Brutally Honest

Did Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori give the worst sermon ever?

The Underground Pewster is suggesting the answer is yes and I've got to wholeheartedly endorse that answer:

Now, that was not the part of her sermon that initially caught my attention, nor was that what led me to suggest that this might be her worst sermon ever. No, it was her interpretation of the story of Paul and the slave girl that left me shaking my head. You may recall the version that Luke gives us in Acts 16,

"Now it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and us, and cried out, saying, “These men are the servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation.” And this she did for many days.
But Paul, greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And he came out that very hour. But when her masters saw that their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to the authorities." Acts 16:16-19 (KJV)

I understand that there are different takes on this passage, and here is mine: Paul does let the possessed girl cry out her message for several days before he casts out the spirit. One might guess that this kind of hawker might draw in the crowds initially, but being praised by the demonically possessed seems counter-productive to Paul's ministry. Paul heals the girl, freeing her from possession, but in actual fact it is not Paul doing the healing, but Jesus Christ whom Paul rightly invokes. 

Our P.B. has a very different opinion, and after she worms the obligatory remarks about homosexuality into the Gospel, she... well, read it (emphasis added) for yourself...

"We live with the continuing tension between holier impulses that encourage us to see the image of God in all human beings and the reality that some of us choose not to see that glimpse of the divine, and instead use other people as means to an end.  We’re seeing something similar right now in the changing attitudes and laws about same-sex relationships, as many people come to recognize that different is not the same thing as wrong.  For many people, it can be difficult to see God at work in the world around us, particularly if God is doing something unexpected."
"There are some remarkable examples of that kind of blindness in the readings we heard this morning, and slavery is wrapped up in a lot of it.  Paul is annoyed at the slave girl who keeps pursuing him, telling the world that he and his companions are slaves of God.  She is quite right.  She’s telling the same truth Paul and others claim for themselves.  But Paul is annoyed, perhaps for being put in his place, and he responds by depriving her of her gift of spiritual awareness.  Paul can’t abide something he won’t see as beautiful or holy, so he tries to destroy it.  It gets him thrown in prison.  That’s pretty much where he’s put himself by his own refusal to recognize that she, too, shares in God’s nature, just as much as he does – maybe more so!    The amazing thing is that during that long night in jail he remembers that he might find God there – so he and his cellmates spend the night praying and singing hymns."
"An earthquake opens the doors and sets them free, and now Paul and his friends most definitely discern the presence of God.  The jailer doesn’t – he thinks his end is at hand.  This time, Paul remembers who he is and that all his neighbors are reflections of God, and he reaches out to his frightened captor.  This time Paul acts with compassion rather than annoyance, and as a result the company of Jesus’ friends expands to include a whole new household.  It makes me wonder what would have happened to that slave girl if Paul had seen the spirit of God in her."

"Paul is annoyed perhaps for being put in his place"!  I don't get it, but I can only assume this is a reflection of the modern attitude that Paul was an arrogant, self righteous, homophobic, hung up, misogynist who needs a little put-down from revisionist teachers and preachers so that today's congregations won't take Paul's letters too seriously.

Paul deprives the girl of her "gift of spiritual awareness"!Are you kidding me? The girl was possessed! (Remember this comes from the leader of a church that believes that homosexual marriages are a gift from God, so with that in mind, demonic possession as a gift from God makes perfect sense).

"Paul can’t abide something he won’t see as beautiful or holy, so he tries to destroy it." Oh, she must really dislike Paul, but the fact is that Paul sees demonic possession as something that is neither beautiful nor holy, whereas our Presiding Bishop sees it as a gift from God. Bad Paul: destroyer of God's gift. This too fits the revisionist picture of Paul as an intolerant man who is merely a reflection of a first century value system that we have mercifully outgrown.

"She, too, shares in God’s nature, just as much as he does – maybe more so!"
Now this is going too far. Does God's nature include possession? 
  
"The amazing thing is that during that long night in jail he remembers that he might find God there – so he and his cellmates spend the night praying and singing hymns."
The amazing thing is that anyone with a bishop's miter on her head would spread the supposition that Paul had forgotten God in the first place.

