“Public enemies. These are the Orcs at the gates. You are not called to love the barbarian horde that is planning to break into your city and pillage, plunder, rape, and mutilate you and your people. You don’t love that horde. That is your enemy and you pray – this is where you have imprecatory …
As in “Who will rid me of this turbulent” one? He kind of is, actually.
Many well-educated people will not get this for the obvious reason, but . . .
People who are not in rural areas have almost no idea just how HARD and for how long this Trump shit has been pushed in the churches, to the point that right now, any person of the Christian faith who also drank the Kool-Aid and is deeply involved in the “Christian” politics of the right wing is thrust into a real and immediate crisis of conscience if they even think about leaving the politics. And this is by design.
Meanwhile, James Talarico, a very vanilla, scandal-free, middle-of-the-road Christian whose actual faith appears to be genuine and unimpeachable is speaking out, saying the two are NOT the same, and in doing so is providing a very specific off-ramp for people who have confused/conflated the cult of Trump with the cult of Christ, which the politicians and propagandists did deliberately so that even the thought of leaving the cult of Trump could be punished with the fear of hellfire.
In short, Talarico is incredibly dangerous to the shaky right wing because he’s specifically laying a path for anyone who wants off the Trump train to still believe they can be a Christian.
And that’s why the Pharisees need him to die. But not kill him themselves, because that would be a sin. Unless God did it himself, in his mercy. Or maybe someone else might get the job done, a heretic or infidel or unemployed guy down at the Walmart parking lot. So they’re not gonna sin themselves, they’re just gonna pray for a holy hitman of some kind, because that’s alright. But not before they dehumanize him with literally fictional language describing him as an orc and unbeliever (“barbarian”) because otherwise someone might remember there’s a commandment against killing somewhere, but that doesn’t apply to fictional monsters and infidels, or something.
Don’t come at me, I’m not a believer, just an explainer, lol
Yeah I think you hit the nail on the head. I’m not Christian, but I think that some of the stories hold value, and this is very reminiscent of the pharisees. But it also fits neatly into the antichrist narrative, where Christians who don’t defect to the beast of the sea are a small group who become persecuted by the defectors who insist that they’re the real Christians.
As in “Who will rid me of this turbulent” one? He kind of is, actually.
Many well-educated people will not get this for the obvious reason, but . . .
People who are not in rural areas have almost no idea just how HARD and for how long this Trump shit has been pushed in the churches, to the point that right now, any person of the Christian faith who also drank the Kool-Aid and is deeply involved in the “Christian” politics of the right wing is thrust into a real and immediate crisis of conscience if they even think about leaving the politics. And this is by design.
Meanwhile, James Talarico, a very vanilla, scandal-free, middle-of-the-road Christian whose actual faith appears to be genuine and unimpeachable is speaking out, saying the two are NOT the same, and in doing so is providing a very specific off-ramp for people who have confused/conflated the cult of Trump with the cult of Christ, which the politicians and propagandists did deliberately so that even the thought of leaving the cult of Trump could be punished with the fear of hellfire.
In short, Talarico is incredibly dangerous to the shaky right wing because he’s specifically laying a path for anyone who wants off the Trump train to still believe they can be a Christian.
And that’s why the Pharisees need him to die. But not kill him themselves, because that would be a sin. Unless God did it himself, in his mercy. Or maybe someone else might get the job done, a heretic or infidel or unemployed guy down at the Walmart parking lot. So they’re not gonna sin themselves, they’re just gonna pray for a holy hitman of some kind, because that’s alright. But not before they dehumanize him with literally fictional language describing him as an orc and unbeliever (“barbarian”) because otherwise someone might remember there’s a commandment against killing somewhere, but that doesn’t apply to fictional monsters and infidels, or something.
Don’t come at me, I’m not a believer, just an explainer, lol
Yeah I think you hit the nail on the head. I’m not Christian, but I think that some of the stories hold value, and this is very reminiscent of the pharisees. But it also fits neatly into the antichrist narrative, where Christians who don’t defect to the beast of the sea are a small group who become persecuted by the defectors who insist that they’re the real Christians.