can bear. But when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.
The Rock-Cut Tomb of Jesus is located in the East Talpiot neighborhood — three miles south of the Old City — in East Jerusalem. The body of Jesus has never been found.
John 20:1 …while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone [rock] had been removed…
1 Peter 2:16 Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves.
OK. We’ve collected enough Bible verses to start a Hallelujah cacophony. Readers must by now have a lot of questions. Don’t worry. Hundreds of thousands of people have made careers answering questions about the Bible. Answers abound.
One obvious question is this: the Bible seems to forbid the eating of blood; if drinking blood gets one cut-off from God’s people; if it results in a kind of excommunication, why does Jesus insist that anyone who wants to live must drink his blood or die?
How does anyone drink the blood of Jesus, anyway? What does it mean — it must be true — what Jesus said; does this death cure work? Is his promise — that eternity lives inside his blood and that we must drink it to live — inerrant?
Here’s another question: Is everyone wicked? Really? Every single person? Is everyone a fool? Does everyone speak “folly”? Is there no one that anyone can trust? Even oneself?
How about this: Will folks who label people they hate with a single word — words like crooked (Hillary) or lying (Ted) or corrupt (____) or fraudulent (____) or dishonest (____) or hypocritical (____) or dumb (____) or killer (____) or guilty as hell (fill in the blank, those who dare) — will they really be cut down?
Will the ruthless vanish and mockers disappear? Really? Does anyone believe these promises of the Bible? Do haters and mockers ever truly fall?
Here’s a good one: the title of this essay is called, Disarming Christians. Disarming is a nice word, right? It means charming or beguiling or winsome. Imagine meeting charming, beguiling, winsome Christians. It would be kind of nice wouldn’t it?
Disarming can also mean taking away someone’s weapons of war. Christians are armed to the teeth with weapons of war, some of them. They carry guns in open-carry states; some carry concealed weapons with special licenses that permit them to bring guns into schools, libraries, and government buildings — even churches.
But let’s not talk about right-now. Let’s not talk about today. Let’s talk about those yesterdays long ago when the deadliest weapon a civilian could carry was a sword.
Jesus must have thought his disciples were unarmed. At the end, just before He was arrested and crucified, he told them to sell their coats and buy swords. Lo and behold, the whole lot of them were carrying weapons, it turned out.
See Lord, they said. Here are two swords right here! They might have added, How lucky we won’t have to sell our coats, stop what we’re doing and make the hard walk to buy swords from a bronze-smithy.
The followers of Jesus were already transgressors. He lived among them just as Isaiah 53:12 (in the list above) said He would. No one needed to be told by Jesus to be bad.
It didn’t matter whether anyone knew or not. In fact, Peter used his sword to hack the ear off a youngster named Malchus — the servant of the High Priest. It’s about as low as a follower of Jesus could go, unless denying Christ three times when He needed him most counts for anything.
The Bible says we are free but warns us to not use our freedom as a license to hurt people in ways we would never hurt ourselves, even when we are able to hide bad behavior to avoid corrupting those who are always watching.
Really? Does the Bible mean to say that people can’t, as the old joke goes, pray to God for bicycles but when they realize God doesn’t work that way, steal them instead and pray for forgiveness? — in Jesus’s Holy Name of course.
Evangelical political operators, as they always do, lobbied the public during the election to vote against the Christian presidential candidates and go with the one person who has no history with any church — the one who refused to divulge his health records, his taxes, or his foreign entanglements.
These operatives urged followers of Christ Jesus to vote for a man who married three women — two, by the way, grew up in prominent, communist families from countries once hostile to the USA.
Trump made a deal with evangelicals; he made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. My essay Satan Surrender sorts through some aspects of the arrangement.
Jesus said: I was born for one purpose; to bear witness to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth hears my voice. Pilate asked Him the famous question: What is truth? He didn’t answer. (Click link to view video.) Hours later, the Romans executed the Christ. British actor Robert Powell portrayed Jesus in the 1976 television mini-series Jesus of Nazareth, which won many awards.
Peter believed he was Christ’s most loyal supporter; his most devoted disciple. Jesus once called him Satan and told him that he was unreliable. Peter may have been crude, possibly foul-mouthed; some Bible writers portrayed him as impulsive and on occasion violent.
It seems to me that the conservative evangelical church in America is a lot like Peter. Jesus will build his kingdom; he will someday make a spectacular entrance onto the world stage, which he promised to do 2,000 years ago.
I think the date is still on. I don’t think we’ve been stood up. Christ Jesus is on his way. But Peter came to a bad end according to some accounts, and the conservative evangelical church and its blind-guides will as well if folks don’t wake up and make changes.
One change we can make is to turn off television whenever possible. People must know that most shows are unwatchable for those who struggle to live a holy and righteous life. People watch OAN and FOX; they visit internet web-sites like Breitbart, etc. Is it any wonder that many in the land of the free and the home of the brave are suffering from a psychosis of evil?
