Woman Takes Courageous Stand in Affirming What All the Powers Tell Her to Affirm

Beatrice Franklin is hopping mad! And she is going to let you know about it in the most courageous way possible. She is going to repost some jarring memes on social media, the single most dangerous place on planet earth. Some might think that no-mans-land in World War 1, or religious fidelity in a time of persecution, or taking to the seas during the age of exploration, or things like that are the contexts of the greatest courage required of people in human history. Forget soldiers or explorers or faithful men and women. Beatrice has come that you might have an exemplar of bravery in these perilous times.

Not only has she stormed the ideological beach of Normandy, but she comes with opinions so bold, so razor sharp, so original, so beautiful, that they can only be uttered by the most courageous of the courageous class! She is so courageous that she is like a woman wearing daisy dukes taking a stroll down the streets of Kabul. 

Her social media feed includes such culturally radical forays into battle as these:

“White people are so racist it disgusts me. I feel sick being white.” 

“Women’s bodies are their own bodies and they can eject parasites inside them if they want to! Parasites are gross!"

"If women were in charge, there would so much less killing!"

“Everyone should be free to love whoever they love for as long as the loving lasts.”

"Capitalism enslaves!"

“Gas powered cars and plastic bottles and billionaires are killing the planet. Buy a Tesla and a yeti!”

“Rich people are so greedy. They should give their Tesla’s to college students.”

“College should be free, like the credit card my dad gave me.”

Now one would think that with such radical and minority views Beatrice would surely be facing persecution, and that probably is coming soon for such steely and courageous bravery, but most days she is only forced to summon her courage in facing her too hot chai tea latte at Starbucks, never yielding in her laser focus for social change from the plush safety of her corner booth. Thank you, Beatrice, for standing in the gap for all of us. 

Man Attempting to Imitate Jesus Becomes Celibate Carpenter

Seattle, Washington

As with Nicodemus, poor Henry Marshall is perhaps taking things a bit too literally. He recently heard from his pastor at Sienna Church of Seattle that we are to imitate Jesus in all things.

His pastor boldly proclaimed that we live in a culture that emulates foolish cultural heroes and celebrities where it should copy the lifestyle of our cultural savior Jesus. "Jesus came into this world to show us how we ought to live," the pastor confidently and heretically proclaimed.

Since historical Reformed doctrines like justification, regeneration, adoption, and the like, get no traction when one is trying to build a large church, the pastoral staff at Sienna Church decided to mine Jesus' teaching for inspiration in making heaven for ourselves through action, according to our own desires, right here and now.

But silly Henry interpreted his pastor to say that he should immediately leave his wife and enter a trade school to learn the skill of carpentry, and begin selling wooden sculptures at the local farmer's market. The pastoral staff at Sienna immediately intervened, suggesting to Henry that he was perhaps mis-handling the Bible. But Henry remains unwavering. He sites back to the pastors their claims that we are to follow the example of Jesus, and that through our actions of giving up sex and making things out of wood we can make a better world.

The pastoral staff, for their part, clarified what they meant by imitating Jesus. Jesus obviously meant that we were to be vegans and fight against whiteness and climate change and capitalism and America! The pastors are still perplexed that anyone could interpret the Bible so recklessly. Then they returned to their studies of Origen, Rob Bell, and John Yoder. 

Parents Who Can Afford it Buy Boat Instead of Sending Their Kid to Christian School

Dallas, Texas

Bob and Wendy Richey are your average suffering upper middle class parents. They only have two houses, unlike many of their friends who have lots more, and they certainly can’t afford private schooling for their two designer kids.

As committed Christians, they know there is a lot of whacky teaching going on in the public schools, but the public schools are free, kind of. They already pay for obscenely high property taxes in both of their gated communities. 

“We are as disturbed as any that our kids are being taught things we don’t believe about gender and sexuality and the unborn and socialism and postmodernism and identity politics grounded in Marxism and atheism and pretty much everything that is of deepest value in education, but what can we do?”

When it was pointed out that their community was one of the fortunate communities to have a truly Christian high school, in the sense that the school actually teaches theology as a tool to unlock all the arts and sciences, Bob answered that the school in question was “absurdly expensive,” and “how could Christians of conscience charge so much?” and that “Jesus would be a socialist and give away education for free because he said to suffer the little children and all that..." 

"And furthermore," Bob noted, "It's all going to be a waste of money when all these Christian school kids go off to college and become a bunch of clones of the secular universities and the secular culture!" 

And then Bob, exasperated in his own confusion but also blaming the interviewer, slammed the door on his F-350 pulling his 28 foot Cobalt and sped away.