There's much more and every jot and tittle confirms for me that my departure from the ECUSA was divinely ordered... and I can't help but wonder what it would take for the orthodox to leave if this ain't it.

Carry on.

Some people are just crazy

And these are some of those people:

H/T to American Digest.

Soda No, Plan B Morning After Pill... Of Course

Disturbing news coming out of the New York City school system:

New York City schools are offering young girls a full menu of birth control options, free of parental counsel, thanks to an unpublicized project by Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration.

School nurses handed out 12,721 doses of the Plan B One-Step “morning-after” pill in 2011-12, up from 10,720 in 2010-11 and 5,039 in 2009-10, the New York Post reports.

Mona Davids, president of the NYC Parents Union, was stunned by the report.

“I’m in shock,” she said. “What gives the mayor the right to decide, without adequate notice, to give our children drugs that will impact their bodies and their psyches? He has purposely kept the public and parents in the dark with his agenda.”

Besides “emergency contraception,” about 40 school-based clinics have dispensed prescriptions for contraception, intrauterine devices and hormone-delivering injections, the Post reports.

Stunning.  

Here's but a sampling of the warnings and precautions for the Plan B One-Step "morning-after" pill:

The most common adverse events (>10%) in the clinical trial for women receiving Plan B One-Step included heavier menstrual bleeding (30.9%), nausea (13.7%), lower abdominal pain (13.3%), fatigue (13.3%), and headache (10.3%).

Think of the parent who sees his/her daughter suffering from any or all of these symptoms and being oblivious to the likely cause. 

Then think about the fact that the same guy passing out these Plan B pills like M&Ms at city schools is the guy who doesn't want your daughter to drink soda.

It's incredible.

Progressive logic... is neither.  

It's regressive stupidity.

How do you gauge the character of a man? (UPDATED)

Bear with me on this one.

We are all flawed individuals.  We're all sinners.  So let's get that part out of the way.  But there should still exist a means by which the measure of a man can be taken, by which we can determine whether or not he is someone you'd want to hang with, someone you'd want your children to look up to, someone you'd want your daughter or niece to marry.

A few of these metrics come to mind quickly.

How does said man treat women in general and his wife/girlfriend in particular?

Is he a man of evidentiary faith?

Is he compassionate and charitable?

You may have your own list of traits that we're likely to agree help measure how much of a man men truly are.

I'm about to add another, though this one I'm sure might have its detractors.

Are you ready for this one?  

What does said man think of Tim Tebow?

This past week, I was exposed to two sports writers who had never really registered even the tiniest of blips on my there-goes-a-man-of-character radar.  Not because of anything in particular that they've done or not done before but because I've never really seen or heard anything from either of them that had captured my attention.

Until these last couple of days.

Let's first deal with ESPN's Merril Hoge:

So much for the whole bearing good tidings thing. In a roundtable discussion on Monday morning'sSportsCenter, ESPN analyst Merril Hoge went on a rant about New York Jets quarterback Tim Tebow, saying that he's "as phony as a three-dollar bill" and that the New York Jets didn't realize "how bad Tim Tebow was" when they traded for him.

Fellow analyst Ron Jaworski tries to defend Tebow's handling of his yearlong situation with the Jets while insider Adam Schefter attempts to relay a conversation he had with Tebow late Sunday night regarding theESPN New York report that he asked out of the Wildcat formation for the team's game with San Diego. While both are given time to make their points, they are just lulls between Hoge's fury-laden sound bites.

"He is not going to win for the Jacksonville Jaguars. All he will do is set the franchise back further if that is a possible feat," Hoge said. "This organization is down as far as you can get. The last person they need is a guy like this now that we're starting to see his true colors."

What was it that set Merril Hoge off you might be asking?

Apparently, the same thing that set Jets beat reporter Peter Schwartz off:

With every media session involving Tim Tebow that came and went, there was something bizarre about our chats with the Jets’ new backup quarterback.

He really sounded like a phony.

And now it’s obvious that the first impressions of Tebow were correct.

