Skip to main content

God Does Not Play Soccer in Short Pants!

Representative Steve King, from Iowa, says that President Obama has a little software switch in him that causes him to support Black people automatically.  And worse, that the President is undermining religion in America--"lowering American values"--by supporting the first openly gay male basketball player.  

 Look, Mr. King said, when people got a little antsy by Tim Tebow's on-field football prayers, and Bible verses painted on his face, Obama did not reach out to him.  Silence.  Not a Bible verse, not a little hymn:  nothing!  But when Jason Collins announced he was gay, Obama phoned him.

 There you are:  the Undermining of American Values! Our President openly supported Jason Collins' right to say he was gay, but would not openly support the injection of a little religion into a football game.  Everyone knows that it was those Bible verses that made Tim Tebow the quarterback he is, and that without a faceful of Bible verses, Tim Tebow would be cut by the New York Jets.  

 Now, of course, in all fairness, Jason Collins did not propose to demonstrate on the court that he is gay:  he just said so, somewhere.  Maybe that was the issue.

 The separation of church and state is an American value, too, I guess, although Mr. King did not say much about that.  To be honest, the separation of church and football is a murkier area, especially in Texas, where it is impossible.  And it is true that baseball players often look up toward the scoreboard, where the heavenly host are seated, to thank God for taking sides during the game.  Lots of wide receivers fall to the turf, making a kind of cross, when they score.  

 I think I am an outlier here, concerning religion and politics, because it bothers me when the President--the same one whom Representative King castigates for Undermining American Values--ends almost every public speech with a hearty Hiho, Silver!, and a God Bless America, Each and Every One!  Everyone says God is on their side, in Afghanistan and Pakistan and on the football field.  (I am speaking, here, only of American football, not International Socialistic Soccer, which has round balls and lots of suspicious touching.)

 Congress has had an official pray-er for centuries, and you can see where that got us!  The arrangement has not done much good for God's reputation, either.  So, just personally, I think someone ought to rewrite our Constitution and say that we do not want an official State-sponsored religion; that we can be religious at home, or in church, or in the end zone, if we want to, but don't baptize everybody Catholic, or Baptist, or Muslim, or anything.  


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

Nice to Run Into You Again

We do not see things in enormous time-frames.  We human beings are fairly new at figuring things out for ourselves.  For instance, some  people today still think of the earth as a newly created thing, perhaps ten thousand years old.  Earth is actually about four-and-a-half billion years old.   That is to say, the earth is 450,000 times older than the Adam and Eve story, and the universe is three times older than that! I recall first hearing that continents were slowly drifting around the earth, and that there quite likely had been several times when the continents were squeezed together.  But people could stand on the edge of their own continents, and not see Africa or Asia getting closer.  It took at least fifty years to figure things out. We called our continent something special. But sure enough, there have been numerous times during several-billion year history of the earth, when supercontinents formed, and eventually drifted off. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...
Post a Comment
Read more