“Hey, didja see it on YouTube?”<\/p>\n
“What?”<\/p>\n
“That crazy preacher guy. You know, the religious leader that presidential candidate follows?”<\/p>\n
“Oh yeah, him.”<\/p>\n
“What a nut case. Ya know what he said? He said, ‘You impostors. Damn you! You slam the door of Heaven’s domain in people’s faces.’ [1]<\/a> What’s up with a preacher saying ‘damn you’? Isn’t that swearing?”<\/p>\n “Huh. I didn’t know he said that.”<\/p>\n “Yeah, doesn’t it sound like he’s a communist or something? I saw this other video clip where he said, ‘Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.’ [2]<\/a> Hey, in my<\/em> church I learned that you gotta earn your daily bread. This preacher sounds like a goddam Commie who wants to give everything away to homeless.”<\/p>\n “Jeez, he sounds like a radical nut.”<\/p>\n “You don’t know the half of it. He also said the peacemakers are children of God. [3]<\/a> You know what that means — he’s one of those anti-war nuts that wants us to pull out of Iraq and leave it to the terrorists. Anyway, that’s what Brush Limburger said on his radio show.”<\/p>\n “Christ, that’s pretty bad.”<\/p>\n “Well, it gets worse. If you look at those picture of him, he looks like a hippie nut, with that long hair braided down his neck. And I’m telling you, he doesn’t look exactly white, if you know what I mean. Like maybe he’s Middle Eastern, where all these terrorists are coming from. [4]<\/a>”<\/p>\n “Hoo, boy. You think the guy is a terrorist?”<\/p>\n “Hey, all I know is he doesn’t like us Americans. There was this other YouTube clip of him preaching, and he said, ‘How much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you?’ [5]<\/a> You can lay money on it that he wants to bring down the American government. [6]<\/a>”<\/p>\n “Man. Thanks for telling me all this.”<\/p>\n “Yeah, well, I’m just trying to keep America safe. No way am I going to vote for anyone who follows a religious nut like that — I’m a good law-abiding Christian, not some kind of Commie peacenik who wants to bring down the American government.”<\/p>\n “They should just execute guys like that.”<\/p>\n Notes:<\/em><\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Words of Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew 23.23, Scholar’s Version translation.<\/em> “Hey, didja see it on YouTube?” “What?” “That crazy preacher guy. You know, the religious leader that presidential candidate follows?” “Oh yeah, him.” “What a nut case. Ya know what he said? He said, ‘You impostors. Damn you! You slam the door of Heaven’s domain in people’s faces.’ [1] What’s up with a preacher saying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[309,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-culture","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n[2]<\/a> Words of Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew 5.4, King James Version.<\/em>
\n[3]<\/a> Words of Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew 5.9, from the King James Version.<\/em>
\n[4]<\/a> Scholars generally agree that Jewish men in Jesus’s time wore their hair long and braided; as for Jesus’s skin color, it could have been a light to medium brown.<\/em>
\n[5]<\/a> Words of Jesus of Nazareth, Mark 9.19, New Revised Standard Version.<\/em>
\n[6]<\/a> Not to belabor the point, but Pilate accused Jesus of being “King of the Jews,” i.e., a possible political threat to the government.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"