The deepest gash

     I've talked quite a bit today on social media about probably my deepest hurt in the last decade, and since it won't go away anytime soon realistically, I'm blogging about it.

    It is the failures, the poisoning of the wells and poisoning the roots of the tree of God by spiritual leaders.  Some say it started as soon as people misunderstood Paul and began using scripture as an excuse for homophobia, some say it started with the start of the marriage of Church and State and Televangelism in the 1970s.  I don't care when it started, all I know is it's probably never been as bad as it has been in the last 10 years in the United States, with the exception of Nazi Germany, with the American Church claiming those Christians were gay and pagan.

    10 years ago, a political party fed up with Obama, fed up with Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus and Ariana Grande and fed up with the existence of Muslims and the LGBTQ+ community created the movie "God's Not Dead," where an atheist professor torments a Christian college student and his Christian wife and a Christian child is tormented by her Muslim father.  That December, Kirk Cameron followed up with his pro-violence against people who didn't believe in Jesus the right way "Saving Christmas," where St. Nicholas beats two men brutally to cheers of admiration and it's all about buying big, fancy material things because we celebrate Jesus become material.  In the following year, Michael Sweet of Stryper condemned Miley Cyrus, a pansexual, gender fluid human trying to understand her self-expression, and would go on to make exceptions for a straight male with crude, racist, misogynist and homophobic tendencies to say "grab them by the [vagina]."  Violence skyrocketed with that man's campaign, and more films were released in even-numbered years to boost campaign funds.  In my apartment and on expanded basic cable, I was stunned to find still enough loyalty to Jimmy Swaggart, a crazed televangelist who, in the 80s, called rock and roll "the devil's music" and "the new pornography."  He also called Christian Rock Stars "as impossible as Christian Prostitutes" and demanded $1 million or God would strike him dead.  After seeing a prostitute in 1988, he lamented on TV and Ozzy Osbourne and Zakk Wylde struck back with the metal song "Miracle Man," calling him "a devil with a crucifix," and saying "Jimmy, he got busted, with his pants down," "self-righteous clown, MIRACLE MAN got busted." (the words "Miracle Man" were put through a distorted talkbox).  Wylde would later tackle a similar topic with "Counterfeit God," about preachers who claim to psychically know people's names and cure their cancer, filling theaters and stadiums.

    As a Christian, all of this is poison to our tree, poison to our body of Christ, poison to us.  We need to stop rejecting the outside world so brutally, some of it can be a necessary release from the dark clouds in our heads.  Rock and roll, video games, pop music, same-gender couples, they/them pronouns; they are not signs of a society partying in sulfur and flames.  You're just scaring them away from Church to the point that now less people go than those who do.  Even I tense up sometimes thinking about Casting Crowns lyrics, and I don't want to.  You are driving me crazy, I can't clean my apartment, I can't hear noise, I can't even look at anyone in my building without tensing up because all I can think of is who would beat me, lecture me and shove my head in a full sink like Carrie's mother.