Chick-fil-A! Lay Thyself Toward The Idol Or Be Damned!

When asked to define the greatest commandment, Christ Jesus answered:

“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

It sounds simple, but that one-two punch of a commission is a constant challenge, and the work of a lifetime.

The whole point my writing Strange Gods was to illustrate how idolatry, far from being a defunct inclination, is still the default mode of humanity. The moment we look away from the Wholeness that is God — whether to that neighbor, or the apple, the idea, the feeling or the need — we become distracted and then ensnared by the thicket of the world where there will always be those quick to designate “Due East” for us and help us to prostrate ourselves in that direction.

Currently — and despite the best efforts of some who would navigate us toward a broader by-way — we are being told that “Due East” is where the godling called Same Sex Marriage resides, and if you think prostration is a choice, or that you can give a respectful nod in that direction and stay on the sidelines, think again. The servants of this idol are making it plain that your whole heart, your whole mind and your whole spirit are expected, or hell awaits, as Brendan Eich and Chick-fil-A have discovered. If you think I am exaggerating, check out this quote:

“We don’t need bigoted people even keeping their opinions to themselves…”

Thus spaketh New York City Councilman Daniel Dromm, for whom there the greatest commandment is clear: you shall love the godling of Same Sex Marriage with all your heart, and all your soul and all your mind. Insufficient to the day is merely keeping out of the public debate. You will pick up your palm brances and welcome this godling with hosannas, or you will never sell a chicken sandwich in this town, pal:

A Chick-fil-A spokeswoman told The Huffington Post that the company is “still in the process of evaluating locations in [New York].” . . .

“We don’t need bigots coming to New York City,” Councilman Daniel Dromm, who is openly gay, told HuffPost. “They are not welcome here unless they can embrace all of New York’s diverse community, including the LGBT community.”
[…]
Last month, [Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy] called it a mistake to have dropped his company into the same-sex marriage debate that way, but he seemed to stand by the substance of his statement.

“I think the time of truths and principles are captured and codified in God’s word, and I’m just personally committed to that. . . I know others feel very different from that, and I respect their opinion and I hope that they would be respectful of mine.”

[. . .]Current New York Mayor Bill de Blasio did not respond to questions from HuffPost on whether he would support the company’s planned expansion.

But Dromm, the city councilman, said there was no place for Chick-fil-A in New York, even if it remains out of the political fray.

“We don’t need bigoted people even keeping their opinions to themselves,” he said. “They need to wake up and see reality.”

The reality is this: Apologies are not wanted. Quiet co-existence is not desired. Full-on participation is required. When evidence was presented of Brendan Eich’s sin against the godling, the inquisitors made it clear that merely recanting would not do. Hampton Catlin — the web-developer whose open letter to Mozilla (protesting Eich’s appointment) was the catalyst for Eich’s eventual dismissal — initially claimed that “If [Eich] had apologized years ago, this would be a non-issue.”

Writing on his blog after Eich’s resignation, however, Catlin revealed that he actually wanted more than “an apology” made in some distant past; he wanted Eich to publicly disavow his donation while promulgating a specific and current political point:

“I met with Brendan and asked him to just apologize for the discrimination under the law that we faced. He can still keep his personal beliefs, but I wanted him to recognize that we faced real issues with immigration and say that he never intended to cause people problems.

Catlin is a more merciful guardian of the godling than Dromm. He would at least permit The Sinner Eich to keep his personal beliefs, for now. Dromm on the other hand, plays his cards more openly, demanding nothing less than Doctrinal Wholeness. Once again:

“We don’t need bigoted people even keeping their opinions to themselves,” he said. “They need to wake up and see reality.”

The reality is this: the gods we humans make are more vengeful and unforgiving than the one who wishes to gather us under a protective wing or be your Consummating Lover.

The reality is this: The godlings born of a totalitarian mindset, nurtured on the milk of resentment and empowered through intimidation and inquisition are godlings that will ultimately fail, but not before they devastate, because false gods are destroyers.

The reality is this:

It is beyond ironic that some of the very people who fought to be able to live their lives freely and “out of the closet” are now actively working to shove others into a closet of silence, where personal beliefs are stowed away in service to a shushing tyranny of “niceness” — a pretend world where no one ever disagrees with anyone or entertains a thought that might slip into non-conformity, and the dubious idol of the permitted social idea has become the unmerciful all-in-all, a godling demanding constant prostration and continual penance under threat of eternal damnation.

Though ostensibly a “secular” topic, the Eich story has earned that religious allusion. The late atheist Christopher Hitchens called totalitarianism “a religious impulse” and said resistance to the totalitarian mentality was “an endless war … refought in every country and every generation.”

Now is our turn. The totalitarian horrors of the 20th century grew upon successful movements to oppress so-called “wrong” thinking, which is antithetical to the very notions of tolerance and of diversity. What followed was a most sinful subjugation of human minds and souls.

I don’t actually care about Chick-fil-A; I’ve never partaken of their birds, but people operating in good faith — and sure of the rightness of their position — should be able to withstand a principled disagreement. Plenty of gay marriage advocates manage to advocate without hoping for the social execution of all infidels, but fascism always seeks full obeisance to the idol and thus demands resistance.

I know that, as a rule, the Guardians of the new godlings are disinterested in anything that came before the godling Self, but they would do well to ponder the words of another man who once tried to keep the “wrong thinking” people out of his city: “the evil which I hate, that I do.”

Or, put another way, “all that I hate, I am become.”