John, your words burn true. The Sermon on the Mount is the stone they stumble over, and they’ve chosen to bury it rather than be broken by it. They want Jesus with a sword, not Jesus with mercy. And you’ve named the cost of that better than I could.
But here’s where I find myself stuck: what do I do with that knowledge? My resources are limited. I don’t stand in a pulpit, I don’t have a crowd to move. What I have is my own mind and conscience, and they’re not immune to the same temptations. I can’t stop the revision of Jesus out there, but I can refuse to let it take root in me.
For me that means choosing, again and again, where I lean. Some mornings it’s a struggle just to turn away from the noise. Some days I feel the itch to strike back, to meet contempt with contempt. And maybe that’s the real test: to set down the sword in my own hand, even when rage feels justified.
It’s not grand. It won’t make the news. But if I can guard one small space of stillness, if I can offer decency where I’d rather sharpen the blade, then at least I’ve resisted becoming the thing I despise.
And maybe that’s where it has to start: not with their hypocrisy, but with our own choices, repeated until they harden into something that looks a little like integrity.
Yes! to everything you said, Dino. As much as we might want to change others, we only have the ability to change ourselves. Maybe my continuing to seek love in my own heart can impact those around me - rippling out in waves I can't see or understand.
I hold this to be an undeniable truth, Joni. I feel it in the center of self that love is the spark in the quiet room, the unseen hand that turns the page. It's the tide that lifts all ships, the whisper in the old wood that makes a house a home. It arrives not to burn down, but to quicken, to awaken the sleeping virtue in us and show us what we can become. It's the silent force that makes a stone roll and a garden grow, turning fear into courage and a fleeting moment into forever.
"They want Jesus with a sword, not Jesus with mercy." You've made me realize that that was exactly what most of the people of Jesus' time also wanted. We aren't too different from them, are we? I don't know whether that makes me hopeful or hopeless.
The difference between the sword of yesterday and today is that we harm more people today. Certainly we have more people now but the sword is also more lethal. I hope that compassion and empathy has grown alongside the growth of population.
No kidding. If your version of Christianity thinks Jesus would be a gun nut and that the Sermon on the Mount is some kind of Marxist tract, you’re probably doing it wrong.
Thank you again John. Your writing always resonates with me. May we all SEE the world in which we want to live, even if we have to squint and strain. May we all devote a couple of minutes every morning and evening seeing how the world will be when we stop living by the sword. In between these moments, let's do the next thing we must do to stop fascism and authoritarianism.
Thanks again, John. Cathy, John’s words always resonate with me too. I am 72 years old, and I have been well aware forever of the evil that lurks in human hearts, the fact that we are all sinners for sure, and the chasm between the profession of my evangelical brethren and their often wildly inconsistent and even antithetical words and deeds. We always at least pretended to believe the actual words of Jesus, or I at least believed that. These last ten years have been insanity, and more and more every single day. The evangelical world has sold its soul so we can hate abortion for all times and for all reasons, and REALLY get to hate gay people(and add trans to the list lately). That is Christianity today-hate. What is happening?
Wish they would confine their lust to just swords and scabbards - Freudian as hell - but there's churches that actually worship the AR-15. Like Jesus did. *eyeroll*
So one of my local churches (Lutheran to be specific) has a message board that changes every few weeks. The current message is one that should make everyone who reads it an atheist: "God doesn't give you what you want. But he does give you what you need." Really? I think the pastor of that church might have to have a little rethink on that one. Because if his reasoning is that his deity gives people only "good" things they "need" then the entire architecture of his religion falls down. By this reasoning, his deity engages in mass murder, "gives" people terminal cancer, forces people into homelessness: all because it is what they "need"? This is one of the most salient reasons why I don't "do" Christianity--or any other manmade religion (which is all of them).
Cry me a river. If you have a problem with that opinion of conservative Christians - go talk to your fellow conservative Christians and ask them why so many of them became such abhorrent gits. And why are they so hell-bent (pun fully intended) on ramming their religion down everyone else's throat and altering laws based on the aforementioned religions in a country, whose founders specifically emphasized separation of church and state.
Meanwhile, here are links to the studies that show exactly what I said: when surveyed about the content of the Bible, non-Christian participants give more accurate answers than Christian ones. Jews and Agnostics score better by a wide margin.
So, I didn't come up with the notion that Christians don't know what they are talking about when it comes to the Bible - they told me so themselves, via the studies, polls, and personal interactions. You want to change other people's opinion on that subject? Talk to the source.