It should not come as a surprise that reports indicate that Tebow opted out of the wildcat package for Sunday’s game against the Chargers when he was told that Greg McElroy would get the start over him. Tebow’s “I’ll do whatever I can to help the team” pledge from the day that the Jets acquired him turned out to be nothing but utter nonsense.

Tebow is not the good teammate that we all thought he was and now it seems as if reports about him being a bad apple in the locker room are true. What does it say about someone, who has captivated the world with his religious faith, doesn’t want to be a part of the game plan to help his team win?

There's only one problem Mr. Hoge and Mr. Schwartz.  One huge fly in your Tim Tebow Hate Soup.  That fly happens to be Rex Ryan:

Ryan acknowledged Monday that Tebow wasn't happy when the coach chose Greg McElroy to start for the benched Mark Sanchez, but insisted Tebow was willing to play in any role Sunday against San Diego - including the wildcat.

''He was disappointed, there's no question,'' Ryan said Monday. ''He was disappointed that he was not named the starter, but with that being said, I'm not going to get into private conversations that I have with players, but it was my decision to use Jeremy Kerley in the wildcat, without question.

''But I'll say this: I believe if Tim's number was called, he would've went in and played. I don't think there's any doubt about that.''

In other words, there was no basis for which Hoge and Schwartz unleashed their venom for Tebow.  None whatsoever.  Of course, this isn't the first time they've done so.  Hoge in particular has a history of Tebow hatred since the latter entered into the NFL.

And so I, with a firmness and resolve I'd be hardpressed to give up, am making a decree.

Merril Hoge and Peter Schwartz have no integrity, no class, no character.

I wouldn't turn my back on either of them.  I find them each to be deplorable and pity their loved ones.

The sort of hate they have for Tim Tebow is based in my view on their own hatred of religion in general, Christianity in particular and Mr. Tebow specifically.  It seems more than obvious to me.

Unlike either of them however, I'm open to having my mind changed.  If you have evidence that would suggest I'm full of crap, leave it in the comments but quite frankly and bluntly, I'm willing to bet this post's comment thread will remain largely empty.

UPDATE: It's becoming clearer that Hoge and Schwartz are simply haters:

Tim Tebow said that he never asked out of running Wildcat plays last week, but the Jets’ backup quarterback acknowledges that Rex Ryan may have misunderstood him.

Tebow said on Wednesday that he told Ryan last Tuesday that he was “definitely disappointed” he wasn’t going to be the starting quarterback in place of the benched Mark Sanchez, and added that he told the coach he wanted to play “regular quarterback.”

“I never said, ‘Hey, I don’t want to do anything,’” Tebow said. “That wasn’t the talk at all. He knows that. And everybody on this team knows that I would never not do something if I was asked. That’s what’s disappointing. People saying,‘Oh, you quit, or you didn’t do this.’ That was not it at all. It was just me asking to get an opportunity to play the position I love, which is quarterback. It wasn’t me asking out of anything.”

My brother summed things up nicely when he wrote on his Facebook wall, "Hoge retired due to excessive concussions. Based on his tirade I'd say he is still a jelly brain."

Excessive concussions, maybe but more likely, Hoge's problem, and Schwartz' along with him, is simple hatred for a man of faith.

And that's a soul problem.

Yea, I went there.  Confidently.

Harry Belafonte: Obama should jail his opposition

It's not necessarily sad that Harry Belafonte would say such a thing.  

It is necessarily sad but more importantly revealing to know that many of Obama's voters would agree with the man.

Know that this mindset isn't, in the minds of many, as radical as you and I might think.

Now America, back to your reality TV shows and your video games

The Fight Goes On

Guest posted by:  CitizenScribe

Today I've read a number of post-election articles vowing to continue the fight.

 While I concur that it is a righteous, necessary, and worthwhile fight, it might be well to take a moment to review the character of this fight.

The fight that wins this is not one of arms. It is one of thoughts, of ideas, of communications.

Who educates your kids? Who entertains them? Do they get their news from Comedy Central? What do they believe in? Why is that? What are their truths? Where did they get them?

