Make that eight things God hates

Before I delve into this rant that has a brother scalding under the ministerial collar, allow me to share a divine perspective:

These six things the Lord hates, yes, seven are an abomination to Him: A proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift in running to evil, a false witness who speaks lies and one who sows discord among brethren. (Proverbs 6:16-19 NKJV)

Sure, they can spell and coordinate colors. But, yeah, still stupid.

Now while others are acting too spiritual, let’s be real. Every one of us has transgressed at least one of these abysmal things that God hates – not feels uncomfortable, not strongly discourages, not doesn’t get a good feeling… no, he HATES these things.

That’s necessary to stress because while it is good for fun and yuks to bash a gay person in order for folk to feel all glorified, God does not hate gay people! Not one bit. If that were the case, it would be listed there.

Apparently, there is one sorely misled and misinformed group of “believers” that love to pray to God and in their spare time, they picket dead U.S. soldiers funerals and blame their death on “fags”. Keeping it classy in the 21st century.

Well, much to their chagrin and the applause of the rest of us, one military dad is taking their heathen behinds to court, according to MSNBC.com:

Hundreds of grieving families have been targeted by the Westboro Baptist Church, which believes military deaths are the work of a wrathful God who punishes the United States for tolerating homosexuality. Most mourners try to ignore the taunts. But [Marine father, Albert] Snyder couldn’t let it go. He became the first to sue the church to halt the demonstrations, and he’s pursued the group farther than anyone else.

I’m flabbergasted it took this long. Those people resemble as much of Christianity as Adolf Hitler did of God’s love. These are vile human beings who believe the Bible is there for them, and them only. They’re not out for witnessing, outreach or the Great Commission. All these troglodytes care about is saying what’s wrong with life and who is to blame for it.

In other words, if I was in the habit of hurling eff bombs like hand grenades, I would unload an arsenal on these tools. It’s shameful what they do… and try to pass it off as God’s will, way and work in this earth.

Snyder’s lawsuit accuses the Topeka, Kan., church of invading his privacy and intentionally inflicting emotional distress. He has the backing of his ex-wife and his two daughters, but Snyder insisted on being the only plaintiff.

Yeah, because that’s how you thank the brave men and women who have fought for our freedom – or worse yet, died for it – by defaming the way in which they did it. MEMO to Westboro: You are in Kansas. The next time there’s a tornado, please take a very close look for Auntie Em twirling in that joker. Please?

If those DBs had done anything in their bible study classes except figure out what catchy headlines to plaster on their Wal-Mart poster boards, they would have read and researched a few things in the bible that may show them how idiotic they are:

“If we give up and turn our backs on all we’ve learned, all we’ve been given, all the truth we now know, we repudiate Christ’s sacrifice and are left on our own to face the Judgment—and a mighty fierce judgment it will be!” (Hebrews 10:26 MSG)

Still not making a dent?

Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. (1 John 4:7-9 NLT)

Listen, there is nothing that says love about these signs, actions or people. They are disgusting representations of what Christ demands from his children. And, honestly, the next time it rains in Topeka, I would drive as far and fast down the Kansas turnpike as possible. Things could get a little hot.

Oh, one other thing, if any of these soldiers are British, you’re only telling their parents that God hates cigarettes. In that case, thanks for the public service announcement. Now, you may shut up.

By the way, save your free speech argument. The U.S. Constitution never meant to allow this kind of mental disease, badgering and borderline torture for the parents of dead soldiers who have to endure these attacks.

Privacy is protected, as is free speech. With this being the blurry line between the two, I think we just need to have the pastor of this “church” and old man Snyder rock the Octagon and get down with some MMA action.

That’ll show someone a righteous action – the “laying on of hands ministry” and the “vengeance of God.” Have mercy.

Sharing a cell with a Christian? Bad. Rape? Not so much.

Call me an ascetic Neanderthal who needs to wake up and smell the 21st century. Call me a misanthrope ruffian who needs to learn the word compassion.

Whatever you call me, understand I don’t really care when it comes something called “Prisoners’ Rights.”

For the rare exception of innocent people jailed for crimes they didn’t commit, I pray God weeds every one of those individuals out from their personal bondage and frees them duly in terms of a sizable law suit.

However, for the status quo, these folk lost their rights the moment they took them from someone unaware.

Take this simpleton noted in Great Britain’s The Sun, Barman Steven Relf.

Here’s a nitwit who admittedly raped two women after he probably spiked their drinks in a pub. Admittedly. Ergo, his rights went out of style like parachute pants. Really fast!

There he is, three hots and a cot when suddenly, a man fresh from a jailhouse salvation becomes his bunkmate. His new buddy begins to proselytize about the goodness of God. And that’s when we discover Relf here is an Atheist.