Genius Social Commentator Works Hard to find Flaws in Flawed Human Beings

Washington, D.C.

Liberal voices everywhere are pooling their impressive intellectual resources to find all the flaws.
Said Zephyr Livegood, “So few people today are willing to do the heavy intellectual lifting in our culture.” Grateful that all the world’s brightest and best people live in our times in the shining liberal wonderlands of our big coastal cities and big altruistic universities, she went on:

“We need better leadership than we have had! I mean, while it is true that guys like Washington and Jefferson founded an impressive imperialistic nation—and all I’ve done is get a degree from the University of Virginia and write some blog posts—they were still the bad guys, much worse than me and my friends! We don’t have slaves, or even buy stuff made in Indonesia. All our clothing comes from a Portland co-op."

In an effort to appropriately identify the flawed people, Zephyr was kind enough to supply us with a list of people with whom we can compare our lives to feel superior: 

1. All the people who wore black face at some point in their miserable racist lives, except liberals like Jimmy Kimmel and Robert Downey Jr., because of the context and everything. 
2. Anyone who ever miss spoke on social media or in a college paper or in a high school yearbook or while in preschool.
3. The Police. Obviously!
4. Writers of tone deaf satire. 
5. White people. Even the mostly white people. And even the poor white people. 
6. Men. Especially the white ones. 
7. Rich people. (Except rich black people. And also except all the rich celebrities who think the right way.) 

8. Black people who vote Republican. 
9. Anyone who offends against the ever changing standards of incoherent postmodernists. 

10. Hitler, mostly for being white, like Trump, and like the Police.

Curiously missing from her list was any mention of people like Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro, or people of that ilk. 

“Grace must be earned with pledges of fidelity to one's comrades. Some people give grace cheaply to anyone who seems sincere in asking for it. We give it only to those who prove to us that they are truly sorry for having been white. We must see public humiliation, cancellation, and groveling obeisance to the collective. Only then will we possibly consider--what is that word--forgiveness."

Joe Biden to Hire Cast of Hamilton as His Cabinet

Washington, D.C.

Following all of the woke institutions of the land but also demonstrating bold leadership, President Elect Joe Biden will make his administration the most diverse in the history of the poorly named White House. 

In a recent interview, Mr. Biden said, "Let me be clear, I am against all the whites that have imposed the whiteness upon the American people for so long. This office has for far too long been dominated by the whiteys, and it stops with me. In fact, I plan to form most of my opinions after hearing what Kamala has to say, since I'm also afflicted with the whiteness, and also my whiteness is even paler now that I'm so old." 

In perhaps the boldest move in presidential politics in the history of ever, Mr. Biden stated that he wanted to do something like the play Hamilton was able to do--that is, make America's story and America's leaders less white and thus more relatable. Then it occurred to him (and by him we mean his advisors) that it would be so much simpler to hire the already beautifully diversified cast of Hamilton itself as his cabinet.

When asked whether or not a group of remarkably talented actors are qualified to lead the department of defense, state, treasury, etc., Mr. Biden wisely retorted, "Come on, man! Sometimes the times call for us to look deeper than such petty things. We want under-represented minorities to have their place. They are young, scrappy, and hungry, and that--combined with their non-whiteness--qualifies them in my mind. Let me be clear, again, I'm not throwing away my shot to make this nation more un-white."

The first cabinet meeting/rap battle will focus on other under-represented groups. The buzz all about town is that Kamala plans to spit some sick rhymes pushing for Jill Biden to be replaced with the first trans womyn. 

Other plans include re-naming the White House the Rainbow Palace of Equity and Inclusion.

White Christian Cisgendered Heterosexual Male Loses Nobel Prize After Winning It

Stockholm, Sweden

The Nobel prize awarding committee has made an enormous mistake. In its foolish enthusiasm, the committee awarded the Nobel prize for medicine to Dr. Carol Johnson, a pasty white cisgendered Christian male devil, who also happened to cure cancer. They prematurely awarded Dr. Johnson on the basis of his work alone, seeing as how curing cancer is fairly impressive. But then a heroic researcher at the organization discovered who he is, despite his girl name.

In a statement, the Nobel Prize Organization acknowledged that in the past it awarded the prestigious honor based on work that substantially advanced medical science and improved the human condition. But for too long medical science has been dominated by Euro whiteys. Just google it and you'll see staring back at you faces of oppression and privilege (with a few token exceptions).

