Convince Me!!!!!!!!!

This is for all you conservative evangelicals who support Donald Trump.  So many of us conservative evangelicals believe that he is the best thing since sliced bread, and well, I’m trying to believe it too.  But I need some help.  Actually I need a lot of help.

So I’m asking you please:  Convince me.

Convince me that a man who says and does the most spectacularly inane things every time the cameras are on him is the man who should be our next president.

Convince me that a man who has run not one but two businesses into the ground is the man to be entrusted with the reins to the world’s largest free-market economy.

Convince me that a man who took a deferment from the draft and then has the nerve to mock the service of POWs because they were captured is the man who should be our next commander-in-chief.

Convince me that a man who routinely says divisive and offensive things for sheer entertainment value is the man who should be entrusted with the task of brokering peace deals in the Middle East and other sensitive regions of the world.

Convince me that a man who says nothing of substance whatsoever is the man to entrust with the responsibility of crafting substantive healthcare, economic, etc. policy.

Convince me that a man who routinely says divisive and offensive things for sheer entertainment value is the man whom we should unite behind as our next leader.

Convince me that what love requires of me is to vote for a man whose message sounds an awful lot like anger and hatred.

P. S.  “Because he’s not Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders” is not good enough.  You’ll have to do better than that.

RHE on “Outgrowing” American Christianity

Today I wish to direct your attention to a post by Rachel Held Evans entitled “On “Outgrowing” American Christianity“.

There is a proliferation of stories out there of people who claim to have “outgrown” church or religion or American Christianity.  RHE’s jumping-off point is one such story which made the rounds of the blogosphere not too long ago.  While there is much in American Christianity that can and should be outgrown, especially in conservative evangelicalism, the reality is that one cannot simply outgrow American Christianity.  It is part of who you are if you are a Christian in America, and you cannot simply opt out of it.  You are part of it and you always will be, whether you like it or not.

Let’s be real, folks: If you’re reading the Bible, you’re interpreting it. If you identify as a Christian, you’re part of a religion. If you’re an American citizen living in America, you can deliberately surround yourself with global perspectives (a good idea!) but you can’t just opt out of American Christianity. It’s far better to acknowledge the fact that our contexts, privileges, affiliations, and blind spots affect our worldview than it is to announce we’ve managed to finally overcome or outgrown them. I find it odd that so many who claim to have a postmodern view of Christianity seem so entrenched in modern, Enlightenment-based ideas of objectivity and progress.

…The truth is, I am a Christian, which means I am religious. And I am an American, which means my Christianity is affected by privilege, by Western philosophy, by 17th century Puritanism, and by Psalty the Singing Songbook.  My American Christian heritage includes both Martin Luther King Jr. and the white segregationists who opposed him – a reality that is both empowering and uncomfortable,  but one I can’t escape, one I want to look squarely in the eyes.

Loving the Church means both critiquing it and celebrating it. We don’t have to choose between those two things. But those of us who remain Christian cannot imagine ourselves to be so far above the Church – including the American Church – that we are not a part of it.

Read: On “Outgrowing” American Christianity by Rachel Held Evans

John Beckett on Millennials and “Adulting”

Today I wish to direct your attention to a piece by John Beckett at Under the Ancient Oaks entitled ““Adulting” is an Indictment of Society, Not of Millennials“.

It is a thing nowadays to bash millennials for being entitled, emotionally fragile, and immature.  We hear all the rants about how previous generations of teenagers and 20-somethings were off fighting wars, holding down factory jobs, and raising children and starting families.  Why won’t these brats straighten up and get with the program?  We hear all the horror stories about today’s students being coddled with political correctness, about “safe spaces” and “trigger words” and about that girl who required hours of counseling because she saw a Rebel flag somewhere on campus.  What is with these people?  But what if the problem is with us and with society at large?

Millennials grew up being told that they could be anything they wanted.  Of course we didn’t really mean it; what we really meant was that they could be anything they wanted as long as they chose from the approved list of options that support our way of seeing the world.  But they took us at our word, and when it came time for them to be adults, they did not like what they saw.

Here are some money quotes:

“So you want me to put on expensive, uncomfortable clothes, commute to a job, work all day five or six days a week for 50 weeks a year, all so we can ‘increase shareholder value.’ If I play this game really really well maybe in 20 years I’ll be an executive and make tons of money, but I’ll work even more hours. If I don’t, I’ll be kicked to the curb the first time ‘fixed expenses’ need to be cut so some executive can make his bonus target.

If this is being an adult, I want to be something else.”

 

The Millennials – and Gen X’ers and a few Boomers – who don’t want to adult are imagining a world where education doesn’t require massive personal debt, where health care is a universal right, where making sure everyone has enough is more important than making sure a few have the ability to become obscenely rich. They’re imagining a world where providing for yourself and your family doesn’t cost your soul.

Read ““Adulting” is an Indictment of Society, Not of Millennials” by John Beckett