On Privilege and Ignorance and "Showing the Work”

I recently read someone on the left decry a right wing commentator by saying his "white male privilege allows him to make sweeping statements uninformed by history and never once question his position". And in the case of this comment, they are substantively correct in their critique, and yet they offer none of that substance in the critique itself. All that is offered is, ironically, a sweeping statement without evidence. In math terms: They get the answer right, but show none of the work. This is a problem. 

A Brief Theology of Tax Day

I see posts going up for Tax Day which say "Taxes are Theft". I'm proud to pay taxes. I'm proud that my taxes go to benefit the common good in a number of ways, from roads, to water treatment, to education, to veterans, to prisons, to helping the needy, to a thousand other public benefits. Granted, some of my tax money goes to pay for military actions I don't agree with, or welfare for rich corporations, sponsored by corrupt politicians. And of course there are policies I vehemently disagree with the current administration about. But you are never going to agree with others about how every dime is spent. Heck, my wife and I don't always agree about how to spend money. Much less me and a government of, by, and for 350 million people.

Mary Magdalene versus the Patriarchy

So the controversy over who Mary Magdalene was has jumped out of the pulpit and lecture hall, and into the Washington Post. For some on the "Right", Mary is a lowly prostitute who Jesus cast demons out of and saved to be one of the "little women" in the Gospel story. For others on the "Left", Mary is one of the leading Apostles, the patron saint of feminine empowerment, who was unjustly and unfortunately silenced by the growing patriarchy of the early Church. Both sides of the debate paint this as an either-or. Either Mary is a barely redeemable ex-whore, or she is an unjustly maligned Apostle. But perhaps the battle lines have been drawn based upon the logical fallacy of the excluded middle.

Today is called "Good" Friday

Today is called "Good" Friday

Let us take a moment of silence and remember

Jesus has been murdered on a cross

Jesus has been murdered in a concentration camp

Jesus has been murdered by a terrorist machete

Jesus has been murdered by the Mother of all Bombs

Jesus has been murdered by Sarin gas

Jesus has been murdered by systematic starvation in an underdeveloped country

Jesus has been murdered by a preventable childhood disease

Jesus has been murdered on the Trail of Tears

Jesus has been murdered on a transatlantic slave ship

Jesus has been murdered in a refugee camp

Jesus has been murdered as a sex slave trying to runaway

Jesus has been murdered in Jerusalem and in Flint and in Syria and in Wounded Knee and in Sudan and in Iraq and in Ferguson and in Yemen and in Auschwitz and in Hiroshima

Jesus has been murdered by hatred and by apathy, by neglect and by oppression, by overt acts of terror and by looking the other way

After all, didn't Jesus say "What you have done to the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have also done to me"?