This election wasn’t won in speeches. It wasn’t won in TV ads. It was won in cartoons. It was won in movies. It was won on Sesame Street. It was won in schools.

Yes there is a fight ahead of us, and it does not look like a short or clean one. The fight is one of belief, of principle, of culture. We have been infiltrated and compromised over decades.

Are you a religious person? Do you entrust the emotional well-being and mental health of your family to Psychology & Psychiatry? Why would you do that? Do you not grasp that a “science” which classifies your core beliefs as a “mostly harmless” delusion is a poor vehicle for the preservation of a moral culture? Do you not know their history, their background, their cultural foundation? Or have you simply accepted that they are the “authority” in all things mental and emotional? They’ve had fifty years of unfettered access to our schools, and with that as their crown jewel, what is the state of that school system?

Yeah, we have a fight ahead of us. It is our challenge to communicate core values in spite of schooling. It will be our campaign to teach real history into the teeth of disinformation. We have the truth on our side, but only if we are effective in communicating it.

Take heart. Even with the lead they have, we are not helpless, and even with all the brainwashing that’s been splashed around, truth can penetrate and bring illumination.

We must become educators, not just “smart” people. We must arm ourselves with real facts, real history, real reasoning and logic.

Use the light, not the dark.

And bring the sun back to our land.

Taggart Romney is, I guess, supposed to be skeert... so skeert

Lawrence O'Donnell took offense that Taggart wanted to punch the President after Obama implied his Dad is a liar at the last debate.

And O'Donnell calls him out... literally:

Asshattery at its finest.

How big a liar is Joe Biden?

Pretty damned huge.  In the following video he claims that Planned Parenthood, under law, can't perform abortions:

Yet from Planned Parenthood's own website:

Abortions are available at many Planned Parenthood health centers, clinics, and the offices of private health care providers. Use our health center locator to find the nearest Planned Parenthood health center that offers abortion services. If there is not a health center nearby that provides the abortion services you need, call your nearest center for a list of referrals.

H/T to Lex Communis who reminds us:

Just remember, this emotionally unstable buffoon is only a heartbeat away from the nuclear missile launch codes.

Chris Matthews removes all doubt

The man is a caricature, he's a joke, he's one of the biggest journalistic buffoons in the history of journalism.

I think at this point we can all say confidently that no one will ever unseat him.

I honestly don't believe that you can sink any lower than the depths the man has plumbed.

Are you ready to experience the worst of all asshattery?  Experience this:

Disordered fakery

Gay guy attempts to do gymnastics on the streets of Missoula, Montana and fails miserably.  Then decides to use his self-induced injuries to further a cause and suck in the gullible.  He succeeds if only for a short time.

Revealing:

A 22-year-old Montana man who told cops he was beaten up by gay-bashing thugs while club-hopping on his birthday — igniting calls online for protest against homophobic violence — made the whole thing up and actually injured himself, he admitted.

Joseph Baken, of Billings, suffered the bruises and cuts to his face when he smashed it against a curb while attempting to stick an Olympic-style backflip in the street, he said.

The young con-artist pleaded guilty to making a false report on Tuesday and was given a 180 day suspended jail sentence and slapped with a $300 fine, the Missoula Independent reported.

Baken's bizarre ruse began when he told Missoula police that three men jumped him outside a club in downtown Missoula early Sunday because he was gay.

Baken said he had gone into the club, announced that it was his birthday and asked if anyone knew a gay bar he could go to.

A man invited him outside for a cigarette, and he and two other attacked him, Baken claimed, according to NBC Montana.

Photos of Baken's battered face were posted on Facebook, Tumblr and other social media sites, prompting an outcry against homophobic violence and calls for protest.

However, a tipster sent a video to the Independent that showed Baker trying to impress his pals by doing a backflip off a curb sometime around 2:30 a.m. on Sunday.

Baker flubbed the stunt and landed on his face.

The newspaper passed the video on to police, and Baken quickly copped to lying about getting jumped.

Video of the man's athletic prowess, or lack thereof, at the link.