Congressman Weiner Needs Jesus

Now this should come as no surprise to some of us, particularly we jaded observers of the ongoings of human events, but apparently according to Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr. President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, it seems clear that Congressman Anthony Weiner should come to Jesus as there is no treatment for sin.

No, I swear, he tweeted it.

"Dear Congressman Weiner: There is no effective "treatment" for sin. Only atonement, found only in Jesus Christ.”

The sheer opportunism that this represents is enough to turn my stomach, and believe me I have had ample opportunity to have my stomach turned of late.Now as someone who does not profess or practice a religion, this sort of comment makes me uneasy. When Tiger Woods got into so much hot water because of his (real) affairs, he was admonished by the Fox evangelical Brit Hume that he would be well-encouraged to drop his Buddhist beliefs and come into the light. This made me uneasy. But Buddhists and the Christians haven’t really had a historical knockdown drag out like the Christians and Jews have. So if Hume’s remark to Tiger Woods on his religion could strike me with disquiet, imagine how a Christian leader’s similar remark, on the Internet, to Anthony Weiner, a Jew, would strike me.

But thanks be to Jesus Christ, Savior of the World, that not all Christians are of like mind, that not all Christians prioritize the truth of their religion over the falsehoods of others. Me too, I like the idea of having multiple deities to call on. Here is part of a resolution that the United Church of Christ adopted in 1987:

“Faced with this history from which we as Christians cannot, and must not, disassociate ourselves, we ask for God's forgiveness through our Lord Jesus Christ. We pray for divine grace that will enable us, more firmly than ever before, to turn from this path of rejection and persecution to affirm that Judaism has not been superseded by Christianity; that Christianity is not to be understood as the successor religion to Judaism; God's covenant with the Jewish people has never been abrogated. God has not rejected the Jewish people; God is faithful in keeping covenant.”

If anything, all Dr. Mohler’s tweet does, as far as I am concerned, is to reaffirm to me that this “history” is still not a part of history. It is still with us.

God help us.

OK, What’s With All This ‘Blood Libel’ Stuff?

Apparently Sarah Palin isn’t the first to use the term “Blood Libel in reference to the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords and the death of 6 human beings.

The first guy to use it was a conservative law professor in the (Malcolm Forbes-owned) Wall Street Journal. In that article he pointed out that liberals wasted no time to point the finger at Sarah Palin’s crosshairs website, where Congresswoman Giffords’ district had a bull’s eye or a crosshairs symbol superimposed on the approximate location of her Arizona CD-8 on Palin’s map featured on that website.

Seeking to hang the tragedy in Tucson directly on Sarah Palin’s – or Glenn Beck’s, or Rush Limbaugh’s – shoulders.

Geez, I know I did.

Mainly because this shooting is something that we should have expected, especially from a mentally unbalanced person as this kid seems to be.

And mainly because Gabrielle Giffords herself mentioned the existence of the website and how it appeared to incite others to do violence against her.

And from that time to this we still don’t know what inspired that kid to carry out what we now know as something that has been on his mind for 3 years now. We don’t know and the only way to know it is to rely on the word of a demonstrably unbalanced person.

And now Sarah Palin is pushing back with her Facebook video in which she also uses the term “Blood libel” giving pundits yet another rock to throw back at her: does she know what it is she is talking about?

The law professor, Glenn Reynolds, used the term just once, when he asked the question “Where is the decency in blood libel?” In that meaning, the term makes a little sense. What he is asking is how can “blood libel,” a false allegation that Jews murdered Christian children to harvest their blood to be used at Passover, in order to justify all sorts of retribution on Jews ever be seen as a polite remark.

The meaning is that just as Christians have “blood libel,” liberals are manufacturing complete lies in order to communicate their disdain and in order to justify their hatred for all things Teabagger.

In that meaning, however, he went a little over the top. Sarah Palin is one person who has never been subjected to death camps and genocide. Yet blood libel was used to justify both of them in the past centuries.

And blood libel is patently false. That Sarah Palin used unfortunate language to stir up her base is, unfortunately not false.

It happened.

Here is what Palin said:

“Journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn.”

Now blood libel is a specific libel. It is a libel about the use of the blood of Christian children. Journalists and pundits (not “pundants” as it was pronounced by Palin) did not manufacture a blood libel, and law professor Reynolds did not use it in that way. But it is obvious to me that to the Alaskan huntress, the term “blood libel” has a kind of ring to it.

So she used Reynolds’ term and got it wrong.

The ignorance and fuzzy thinking of Sarah Palin continues to astound me.

Happy Birkat Hachamah

No, seriously. Today is an anniversary of sorts. Not an annual anniversary (and yes, please excuse the redundancy) but rather today is a “bidecioctennial” celebration. The celebration of Birkat Hachamah, observed by Jews around the world as the anniversary of the sun’s sunrise position. The position in which it rose today.

The position it rises once every 28 years.

Today, according to The Talmud, the sun rose on the very first day that it could at the creation of the universe. That is, not on the first day because there was no Earth. And not on the second or third day either for that matter. But on the fourth day, when there was both a Sun and an Earth, the Sun rose on that day in the very same spot that it rose this morning.

And the Talmud tells us that it does that every 28 years.

Well doesn’t that beat all? From the New York Times:

“‘It is a milestone,’ Rabbi Metzger, now 43, said of the occasion, which occurs maybe three times in a lifetime. ‘It reflects the intergenerational passage of life.’ His father, Rabbi Alter Metzger, now 76, first participated in 1953, and his children will join in for the first time on Wednesday.”

“The service will be brief, Rabbi Joshua Metzger said — no more than half an hour. Wednesday also happens to be a busy day for Jews because Passover begins in the evening.”

Well now that’s true. Imagine having to go short on one religious celebration because it falls on the eve of yet another.

Let me try to relate to this as someone who still retains a residence in The South. This is sort of like going to one of those all-day NASCAR parties and then attending the races before or after, right?

Well, maybe not exactly.