A source said Relf was “furious” at having to share at Manchester Prison with the Christian convict and wanted him to be “evicted”. He said: “He moaned about how the guy wouldn’t shut up about God. He said he wanted to speak to a lawyer about his rights so he could be moved cells.”

And what happens? Relf’s letter made it to the desk of some pencil pusher with the British ACLU and Voila! He’s got a new cell freshly scoured from the remnants of witnessing.

Nice, because convicted rapists deserve all the stylings of a five-star hotel stay. It’s a shame he didn’t keep that cell mate because in prison, he will be crying out to God in some fashion before it’s all over.

That’s not a right. That’s just wrong.

Former KKK Leader now an ordained COGIC minister

Is THIS what's next? Stranger things have happened.

I have heard of the pot calling the kettle black, so what in the world does this newly ordained minister for a COGIC church call his followers?

Meet Johnny Lee Clary, a good ol’ boy from Oklahoma, proud white boy who is a minister for a black denomination… and oh yeah, a former imperial wizard for the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

This should be good.

“Bishop [George] McKinney and I both felt like racial reconciliation was needed now more than ever,” said Clary, who befriended McKinney in the early 1990s when the two spoke during a Promise Keepers event. “We feel like it makes a huge statement that the former national imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan would join the Church of God in Christ and reach out with the Church of God in Christ to bring racial reconciliation to America.”

In case you haven’t read your bible recently, this is called f-o-r-g-i-v-e-n-e-s-s and r-e-p-e-n-t-a-n-c-e. WOW!

You know God truly had to yank the scales from Clary’s eye sockets for him to see the error of his ways and make good on a promise to God to be “all he could for Jesus Christ.”

The word “kyklos” is Greek for circle and in the reconstruction era of the 1860s, a “circle of friends” decided to cleanse the south and then the only circle they used was the noose placed around 1000s of necks. And yet, they use the Bible for the terrorism.

Bishop McKinney knows this… and still accepted Clary into the fold, with open arms. That’s God.

“I know the answer to racial reconciliation, and that’s Jesus Christ,” he said. “They all come to me, even secular people are saying, ‘What changed you?’ I tell them, ‘The only thing that changed me was the Word of God.’ Because when I accepted Christ … I had to get my mind renewed, and that was through God’s Word.”

It’s no secret racial reconciliation still needs to improve, but stories like this really help folk answer the Rodney King rally cry.

Why can’t black men and white men preach the red-stained words of Christ together? The fact that Clary dawned a hood and burned the same cross he professes now is the headline of this story, but the heart of it is a man with a vision [McKinney] who reached out to another man with some victory [Clary].

There is not one scripture in the Bible that says God chose one race over another. People get out of the Bible what they bring to it in the first place. You get a cowardly bigot – black, white or any other hue – reading the Word of God, somehow that filter will let some of that dirt through.

I know for a fact these two brothers-in-arms are reading this one:

Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other. (John 13:34-35 MSG).

There’s hope yet, people. And in the words of a dude who can’t decide if he wants to be a white politician or a black civil rights activist, “Keep hope alive!”

Pastorz in Da Hood

Stereotypes. They sure suck.

These weighty, sinful and misleading generalization have been the bane of this nation’s existence for centuries. Why? Because no matter the group of people in the cross hairs, there will always be a small – and extremely vocal and visible – minority that ruins it for everyone.

Take crime-impoverished cities (AKA “the ghetto”) for example. These dilapidated areas are chock full of pioneering civic leaders who care about the people in the community and the places in it. However, there’s that criminal element who thinks the city is their personal storefront for target practice and anarchy.

As seen in Pastor Joshua's bookstore, perhaps.

Thanks to those heinous dunderheads (most of them, under the age of 21), the ghetto remains the ghetto and people with any sort of sense avoid them at all costs.

Here’s another one: Meet the “Rev.” Joshua Sims of Double Rock Baptist Church. In, uh… Compton, California. (Sigh).

A Baptist minister was arrested this morning on charges of stealing more than $800,000 from the church he leads in Compton, officials said. The Rev. E. Joshua Sims, pastor of Double Rock Baptist Church in Compton, was taken into custody this morning at his home in Corona, said Steve Whitmore, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The arrest concludes a months-long investigation by sheriff’s deputies, Whitmore said.

This travesty would be different if this sell-out was arrested on a whim because of a misinformed phone call. Alas, this was a “months-long” investigation… well, eight years actually. EIGHT YEARS!

A church in Compton no less is home to a pastor who suddenly encounters a trunk full of bling, which just happens to belong to a friggin’ Bentley. Did I mention this was in Compton?!

