Hypocrisy and Hatred Now Christian Fruits

HYPOCRISY AND HATRED

NOW CHRISTIAN FRUITS

The life and speech of a professing believer in 2012 can now be filled with caustic rhetoric, hate filled innuendo, blatant hypocrisy, and just plain old vanilla dumb. Take for instance Paul Collins Broun, Jr. who is the U.S. Representative for Georgia‘s 10^th congressional district. This man claims to be a Christian and a Southern Baptist. This week a video surfaced where Broun was addressing a group from Liberty Baptist Church when he said that evolution and the Big Bang theory were “lies from the pit of hell”. He suggested the Earth was about 9000 years old. (If you include the leap years!)

OK, fair enough. Many people go around with those kinds of crusades which obscure the gospel and make wars out of non-redemptive issues. It happens all the time and the “lies from the pit of hell” always provides a bit of red meat to the fundamentalist masses. Of course for a sitting congressman to say things like that makes people wonder how he could fairly decide where educational money is given and spent. Oh well, he like others believe that these kinds of issues separate the sheep from the goats.

But let us examine a few other things that Broun has done and said and let us see if they meet the “I am a follower of Jesus” smell test.

In that same speech where he mentioned evolution, Broun attributes his 2007 election to the direct intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ, shows slides of a Kodiak bear and a lion that he heroically shot, and tells a story about heroically shooting another lion in the face, explaining that “God directed that bullet, because if I’d missed, that lion would have been in the back of the truck with me and I’d have been clawed to death.”

You just can’t make this stuff up.

In May 2009, Broun proposed failed legislation that would have proclaimed 2010 "The Year Of The Bible".

Ah yes, the Year of the Bible. To many if not most professing Christians that seems like a bold stand for God’s Word, when it is in fact a self righteous attempt to push the Bible under the collective noses of the culture. It also means we could have the Year of the Koran. And you can see where it all leads.

He also introduced a bill to ban the sale or rental of sexually explicit materials on U.S military installations.

So yes, he is a moralist who believes that morality can be created and enforced by laws.

On November 10, 2008, one week after the 2008m election, Broun drew national attention when he criticized President-elect Barak Obama's call for a civilian national service corps, suggesting that Obama might use it to establish a Marxist dictatorship. Broun said, "That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did. When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist.”

Wow. The man wasn’t even sworn in yet and that kind of mindless hatred was already in full swing. And the Hitler references were already in full bloom. Maybe God revealed this to him while he was taking communion. Of course it doesn’t matter that the previous Bush administration had endorsed such an idea.

In an interview with Sirius Radio Broun said "I don't know" when asked if President Obama was a US citizen or a Christian. He also said that he did know Obama was a socialist, and said “America has to stand up and decide if we want to be a socialist nation or if we’re going to be a free nation." During President Obama's 2011 State of the Union address Broun tweeted that "Mr. President, you don't believe in the Constitution. You believe in socialism."

What a wellspring of love and grace. And oh yes, race has nothing to do with this. But this is what passes for being a disciple of Jesus Christ? A baptism certificate and a church membership is all you need now a days.

In a town hall meeting in February of 2011 a man asked Broun, “Who will shoot Obama?” Instead of immediately reprimanding the man, Broun responded, "The thing is, I know there's a lot of frustration with this president. We're going to have an election next year. Hopefully, we'll elect somebody that's going to be a conservative, limited-government president ... who will sign a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.”

Instead of rebuking the man, he went on another rant.

In 2008, Broun and 91 co-sponsors introduced H.J.Res.89, a proposition for the Federal Marriage Amendment .The proposed amendment to the United States Constitution would define marriage as "as consisting only of the union of a man and a woman."

You see, Rep. Broun and his fourth wife Nikki feel very strongly about the sanctity of marriage. In fact, all four of Broun’s wives feel strongly about traditional marriage.

So we are left with a Neanderthal model of what a Christian should be. Excoriate liberals, spread rumors, adore this country, stand for traditional marriage, go hunting, and throw around a few Hitler references and voilà !, you are a follower of the American Jesus. Do you ever get the feeling we are living in a series of parallel universes? Somehow the absurd has snuck around to the back door and has now become the Christian banner. I guess I could go on, but if you are thinking that there is nothing wrong with Rep. Broun’s idea of Christianity than there is little anyone can say to change your mind.

(I am now saying this purposely with a tired and satirist voice.)

Yea, yea. Rah rah. Hoorah for America. Stand up against the commies. Raise you guns. And stand upon the Washington Monument.

The end must be near.