And Christians for Un-Jesus
The man angrily shouting out of his car window on Wednesday was barely decipherable above the traffic noice and music from my Bluetooth speaker behind me. He said something about the number of words on my sign: NO SECRET POLICE. (The others side promoted the local No Kings rally this Saturday.)
I figured it out later. The sign was a radical leftist lie, Angry Driver thought, and the real message was NO POLICE. Like “Defund the Police” after George Floyd’s murder.
Fine, I thought. What part of losing your Bill of Rights protections to a totalitarian dictator backed by masked secret police makes your heart sing, I’m proud to be an American | Where at least I know I’m free ?
It is remarkable how many neighbors have lost the plot on the whole 1776 and “We the People” thing. It may be that Angry Driver is not paying attention to the lawless behavior of ICEmen in Chicago and Portland. But likely the idea of busting heads on people he thinks are not like him gives Angry Driver a visceral thrill. He’ll have a rude awakening when it’s someone he knows or he himself is thrown to the ground and dragged off my masked thugs in violation of multiple once-constitutional rights.
“Sorry, the only king is Jesus,” spat a woman passenger in another passing car. That non sequitur was her reply to the No Kings ad.
It is remarkable, too, how many neighbors have lost the plot on the whole Jesus thing.
Former youth pastor John Pavlovitz experienced that at and after Wake Forest Pride Fest last weekend. It was all rainbows and music and dance, “a glorious thing to behold.” Until the “Christians” showed up, “a sullen, stone-faced cadre of almost exclusively young white men from local (and out of state) Evangelical churches.”
Pavlovitz writes:
One of the disrupters later posted that he and his partners were celebrating that “the Gospel was preached.” What he doesn’t understand is that their “Gospel” provided no good news, brought no love for neighbor, exuded no joy, and was bereft of Jesus.
All that stuff came from those they were targeting.
One of the protesters on Wednesday accosted Pavlovitz in the grocery store:
The first thing out of his mouth was, “Do you want to make enemies or do you want to have a conversation?”
I said, “You come screaming through bullhorns, waving signs about eternal damnation, and invading people’s personal space, and you’re gonna try and gaslight me into believing you were interested in conversation?”
He wasn’t pleased.
The takeaway was that his accuser’s anger wasn’t about the LGBTQ community, Pavlovitz concluded. “They’re out to get rid of everyone who isn’t like them.”
Like the Donald Trump administration’s lawless law-enforcement. Or like Jesus-less Christians. Americans for Un-Freedom mean to wring America out of America in America’s name. Founders be praised.
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Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?
No King’s One Million Rising movement – Next national day of protest Oct. 18
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