Explore Christian teachings and insights with Pastor Jim Butler. Join us for spiritual growth and community engagement.
Last week Defense Secretary signed a memorandum to all Defense Department civilian employees directing them to prepare five bullet points.
Civil Servant Vet in his mind while typing his email with his
prosthetic hand.
Thank You For Your Service,
Pastor Jim
Let all things be done decently and in order (I Corinthians 14:40).
Pastor Jim
Suggested Music is “One Tin Soldier.”
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God (Matthew 5:9).
Pastor Jim
“Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles, considering a different “British Invasion.”
“RELEASE THE FLYING MONKEYS!!! … I hereby pardon them from all they are about to do.”
Not in Kansas Anymore,
Pastor Jim
Q: What is the difference between Donald Trump and a school bully?
A: That’s easy! The school bully has class.
For women and those who have faced and bullies and abuse …
Pastor Jim
“Say it!! America is DOGEland!”
And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you’re going to fall
Tell ’em a hookah-smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
Call Alice
When she was just small-“White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane.
“Meet ‘Hannibal!,’ Your New Gatekeeper“
Girl, you really got me goin’
You got me so I don’t know what I’m doin’
Yeah, you really got me now
You got me so I can’t sleep at night-The Kinks
“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
John 8:32
As long as quantity governs, anything goes.
-W. Edwards Deming
W. Edwards Deming taught the Japanese about quality. Hear his words and apply them afresh today’s United States. How have we emphasized quantity without quality? How do our leaders attempt to lead by “announcements,” “threats,” and “slogans” versus providing transformational change that values the worker?
A Parable: DOGE makes shocking accusation that of all Federal workers, 50 percent performs below average. Tomorrow DOGE accuses that the other 50 percent performs below average. Someone forgot to tell DOGE that even in the highest quality aerospace and medical groups, at any measured time, 50 percent will measure “below average.”
Years ago, in a restaurant booth adjacent to mine not far from the church I pastored, I overheard an engineer lamenting to another, “I don’t know what to do. I know I am technically right … but I am people wrong.” How can we be technically right but people wrong? What is the ultimate cost of someone who considers himself “right” but is “people wrong”? How do attempts to lead by slogan or announcement fail being people right?
Truth,
Pastor Jim
“Calling out Kindness!”
Appropriate music for this would be “House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals.
“Compassion is Criminal!”
“Trust me! It’s in My Bible!”
“Don’t You Want to Spend Eternity with ME!?”
Ultra Christian nationalists partnered with corrupt politicians in an attempt to create a utopia, where everything black-and-white and where greed, wealth, and corruption are displayed as victor’s spoils of the new Christian Patriotacy.
The above podcast was one minor voice who made observations regarding the beliefs about much bigger players of a Christian jihad to overthrow the U.S. Government in the name of God (and wealthy oligarchs). I have made my own in-person observations.
Roger Williams founded the colony at Rhode Island and the oldest Baptist church in the United States. He was an ardent supporter of separation of church and state. I paraphrase his words: “If earthly bodies of government are dead to things of the Spirit, and the Christian is alive to the Spirit, what happens if a Christians joins himself to the corpus of Government? Nothing happens to Government, as it is already dead; however, the Christian changes and begins to stink.” The original quote from Williams – I answer, secondly, Dead men cannot be infected. The civil state, the world, being in a natural state, dead in sin, whatever be the state-religion unto which persons are forced, it is impossible it should be infected. Indeed the living, the believing, the church and spiritual state, that and that only is capable of infection; for whose help we shall presently see what preservatives and remedies the Lord Jesus hath appointed (See The Bloudy Tenant by Roger Williams at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/65739/65739-h/65739-h.htm#Page_96), page 97.
Williams taught the importance of keeping the church “at arm’s distance” from Government and influence as “salt of the earth.” Notwithstanding, salt makes an awful main course. Roger Williams and other Christian groups were persecuted by the Church of England, the church-of-state under King Charles I.
For example if a politician is voting against the bill as a matter of personal reflection of what is best for the country, does the other “Politician for God” consider this vote as a vote for or against God? If so, do Evangelicals now consider themselves the new “church-of-state”? If so, to disagree with the party’s vote or its candidate would brand someone not only political “nay” vote but also a heretic. There is a difference between, “Let us pray for our leaders as we seek to do the work of government” and “Let us pray for my bill and the “nay” voters be damned.”
The above image shows the theological basis for separation of church and state, namely the First and Second Commandment: I. You shall have no other gods before Me. And II. You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them nor [b]serve them
3 “You shall have no other gods before Me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them nor [b]serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting[c] the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments (Exodus 20).
Because government requires compromises, a Christian group is tempted to endorse a candidate as “more favorable” their views, though his other views stand against anything remotely Christian. The golden calf of politics presents two horns of power and money, more addictive than fentanyl. The theological gymnastics in the U.S. today that tries to turn empathy into a sin is simply redaction of the Bible for Christian nationalists to hold onto power and money in their quest to establish a far right church-of-state.