Here is what I find fascinating and disconcerting at the same time.
There is violence in other religions and philosophies. If you look at Ramayana, Kalevala, Egyptian, Greek, Mesopotamian, Slavic lore - there are oodles of violence. They own it. And great violence coexists with great beauty, love, and phenomenally deep ideas.
The gods and goddesses are closer to humans and they evolve with humans. Greek gods, for example, started off in animal guise, like Egyptian gods, but they eventually transformed into humans. Not only that, but their roles used to be more violent (Apollo used to be an assassin god and became the god of the arts, his sister Artemis was a warrior huntress but became the goddess of healing and protectress of young women, even Athena used to be portrayed with a spear or a sword), and then they transformed to something more civilized.
Another remarkable thing about non-Christian philosophies and faiths is longevity. They operate in terms of millennia. In the Chinese lore, there is a story of one female immortal who spent seventy thousand years being an apprentice to a much older and wiser immortal. This was her path to maturity- seventy thousand years.
And then we have Christianity... The timeline is laughably short. Where other gods spend tens of thousands of years just figuring out what they want to be when they grow up, Christianity has 6,000 for EVERYTHING. The whole creation. A bit flippant, not to mention arrogant. Second, while there was some hope of moral evolution with Christianity with the transition from the horrifically violent and uncompromising Old Testament to Christ's New Testament, human beings managed to find even the New Testament good enough excuse to incite violence. So, we ended up with the controversial match of the gentle, loving, forgiving Christ and people willing to do hideous things in his name (let's not forget - Torquemada was considered the perfect Christian in his day). And that's where we are today. Which is not a comfortable place to be - especially for those of us on the receiving end of this ideology.
If you listen to Charlie Kirk’s message, it was the same as James Dobson, especially about women.
He was such a young man 31 years old to have such intolerance for a fellow human being especially in the LBGTQ community.
He said that the military should occupy every city in this nation.
He said religion (his) is the government.
He told women not to go to college that the only reason to go to college was to find a husband.
Told women fully submit to their husbands that they were not in charge. How insecure these men are that they do not want equal partners or their partners to realize a full potential in life.
Ezra Klein said “ Charlie Kirk did politics right”!
Have no idea why he would say such a thing !
Calling him this great debater .
He had the approach he did because he was trying to get people to trust him ,believe him like him and walk away, saying “what a nice guy”.
He had been espousing these ideas and beliefs since he was 18 years old and he died at such a young age of 31.
The sad reality is HE HIMSELF was exploited.
Christian nationalism is spiritual and emotional abuse .
No one 18 years old, as was the stated age of Charlie Kirk when he bagen his “mission”, has a fully developed prefrontal cortex in their brain. This part of the brain develops in the mid-twenties. It is responsible for much of the personality and decision making. It is what helps the individual understand the consequences of their behavior , among many other things. The prefrontal cortex doesn’t mature until someone is in the mid to late twenties. Perhaps this early Kirk that never changed his tune, was so hateful to so many who were different than he. It is also a great argument that those under 25 should never have guns except under older adult supervision.
Sorry, I don't agree with this excuse of immaturity as a reason for atrocious, abhorrent behavior. I was a mom at 19, my husband 23. He started working at age 15 1/2, worked 2nd shift after graduation while attending a vocational school during the day. We married after I graduated high school, became young parents due to birth control failure, a year later. He was, and still is, an exemplary father and husband 48 years later. There are millions of young men who are as responsible as he was. No excuses for this degenerate, hateful man. If maturity was the issue why did he maintain this disgusting ideology long after he "matured"?
“Charlie Kirk. Wow. I can’t believe we have to discuss this dude, but here we go. Where did this guy even come from? Miri AF writes:
“A crazy conspiracy theorist might also suggest there is simply no way that ordinary 17-year-olds somehow get themselves onto the Fox Business channel, as Kirk did, and then just a year later, with no meaningful qualifications or experience at all, manage to found one of the most visible, wealthy, and successful conservative advocacy organisations in the country.
Turning Point USA, described as "an American non-profit organisation that advocates for conservative politics on high school, college, and university campuses", was reportedly founded by the then 18-year-old college dropout, Charlie Kirk, and successful businessman, Bill Montgomery, 53 years Kirk's senior.
Montgomery, who had a military background, allegedly "died from Covid complications" in July 2020.
