Holy White Noise

This post has been updated. Scroll to bottom.

I’m supposed to be on a break, and I had wanted the “Echo Taps” post to stay up all weekend. We owe our veterans a lot. But we owe Someone Else so much more.

There’s been a lot of hullabaloo recently on the Greensboro blogs - because of new-Mayor Knight’s recent decision to begin Greensboro City Council meetings with a “non-sectarian” prayer.

This all comes down while I am reading a fascinating book called, “Nightmare Along Pennsylvania Avenue” by Perry Stone. I picked it off a sale-table at Books-A-Million the last time I was home.

Fellow doctor-blogger, Joe Guarino has taken a lot of heat/noise in the blogs from folks I like to call “the usual suspects” for defending the Mayor’s decision to act a little more like Abraham Lincoln and a little less like Karl Marx . . . the Mayor knowing full well that the action might stir some turds.

Now, the “non-sectarian” thing is troublesome for me, and I truly think the U.S. Supremes have long over-reached in their desire to be politically-correct and "protect" religious minorities from being "offended" (in other words, they've gotten it right, but they've also gotten it very wrong). And that’s because I have a very hard time separating the freedom of religion from the freedom of speech.

As anyone in my family could tell you, as a typical black-sheep-now-back-in-the-fold, I’m not a very good public-pray-er (I usually defer to other family members in saying grace), but the Lord's Prayer notwithstanding (the Lord was offering it so He didn't invoke His own Name), if I’m going to offer a prayer in a public venue, it’s not going to be “non-sectarian”, it’s going to be in The Name of Jesus Christ . . . you know, The Man I believe to be The Son of God Who died for my/our sins.

It’s free speech. And it’s not “hate-speech”. So if you don’t like it, grow up, suck it up and deal. Close your eyes tightly and say your own prayer while I'm saying mine. Turn your back or walk out on my prayer if you're so offended. Apply to say your own prayer at the next meeting so I can be "offended" and make a scene (although I don't generally make scenes because I'm from the South and my Baptist Mama taught me that that sort-of-thing is just rude . . . if at all possible, you're supposed to hate the "sin" and love the "sinner" . . .

. . . of course, I am a mere human and it's not always possible;).

But don’t tell me how to pray - in ANY venue.

OBTW (Sue), I've always looked at your (Jewish) God and mine as the SAME God. The difference is in how we perceive Him and His covenants. I know full well that Christians failed the Jews during the Holocaust, but THIS nation . . . and the Christians in it . . . are the reason we're not all speaking German today. And here's a thought from another long ago Housecalls post - speaking to my own feelings of "eternal" sadness & isolation after being driven out of Asheboro for doing the right thing by a dying baby (something you've not given a rat's tail about . . . consigning the story/case to be fodder for cyberstalkers):

I keep going back to the way this nation (greatly blessed) was founded. It wasn't because our Founding Fathers turned the other cheek. Tea in the harbor and all that. Lincoln's generals trounced the enemies of the union at Gettysburg . . . and drove a stake through the heart of the Confederacy during Sherman's march. They weren't "nice" about it. Hitler's ovens were not shut down by Churchill sitting down and shutting up . . . or the Allies staying "positive".

I think God expects good men and women (as individuals and collectively) to speak and to act when faced with great injustice.

I also believe that God acts through nations and governments. His work isn't always easy and we're not always privy to His design/plan.

Meanwhile, well-named, well-connected, knows-what’s-best-for-all-of-us-despite-never-having-lost-any-skin-actually-fighting-for-something-he-believed-in, GSO-journalist-and-blogger-king, Edward Cone . . . of all of us uncivilized-bloggers-that-the politicos-turn-their-noses-up-at, the only one with a "bat(shitcrazy)" phone to the Greensboro News & Record (purveyors of truth that they are) . . . had a column up last Sunday that made me sick . . . mostly because it was clearly designed to denigrate Joe.

You see, as it turns out, the very existence of Joe Guarino's increasingly well-read conservative/Tea-Partyish blog is stepping on some serious Greensboro-establishment/status-quo toes: For we in North Carolina have followed all of Ed’s once-uber-cool, cutting-edge, deep-blue notions of how government "should work". We put his party's candidates in office . . . from Hunt to Sleazely to Cooper to Edwards to Purdue and to Obama . . . yet somehow it’s not working out the way Ed/Roch/Sue/etc. expected/predicted.

It's turning out that you simply cannot blame every problem of our American landscape (or the world for that matter) on born-again, faith-on-his-sleeve George W. Bush. Our Edward Cone is finally feeling the heat.

It’s not always good to be king.

Yesterday, as tens of millions of gallons of oil continued to pour into the Gulf of Mexico . . . because of an oil company’s greed & incompetence - combined with our government’s abject (I love that word) failure to regulate . . . our current President (who called "pastor" a man whose speech spewed hate and damned America) told us that government agencies (the same kinds of agencies he decided could best run healthcare) are seeped in a “culture of corruption”.

Well, yeah, Barry. I kinda knew that already . . . long before you and your buddy, (I smell an impeachment proceeding coming on) Rahm Emanuel, schlepped out of Chicago. So tell me Mr. Hope & Change, before you and your Democratically-controlled Congress wrote several thousand pages of new laws for the Federal government to enforce and me/others-like-me to suck-up/pay for, WHAT did you/your oh-so-enlightened party do to enforce the ones we already have?

