Jesus and other impositions

A few days ago, I posted about a person’s response to my response to a faulty political email. The gist of the post, in her eyes, was that my response went to her family and some of them were 15 and 16 and didn’t understand all this wrangling.

Let me address one thing up front. To think that a teenager today is not savvy enough to comprehend the politics of today is simply ludicrous. My son, Kyle, will be 13 in a week and a half, and he will debate politics intelligently with anyone. He watched the debates. He commented on what was presented. He has clear and definable political views.

Beyond that, one of the family members responded to my response. She did not address my politics, but stated that she didn’t know me and didn’t want me emailing her. Since my response had a Biblical reference in it, she said she didn’t appreciate me imposing my religion on her. She said I had no way of knowing if she were a Christian or not. She was respectful in her email.

I thought about it. I agree that religion does not need to be crammed down ones throat. However, as I thought about it, it occurred to me that there are impositions in everyone’s life.

When someone on the street says to me, “how about that Wildcat game,” they are imposing their sports on me. What if I am a (shudder) Cardinals fan?

Every day, in some way, or someplace, someone is imposing their view on me. Every day I get emails offering me Viagra. Here someone is implying that I have difficulties in that area and they are imposing their medical opinion on me. How do I handle this? Just like most other people, I laugh and hit the ‘delete’ key.

Every day, someone is imposing their morality on me when they look disdainfully at something one of my kids is doing, in my presence. How do I handle this? Like most folks, I let it run off of my back. Now, if you voice your opinion, you might not get the ‘run off my back’ response.

At least a couple times a week, I get a spam mail about pornography. Oh my gosh, where is my uzi? No, just like most of us, I hit that faithful delete key. But, here is someone imposing their fetish on me. How many times have you been at a gathering where someone started telling an off color joke? What do you do? Walk away. It is just that simple.

What about racial humor? How dare you impose your bigotry on me? We generally walk away. If we comment at all, it is simply a request not to tell it.

However, just let a believer mention the name of Jesus in a conversation or email, and the non-believer starts making the claims of imposing our religion. Puh-lease! If you don’t believe, his name is just another name. I might as well have said Bob. Speaking of Bob, have you heard …. Oh wait, I don’t want to impose my Bob on you ..

I am telling you this. Jesus is part of my life. I talk about my wife. I talk about my truck. I talk about my kids. I talk about my grandkids. I talk about my job. I talk about my hobbies. All of those are imposing on you. I am going to talk about Jesus. I do have a blog for Bible studies. On it, I don’t talk about my wife, my truck, my kids, my grandkids, or my job. You can see it at won-by-one.blogspot.com.

If you don’t like what I say, don’t read.

My dad told me that my rights ended where his began. Same here, my right to write, your right to read, they work together. But, that is just me, imposing my opinion on ya.

Dare I say it?

Have a blessed day.

I ate my cake. Where is my cake ?

WARNING ... Political ... The views expressed here do reflect the opinions of management .. I am Ron Simpson, and I approve this message !

There is an old saying about having your cake and eating it too. You cant have it both ways. Casting party affiliation aside, (I am a conservative Democrat, by the way.. this is here on purpose,) I want to look at some current issues being discussed in the news. I fully realize I am inviting the scorn and rebuke of those that disagree. So be it.

The RNC is highly touting Palin’s daughter for her choice to keep her baby. I agree. I disagree with abortion. I also disagree with my tax dollars paying for it, as I am morally opposed to it. However, and here is the sticky wicket, I am also opposed to back door butchers killing kids because abortion is illegal. We will never stop abortion. All of my morality will never prevent a scared teenager, pregnant and confused, from finding a friend that knows someone, that knows someone, that can take care of the problem, even if abortion is illegal. (I haven’t forgotten the cake.)

The high road traveled by the conservatives is their biblical imperative against murder.

Paul, in his letter to the church at Rome, addressed certain Jews that were refusing to fellowship certain Gentiles in the same church, because they had not submitted to the ritual of circumcision. Circumcision was a tenet of the Law of Moses. The Bible states that Jesus fulfilled the Law and it was complete. Where the Law was lacking in that it provided no help in obeying it other than the consequence of disobeying (which every parent uses as well,) Jesus provided with his sacrifice and coming Comforter giving the believer added strength and grace to measure up. These Jews wanted these Gentiles to enter into the tenets of the finished law. Paul stated to them, that if they wanted to abide by the law, they had to abide by the whole law and would die under the law. He basically told them that they did not have the option to pick and choose which rites and rituals, which laws and tenets, they were going to obey. It was an all or nothing deal.

Back to 2008:

We want to praise this unwed mother to be for her decision to not have an abortion. If we will use our biblical imperative as our stage from which to shout this praise, we must also stand on the biblical words about fornication (sex outside the bounds of marriage.) So, in one breath we must praise her. In the other breath we must admonish her. You cannot pick and choose which passage in the Bible you want to recognize.

Wait, wait, wait. Doesn’t the Bible tell us we are to forgive our brother? Why yes, it does. It tells us that we are not to forgive them once, not twice, not even seven times, but Seventy times seven (the words of Jesus.) So we can forgive her the indiscretion of sex outside marriage. Yes, we can.

However, does that forgiveness only extend to her? Does the forgiveness not extend to those that, for whatever reason, choose to abort their baby? Does the Bible tell us to forgive the fornicators, but not the abortionists? Does it say it is OK to forgive the adulterer, but only if that adultery does not involve homosexuality? Are we to pick and choose who and what we forgive?

A mob grew angry against Jesus when he healed a man of palsy and forgave his sins. They cast their claims of blasphemy against him. He asked them which was easier to say, be healed or be forgiven?

You want to heal this land ? Start by practicing forgiveness.

This is not a Republican or Democratic issue. This is a bipartisan issue. It will not be resolved by passing laws. Look at our jails. We keep them filled. Every law written has not stopped crime. I am not an idiot. I know we cannot wholesale abandon law. It is necessary. There must be a standard and accountability. However, we cannot eat our cake and wonder why we don’t have it.

If we want forgiveness, we must offer forgiveness. (Yeah, there is a passage and parable for that too.)

Before we can reach across an issue to attempt any realistic healing, we must first accept the validity of our opponents stand or, at the very least, the validity of their right to have it. We are a nation of diverse cultures. We sprang up because a rag tag group of separatists were tired of the oppressive rule of the Church of England. Three hundred eighty-eight year later and we have become that which we opposed. Tyrannically trying to bully our citizenry, not with fly-by-night troops and religious torturing, but by our bully platform.

On the View, (a show I do not watch for no real reason other than it does not appeal to me,) Hasselbeck decried the liberal left-wingers that look down on Palin’s daughter for making this choice. Whoopi chimed in that they had done the same thing, on that stage, to Brittney Spears sister. She stated, “We judged her, we did it. We, Americans did it. It is not a liberal or conservative thing.” (paraphrased)

We have become the cake eating cake mongers of our time. Democrats, Republicans, Indepenents, Green Party Members, and any other unmentioned political party of our country.

I ate my cake. Where is my cake?