Relax? I Don't think So.

St. Stephen takes one on the chin for the team.

A friend posted a cute picture of babies leaning back in lawn chairs with the caption, "Relax, God is in Charge!"

We all post cute stuff like that all the time. The point is to reassure our brothers and sisters that ultimately everything is going to be alright.

And it is.

In the end.  The problem is, if you read the stories that come down to us in scripture, leaving God in charge is not an entirely relaxing proposition.  I mean God's record for providing comfort and relaxation for his children is not very good.  Now I'm not saying that everything God does to us isn't for our ultimate good.  I suspect when it's all said and done and we're sitting on our verandas in the New Earth sipping peach tea and nibbling cashews and pistachios, we'll say, "You know, I'm glad God let that happen to me."

But it's almost ALWAYS easier to appreciate some things long after they've happened to you.  I imagine all these guys would have chosen for things to be a whole lot more "relaxing" if they'd been laying out the events of their lives.  Here are some examples:

Noah - Nice house, Family.  Position in the community.  God asks him to preach the end of the world and build a honkin' big boat.  So for more than a century Noah bankrupts himself and wears out his body and his sons' bodies building a boat the size of a small aircraft carrier with nothing more than hand tools. Noah died much younger than his father and grandfather, probably as a result of the stress.  People laughed at him the whole time he was working on the boat.  Then he gets to spend 40 days rocking up and down in a boat at sea in the middle of the worst storm in history then spends the rest of that year feeding animals and hoping the water will go down while living cheek by jowl with family in very close quarers. Then when it's done he gets dumped out in a barren land to start all over clearing away the mud and debris and trying to scratch a living out of the devastated ground.

Jacob - Gets run off by his homicidal brother, sleeps on a rock, get cheated out of a wife by his uncle, cheated out of his pay by his Uncle and to add insult to injury has his leg jerked out its socket in a wrestling match with an angel no less.  He's blessed with two wives who fight constantly, 12 sons that fight among themselves constantly, murder his neighbors and sell one of their brothers to Egyptian slavers.

Joseph - Gets sold to Egyptian slavers by his brothers, gets accused of a death penalty offense by his master's slutty wife, gets thrown in prison and forgotten by everyone he ever helped or did a nice thing for.

David - Peacefully tending sheep and some prophet comes along and pours oil on his head.  Next thing you know he's hiding in caves and the King has soldiers running all over the country looking to murder him.  Why?  No reason. The king's nuts.  God called David a man after his own heart.  Then his own son tries to murder him and stages a revolt.

Elijah - Preaches what God tells him to faithfull, gets hounded from one end of the country and winds up all alone in the mountains eating scraps brought to him by a bird while soldiers scour the countrysided. 

Elisha - Carries on Elijah's work.  Winds up surrounded by thousands of enemy soldiers with one mission on their minds - Kill Elisha!.

Isaiah - Nice man. Prophesied Jesus' coming. Wrote some of the most beautiful passages in scripture. I think the King sawed him in half for his troubles.

Jeremiah - Bit of a gloomy Gus, but he did pass along the messages God told him to.  Was stoned for his efforts to obey God.

Only one of Jesus' disciples died a natural death.  All the rest were murdered, some were tortured and none of their deaths were merciful.  The only one who died of old age was boiled in oil once before they allowed him to expire on his own.

Jesus himself was brutally killed by the leaders of his own church.

RELAX?

I don't think that's in the cards these days.  It may explain why I'm living literally day to day right now.  If anyone has a small cabin in the woods they'll rent me cheap, I'd like to talk to you about it. I don't think things are going to get much better for a while.  Call me a pessimist, but I don't think God's mercy has anything to do with my comfort. Until I can figure out what he wants to do with me next, I'll just ride out the storm.

"Oh, but you left out the rest of those stories," you may protest.  Much good came out of all these.  Joseph became number 2 in Egypt, David was King, Jesus saved us all.

Precisely my point.  If God sees something good He can make out of the events of your life, He has no compunctions about making your life miserable to accomplish that good.  Paul says in Romans 8:28 - "All things work together for good to them that are called according to His purpose."  You should know that going into the deal.  There is nothing in that promise that says you'll be comfortable, wealthy or even well-liked.  Anyone who says differently is building a crystal cathedral or selling prayer cloths blessed by the saints in Jerusalem.  Paul, by the way, was beheaded shortly after he wrote that passage.

When you sign on as a Christian, you don't sign up for a comfortable voyage through life, my sailor friends.  You sign up for a profitable one, true, but don't expect to get paid till the voyage is over.

Tom King -
*  From a cheap hotel room in Puyallup, Washington in the midst of an almighty great storm

Muzzling Pastors With the IRS

Should the IRS tax churches that engage in politics?

Rick Cohen in a recent Nonprofit Quarterly piece, suggested that allowing pastors to endorse political candidates or speak out on political issues is somehow bad for the nonprofit sector and that churches that engaged in political speech were somehow at odds with the constitution.  I respectfully disagree. 

Every nonprofit lobbies for their party (usually Democrat) in some way. Whether they call it "educating the public" or "informing our representatives", it's obvious which political camp any given nonprofit 501(c)3 is sitting in.

Churches are not strictly in the same category as the mainstream 501(c)3.  Churches are, in fact, a unique segment of the nonprofit sector, protected four ways in the Bill of Rights - freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion and freedom of the press (should they have one). Historically, churches have always been a factor in political activity in America. During the Civil War, it was largely church folk that pressured Lincoln to make the war about ending slavery. Powerful speakers rose in pulpits across the land (even a few brave souls in the South did) to call for the end to the pernicious institution. The Revolutionary War was practically organized in church houses across the country. If the IRS had taken this attitude during the 50s and 60s, Dr. Martin Luther King would have had some difficulty fighting for Civil Rights.  Remember, Dr. King was a preacher.  And it was church people that forced the Congress to take up the issue of Civil Rights - both black and white church people exercising their rights of free speech and assembly.  Churches were burned and bombed, but they stood firm.