Perhaps the answer to my earlier question about the blood of Christ Jesus is to ask another question: Is His blood so holy and precious — powerful to save — that any other blood is poison by comparison, even defiling to the sensibilities of an Almighty God?
The sacred life of Jesus and the fearful agony of its end — suffered on the cross of a Roman executioner — brought a flood of life into the dark world of sinners, who Jesus said God loves more than Him; God gave His Son over to a crucifixion, of all things — to settle scores for all time for the terrible things we’ve done against Him and against each other.
Let’s face hard facts: people sometimes do bad things for which they deserve to die. Everyone it seems has someone who wants them dead; everyone is hated by someone; and everyone at one time or another hates enough to kill. That’s reality as I see it anyway.
In my mind, after years of reading the Bible and listening to sermons, I have developed some fantasies. Sometimes I imagine things that could never happen, but imagining their possibility gives me a kind of emotional release.
God forgive me. Sometimes I think I hear Jesus crying out on the cross in a loud voice; he’s yelling at me: Kill me, he screams. Eat my flesh; eat my clotted blood; hurl your hate; do it now! I’m bleeding out and time is short….
Jesus’ head falls forward. He is quiet, and I am witness to the horror of hatred satiated and injustice served. His face in death is unrecognizable. I recoil at the thought of God; that He could unleash such terror against a righteous man.
God forgive me. More hallucinations. Jesus slurs his words and looks past me into the storm. Strike me until your hate is spent; strike until you exhaust yourself and can no longer lift your arms or even stand; fall into the mud and blood at my feet and eat your fill. Make yourself sick on your hate. It is finished.
My mind is a whirlwind, a tornado of confusion. Nothing seems real. Do you not see? Jesus is whispering, rasping. The wind howls. Thunder whipsaws the cross like a pendulum. His voice is a death rattle, I can barely hear. Everything is accomplished.
A soldier shoots out of nowhere and plunges a spear into Jesus’s stomach. The soldier twists the blade and yanks hard. He doesn’t look. He walks past and pulls at his vest for cover against the hail.
Your sins are forgotten!
Did Jesus shout to a man who wouldn’t look at him? Sins forgotten. Or was he shouting at me? Was it the soldier snapping like a feral dog maybe at us both? I couldn’t tell. The blood from Jesus’s wound pounds on me like a waterfall as I writhe in the mud and the rain.
Yell louder, I can’t hear, I scream back, because the storm is raging and I can’t hear myself above the thunder and the rain. I forgive you, I think I hear Him calling.
My mind is in fever. I don’t know what is real or if I’m in delirium. Is Jesus dead or not? Yes, he’s dead; of course he is. But I hear him hacking into the howl.
Get up! Yes, he is yelling loud, like a young man; a warrior. Now I hear him clearly. Find the brother and sister you hate; find the mother and father you despise — who like strangers lusted and misused you — who stripped you naked and beat you; find them; find them all; find the wicked people who ruined your life and forgive them.
I stagger to my feet. The rain is violent. It cleans my body completely. I look up at Jesus. His body is clean as well. His eyes are glazed by death. He doesn’t breathe. Water runs down his face and off the soles of his feet.
I turn and look into the storm. I’m cold. The temperature has dropped, and I’m really, really cold. Find a way to love, I hear him murmur. Find a way to love the world we gave you; find a way to love everything in it including yourself, because we made you from the mud you puked in.
I want you to live, I say. He doesn’t hear. How could he? He’s dead. I love you, I say, under my breath.
The way, the truth, and the life — it’s whathe said he was — sweet words everyone pretended to believe. No one knew what He was talking about.
I look up at Jesus for the last time. Death has a look that is best described by the word, horror. But Jesus looks like an angel in flight with his arms outstretched and his body washed clean by the storm. He is more beautiful in death than he ever was in life.
You’re free, Jesus, I say at last.
You’re free. Spread your wings and soar. Fly away to wherever your heart lives, to whoever your heart loves.
You’re free.
Billy Lee
Post Scriptby the Editorial Board:
Knowing our writer the way we do, the Editorial Board hasstrongly admonished and chastised Billy Lee. We explained that his fantasy encounter with Jesus wasn’t an appropriate ending for an essay about disarming Christians.
It’s not good enough, we told him. It doesn’t meet the high standards of the Pontificator. We insisted that he give Jesus the last word — not the fantasy Jesus that swims in his head, but the real Jesus; the Jesus of history and the Bible.
Here is what he picked — something Jesus said — from Christian scripture, John 16:33.
I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.
Jesus is the Christ — the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, Billy Lee insists. It sounds like words he stole from somewhere.
It’s true.
With any luck at all, maybe this time Billy Lee got it right, for once.