And Josh here didn’t think that would flare up on his tail like a vicious case of herpes? Classy, brother.

In a city of drugs, death and disenfranchisement more common that jobs, money and hope, you would think a church would strive to be the city on a hill and offer some well, hope to its people, he chooses the more saintly approach of his hands-on ministry by putting his hands in their back pockets looking for his latest fix.

What’s next? Find a street named after a progenitor of the Civil Rights movement, get in a stolen car and start shooting up the place? Oh wait, that happens all the time in American every city on Martin Luther King Blvd. daily.

Well, thanks Josh for giving stereotype lovers and bigots everywhere something to relish. What took you eight years managed to bash Christians, minorities and the upstanding ‘Boyz N The Hood‘ in troika-filled fatal swoop.

Church blogger watchdog may be put to sleep for sniffing around

Wall Watchers, if any one post on the Wall gets up your dander, this should be it.

There are several of us who are passionate about exposing the surreptitious flaws, duplicitous spirituality and malicious intent of so many in the pulpit who should be doing so… none of that.

Most of us folk seen as “Another Bricks in the Wall” are libidinous, and it shows through our words, our thoughts and our dexterity.

Well, thanks to some Orwellian actions in Jacksonville, Fla., and this story from the Times-Union, we can subtract one from the list.

A blogger critical of First Baptist Church Pastor Mac Brunson wants to know why his Web site was investigated by a police detective who is also a member of the minister’s security detail.

I’m sorry?! What?! Listen here, I’m over anonymity in the blogosphere. I – like apparently the alleged mastermind behind FBC JAX – have no choice, but the reason I have no choice [COUGH… legal action… COUGH… non-disclosure agreement… GAG!] is the very inspiration behind my words.

I have witnessed hypocrisy in action. I have felt the vitriol from parishioners because of the actions of some ne’er-do-wells in the church. I have seen longtime church members stabbed flat in the back by the very church elders who espouse love for them. I have experienced the highs of listening to a man of God, and the lows of knowing him become a “Mand of Gawd.”

Evidently, so has FBC JAX, or thanks to Rev. Mac Brunson and his wielding stick of power, Mr. Thomas A. Rich.

So, as the story, Pastor Mac got his feelers hurt and called one of his security guards – also one of Jacksonville’s finest – for a hook-up. And now, because Rich attempted to unveil some misgivings inside the church, he gets a big, stinking peace out for his trouble:

Rich also wants to know why Hinson [said cop] revealed his name to the church despite finding no wrongdoing [on the blog, FBC JAX]. Hinson obtained a subpoena from the State Attorney’s Office requiring Google Inc. to reveal the author of the blog. Rich’s unmasking led to an eventual trespass warning banning the longtime member and his wife from First Baptist, despite the fact that Brunson and a top church administrator conceded the blog never threatened violence.

Violence?! No really. Some tool was going to Pastor Mac’s house, stealing his mail and taking voyeuristic pictures of his wife. And Thomas here got pinged for that because he wrote on a blog. Stay classy, Mac.

However, the pastor somehow forgets to discuss the rationale behind FBC JAX, which is:

Rich said he launched his blog in August 2007 — more than a year after Brunson became the pastor — because he was alarmed by what he described as Brunson’s “abusive preaching,”   especially during fund-raising campaigns. The blog has included criticisms of Brunson’s $300,000 salary, his plan to open a church school, his construction of a “lavish” office suite, accepting a $307,000 land gift from church members for his home and putting his wife on the payroll.

When megachurch pastors care enough to "send the very best"

Quite naturally, Pastor Mac didn’t have a comment to much of this, except to say that “he is one of the lowest-paid mega-church pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention.” Here, here. Get him a cookie.

I wonder if it ever dawned on a PASTOR that here sits one man who attends a church, has strong relationships, maybe have children who have friends and oh yeah, somehow stay in touch with God.

But because he has the unmitigated gall to not come to you personally, you ban his family from your hallowed church for life. Now, that’s the ubiquitous answer to “WWJD!”

Is that what a shepherd is supposed to do? What about that parable about the lost sheep? Apparently, Thomas is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, so that makes this heinous action okee doke.

Maybe Thomas was right about Pastor Mac, whom – full disclosure – I actually have really been blessed by a few of his messages.

Maybe Thomas would like to climb on the Wall and give his own point of view to us (Hint… Hint).

Maybe Thomas was off-base. Regardless, after this blog post, maybe there needs to be a movement for that First Amendment thingy.

Seeing how it’s so easy and user-friendly to walk right up to a megachurch PASTOR’s office and speak your mind freely. Sure, go ahead, line up everyone. The sheep’s costume are on the left.