Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, June 3, 2020

I think that kid is wearing Reebok Pumps.


It doesn’t matter what I try to do, crack open a book or watch television, but my mind keeps going back to what’s going on in our country. Something I think that has been uncovered are all the marches going on across the globe for the same cause.  The internet sure has divided us but also brought us closer in many ways.


Twice-baked potatoes sound like a good idea but they are highly over-rated.


It was five years ago some folks were worried about a thing called Jade Helm.


This was popular on social media yesterday. My apologies if you are offended, but you should probably get your head out of the gutter, he was obviously referring to a cat.


Am I bugging you? Don’t mean to bug ya. OK Edge, play the blues…


A Twitter feed which is equal parts funny and depressing – @influencersitw


House where Adolf Hitler was born to become a police station

Austrian authorities have presented the winning plan to redesign the house where Adolf Hitler was born in 1889, turning it into a police station.

They are trying to make it unattractive as a pilgrimage site for people who glorify the Nazi dictator.


Mississippi News – Madison County prosecutor: ‘We can only hope the deadly coronavirus strain spreads in riots’


This is from a Houston Redditor.

I have literally never been more proud to be a Texan. from texas


I heard a Terry Dorsey reference yesterday, that’s a name I haven’t heard or thought about in a while.


Here’s the Hardline segment I referenced yesterday in which Bob Sturm talks about faith and politics. Of course, all of this came about due to recent events. A lot of us who grew up in Evangelical youth groups and attended Baptist colleges feel a real kinship with Bob. When Bob talks about his parents and church leadership telling him not to listen to any music other than music from Christian artists from Christian record labels we know where he’s coming from, and how shallow that can make us. We empathized with him when he spoke reverently of Jerry Falwell Sr. while at the same time being frustrated with what came out of his mouth. We know how he feels when certain folks we admire in the Christian community say or do certain things that really aren’t representative of the Christian faith, even though they loosely rationalized those actions with scripture – the most egregious being love of country over love for Christ. We love Bob because we know what it’s like to be Bob. So, when Bob pulled a Jerry Maguire yesterday and laid his balls out there and the segment (which lasted over 23-minutes) wasn’t interrupted to go to a commercial break, we knew this was a big deal. And later in the day when you saw him tweet about the president being a wolf in lambs clothing and retweeted something like this, you totally understood he was at the same crossroads you encountered before, though it’s going to be harder for him because of his public profile. A lot more arrows are going to fling his way. He was brave enough to state something I’ve been wanting to say for years on this blog, it’s all about one issue.

I transcripted almost everything he had to say just in case you aren’t able to listen to the audio.