Based on this information, Charlie Kirk's rise to huge influence and fame, sounds just about as plausible as Sebastian Shemirani's, the "ordinary young man" who appeared on the BBC in his early twenties to denounce his mother's crazy conspiracism, and then shot to further international fame just a couple of years later when he accused said mother of "killing his sister". Sebastian - and brother, Gabriel - are now very famous as activists for the Online Safety Bill seeking to crush the "harms" they allege are done by "conspiracy theories".
This kind of stellar rise to cultural significance and visibility, despite their complete lack of any professional experience qualifying them for such positions, is not a trajectory any normal young person follows, regardless of whether they are on the left or right of the political spectrum.”
I found this interesting and a good observation and I’m not familiar with this Sebastian he’s talking about .
Who did back and fund and create that “turning point”organization?
James Dobson and focus on the family ??
The Koch Bros ?
They say they’re not supposed to think or talk about any of this ?
They’re trying to sanitize talking about what Kirk himself said in his own words.
I have a tee shirt that says “Read the RED words”. Imho, that’s what is necessary to be a Christ follower. Since the word ‘Christian’ has become negative, I don’t want to be seen as one who weaponizes religion. My God loves.
They cherry pick their faith, their history, their enemies. Their reality is defined by what suits their needs and benefits them. Hypocrisy is their primary tenet. All this is evidenced in today’s evangelical movement.
Preach John. Unfortunately, my wife and brother are lost to this brand of "christianity." Their justification for hating lies beneath a thin veneer of love the sinner, hate the sin mentality. They are ill. And their illness makes them liars and hypocrites who will blindly follow people like Kirk. They are lost in a cult or true believers. That's what makes them truly dangerous. They are easily manipulated by the cult of trump.
You truly speak truth to power. Those who take up the sword because of Jesus’s words, do not read the rest of the story. They stop where it is convenient for their beliefs.
John, your words burn true. The Sermon on the Mount is the stone they stumble over, and they’ve chosen to bury it rather than be broken by it. They want Jesus with a sword, not Jesus with mercy. And you’ve named the cost of that better than I could.
But here’s where I find myself stuck: what do I do with that knowledge? My resources are limited. I don’t stand in a pulpit, I don’t have a crowd to move. What I have is my own mind and conscience, and they’re not immune to the same temptations. I can’t stop the revision of Jesus out there, but I can refuse to let it take root in me.
For me that means choosing, again and again, where I lean. Some mornings it’s a struggle just to turn away from the noise. Some days I feel the itch to strike back, to meet contempt with contempt. And maybe that’s the real test: to set down the sword in my own hand, even when rage feels justified.
It’s not grand. It won’t make the news. But if I can guard one small space of stillness, if I can offer decency where I’d rather sharpen the blade, then at least I’ve resisted becoming the thing I despise.
And maybe that’s where it has to start: not with their hypocrisy, but with our own choices, repeated until they harden into something that looks a little like integrity.
Yes! to everything you said, Dino. As much as we might want to change others, we only have the ability to change ourselves. Maybe my continuing to seek love in my own heart can impact those around me - rippling out in waves I can't see or understand.
I hold this to be an undeniable truth, Joni. I feel it in the center of self that love is the spark in the quiet room, the unseen hand that turns the page. It's the tide that lifts all ships, the whisper in the old wood that makes a house a home. It arrives not to burn down, but to quicken, to awaken the sleeping virtue in us and show us what we can become. It's the silent force that makes a stone roll and a garden grow, turning fear into courage and a fleeting moment into forever.
Amen Joni
Thank you !
"They want Jesus with a sword, not Jesus with mercy." You've made me realize that that was exactly what most of the people of Jesus' time also wanted. We aren't too different from them, are we? I don't know whether that makes me hopeful or hopeless.
The difference between the sword of yesterday and today is that we harm more people today. Certainly we have more people now but the sword is also more lethal. I hope that compassion and empathy has grown alongside the growth of population.
No kidding. If your version of Christianity thinks Jesus would be a gun nut and that the Sermon on the Mount is some kind of Marxist tract, you’re probably doing it wrong.
Thank you again John. Your writing always resonates with me. May we all SEE the world in which we want to live, even if we have to squint and strain. May we all devote a couple of minutes every morning and evening seeing how the world will be when we stop living by the sword. In between these moments, let's do the next thing we must do to stop fascism and authoritarianism.
Thanks again, John. Cathy, John’s words always resonate with me too. I am 72 years old, and I have been well aware forever of the evil that lurks in human hearts, the fact that we are all sinners for sure, and the chasm between the profession of my evangelical brethren and their often wildly inconsistent and even antithetical words and deeds. We always at least pretended to believe the actual words of Jesus, or I at least believed that. These last ten years have been insanity, and more and more every single day. The evangelical world has sold its soul so we can hate abortion for all times and for all reasons, and REALLY get to hate gay people(and add trans to the list lately). That is Christianity today-hate. What is happening?
