How This Blog Began: An Outrage in 2011

How This Blog Began: An Outrage in 2011

Before 2011 several friends urged me to start my own blog. Blogging was a relatively new thing then. I wasn’t anxious to do it. I’m not adept at technology and I didn’t need another writing project. I put them off and did not intend to start a blog.

Then something happened that so outraged me that I couldn’t resist the temptation (or call) to speak out publicly—including on a blog. That’s when this blog began—before Patheos invited me to join their platform of blogs. For a year or two it was just my own, independent blog “floating around” out there in cyberspace. But word spread and pretty soon I had a few hundred and then a few thousand readers.

What propelled me to start this blog?

*Sidebar: The opinions expressed here are my own (or those of the guest writer); I do not speak for any other person, group or organization; nor do I imply that the opinions expressed here reflect those of any other person, group or organization unless I say so specifically. Before commenting read the entire post and the “Note to commenters” at its end.*

In 2011 the Alabama state legislature passed a sweeping law criminalizing giving help to illegal aliens. It went way beyond criminalizing employing them to criminalizing giving them shelter or even a ride.

Yes, yes, yes…many times yes (so don’t bring this up!). I know that several courts blocked some provisions of the law and parts of it have never been enforced. It isn’t the fate of the law that upset me then and still upsets me now. It’s this. Most of the legislators who voted for it considered themselves Christians and yet criminalized doing exactly what Jesus commanded his followers to do! When Jesus commanded his followers to give a cup of cold water to a thirsty person he did not mean unless the thirsty person is an illegal alien!

Again, don’t anyone (!) get overly literal here. Clearly Jesus was not limiting his commandment to literal cups of water; he was commanding his followers to give to those in need what would save their lives and help them live human lives. He was commanding us to act lovingly toward those in need without regard to who they are.

The bill passed by the Alabama legislature, by Christians, clearly contained language that clearly, unequivocally violated the spirit if not the letter of Jesus’s commands to his followers. And it criminalized obeying Jesus.

As a Christian theologian I said then and I still say now that any law maker or law enforcer who criminalizing or punishes someone merely for obeying Jesus cannot be a Christian.

Around the same time a student at Beeson Divinity School at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama discovered a problem in Alabama’s tax code that favored the rich. She crafted a bill that would have made the tax code fairer and it went to the state legislature which turned it down.

Can there really be any doubt that America is full of false Christians? People who call themselves Christians but really do not translate even the most basic, simple commands of Jesus into their daily lives and even go so far as to support laws that criminalize Christian behavior?

America needs prophets—just like Judah and Israel needed prophets in the times of the exile and afterwards. We need new Jeremiahs, Isaiah, even Elijahs and Elishas. We need men and women who will stand up publicly and declare the Word of the Lord against those who call themselves Christians but live against the example and teachings of Jesus about the Kingdom of God.

May God have mercy on us if we do have listen to them. Then people ask me to name one. Okay, I will dare: Cornel West. Is he right about everything? No, certainly not. He’s not Jesus or God or even on a par with Jeremiah or Isaiah. But he is speaking truth to power and he is well-versed in the teachings of Jesus. But how many Christian churches or institutions would even dare to have him speak in their buildings or institutions? Not many.

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