Mike’s Rumblings 03-15-24
This is an audio version of Mike Murphy‘s Friday rumblings. This is a regular post on Facebook that I’ve turned into a podcast. I decided Mike’s words needed a wider audience. You may agree or disagree with what he says, but there is certainly much food for thought contained here. You can friend Mike on Facebook for the printed version or read it below
Rumblings. 3.15.24
1. “It was kind of a tense night, because it feels like this might be the last time we get a State of the Union. Depending on what happens in November, next year might just be a Kid Rock concert and an immigrant catapult.” ~ Stephen Colbert
What needed to be called out at the State of the Union was called out. And so the battle lines keep being drawn.
Authoritarianism vs Democracy.
Toddler vs Grownup.
Retribution vs Justice
Truth vs Lies
Order vs Chaos
2. What is premeditated ignorance?
“It is the quality or condition of deliberate unawareness. It is when people do not know because they do not want to know. For, if they did know they would have to take responsibility for that knowledge and they would thereby be required to renegotiate their identity and to relinquish the status, privilege and authority that are derived from the false order of knowledge. At the very worst, they would be compelled to leave their comfort zone.” ~ Source unknown
Of course, MAGA, and its various subsidiaries are the gold standard for cultivating premeditated ignorance and as Katie Britt reminded us – they’re also really quite adept at premeditated lying.
Perhaps a 12 step program for the deliberately unaware is needed. But who would attend? Who is going to break rank and admit they need help?
3. Love these pithy tidbits from Shane Claiborne.
“Those who follow Jesus should attract the same people Jesus attracted and frustrate the same people Jesus frustrated.”
“I can’t imagine Jesus waving an American flag any more than I can see him wearing a “God Bless Rome” shirt.”
“Patriotism is too small.”
Our Bible doesn’t say “For God so loved America. It says “For God so loved the world. America First is a theological heresy.”
4. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German pastor, theologian and martyr was asked, in 1943, how it was possible for the Church to sit back and let Hitler seize absolute power. His firm answer was that cheap grace was being offered and costly discipleship was being dismissed.
“Cheap grace,” Bonhoeffer suggested, “is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, and absolution without personal confession”
My friend Charles Emery reminds us that “we live in a time and culture that not only teaches cheap grace…but praises it.”
5. Norm Chomsky: “Education is not memorizing that Hitler killed six million Jews. Education is understanding how millions of ordinary Germans were convinced that it was required. Education is learning how to spot the signs of history repeating itself.”
Where are you seeing history on the verge of repeating itself? If it’s a repeat of something hurtful, what should you be doing to help stop it?
6. “You take the lies off him, and he’ll shrink to the size of your hat. Take the malice out of him, and he’ll disappear.” ~ Mark Twain
We should be so lucky.
7. During my years in full-time ministry, I found myself writing and preaching sermons I knew would rattle more than a few cages, even my own. Oftentimes, even when I wanted to play it safe, the biblical text of the day just wouldn’t allow it, for it had a fierceness and a challenge that could not be ignored.
I preached one of those kind of sermons in Reno back in the day. At the end of the service a very prominent man, who I knew was at church to take another look at the Christian faith he had long abandoned, approached me. He shook my hand, smiled and simply said: “Well done. You really are a provocative S.O.B.”
And then he walked away.
He wasn’t being crass. Not at all. He was paying a compliment.
I appreciated the fact he didn’t mind getting his cage rattled. Others, over the years, did mind but that’s a storyfest for another time.
8. “An entire branch of the Christian family has lost its way. We were more discipled by the American Dream than Jesus’ peace-making, enemy-loving, neighbor-serving Way, and the natural outcome was to rally around a truly anti-Jesus-way strongman who promised us power. We exchanged the beatitudes for the bluster of Barabbas …” ~ Aaron Niequist
“Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion – which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God’s will – from their own.” ~ Barbara Brown Taylor
9. “We need the wisdom of a “full prophet,” one who can love and yet criticize, one who can speak their words of correction out of an experience of gratitude, not anger. We have to pray to God to teach us that.” ~ Richard Rohr
Let’s join him in that prayer.
10. Thanks for your prayers for my knee surgery last week. I’m on the mend. During my two day hospital stay I met and had conversations with medical staff who had immigrated from Mexico. Argentina, the Philippines, Columbia, Korea, and Viet Nam.
Word on the street advises me that I’m lucky to have gotten out alive, that I survived the wrath of the immigrants. But guess what? No one threatened me. There was not one gang member, thief, criminal, drug trafficker or rapist in the bunch. Not one of them looked like the ‘poison in the blood of our country.’ That can’t be right. I’ve been told over and over again to be afraid, very afraid.
So, where do all the waves of misinformation come from? Who’s behind it? Basically, it all comes from one man who just makes stuff up as he goes along. He is both the origin and transmitter of crap. It’s garbage in/garbage out. And his peeps eat it up and can’t get enough.
From my vantage point, these immigrants I met all seemed like regular folks who came to our country looking for an answer to a problem they were facing. They weren’t interested in becoming a problem. They came looking for freedom, not to be punched in the face by those wanting to deny them that freedom.
We can fix border issues. It won’t be easy but it’s doable. But can we fix the hateful rhetoric that fuels our response to those issues? Going forward, we can certainly deal with the hate if we choose to vote for people who aren’t haters.