"Joy and pleasure are as real as pain and sorrow and one must learn what they have to teach. . . ." -- Sean Russell, from Gatherer of Clouds

"If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right." -- Helyn D. Goldenberg

"I love you and I'm not afraid." -- Evanescence, "My Last Breath"

“If I hear ‘not allowed’ much oftener,” said Sam, “I’m going to get angry.” -- J.R.R. Tolkien, from Lord of the Rings

Monday, August 17, 2015

Which God Would That Be, Then?

Glen Cook, in The Instrumentalities of the Night, describes a progression of the religions centered in the Holy Lands. The first is the god of the Dainshaukin, which he describes at various times as "vicious," "psychotic," "egomaniacal," and "psychopathic." That one seems to be a blend of the ancient Middle Eastern gods -- think Baal and the like -- at least as near as I can figure. (Cook doesn't display a lot of sympathy for organized religion or the gods themselves in this series.)

With that in mind, take a look at these two stories. First, Pastor/Governor Mike Huckabee (via Bark Bark Woof Woof):

During an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union this morning, Mike Huckabee was asked about “Mainumby,” a ten-year-old Paraguayan girl who became pregnant after she was raped by her stepfather. The girl, whose name is a pseudonym, was denied an abortion and forced to carry the baby to term, despite objections from medical experts.

When CNN host Dana Bash asked Huckabee if he would have allowed Mainumby to have an abortion, Huckabee responded with a stock answer: “Does it solve the problem by taking the life of an innocent child?”

Bash then asked Huckabee if it would be easy “looking in the eyes of a 10-year-old girl and saying, ‘You had a horrible thing happen to you, and you’re going to...carry it out for the next nine months.’”

Huckabee responded: “No, it isn’t easy. I wouldn’t pretend it’s anything other than a terrible tragedy. But let’s not compound the tragedy by taking yet another life.”

His rationale for such a decision is two-fold Huckabee explained, it protects both fetus and mother: “There are two victims. One is the child; the other is that birth mother who often will go through extraordinary guilt years later when she begins to think through what happened — with the baby, with her. And again, there are no easy answers here.”

"There are no easy answers here." That's good, especially since the Pastor/Governor has one: punish the 10-year-old mother-to-be for being the victim of a rape. Why do I get the feeling that this is not an issue on which he's squandered a lot of thought?

And what about the life of the "innocent child" who is the real victim here? Oh, I forgot -- children only matter before they're born.

As for Part II of today's post: You can tell this guy is a real conservative:

Pastor Ben Bailey of the Central church of Christ in McMinnville, Tennessee blamed “liberal society” for banning the stoning of LGBT people, whom he said were deserving of punishment.

In a Sunday broadcast for The Gospel of Christ television program, Bailey observed that some couples were choosing to go to churches with “relaxed and liberal views.”

He said that they wanted “things like women preaching, women leading in service, where homosexuals and gay marriage were accepted openly.”

“They were just looking for something liberal,” the pastor continued. “Something that didn’t criticize or condemn or didn’t have any hardcore standards on anything — anything goes type of mentality.”

But Bailey argued that was not what God wanted.

“He has a definite standard and it is not the liberal mindset that we see today,” Bailey opined. “This book [the Bible] does not condone things like women preaching… Paul said I do not let a woman preach of be in authority over a man, that’s not according to the Bible. If I’m out to please God, we don’t find things like that in the Bible.”

“God does not approve of homosexuality or gay marriage,” he insisted. “The scripture says… that is vile, unnatural and deserving of a penalty… It’s an abomination that under the Old Testament deserved stoning.”

Got that? Not stoning people is "liberal." This guy makes Rick Santorum look like a progressive.

He is, of course, an Old Testament "Christian". I wonder how he'd manage if he pulled his head out of his Leviticus long enough to read the Gospels?

(By the way -- I've read that the word "abomination," of which the OT "Christians" are so fond, is a mistranslation, and the word actually used meant something like "not the custom" or "against our tradition." But then, that doesn't have quite the same punch, does it?)

The real problem is how to lure these roaches back into the woodwork where they belong.

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