Purpose-Driven Hypocrisy

All you’ll hear from rightwing bloggers is how the MSM (mainstream media to those of you who aren’t total label-dependent losers) doesn’t care about religion, about how it ignores the fact of wide-spread christianity in this country.

Riiiiight.

Yesterday on Meet The Press, Rick Warren and the Editor of Newsweek were on talking about christianity and religions for the entire show. Rick Warren got to pimp his ministries and tell the world how he’s not like the other religions.

Tonight, ABC news had a whole special on christianity in this country, citing statistics like “79% of Americans identify as Christian, 26% identify as Evangelical Christian”. 26 was never such a scary number. Then the piece went on to talk about Christian schools and teen pledges of virginity and exploring the nuances of the jesusy teeny-boppers’ concept of “messing up”. Which apparently means when a teen boy masturbates.

At least no kittens get killed.

So back to Rick Warren. I was watching him talk. He was saying all the right things. About how there’s no respect among people who disagree. About how there are more important things in the world to be accomplished than political wins. Like poverty. Like education. Like HIV & AIDS.

Right on, Brother Warren!

And he talked about how the megachurches and politico-religious have forgotten that a central tenet of their religions is this: humility.

Can I really be hearing this? Is this the beginning of a new era of civil disagreement? Where everyone begins by respecting the basic humanity of one another while even vehemently disagreeing? Where not everyone walks in with the Correct Way to do things, without a socio-political Not Invented Here Syndrome? With—dare I say it—humility?

Off to Google. “Rick Warren”. “Saddleback Church”. “Purpose Driven”.

What did I find? I found Kay Warren, Rick’s wife, ministering to the sick:

“I’m here to tell you there is hope because the Church of Jesus Christ is getting up, and when the Church of Jesus Christ gets up, things happen,” Gataha said. “When the Church is getting up, HIV/AIDS will sit down.”<br/> “If we don’t do something, who will? If we don’t show God’s love, who will? If we don’t show up, who will?”

Ummm, ‘who will?’ How about the rest of us who have been trying to do and actually doing things for over twenty years, you stupid bitch? How about those who have been struggling to get people help, get prevention education in place, and all the while having to fight people like you who stopped us at every turn, who went on claiming that the wages of sin were death?

For someone who opts into a book of popular mythology which goes back over most of recorded history, you sure don’t have a sense of the past, lady.

As if you thought her “humility” wasn’t suffering enough already, she goes on:

Now she’s leading Saddleback’s HIV/AIDS Initiative and encouraging other churches to start their own HIV/AIDS ministries. “The goal I see is to end HIV,” she said. “Humanly speaking, it’s impossible. When God enters the problem, suddenly things become possible.”

Ahh, so she does have a sense of history after all. She acknowledges that others have been trying to save peoples’ lives. But where have our efforts fallen short? We haven’t left it up to God to fix.

Well, how about that.

So let’s think about all this “humility” floating around. These are like the cavalry, letting everyone else fight the good fight and coming in, refreshed and ready and loving the smell of abstinence in the morning, to save the day.

Not only that, but apparently, HIV is a blessing for Christians:

HIV/AIDS gives the Church the chance to do what it has been called to do – to love other people and to love God, [Robert Redfield] said.<br/>

•••

Sam Brownback, a senator from Kansas, said that American Christians have been given much and must use those gifts to help people who are suffering. “If we’ll just give them the crumbs off our table, they can live and we can save our souls,” he said.

So there we have it. They do for their own rewards, offering the rest of us their crumbs, so they can sleep at night.

I write this while watching Saturday Night Fever on Cinemax. Tony Manero just said something relevant:

“Everybody’s gotta have somebody to dump on.”

Well, how about that. Maybe that’s the true anti-gay agenda. They just need someone to dump on.

And what, then, is humility? Humility is this: I welcome all their true efforts to end HIV and AIDS irrespective of their motives if it means life for more people. Not only do I welcome their help, I am begging their help, begging everyone’s help. I miss Allen each and every day. I would do anything to have him back, including selling my soul so that Sam Brownback will give us those precious, supposedly life-saving crumbs from his table.

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