“They don’t love you how you deserve to be loved, and I hope you don’t mistake the paltry half-measures they take to show you love as being all there is to love.
Not long ago, if you wanted to be rhetorical, you could suggest that gun ultras in the Legislature should memorialize dead schoolchildren as "Second Amendment Martyrs" and celebrate their sacrifice made in the name of our freedom to own assault weapons. Now, you hear the gun ultras more or less saying this themselves, not exactly celebrating but definitely shrugging off the leading cause of death in children as the necessary price we pay. They are actually saying this.
I think of how the prophet Jeremiah railed against the people of Jerusalem, including some of their leaders, who sacrificed children by burning them alive on altars to Molech. The name of the place where these abominations occurred, the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, evolved into Gehenna, the name used in the Greek New Testament for hell. Gehenna's origin story suggests to me that hell is not a place that God created for punishment, but rather one erected by humans in a willful attempt to separate themselves from God's love and justice.
It also suggests to me that our society has created its own Gehenna, sacrificing children on the altar of guns and rationalizing it as the price we must pay rather than recognizing it for the betrayal and abomination it is. We know what Jeremiah would say to Bill Lee and the Tennessee General Assembly because he already said it. But they won't listen, so now we all get to live in a manmade hell where children go to school each week wondering whether they will live through it.
*nods* I'm about out of hope for particular folks in Tennessee, but I still have hope for their friends and family and kids and grandkids who see what they're doing and are slowly and surely overcoming their own fear. I hope they all read Betsy's words. *waves to everyone reading this*
A short version of a much longer story: I had been working on the pastoral staff (I was ordained to Christian Ministry in 1980) at a Baptist Church in CA SF Bay Area. Worship ministry was part of my responsibility. On Saturday, December 15, 2012 I worked feverishly to develop a music notation which could be used by the worship team I was leading the next day in services. Early Sunday I “taught” the team “Peace On Earth” by U2. I had replaced the names of children in the original lyric with the names of the children that had been killed in the Newtown Shooting on Friday, two days before.
In the wisdom of hind-sight, description of the immediate reaction would be best described by Jack White’s version of “Love Is Blindness”.
We moved on through Christmas and New Year but Easter came early in 2013 and I was terminated for “deficiencies in style” and announced my resignation March 17th as we headed into the Easter Season. I had served the church for 17 years. The Senior pastor wrote me a letter and said “you are a better leader than I am”. . . . .
In the aftermath a family member vented saying, “I just want love to win!”
I later wrote my immediate response on the wooden chalkboard in the kitchen.
“Love HAS won! At great cost. Then said, ‘Follow Me!’”
The chalkboard is still in the kitchen. It has not changed. And this "Old Timer with a Walking Stick and No Plaques” on the walls (Propaganda’s lyric) continues to try to figure out how to Follow faithfully.
“Love HAS won! At great cost. Then said, ‘Follow Me!’”
Not long ago, if you wanted to be rhetorical, you could suggest that gun ultras in the Legislature should memorialize dead schoolchildren as "Second Amendment Martyrs" and celebrate their sacrifice made in the name of our freedom to own assault weapons. Now, you hear the gun ultras more or less saying this themselves, not exactly celebrating but definitely shrugging off the leading cause of death in children as the necessary price we pay. They are actually saying this.
I think of how the prophet Jeremiah railed against the people of Jerusalem, including some of their leaders, who sacrificed children by burning them alive on altars to Molech. The name of the place where these abominations occurred, the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, evolved into Gehenna, the name used in the Greek New Testament for hell. Gehenna's origin story suggests to me that hell is not a place that God created for punishment, but rather one erected by humans in a willful attempt to separate themselves from God's love and justice.
It also suggests to me that our society has created its own Gehenna, sacrificing children on the altar of guns and rationalizing it as the price we must pay rather than recognizing it for the betrayal and abomination it is. We know what Jeremiah would say to Bill Lee and the Tennessee General Assembly because he already said it. But they won't listen, so now we all get to live in a manmade hell where children go to school each week wondering whether they will live through it.
*nods* I'm about out of hope for particular folks in Tennessee, but I still have hope for their friends and family and kids and grandkids who see what they're doing and are slowly and surely overcoming their own fear. I hope they all read Betsy's words. *waves to everyone reading this*
A short version of a much longer story: I had been working on the pastoral staff (I was ordained to Christian Ministry in 1980) at a Baptist Church in CA SF Bay Area. Worship ministry was part of my responsibility. On Saturday, December 15, 2012 I worked feverishly to develop a music notation which could be used by the worship team I was leading the next day in services. Early Sunday I “taught” the team “Peace On Earth” by U2. I had replaced the names of children in the original lyric with the names of the children that had been killed in the Newtown Shooting on Friday, two days before.
In the wisdom of hind-sight, description of the immediate reaction would be best described by Jack White’s version of “Love Is Blindness”.
We moved on through Christmas and New Year but Easter came early in 2013 and I was terminated for “deficiencies in style” and announced my resignation March 17th as we headed into the Easter Season. I had served the church for 17 years. The Senior pastor wrote me a letter and said “you are a better leader than I am”. . . . .
In the aftermath a family member vented saying, “I just want love to win!”
I later wrote my immediate response on the wooden chalkboard in the kitchen.
“Love HAS won! At great cost. Then said, ‘Follow Me!’”
The chalkboard is still in the kitchen. It has not changed. And this "Old Timer with a Walking Stick and No Plaques” on the walls (Propaganda’s lyric) continues to try to figure out how to Follow faithfully.
“Love HAS won! At great cost. Then said, ‘Follow Me!’”
Keep On!