A spokesperson for the organization said, "Curing cancer is nice and all, but advancing intersectionality is even better. We just wish cancer had been cured by a left-handed transexual paraplegic black zim/zer from Detroit. It just goes to show you how deep our prejudices go that we can't find one."

When asked whether Dr. Johnson's cure for cancer might help all people and not just his own people, whoever they might be, the spokersperson said, "That is exactly how they keep the rest of us down. They make it seem that they care about all of us, but we will no longer be duped. We must rise above this system that would make us slaves to the oppressor. We now know that while it seems Dr. Johnson is giving us a gift; in reality, he is giving us shackles of obligation that we, for far too long, have been compelled to acknowledge in our contrite aquiescence." After her statement, several voices in the background were heard to say, "Amen!" 

Austinite Worried Heaven Won’t Be as Awesome as Austin

There is a city set upon a hill, a land flowing with craft beer and whisky, a utopia where Teslas abound and where the bodies and the beards are sculpted with an attention to detail that people in cities like Oklahoma City or Topeka or Fresno give to basic human survival. High paying jobs in technology abound for the deserving alphas that swarm to the farmers markets with their dogs, whose lives are immeasurably better than most of the members of the human species.

Twenty-eight year old mega-church attendee and software developer Boone Higgins boasted that Austin is the perfect city. “When I graduated from San Jose State, I was worried that I wouldn't find another place like the Bay Area. I had heard Austin was a sanctuary city for single young semi-Christians, but it turns out that this place is utopia. There is so much to do and see and buy, and there are so few unintelligent or unattractive people, and also virtually no children. I love it!"

As to Austin's reputation for materialism, Boone said, "The people here are rich, but in an authentic distressed-designer-jeans wearing kind of way. They are also environmentally conscious and spend their money in ways that love and respect the planet, like buying overpriced Yeti products. They give a generous minuscule amount to their mega-churches that don't seem to need it. They buy electric vehicles and solar panels and live on the lake, where they can commune with the divine in the simplicity and beauty of nature, sometimes on their boats. They don't build roads so that the trees can give us fresh air and hiking trails, which of course leads to miserable traffic, but who cares? I work in tech and live downtown and telecommute most days."

When asked whether Boone not only didn't want Austin to change, but that perhaps he didn't want to change to learn to appreciate something deeper and truer and better than Austin, like heaven, Boone responded by looking confused for a few seconds, and then sheepishly muttering, "that's deep," and then shuffling away to ponder this over a Thirsty Goat IPA and tacos.

Go Crusaders! Is That Offensive? Oh, Uh, Go Sea Lions!

It is amazing how many people are accused of racism today. You are a racist if you criticize Obama. You are a racist if you would never move your family to urban Detroit. You are a racist if you criticize rap music. You are a racist if you think that perhaps gay marriage is a bad idea. You are a racist if you wonder if you might be paying enough in taxes. You are a racist if you happen to like the name of the team that plays in Washington.

I have referred to it as "political hypochondria," because we live in a society that seems to love its offenses. The fascinating thing in all of it is that there is very little calm discussion of the issues. Instead, there are emotional eruptions of offense at ever turn. The only people that cannot be offended are the Christians. They have enjoyed privilege for too long. They frankly deserve to be made fun of for sport without consequence by the whole of post-Christian society. So suffer in silence, Mr. Tebow. You don't count as a victim. Michael Sam does! Tebow is creepy, but Sam is brave! Boo Tebow, hail Sam!

Let me say that I think we should be respectful and loving towards all people; that all human beings deserve respect for being made in the image of God. In a purely atheistic universe, racism would be par for the meaningless course. If some animal group could exploit another for advantage, it is not like the mindless, purposeless universe is going to care. Evolution is indifferent to racism and probably even encourages it through the process of the emergent consuming the inferior.

Now I realize that there is some merit to many of the ideas circulating about Obama, Michael Sam, the Redskins, disenfranchisement, poverty, prison rates and the like. But I also would like to explore two questions I have concerning the renaissance of this charge of racism:

First, what exactly counts as racism today? C.S. Lewis once said that if we were not careful, various essential terms would come to lose their meaning. I think this has happened with words like "homophobia" and "Christian" and "racist." I was taught that a racist is someone who hates other people merely by virtue of their race or origin. Hating blacks because they are black would be a clear example of racism. But today we have people interested in broadening the meaning of the term. You are racist not merely because you hate blacks, but because you speak in ways that offend certain black people, perhaps 30 - 52% of them. Some blacks are even offended by "black" as a term of reference. So I've already offended many and therefore clearly I am a racist.

