I’m Free

[BoSoxGal]

I’m Free. And So are You.
OCTOBER 8, 2018 BY REBECCA HAMILTON


I know that it is a settled fact that Brett Kavanaugh is on the United States Supreme Court for as long as he lives. However, sexual assault, rape and child molesting are no more acceptable to me now than they were last week. Neither is the continual verbal hazing of women by the President of the United States, who is himself a sexual predator, that has gone on for the past two years. I am disgusted to my core by the moral blackmail that has been used against pro life people in an attempt to coerce us into supporting monsters for high positions in this country. When religious leaders join in with it, it is spiritual abuse, and I am way past tired of that, too. Being pro life does not mean accepting rape and supporting putting rapists in positions of power. The very thought is anathema.

I posted that paragraph on my Facebook page on Saturday. A reader responded with the latin phrase “anathema sit.” This phrase means “he is anathema” and was used in times past to express that someone had been excommunicated.

I don’t think the Church does this kind of showy excommunicating anymore. The closest I’ve seen was when Pope Francis excommunicated members of the Mafia a few years ago, and even that wasn’t like the scene in the old movie Beckett, with its candles, black robes and thundering pronouncements.

Still, “anathema sit” is a fine Biblical phrase, especially today. So far as I’m concerned it applies to every rapist-loving, sexual-assault-supporting, child-abuse-backing walking barrel of dirt on the planet.

I tried to make a play on the phrase “anathema sit” last Saturday. I pulled out my hillbilly Latin and my faulty memory of Scripture and typed “si quit per falsum evangelii ipsi anathema sit.” The feeble little joke fell flat, as it should have. But I still think my point was valid.

Anthema sit means “he is anathema.” It comes from Scripture. I think it’s from one of the letters St Paul wrote. He said (and I paraphrase and misquote) “a man who changes the Gospel is anathema.”

I thought that applied rather elegantly to the situation at hand. Pro life people have, for half a century, been blackmailed on peril of their immortal souls to act as Stepford voters. We’ve been told over, and over, and over that we must ignore every other issue, and, as it turns out, every moral precept, in order to support the push to get five justices on the Supreme Court who have been vetted by our religious and moral leaders to be “the ones” who will overturn Roe.

If we ever, for any reason, stopped marching in line long enough to consider the wrecking ball that our movement has become to our democracy, or the dastardly people that we are being asked to blindly support, then we were told that we had become fellow travelers with the long knives and bloody butchery of abortion.

Thinking for ourselves, caring about basic morality or the common good, were verboten in the Stepford voter world of pro life politics. Stepping out of line would make us guilty of mortal sin and doom our eternal souls to hell. That was the story.

That is how the Republican Party has managed to transfer so much of the wealth of this nation to a few extremely wealthy campaign donors. It is how we’ve gotten a Supreme Court that has given Constitutional Rights to corporations, adjudicated a national Right to Work and opened the floodgates for people of wealth to literally buy our government with dark money that no one tallies and no one has to tell they are using to buy election after election.

It is also how Christian people have been bamboozled, bullied and blackmailed into turning their backs on the Gospel. It is how political-whore religious leaders have reduced Jesus to a get out of hell free card and used Him as a club to beat and batter anyone who fails to support their work as political operatives for the Republican Party and extreme right wing policies.

This almost total abandonment of the Gospel of Christ for the gospel of Republican Party worship has driven people away from Christ in massive numbers. We are losing whole generations to Him because we are preaching, teaching, and following a false political god.

Si quit per falsum evangelii ipsi anathema sit indeed.

Something terrible happened last Saturday. But something wonderful also happened.

The United States Senate put an attempted rapist and sexual predator on the Supreme Court. That’s the terrible.

The United States Senate put the fifth hand-picked, signed, sealed, and delivered golden boy, anointed by the pro life movement, all the political preachers, and legions of screaming Stepford voters as The One on the Supreme Court. Justice Kavanaugh, we were told over and over, is The One. Not only that, but he is the only One who can fill this position.

He will overturn Roe v Wade and Casey. That’s why pro life people had to support him, no matter what he had done. It is why no one else could be nominated to fill this spot. God sent a sexual predator to overturn Roe because, evidently, God has a sadistic sense of humor and despises women just as much as the political preachers and the President of the United States who nominated The One.
The fact is that there are now — count them — one, two, three, four, five handpicked, vetted, promised ones on the Court. We have paid with our souls, our ability to think, our fidelity to Christ, our witness for Him, and our country. But we have five votes that we have been promised over and over and over again will overturn Roe v Wade and Casey.

But that isn’t the wonderful thing that happened. The wonderful thing is that we are now free. We don’t have to be Stepford voters ever again.

We can pay attention to other issues, such as protecting social security and health care, rebuilding our infrastructure, taking the power back from the wealthy and giving it to the people again, keeping our kids safe in schools and providing every child with a first-class, free education. We can end this endless war and finally live in peace. We can reclaim our sanity and stop blindly hating one another. Maybe we can even begin to follow the real Jesus Christ of the real Gospels. We can be Americans again.

There is a catch to this. We have five monsters on the Supreme Court who were put there, not to support the sanctity of human life, but to make America a government of the wealthy, by the wealthy and for the wealthy. Their real job isn’t overturning Roe. That’s just the hook in our mouths that the power brokers have used to drag us around. Their real job, and why they were nominated, is draining every last drop of blood out of the people of this country and putting it into the coffers of a few obscenely wealthy people. We have a Congress that labors in the same vineyard. Indeed, we have an entire political party and most of our religious leaders who are nothing but whores for the rich.

The moral destruction to this nation has been immense. And the almost total annihilation of the witness to Christ from our religious leaders has become rock hard and set in concrete.

