Tuesday, May 22, 2012

What Would Jesus Do?

I read an article that actually made me ask this question out loud.


What would Jesus do?  


Pastor Charles Worley on Sunday in front of Providence Road Baptist Church just outside Maiden, N.C. said in a sermon recently that lesbian's should be rounded up and interned behind an electric fence, gay men in another camp.  We should be kept there until we died out because we could not reproduce, so eventually we would all be dead.


I think I have read about this, I think this world has seen this before.  The names of those camps were Auschwitz, Dachau, Ravensbrueck among too many others.  Lets not mince words, these were not work camps, they were not concentration camps, they were EXTERMINATION camps built to get rid of communists, socialists, Jews, gypsies, liberals and homosexuals, among others.


Pastor Martin Niemoller said of the apathy of people during the second world war:


First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.


Add yourself to this list:  gay, lesbian, trans, left handed, glasses wearing, brown eyed, green eyed, too short, too tall, etc.  Eventually who will be left?  Not me and not just about every one I know.

Then there was the more recent Khmer Rouge, they did not even bother with camps, they just killed everyone that did not fit into their plan.  They killed almost fifty percent of their population in less than ten years!  

Has this world learned nothing from the past?  

The population of the United States is about 313 million, so if Paster Worley and his merry band of assholes just killed us outright, how long would it take? Why bother with a fence or an airdrop of food?  Bullets would be much cheaper.  

It is estimated that 10% of the population is gay which is about 31 million of us, so might take awhile, but I'm sure if they tried hard enough they could get us all.  Or perhaps when they discover they are going to have to shoot their Auntie M, or the guy that sells them their tires, the doctor that delivered their children, the woman that teaches their daughter to sing, or their dentist would they begin to wonder why they are really so afraid of us?

Which leads me back to my question:  What Would Jesus Do?

I have to believe that the Jesus that I was taught about at St. Matthew's Parish in Jamestown, Rhode Island would not say "go and round um up, put them behind that fence and forget about them."

I have to believe that the Jesus I heard about would say something like "love them as you would  love yourself".

I'm sure he might put it a little better than I can, but I don't think he would preaching that we should all die.

How did we all hear such a different Jesus.

1 comment:

KW McMahon said...

AMEN!

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". We MUST never repeat such a horrid past.