Saturday, September 03, 2005

 

An End to the Wickedness

The Greek language has a number of words for our English word 'love.' Culturally, they see a difference in the love between a mother and child and the love between husband and wife. I always liked that they made those kinds of distinctions as I think we throw the term around with too much abandon. McDonald's has the advertising line, I'm Lovin' It. I suppose it's harmless, but I think it cheapens the term a little bit. There are true loved ones in my life, any affection I may have for a fast food chain pales by comparison. It's not even the same emotion. The Greeks were really onto something here.

The Greek language has the term Agape for its strongest type of love. Agape is the love that God has for us. My understanding is that a mere mortal is not capable of Agape, such is the love our creator has for us. I can appreciate that idea, and only wish we made the same kind of distinctions in our language.

I came upon a quote over at Clean Cut Kid last night and clicked on the link provided in his article. The following is from Rev. Bill Shanks as quoted on a website called Agape Press:

"New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion -- it's free of all of those things now. God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there -- and now we're going to start over again."


The content of Rev. Shanks' quote offends me. He seems to be taking joy that those who don't believe the same thing as him are now dead or homeless. Nice guy. While the quote offends me, the fact that it appears on a website called Agape Press troubles me even more. While I have some problem with our use of the English term love, I am utterly disgusted that the term Agape would be in any way associated with such a hate filled diatribe.

I made a post on BOJ News Service yesterday. Like all good ideas I have, I had this one in the shower. I started thinking what a right wing Christian whack job would think of the devistation in New Orleans. I chose my favorite right wing Christian whack job, Pat Robertson, to be my subject. This was a difficult post for me to make because I don't want to be seen as making light of the horrible situation on the gulf coast. In fact, I considered not making the post at all, figuring no one would be STUPID enough to delight in the death and displacement of thousands of people. That even if someone felt that way that they wouldn't say it out loud. That if they said it out loud, no one would be UNCARING enough to actually print it. As usual, someone from the Christian right came through with an outrageous statement that shows them for what they truely are.

I know nothing of Agape Press other than this one article. I actually enjoyed the first half of the article, a man seeing divine intervention even in the face of loosing all of his belongings. That's an example of a kind of faith that I wish I had, and it makes me look at what I think is a crappy horrible life and realize that I'm not nearly thankful enough to the one who provides it all. Printing Rev. Shanks' unbelievable comments is, however, unforgivable.

Rev. Shanks is not correct. My guess is that most of those things he mentioned are still going on inside New Orleans as there are still people trapped there. He'll be correct soon enough, though, as everyone will be removed from the city or dead. At that point all of the wickedness will be gone from New Orleans. So will all the Christians. That shouldmake Rev. Shanks happy.

BOJ

Comments:
If you would give me control of the media, I could have everything under control in less than twenty five years. Can you say "Utopia"?
 
Guess we didn't learn a darn thing from Sodom and Gomorrah, Pompei and Herculaneum, not to mention Manchester and Spencer, South Dakota! All known cities of sin and iniquity! Wickedness and witchcraft! Maybe even card playing and square dancing, probably satellite tv.
 
"....this is the end, this is the eeeend of the wickedness..." hey, isn't that a Don Henley song?
 
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