There's been SOOO much flying around about all this Duck Dynasty business on facebook. It really sparks me on a few things and so I'll say my piece. As to Phil, I don't really care what he said and honestly haven't looked into it. Why? Because it's a damn entertainment show for fuck's sake! A & E shouldn't really be surprised by his conservative Christian views, his racist comment (he's lived in the middle of it, he's old enough and from south I don't see how this should be any kind of surprise) or the fact he speaks his mind. What bothers me is all media coverage and attention whoring the whole things done. There's a shitload of more important things going on that they're just diverting attention from. Wouldn't surprise me if they planned and just asked a few questions in the right direction to illicit the answers they expected. We should be far less concerned about Phil's freedom of speech, A & E is a private company and also has the right to terminate him if they wish, and more concerned about our own freedoms. The senate just pass the National Defense Authorization Act and can now indefinitely detain American citizens without trial...WTF?! We also lost five of my brothers in a helo crash in Afghanistan. We're still there and still dying to protect those freedoms while ya'll let em slip away cause you're too busy crowing about a redneck that's not going to be on tv anymore...Perspective people, get some! FUCK ><
As to Christianity, sometimes it really bothers me what preachers say, it's like they don't think. There's a lot of ignorance and intolerance out there, and unfortunately plenty from the horses mouth so to speak. The first church I went to when I was in GA was a baptist church with an old school fire n brimstone sermon on the evils of facebook and how we need to protect our children from all the sickos out there by monitoring them 24/7 and not letting them have any privacy. Guy couldn't have been more wrong, his heart was in the right place maybe but his suggested methods...no. It's stuff like that that keeps me out of church more often than not. I was also just super creeped out by the ultra unnaturally friendly people there. Needless to say I never went back and it was a good while before I braved another one. On one of my deployments when one of our guys ate it outside the wire and we where sending him home in a box, the chaplain said the worst thing he could have. A guy with a wife and three kids died and he goes and says how if you believe and have faith God will look out for you. One of those 'yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death' verses, which was entirely inappropriate. I rarely go to church, mostly because there's too many idiots spouting what they don't know, or harping on the letters of old testament law about how all these people are wrong (basicly anyone outside of traditionally conservative views, namely homosexuals but most people and families fall outside this these days). What frustrates me is how they miss Jesus. I'm not sure how you do this if you read your bible, the entire new testament is centered on him for a reason! lol
If Jesus where here today he'd being doing the same thing he did then, the church is just as full of Sadducees and Pharisees today as it was in his time. I'm not religious, I believe in Jesus. I'm terrible at reading my bible even infrequently, though I'm well educated on it and know and am very familiar with it (growing up in church and going to a Christian school up til high school will do that), I rarely attend church regularly and I'll be the first to tell you I'm out of place with churchy folk and no less a sinner than anyone else. I feel dirty when I say I'm a Christian cause so many people don't get it, to include many who call themselves Christian = \. It's funny how out of touch even people claiming to be Christian are with God. Jesus put it simply and I try to stick to that, everything else doesn't make sense cause each and every last one of us are sinners. His teaching simplified, love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and love thy neighbor as thy self. His example was treating people with love not judgment. If anyone had a right to judge us it would be him but he didn't and about the only thing that really made him flip out was all people that set up shop and where peddling out of his Fathers house. His example left no room for this 'I'm better than you' self righteous bullshit, we've all fallen short of the Glory of God. Not to feel bad about it, basicly it's just a fancier, I suppose churchier, way of saying we're all human and fuck up. I believe that as a Christian it's important to stand fast in our beliefs. Discerning exactly how that looks can be confusing. So I just circle back to Jesus.
There are certainly issues I have with homosexuality and marriage, it bothers me and I don't like it. But I have a teacher from high school that I very much respect and love. He was one of the best teachers I've ever had and we're fairly close. He's one of the few teachers I know that really cared about his students and made a real effort to teach us, and not just history or foreign language. He got married to his long time partner this year (of 17 years I believe, which is really not so common among any of us these days), which surprised me cause I'd heard rumors but never cared if they where true or not. I'm happy for him and don't begrudge him his happiness, he's earned it and more deserving than most in my opinion even if I'm still not so ok with it. Whether I agree with it or not I will concede its not about me and he has as much right to his happiness as I do. Aside from being one of my best and favorite teachers, I did a foreign exchange trip my sophomore year in high school that my little bro did too with the same family. My teacher ended up taking over that program and I got to meet up with them while I was stationed in Germany. I caught up with him again when I was back in town this year. We had lunch and I had a real good time hanging out with him and his guy while I was there. I didn't judge them and they didn't judge me. I may disagree with them on some things but I'll say this, there's a lot of shit in this world that none of us will understand but we don't always have to. One thing I do know, both my teacher and his guy are veterans like me. They served my country as I do in a time when their life style wasn't acceptable. They're two genuine loving people and never once did either of them make any kind of deal about their lifestyle. Which I honestly feel is how it should be. It frustrates me to no end how much the media goes on about and praises gay people for coming out, it's so brave! Or how much they make an issue of race, like we're so forward thinking for finally electing a (half) black president. All any of that shit accomplishes is it continues to divide us along old, out dated, opposing sides. If homosexuals are any less acceptable to God, like a lot of preachers like to shout about, than I am I'll be happier in hell next to brothers like my teacher and his man beside me. They've got nothing more to prove to me. We're all still just sinners, my Jesus loves all of us anyway. No idiot spouting ignorance from a pulpit will get me to believe different. Jesus might rebuke them as sinners if he was here, but he'd definitely embrace them with open arms and forgive them as well. I've got my sins, he'd rebuke me too.