In other words, what have you for me lately?

Now, being an educated woman (my liberal-arts education coming from an institution in-the-heart-of-Greensboro no less), I used to be more like Ed Cone. I used to put a lot of faith in the Court system . . . the system whose abject failures and in-your-face inequities (like people-charge-with-the-public-good getting away with swearing out lies under Oath) I'm supposed to just get over. I used to think that Church and state should be kept utterly separate. I used to think that the Big Bang was just an accidental spark in a black-hole without any Intelligent Design. And I used to think that we should live and let live . . . right up to shrugging off/rationalizing abortion as a woman’s absolute right to chose.

But the last twelve years (being battered by just about anyone with a bat who wanted to swing) have changed my mind about a lot of things. I certainly have re-discovered my Faith in a way that I would not have, had I not walked through this fire.

So I don’t think those things anymore. And Mr. Stone's book is right where my head is at these days.

Anyway, last night . . . alone down-East and on-call . . . and a little down-in-the-dumps because I could not be a just-a-little-bit-more down-East with friends who are now acting as the North Carolina coast’s first defense against tar-balls . . . I could not sleep and spent that time aimlessly surfing the Internet. I kept going back to a thread at Joe’s - mostly because Michelle Forrest was there, and she’s a good/deep thinker (albeit easily offended), with a truly Christian heart and an open mind.

I’d actually like to be more like Michelle (all sweet and cuddly), but alas, our Lord in-His-wisdom elected to make me a skeptic and a critic . . . and since He’s allowed my edges and my tongue to be so thoroughly sharpened by life experience, I might as well be the tool (take that any way you want to) He fairly obviously wanted me to be.

Inspired by Stone’s book and weary of some of the sanctimonious clap-trap I was reading (from people who preach truth & justice - and want it for themselves - but have done nothing but sneer & spit at my predicament), I dived in.

And/so, I think, in addition to Echo Taps, my last comment at Joe’s (well, my last comment excepting the one the linking this post) is the thought I’d like to leave my readers with over the holiday weekend. I am speaking directly to Michelle’s earnest comment about the possibility of people-of-other faiths offering prayer before a council meeting.

“I am troubled at the thought of Christians participating in prayers to other gods.”

Here is my response (and it’s a response to Ed as well):

Michelle, while I would stand silently while someone of another faith (say a Wiccan or a Muslim) prayed - out of tolerance and respect for that person, I would not be praying "with" him/her. I would probably actually be silently praying to Someone Else.

In other cases, God might be getting stereo - just with the volume turned down on one side.

As noted before, I've done it before.

If it helps Maynor Knight to say a prayer BEFORE he conducts government business, then let him say the prayer and get on with business.

I am more troubled by Christians acquiescing to silence and passivity every time they are challenged or told to shut up and sit down because a Carpenter from Galilee/his teachings "offends" someone.

I am also troubled by the very clear results of God being thrown out of our schools and His Name slowly & methodically stripped from and/or covered on our government buildings and memorials . . . and His Son's Name never mentioned/invoked in a public forum as if It were something dirty and to be ashamed of.

It seems to me to be a form of denial. And because of what I have been through over the last twelve years . . . at the hands of people-charged-with-the-public-good professing to be Christians - while spitting on every noble/ethical notion I was raised/educated to believe (as Abner noted, that was Hitler's style) . . . it feels like the worst kind of denial (mixed in with a huge dose of hubris).

It may not be politically-correct, but I believe this nation has paid a very high price for taking God out of our equation . . . for watering Him down to the "non-sectarian" . . . and will continue to pay for it.

Now, Cone and Polinsky and Hoggard and the rest can call people like me every ugly name in the book - tell us we're selfish and crazy and stupid and ignorant morons and purveyors of division amongst the common man.

(1) It's just not true. And (2) That was prophesied too.

You-all have a nice Memorial Day weekend.

Comments are closed. I'm done with the noise on this holiday weekend.

May God Bless America. We NEED Him desperately.

Sunday Afternoon Update: I am enjoying my holiday weekend (even though I'm not on holiday), but I have checked in a few more times on Joe's thread.

Meanwhile, still trying to counter the "push-back" from what he apparently thought would be a fairly easy party line to push forward, Ed Cone has a post up quoting an "open letter" to Mayor Knight from Pastor Michael Usey of Greensboro's College Park Baptist Church.

(In the interest of full disclosure, genuinely disturbed by the rationalizations in the letter . . . it seems that so much in this society is driven these days not by right or wrong, but by the fear of lawyers . . . I sent Usey an e-mail yesterday, telling him I disagreed with him, and linking this post.)

Michelle Forrest (bless her cuddly little heart) was once again able to cut through the pseudo-intellectual, apologist clap-trap (see her comments on Ed's thread) by putting the Pastor's opinion in context of the ("progressive", "liberal") political leanings of the congregation he leads . . . moreover, she pointed out that much of the content of Usey's letter was in-your-face plagerized from a website maintained by the "Baptist Joint Committe for Religious Liberty".

(I did my best to cut through the clap-trap too . . . with a question as opposed to a declarative statement.)

And (of course), the Greensboro N&R, ran with Usey's letter as an opinion column today.

So much for checking sources.