Or even speaking about another race without much knowledge of them or interest in them is offensive. The idea here is that people of different races cannot in principle understand the turmoils of other groups, and thus even speaking of them and their troubles is offensive. This is a phenomenon that philosopher Francis Beckwith has termed "hard multiculturalism."

Or what if you are not sorry enough for the crimes that your ancestors committed against blacks or Native Americans? (Of course this can work in infinite regress here, since everyone's group was at one time or another mistreated by some other group.) And by sorry enough, what I mean here is penance in the form of bottomless monetary compensations. Of course I'm a racist for even writing such a sentence, but is Thomas Sowell equally racist for saying the same thing of black entitlements? It certainly is possible to be a racist against one's own race, but can one really be so dismissive of Sowell!

Or what if you think it is a moral failure of the black community that the fatherless rate is so high among them? Is it simply a fact that since I'm not black, I don't get to make such a comment, because, again, I cannot even in principle understand black culture? And if that is the case, then why on earth should I ever even care to speak to a black person, since it will never lead to understanding? If morality doesn't bind us, what on earth does?

Or what if you think the fundamental tenets of Islam as a religion are destructive to human beings?

Or what if you happen to think that Christianity is correct as a matter of fact, and for all cultures? No, not American Christianity, whatever that even means, but Christianity!

Or what if you think it is within the realm of possibility that whites and evangelical Protestants could be discriminated against?

Racism! All of it is racism! One guy even said he knew "white" I said such things, because he was clever.

Today, if you operate outside the enlightened language codes provided for us by our intellectual parents, then you are a racist.

Nevermind that you might be a loving human being who grants the benefit of the doubt to any other human being, regardless of skin color or socio-economic background.

Nevermind that you are a truly color blind executive who hires only the best qualified person for a needed position in your organization.

Nevermind that you find every human being you meet interesting and attempt to draw them out by asking good questions and listening well.

Nevermind that you judge someone not by race or bank account, but by their character and the content of their ideas.

Nevermind that you give liberally to disadvantaged groups of all kinds.

All of that may be true, but if you cheer for the "Redskins," or criticize Obama or question entitlements, then you are clearly a racist.

And now my second question: Who gets to be offended to the point of changing our vocabulary?

Perhaps the best example of this matter for me is the Redskins controversy.

One side says the term can never be dignified and has always been a demeaning racial slur. The other side says that it can be used in a complimentary sense, as it was originally by some Native Americans and as it is presently used by some of them today.

So one side asks, "should I have the right to tell the offended that they should not be offended," and the other side replies, "should you have the right to tell the unoffended that they should be offended?"

Recently I was told that the title "homosexual" is now offensive. Then how shall I refer to those with same-sex interests? Well, just don't call them "homosexuals!" Perhaps I should start referring to "bisexuals" as "polyamorous," at least until that becomes offensive.

How are words determined to be offensive? The word "Christian" was originally an insult directed against the "little Christs" running about in the Roman empire. It was a term of derision, as if to mock them by suggesting that they were merely parrots of some other human being. But the Christians accepted it and turned it around, making it a term that accurately described their allegiance to Christ as Lord.

Ole Miss is called the Rebels, and surely many high schools in the south refer to themselves as the "Rebels," but I am left to wonder at how many find such a term to be offensive. Surely there are many offended at it, but then why is the name not changed? Most people in the south are probably now able to tease out the good connotations and the bad connotations of the term "Rebel." At what percentage of offense should Ole Miss change its name?

Christian schools call themselves the "Crusaders." Can you imagine being a Muslim student at a public school playing against the "Crusaders?" But again, Christian schools call themselves Crusaders, not because the Crusaders behaved atrociously to Muslims and Jews, but because there is still enough connotative good to the term to preserve it, even though some colleges and schools have jettisoned the name. Point Loma Nazarene changed their name from the Crusaders to the Sea Lions (and not the sea mammal, but something like Aslan coming out of the sea... I know... hilarious). But they are far less racist now for having done it.

My only point here is really just a philosophical one: Who gets to suggest that connotations have shifted and a term is now no longer acceptable to use? This is simply an epistemological question. Who bears such authority? If five people are offended at Crusaders, should I change it, when 500 love it?

As Christians we are told to exercise our Christian freedom in a way that is loving towards others who may be more sensitive to various issues than we are. Paul used the example of meat sacrificed to idols. And surely what he had in mind was something like a dinner where some Christian asserts his freedom without showing any grace to his brother or sister. Of course he was thinking of this on a small scale, among people of a similar epistemological grounding (The Church). But even on the larger cultural scale, I really don't want to offend other people. But I think we all have to admit that offending others is awfully easy to do in this culture.