It is despairing, Rick. I hear you.
Amen
If you think the Beatitudes are too "woke" (whatever that means), you're doing Christianity wrong.
Wish they would confine their lust to just swords and scabbards - Freudian as hell - but there's churches that actually worship the AR-15. Like Jesus did. *eyeroll*
Remember, slaveholders and lynchmobs saw themselves as devout Christians. So deluded. Their (un)spiritual racist descendants persist in this folly.
So one of my local churches (Lutheran to be specific) has a message board that changes every few weeks. The current message is one that should make everyone who reads it an atheist: "God doesn't give you what you want. But he does give you what you need." Really? I think the pastor of that church might have to have a little rethink on that one. Because if his reasoning is that his deity gives people only "good" things they "need" then the entire architecture of his religion falls down. By this reasoning, his deity engages in mass murder, "gives" people terminal cancer, forces people into homelessness: all because it is what they "need"? This is one of the most salient reasons why I don't "do" Christianity--or any other manmade religion (which is all of them).
Extreme conservative Christians can't quote the Bible because they haven't read it.
I don’t agree with that statement. I don’t think you can put conservative Christians in a box Maria. We are all different folks with different ideas.
Cry me a river. If you have a problem with that opinion of conservative Christians - go talk to your fellow conservative Christians and ask them why so many of them became such abhorrent gits. And why are they so hell-bent (pun fully intended) on ramming their religion down everyone else's throat and altering laws based on the aforementioned religions in a country, whose founders specifically emphasized separation of church and state.
Meanwhile, here are links to the studies that show exactly what I said: when surveyed about the content of the Bible, non-Christian participants give more accurate answers than Christian ones. Jews and Agnostics score better by a wide margin.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/07/23/what-americans-know-about-religion/#:~:text=Looking%20only%20at%20questions%20about,Christianity%20as%20do%20Christians%20overall.
This study shows the level of disengagement from the Bible and lack of transformative knowledge.
https://www.barna.com/research/sotb-2021/
So, I didn't come up with the notion that Christians don't know what they are talking about when it comes to the Bible - they told me so themselves, via the studies, polls, and personal interactions. You want to change other people's opinion on that subject? Talk to the source.
Right on Maria! You bring the receipts. Not that it matters to those who use their religion to sow hate and violence against the Other.
Here is what I find fascinating and disconcerting at the same time.
There is violence in other religions and philosophies. If you look at Ramayana, Kalevala, Egyptian, Greek, Mesopotamian, Slavic lore - there are oodles of violence. They own it. And great violence coexists with great beauty, love, and phenomenally deep ideas.
The gods and goddesses are closer to humans and they evolve with humans. Greek gods, for example, started off in animal guise, like Egyptian gods, but they eventually transformed into humans. Not only that, but their roles used to be more violent (Apollo used to be an assassin god and became the god of the arts, his sister Artemis was a warrior huntress but became the goddess of healing and protectress of young women, even Athena used to be portrayed with a spear or a sword), and then they transformed to something more civilized.
Another remarkable thing about non-Christian philosophies and faiths is longevity. They operate in terms of millennia. In the Chinese lore, there is a story of one female immortal who spent seventy thousand years being an apprentice to a much older and wiser immortal. This was her path to maturity- seventy thousand years.
And then we have Christianity... The timeline is laughably short. Where other gods spend tens of thousands of years just figuring out what they want to be when they grow up, Christianity has 6,000 for EVERYTHING. The whole creation. A bit flippant, not to mention arrogant. Second, while there was some hope of moral evolution with Christianity with the transition from the horrifically violent and uncompromising Old Testament to Christ's New Testament, human beings managed to find even the New Testament good enough excuse to incite violence. So, we ended up with the controversial match of the gentle, loving, forgiving Christ and people willing to do hideous things in his name (let's not forget - Torquemada was considered the perfect Christian in his day). And that's where we are today. Which is not a comfortable place to be - especially for those of us on the receiving end of this ideology.
If you listen to Charlie Kirk’s message, it was the same as James Dobson, especially about women.
He was such a young man 31 years old to have such intolerance for a fellow human being especially in the LBGTQ community.
He said that the military should occupy every city in this nation.
He said religion (his) is the government.
He told women not to go to college that the only reason to go to college was to find a husband.