There’s a lot of power to be had in the moral blackmail and spiritual abuse to which pro life people have been subjected this past half century. The holders of this power aren’t going to free us willingly.

But we can free ourselves. We just have to be very stubborn and tough about doing it.

I think this whole deal may falter. It won’t surprise me if we aren’t given some sort of King’s X story about how we must, on pain of committing the mortal sin of supporting abortion, continue to vote like a bunch of blind, totally amoral rabbits. But that’s a lie. Five votes are enough. And if they’re not enough, then why did we give away everything to get them?

I think it’s very possible that the five chosen ones will not perform as pro life people have been told they will. It’s a real possibility that they will punt and not overturn Roe. I know that the power brokers on the right need legal abortion so that the moral blackmail can continue.

I expect that pro life people have become so accustomed to Stepford voting, non-thinking, and sleazy what-about-him amorality that they won’t want to let it go. They’ve become habituated to following the easy false Gospel of vicious self-righteousness and condemnation that these liars and manipulators have taught them. I think that many pro life people will never be able to think, live, function as free people again.

A huge number of people, both inside the churches and outside of them, have been lost to Christ because of “religious” leaders who preach an anti-Christ political gospel. There is murder of the body, and there is murder of the soul. These political religious leaders are murderers of the soul on a mass scale.

Si quit per falsum evangelii ipsi anathema sit. A man who teaches a false gospel is anathema.

That is the judgement of Scripture on those who twist the Gospel for their own ends.

As for me, I am on a new path. I know that many of my pro life brothers and sisters will never leave their prison. They will allow themselves to be morally blackmailed and spiritually abused for the rest of their lives. They will continue Stepford voting and heaping hate on everyone their political preachers tell them to hate.

But I am a free American again. I’m going to work to reclaim my country for the common good, including an end to rape, sexual assault and child abuse. I am going to work for the sanctity and the dignity of all human life, from conception to natural death, including the lives and dignity of women. I will not allow anyone, no matter their collar, to subject me to moral blackmail and spiritual abuse ever again.

Will you join me?

[wesw]

BS GAL, I just deleted a cruel , merciless post...., about you.

I m sorry that I even wrote it, but you are just hateful, so hateful.

follow jesus,

I ll quote one thing....."suffer the little children"...., i.e.- you need to tolerate the little bastards, and be kind

I won t say more, for as meade noted, my tongue can be a vile weapon, and I m sorry that I have used it so.

you aren t free if you are a slave to hatred.

[Scooter]

You're one to talk about following Jesus. You've sold your soul to join the cult of a malevolent clown. And what you think you got in return, I cannot fathom. It's so ironic that you would say it in this thread, when the article that BSG posted speaks about "Christians" like yourself who have abandoned virtually every tenet of the faith in order to justify their support for him.

I would take satisfaction in knowing that it will come back to bite you in the ass, but it will also harm millions of people in its wake, so there won't be any pleasure in watching your reap what you sowed.

[BoSoxGal]

I’m not Catholic, or anti-abortion. I’m an atheist who thinks with 12 years left to avoid catastrophic effects from climate change, the aborted fetuses are the lucky ones.

A Catholic friend posted this piece (from Patheos) which I found very compelling and insightful, and posted here to generate discussion.

Of course from wesw it only generated some kind of pathetic ugly drivel.

[Big RR]

wes--Follow Jesus? I can guarantee that Jesus would not tolerate separating parents and children at the border, whatever the reason (and especially not to deter migration). suffer the little children; Trump changed that to "let the little children suffer".

Jesus is much more than a get out of jail free card, and following him is a lot more than being condemning and judgmental. Love is indeed much stronger than hate, but it is also a lot harder to practice because it requires you to get involved in others' lives and to stand up for what is right and just. I'd much rather stand up and humanely care for the children that are here than mouth platitudes about the fate of the "unborn".

[ex-khobar Andy]

Jesus is much more than a get out of jail free card . .

Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to believe that it is and that there is no expiration date. See this Guardian item about Gerry Falwell Jr. and his support for Trump. Quote from the piece:

Whether Trump was a good Christian was a matter between him and God. “Evangelicals believe every human being is a sinner. We’re all imperfect, we’re all flawed, and we’re redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ.”

Jerry Falwell is a idiot. I suspect that the fact that he is very rich and white has nothing to do with his love for Trump. ([/s] if anyone needs it.)

[Big RR]

You have to love this:

I can’t imagine a war breaking out in a civilised society in the 21st century. But if this was the 18th century, I think it would end up in a war. It’s scary.

you have to wonder if Falwell even knows that for over 75% of the 18th century there was no US and much of the country was under English rule. Perhaps he meant the 19th century.

And as for poor Kanye West, what exactly did "they" do to him; dare to speak out and criticize. It seems he does an awful lot of the same thing.

[eddieq]

As a Christian, I find it disheartening that so many Christians have an unwavering, unquestioning support for President Trump. To have such a prominent name calling him "moral" tells me how misguided they are. A lot of words can be used to describe President Trump but moral never crossed my mind. Christians should emulate the values that Jesus taught - compassion, charity, love, and forgiveness among them. Those are words I would not use when describing the current POTUS.

I do agree with Jerry Jr on one point, though. Every human being is an imperfect sinner, flawed and, if you are a believer in Him, redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ. I don't know the status of DJT's soul, that's between him and God. I just don't see DJT acting in a manner that would make any pastor proud to say, "He's a member of my church".

I don't care for Kanye's music and only know about him because of his antics. He's free to support whomever he likes.

[Lord Jim]

you aren t free if you are a slave to hatred.

Says the slavish follower of the greatest purveyor of hate in national American politics since George Wallace...

I swear wes, you are a 24/7 365 irony generating machine...

You churn it out like Carter used to churn out liver pills...