  • The luckiest thing to ever happen to you is that your mom happened to be within  U.S. boundaries to give birth to you. It had no meritocracy, you simply were born here.
  • I’m part of two groups. I’m a white affluent male. I was born in a Christian home and the religion of my parents became mine. It’s a life of faith I have chosen and I’m not embarrassed by that. If you are part of either of those groups, can you think about employing a little more empathy?
  • It has always bothered me as a Christian that we have white churches and black churches. And I know there’s no fixing it now, but I’m going to take a wild guess and assume there are black churches probably because churches weren’t really welcoming back in the day and so the black community figured out their own house of worship. If I’m uninformed or ill-informed on that, please accept my apologies.
    • I’m taking a wild guess because I am familiar with how things worked in our country, whether it be diners, or water fountains, or hotels, so I’m going to take a while guess and say the people making you go to a different water fountain, or a different restaurant, or a different hotel, probably also had something to say about where you went to church.
  • So where am I going with this? I even think about the wisdom of speaking about this publicly. But I think we, as Christians, and I realize I’m saying “we” and it’s an inclusive term, and if you don’t feel like you are a part of that group feel free. I’m not trying to include anybody against their will. But those of us in quote “Bible Belt” who believe in Jesus and his message, I think we have taken a wrong turn and have confused our faith with our politics, and that’s just so counterproductive, man, because on issues like immigration, and on issues on just social decency, and on issues of racism or whatever, we’ve got our political jersey out and it totally smothers any sort of message of Jesus’ love. And you don’t have to go very far into the Gospels to see, you know, the good Samaritan, and just all the messages of look, if you are treating people differently on color of skin or religion or any sort of thing, you are doing it wrong.
  • And I realize the elections are super important because that it all comes back to abortion, and I get it, I understand. I have parents who would literally, and I love them, but they would vote for Darth Vader to protect abortion (his parents are very religiously and politically conservative and pro-life).
  • And so, you know, as I see all this, and I’m not a real political person, but I really believe that those of us who believe in religion, and again, I’m not trying to alienate anybody because this is not a religious radio station so just bear with me just for another moment. Those of us who really want to see things change in this world, we got separate our faith from our politics. You can still care about both, man, but the second you merge them together, you are more worried about losing an election or losing a judge or losing anything, that’s when you became tone-deaf to anyone who isn’t like you. And that’s how we can’t get out of this, man. And I’m not asking you to change the world, I’m asking you to consider a different, a different uh, turn in the fork in the road, man, or we’re going to be stuck here. I feel that so much.
  • Honestly, it does come back to the human reaction on the blame game. Because affluent white guys or Christians, you know, they don’t want to feel like they are being blamed for society’s ills like, “I had nothing to do with slavery,” “I had nothing to do with George Floyd,” “I had nothing to do with Botham Jean” or the lady in Fort Worth, “I had nothing to do with any of this stuff, why are you guys acting like it’s my fault?” Well, it’s not your fault, but if you are part of this society and you dont’ want to do this every three months, could we figure out a way to have empathy for those who aren’t affluent and white. Could we leave our little shell, even if it’s just between our ears and say, “Man, I could probably pull on the rope a little better to help people that aren’t me.
  • I’m gonna step on a grenade here because my parents are going to disown me on this one. I just think if your willing to sell the world for one political issue, I think you have to have a tipping point, personally, and I get, you know, abortion, because I was raised in a house where that was the only thing that mattered to them and they are freaking that I don’t support the president who claimed for the last five years that he cared about abortion. I’m not buying it, by the way.
  • I do know that most of my brethren from the church, because I’ve argued with many of them about this in the last couple of years, I just think you have to have, like if you want to say, “Look, I will vote for the candidate that agrees with me on abortion,” then my counter to you is, okay, how many other thing are you willing to give up before you would move from that position? And if the answer is literally everything, then we are having a different conversation. Because I think there is way more nuisance to this world than that one political issue. Now that’s a very, very, very important one but so to me is showing no empathy for the little Guatamlean, Honduran, Mexican kids at the border. I think that was shameful because they are God’s children, and as a disciple of Jesus, it’s my job to care about them too. And it’s my job to care about people losing their life because they used a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill.
  • I do feel compelled to speak my peace about my particular place in life. Even over the weekend, and we can get into this later, and it has nothing to do with faith, but I honestly was trying to make sure that we didn’t fall under the exact same path of “oh, huh, black community, yeah, hey, really mad about something, had to trash our city again, great.” I’m starting to hear that from relatives, from fellow believers, and I’m just like, dude, don’t fall into the same traps, man. Otherwise, we never heal, we never get better, we never improve it for any of us. Hopefully, some people heard that and wasn’t completely offended by it. And maybe it made you think, and like I said, I don’t have all the answers. My brother is a preacher, there are a lot of good preachers out there that hopefully have better answers than I do. I’m just absolutely sick and tired of a world where we have confused faith and politics to a point where, gosh, I think politics might be more important to a lot of people. And let me tell ya, things of this world that don’t last, yeah, politics. Your election, when you were 30 and you’re on your death bed, you aren’t going to care, but maybe you will care about changing someone’s life.

This entry was posted in Personal. Bookmark the permalink.

2 Responses to Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, June 3, 2020

  1. Bizarro Big Tex says:

    Keith, thanks for the thoughts on Bob Sturm’s show. Brother Sturm helped give form and substance to several of my evolving beliefs on this interplay of religion and politics in his lengthy statement the other day also. Government should not flow or be controlled from the pulpit. The pulpit should guide us to be better men and women based on the teachings of our Faith. In turn, we can have better governments because people have the betterment of their fellow citizen at heart, as a man from Galilee taught us many centuries ago. But, unfortunately, charlatans have distracted the Faithful with false issues and empty promises to increase their power at the ballot box and win elections. And some evangelicals have been complicit by turning a blind eye to this abominable behavior. To me, this is a despicable desecration of our Faith. Corruption of doing the Lord’s Work purely to accomplish a political goal. My heart breaks for my Faith and my America. Rant done.

  2. Ricardo Perry says:

    Although i am of a different church (Roman Catholic), i have similar views as Sturm on what is going on with my fellow Catholics. When i was much younger, folks in my church were more sympathetic and kind and inclusive, but somewhere along the line the focus shifted to abortion above all other issues. Now, shockingly, i see “Q” – 2nd amendment – build the wall – trump 2020 stickers in the parking lot, and feel a loss of faith and trust in my fellow parishioners.

    I’m not saying they cant be republicans, but vote for a genuinely good man. We all know DJT is not a good man.

    God save us all.

Comments are closed.