Told women fully submit to their husbands that they were not in charge. How insecure these men are that they do not want equal partners or their partners to realize a full potential in life.
Ezra Klein said “ Charlie Kirk did politics right”!
Have no idea why he would say such a thing !
Calling him this great debater .
He had the approach he did because he was trying to get people to trust him ,believe him like him and walk away, saying “what a nice guy”.
He had been espousing these ideas and beliefs since he was 18 years old and he died at such a young age of 31.
The sad reality is HE HIMSELF was exploited.
Christian nationalism is spiritual and emotional abuse .
No one 18 years old, as was the stated age of Charlie Kirk when he bagen his “mission”, has a fully developed prefrontal cortex in their brain. This part of the brain develops in the mid-twenties. It is responsible for much of the personality and decision making. It is what helps the individual understand the consequences of their behavior , among many other things. The prefrontal cortex doesn’t mature until someone is in the mid to late twenties. Perhaps this early Kirk that never changed his tune, was so hateful to so many who were different than he. It is also a great argument that those under 25 should never have guns except under older adult supervision.
Sorry, I don't agree with this excuse of immaturity as a reason for atrocious, abhorrent behavior. I was a mom at 19, my husband 23. He started working at age 15 1/2, worked 2nd shift after graduation while attending a vocational school during the day. We married after I graduated high school, became young parents due to birth control failure, a year later. He was, and still is, an exemplary father and husband 48 years later. There are millions of young men who are as responsible as he was. No excuses for this degenerate, hateful man. If maturity was the issue why did he maintain this disgusting ideology long after he "matured"?
Exactly
Just read this
“Charlie Kirk. Wow. I can’t believe we have to discuss this dude, but here we go. Where did this guy even come from? Miri AF writes:
“A crazy conspiracy theorist might also suggest there is simply no way that ordinary 17-year-olds somehow get themselves onto the Fox Business channel, as Kirk did, and then just a year later, with no meaningful qualifications or experience at all, manage to found one of the most visible, wealthy, and successful conservative advocacy organisations in the country.
Turning Point USA, described as "an American non-profit organisation that advocates for conservative politics on high school, college, and university campuses", was reportedly founded by the then 18-year-old college dropout, Charlie Kirk, and successful businessman, Bill Montgomery, 53 years Kirk's senior.
Montgomery, who had a military background, allegedly "died from Covid complications" in July 2020.
Based on this information, Charlie Kirk's rise to huge influence and fame, sounds just about as plausible as Sebastian Shemirani's, the "ordinary young man" who appeared on the BBC in his early twenties to denounce his mother's crazy conspiracism, and then shot to further international fame just a couple of years later when he accused said mother of "killing his sister". Sebastian - and brother, Gabriel - are now very famous as activists for the Online Safety Bill seeking to crush the "harms" they allege are done by "conspiracy theories".
This kind of stellar rise to cultural significance and visibility, despite their complete lack of any professional experience qualifying them for such positions, is not a trajectory any normal young person follows, regardless of whether they are on the left or right of the political spectrum.”
I found this interesting and a good observation and I’m not familiar with this Sebastian he’s talking about .
Who did back and fund and create that “turning point”organization?
James Dobson and focus on the family ??
The Koch Bros ?
They say they’re not supposed to think or talk about any of this ?
They’re trying to sanitize talking about what Kirk himself said in his own words.
Unfortunately, he himself was exploited
John, please keep doing what you’re doing. It is invaluable.. you are not letting them hijack the message of Jesus.
Excellent read…
I have a tee shirt that says “Read the RED words”. Imho, that’s what is necessary to be a Christ follower. Since the word ‘Christian’ has become negative, I don’t want to be seen as one who weaponizes religion. My God loves.
They cherry pick their faith, their history, their enemies. Their reality is defined by what suits their needs and benefits them. Hypocrisy is their primary tenet. All this is evidenced in today’s evangelical movement.
Preach John. Unfortunately, my wife and brother are lost to this brand of "christianity." Their justification for hating lies beneath a thin veneer of love the sinner, hate the sin mentality. They are ill. And their illness makes them liars and hypocrites who will blindly follow people like Kirk. They are lost in a cult or true believers. That's what makes them truly dangerous. They are easily manipulated by the cult of trump.
Excellent message! As usual, you have inspired a conversation between my wife, Paula, and I. We thank you again for that.
You truly speak truth to power. Those who take up the sword because of Jesus’s words, do not read the rest of the story. They stop where it is convenient for their beliefs.