| let me be frank |

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frank turk and i had an exchange over heaven, hell, election, predestination, and whether or not one should have kids if one held literally to any of these. the bulk of our exchange is here. frank’s last word (here, anyway…) is here; this is my final response.

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i have owed frank turk a reply for a couple of weeks. we began an interchange a few weeks back – i initiated it, asking, ‘if you believe in jacob have i loved, esau have i hated, how could you ever have children? anyway, the ball has been in my court for a couple of weeks. few excuses, really – philadelphia and washington trips for work, the general indifference to really getting on the laptop and debating, a general (not so grand) funk around all going on with life – but all of them combined don’t equal 24×7 hours for the weeks i’ve been silent.

perhaps the biggest reason for another ping to his pong is … what’s the use?

and it’s not so much a disheartened ‘what’s the use?’ as it is a growing understanding of the limits to things i can control.

for example, i got into a spat which i wrote about a few posts back (read it here) over racism – being from georgia, i’ve seen first hand blatant racism for years, some of it coming from people from whom i wouldn’t have expected it. even this summer at trc – i honestly could not believe how so many wealthy white southerners even in the twenty-first century could have such deep prejudice against blacks and latinos. it blew me away.

of course, all racism isn’t blatant. you see, blatant racism is the easiest to ignore. it’s the more subtle undercurrents that do the most damage.

and subtle racism is hard to prove – and that, perhaps, was the difficult thing about being in the fray over at the blogsite where i was a black sheep (pun intended) among wolves. i don’t think it needs to be said that nobody wrote, ‘you can’t trust blacks like obama in power because they’ll take all the money from the whites.’ nobody says that. but the racism there, if you’ve grown up in it like i have, was quite palpable. as it is at most sites where blog owners viciously attack our president and the plans he has to lift up those left behind in 21st century America.

an example: last week, fox news broke into it’s scheduled programming to show our president giving a speech. not all that big a deal, i suppose, but it raises this question: do they break in and show every speech president obama gives? i’m sure this will surprise you, but i don’t watch fox news – if i want to laugh at sheer silliness, i’ll catch the three stooges or gilligan’s island… – so i don’t know whether or not they show each and every speech our president gives.

but here’s my point: the speech was given at an awards ceremony given by the…

congressional…

black…

caucus.

yup. the cbc.

now, you may think i’m making a point that isn’t there. but, to me, the whole point of televising the speech was to show a black president ‘catering’ to a bunch of black folks speaking occasionally in black lingo reciting history of black repression and talking about issues important to black people.

it was to show that president obama catered to ‘them’. that he was/is one of ‘them’.

and we can’t have that, can we?

the intent, to me, was quite clear.

can i prove it? no.

can others deny that it had anything to do with race? yes.

can others and still others say that all of their minute-by-minute disrespect to – and name calling of – the president has nothing to do with race, but only in keeping america from being destroyed? sure.

(an aside: at least we/they have the last eight years, when their party was in charge, culminating in the worldwide calamity of 2007-2008, to know what ‘destroying america’ might look like…)

but if it isn’t the obvious ‘a black shouldn’t be president,’ isn’t it most certainly ‘a black president is going to cater to ‘them’ and give ‘them’ everything ‘they’ want and do it with ‘our’ money’?

but back to me and frank. (remember? this post was about our exchange… trust me – i’m getting there…) see, i cannot change the minds of the right wing who read each others’ blogs and who have become convinced that they are sole possessors of the truth, that all the media is out to get them, that the devil – or at least a socialist – is under every rock.

and i cannot change frank’s mind.

and, lest there be any confusion, my diatribe about racism is NOT pointed at frank. in fact, in our exchange i have seen a side of frank that, in all honesty, i had not seen in my too-frequent decisions to step in as the wolf among sheep over at the gospel coalition.

the point i was making above was that i cannot control what everybody thinks or believes.

see, i’m not sean hannity. millions of mindless minions do not read this blog and buy everything i write.

the question i raised, ”why would you have kids if you believed ‘jacob have I loved, esau have I hated’?”, could form the basis of a narrow, focused argument, or a more wide-ranging view of God, heaven, hell, the role God plays, etc. etc.

in a nutshell, my belief is based on the old saw i play here too often: there cannot be an eternal, burning hell.

my question, basically, was that the possibility (likelihood?) of having a child end up there should be enough to keep any loving father-to-be or mother-to-be from ever entertaining the thought of having kids.

extreme position? perhaps. might read that way, but it falls out logicially.

if…
a) everyone is lost when born; and,
b) everyone remains lost unless God works something in them to save them; and,
c) God doesn’t have to work something in anybody; and,
d) God, in fact, DOESN’T work something in everybody; and,
e) ‘faith comes by HEARING’; and,
f) many, many haven’t heard; and,
g) many, many have died without hearing and are lost; and,
h) dying lost means being burned forever and ever with no chance of ever escaping; and,
i) by no stretch of the imagination, the possibility is high that my kid might also die lost…

…then… well, draw your own conclusion.

of course, given (a)-(i), you can come to some different conclusions:

1- everyone is lost, but God saved everyone at the cross.

2- death isn’t the end of God’s offer of grace to someone.

3- hell is a (sick) fairy tale, only preached by people desiring control over others.

4- we were never lost to begin with, and Jesus’ death and resurrection had nothing to do with any blood-sacrifice-payment-for-sin atonement, but only to show that we had always been ‘at_one’ with God.

and come to some different conclusions i did.

frank, i guess we’re left to disagree. at least you proved to me you have a heart much bigger than i thought.

speaking of ‘thought’, the thought came to me earlier in the week that, even if i think that most of the fear preached in Christian churches is sick blasphemy, the fact that the church continues to exist and promote a solid moral code and a loving (well, mostly loving – except that he likes toasting people…) God is a good thing.

and it’s a great thing that, in some churches, ‘God loves you’ is still preached – with no exceptions. there, most assuredly, the presence of the church is an extremely good thing.

as noted above, our original exchange is here. frank gets/got the last word here.

~ by mikerucker on October 3, 2009.