You can especially see this demonstrated when Christian led government leaders attempt to justify their cuts to programs that would benefit the poor, the elderly, and the immigrant in the name of protecting the offering plates of the rich. In this Unholy Version of the Politician’s Bible, it reads, “Cursed are the poor and those with empathy, for theirs will be ours.”
No Other Gods,
Pastor Jim
See Also
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/65739/65739-h/65739-h.htm#Page_96
Aretha Franklin’s 1967 song Respect captured both the rights of women and civil rights.
Last week my wife and I visited both Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama. We saw where the local Birmingham Fire Department turned fire hoses, and the local police released their German Shepherds and batons on black children. The person in the image is the “Spirit of Rosa Parks” who faces the same forces today ordering her to “Step to the back of the bus or step off!”
As I stood in the same pulpit where Rev. Martin Luther King addressed 5,000 to launch the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It was this pulpit that introduced the world to Rev. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. This was the start of the “Freedom Riders,” who road buses across the U.S. to express their right to peaceful enjoyment of the United States.
At the 16th Street Baptist Church, we gathered around the black stone memorial where a Ku Klux Klan member, who was also a city employee, remotely detonated dynamite under the church steps and killed four little black girls. This was the same church where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream!” speech before he gave it at the Lincoln Memorial that resonates through our years.
This Little Light of Mine,
Pastor Jim
Abuelo arrived in Miami, Florida as a 10 year-old political refugee from Havana, Cuba, fleeing with his family the terror of Castro. From age 10 to 20, Abuelo picked citrus 10 hours a day, loading crates that weighed more than he. Unable to attend school, Abuelo married his bride, also a refugee, and spent the rest of his life pushing a lawn mower for the wealthy American families in Miami. He specialized in crafting Disney animals out of hedge bushes, which the children loved as they were bused to their private schools. He and his wife made one mistake of returning to Havana for the death of his mother. Last week ICE raided a Super Mercado in Miami. Seeing the ICE squadron circling the market, Abuelo asked his grandson to lead grandmother out the backdoor, as she legally blind due to cataracts. Abuelo laid himself and his walker across the doorway of the market to buy time for his bride. As ICE took his retinal photo and ran his data in the immigration database, they saw him flagged as refugee status “invalid” due to his return to Havana for the funeral. As Abuelo shuffled, shackled hands to feet, onto the C5 Galaxy military transport to Guantanamo Bay, he is comforted that by his “final sacrifice” so his bride of many years would die a free woman in the the country that he loved. Dios te Bendiga! (Abuelo is Spanish for “grandfather.”)
De Colores,*
Pastor Jim
De Colores (“Of Colors”) – a traditional folk-song sung throughout the Spanish speaking world that became the anthem of the United Farm Worker’s Union in the 1960’s, led by Cesar Chavez. De Colores is also sung in the Christian faith movements of The Cursillo Movement and The Walk to Emmaus.
Coretta Scott King, widow of Rev. Martin Luther King, with Cesar Chavez. Notice also in the video several clips showing Cesar Chavez being helped up in his weakness. He fasted multiple times as part of his commitment to nonviolent protest of use of pesticides and conditions for U.S. farm workers. See also https://ufw.org/today-history-cesar-chavez-began-25-day-water-fast-delano-calif-feb-11-1968/
The 1948 Slogan of the De Beers company changed the industry with their “A Diamond is Forever” campaign, making a diamond a symbol of lasting commitment and love. Before this time, other precious stones were used.
In today’s blog we discuss, like the diamond, love is an enduring commitment as I Corinthians 13:8 tells us, “Love never fails.”
By contrast, “blood diamonds,” also known as “conflict diamonds,” are a betrayal of trust in that they are mined and sold by countries to fund self-serving, unethical, and illegal activities. Presently in the U.S. its “diamonds” of Governing agencies, boards, and Military are being mined for “blood diamonds” in a conflict that betrays the enduring trust and nature of these entities which serve the U.S. and the world. In its place this blood diamond is not worn on the hand of the of a United States that reflects “One nation under God,” rather as a synthetic conflict stone worn in a hog’s snout sacrificed on the altar of fascism.
Our standing as a nation known for its enduring commitments, ethics, and devotion to its allies will be determined which ring we choose to wear on our hand of State. The trinket proposal to offer a $5,000 dividend to the American people that is mined from the mass firing of government employees is a gem paid for with the blood diamonds of the financial losses of those Americans who were fired, many of whom are veterans who pursued a career in Civil Service.
Do you walk in the valley of kings?
Do you walk in the shadow of men
Who sold their lives to a dream?
Do you ponder the manner of things
In the dark?
The dark, the dark, the dark-Barns Courtney
“JAN 6 Grade Clarity!”
“He Went to Elon’s!”
“The Pride of Trump”
“Panning for Prejudice”
“My Lord, My God”
“A Gusher of Bigotry”
”The Facets of the Least”
34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me -(Matthew 25:31-40).
Blood Tears,
Pastor Jim