“Blood in the house, blood in the street
The worst things in the world are justified by belief.”
U2

A 13 year old boy blows his ass up in a street full of wedding partiers in Turkey and 50 people are killed. 5-0. What. The. Fuck. It’s no longer news within 24 hours.

A major party presidential candidate wants to deport 11,000,000 people. How exactly he doesn’t say, presumably because saying he will herd them into boxcars and dump them South of the Border wouldn’t make for good headlines. Like Germany in the 1930’s, we don’t care about the details. We just want a strong leader.

A self proclaimed Christian Leader calls the candidate “Churchillian”. What. The. Fuck.

We really have been raised by wolves.

If someone asked me why I am a Christian I would have to answer truthfully: because it’s the best bad option. I would have to agree with Ghandi. “I like your Christ, but I don’t think much of your Christians.” Some folks have said that Jesus of Nazareth was not the first Christian. Looking at much of what we do now in his name, I think to myself, “Lord Jesus, I hope they are right. ”

Now, you may say, not without justification, that many of His followers do any number of great things. I stipulate that is correct. Hospitals. Orphanages. Peacemaking. Leper colonies. Countless acts of selflessness and love that don’t make headlines. None of which justifies the bad things, the evil things, also done.

An old preacher of my youth said once – and I paraphrase a little – walking into a church don’t make you a follower of Jesus anymore than walking into a barn makes you a mule.”

Maybe it’s time we stop building religious businesses and start investing in lives. Maybe the lives of children already born are worth protecting as much as those yet to leave the womb.

I am struck and humbled by the fact that the only people Jesus fought with were the religious leaders of his day. They called him a drunkard and friend of sinners. He hung out with people the respectable folks wouldn’t be caught dead with. They tried to trap him with religious proof texts and laws. Jesus would have none of it.

If anyone is serious about following Jesus then maybe it’s time to stop using the rest of the bible to explain away the things he said. That would be truly revolutionary.