And the desire to muzzle political in churches, I have noticed is never applied to liberal pastors like Rev. Jesse Jackson or Rev. Al Sharpton who both speak wherever they want to and have, so far, not left a trail of tax-paying churches in their wake.

Freedom of Religion is not Freedom From Religion. As unions, political parties and advocacy groups speak for workers, population groups and people of various political persuasions, so churches speak for the members of their congregations. To muzzle pastors is absolutely unconscionable. It is to silence people because of their creed and we would certainly not condone silencing people because of their race or color.
Churches are in no way profit-making enterprises. When naughty pastors misuse church funds they should be arrested and thrown in jail and taxed. I know of few Christians who would object to that. When churches profiteer off their members, they should be investigated and taxed like all git-out! BUT to muzzle this country's clergy for instructing their congregations regarding things political is unconscionable and deprives the political process of a key element of decision-making - a conscience.

This attack on churches through taxation is little more than an attack on religion itself.  Like the so-called gay marriage initiatives, the quashing of religious political speech is little more than a thinly veiled attack on the Christian faith itself.  It is all about misusing the "fairness" argument to make the case for forcing institutions of faith out of the public square and back behind the church's closed doors.

From there it is but a short step to forcing the church underground and out of the public eye altogether, as though it were some sort of perversion rather than an expression of faith and belief.

Perhaps we should change the designation of churches to separate them from nonprofits that accept federal and state grants. If churches accept government money, then fine, they need to shut up about politics. BUT so long as a church operates as a religious institution and is in fact, not for profit, operates ethically and accepts no support from the government, then by all that's holy let them speak up and say what they will.

Labor Unions are tax exempt, although donations or payments to a union are not tax exempt.  But then that makes sense.  Unions are designed specifically to enrich their members by brokering deals with employers for better pay and benefits.  While church donations are exempt from taxation, their purpose is not to enrich their members.  Church members don't strike against God or the government for better pay, for instance.

Unions are essentially profit-making entities. They earn raises and benefits for their members. that is their chief purpose. That's a whole different story from churches.

Churches, just like unions serve as a critical voice for their people.  Throughout US history churches have traditionally been the conscience of our nation. Perhaps you don't like churches, hate pastors and have nightmares about the Sunday School teacher who used to wag her boney finger at you and tell you that you were going straight to hell because your hair was too long or your skirt too short. Well too bad. Sorry for your trauma, but that gives you no excuse to silence people of faith, just because you have a problem with religion in general or some religious people in particular and have chosen to remove yourself from their company.

Churches have a perfect right to exist and if unions can do the political organizing that they do, then so can churches. I listened in on an SEIU meeting a few weeks ago. It was little more than a rally for Democrat candidates.  The leaders manipulated the truth throughout in an attempt to frighten members into voting for Democrats. For some reason that's not troublesome, while Pastor Bob's telling his members that two dudes sleeping together is immoral is no matter what some arbitrary law says on the subject is somehow a threat to the Republic.

Turning the IRS loose on churches that speak their mind, is hypocritical, especially when it's Democrats pressing for churches to be punished for political speech.  In the past month, I've watched a parade of liberal pastors appearing on commercials in support of an initiative here in Washington State to legalize gay marriage.  I plan to introduce evidence to the IRS calling for the same level of scrutiny for the churches that employ those liberal pastors that the IRS applies to scrutinizing conservative pastors who endorsed candidates during the recent "Pulpit Freedom Sunday". Oh, and what about the church pastors in this country who accepted "sermon notes" from the Obama administration to guide them as to how to support the president's policies from the pulpit.

What's sauce for the goose and all that.....

I'm just sayin'

Tom

Tragedy in Texas - White House Responds

Dateline: 10/19/2012 - The White House

Within minutes of the announcement that the beloved symbol of the Texas State Fair, "Big Tex" caught fire this morning and burned, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney released the following statement:

• Our hearts go out to the people of the great State of Texas. The president wants everyone to know that no effort will be spared to catch and punish the perpetrators of this outrage. Former president, Bill Clinton, has volunteered to lead a task force of FBI agents and several cute interns who  are looking into reports that notorious right wing terrorist, Glenn Beck has established a secret terrorist cell in the Dallas area thanks to the failed policies of George W. Bush.

The president was unavailable for comment say White House sources due to his not knowing about it, having skipped the morning security briefing to play golf with a Hungarian-American donor. Carney promises that the president will "give a damn" should the subject come up on one of the talk shows he's scheduled to appear on this coming week. 



Big Tex tragedy unfolds.

 Officials of the Texas State Fair have already issued a no-bid contract to Houston-based Halliburton for reconstruction of Big Tex. In a press release to Fox News, Halliburton CEO, Dave Lesar, promised to "Have him back up in a couple of days."

The new and improved "Big Tex" will be made largely of kevlar and concrete, according to Dallas architect/designer, "Ox" Buchanan, who, according to sources within the State Fair, volunteered his services to Fair officials even before the fire was fully extinguished.

Governor Rick Perry announced that he would send a Texas Ranger to Dallas to handle the investigation and shoot the "friggin' little Yankee perp". Minutes after the governor's announcement Chuck Norris called the governor and reportedly begged, "Oh, please let me....."