About Jesus

Yesterday Jesus burned.

Lightning struck a 6 story statue of "Touchdown Jesus" and it burst into flame.

Whether this statue was considered a graven image depends on how literal you take the Bible. Rick and Bubba, for instance, might think God smote the image of Jesus cause we just ain't supposed to do that. This video is loud, but short.





UPDATE: here's the song that clip comes from:

At any rate, while on the subject of Jesus, my blogger-friend Michael Bayly has brought up that Jesus really was a sissy. So many of us get called sissies, I guess if Jesus was one, it's OK for us, too.

Michael's post was actually based on a lecture by Dr. David Rankin from the 1980's he heard on tape, which he transcribed and took excerpts from. Now I'm doing the same to Michael's post, but it would be worth your time to read it yourself. Jesus was a sissy.

Jesus was able to feel and express a wide range of tender emotions. He wept
without shame, even raved and screamed and moaned and won no battles. He was an intuitive thinker, often the victim of wild imaginings and flights of fantasy.
He responded to beauty, embracing the birds of the air and the lilies of the
field. He nurtured little children, relating to them in the manner of a mother.
He freely touched other men and kissed them.

Rankin continues,

Does Jesus really fit the American ideal of manhood?” Rankin asks. Can we
imagine Jesus as a United States Marine? As a linebacker for the Detroit Lions?
As the Marlboro Man? “By almost every standard in our culture,” concludes
Rankin, “Jesus was a real live honest-to-goodness sissy.

Michael, and Rankin, point out that Sunday School teachers and some preachers portray Jesus as a warrior. Rankin says they were right in saying we should be more like Jesus, but wrong in their reasoning.

A man who walked around the countryside without position, without
possessions, searching for the meaning of life. A man who lingered lazily in the
fields in order to study the flight of a bird and the petals of a flower. A man
who embraced the lowly and the outcast and the leper and the stranger while
protesting their condition. A man was so physically frail that he could not even
carry a wooden cross to the top of a hill. A man who suffered a humiliating
defeat while blessing the enemies who had arranged his death. A sissy. One of
the greatest models in religious history was an honest-to-God, real live,
long-haired, soft-bodied sissy.

So why am I sharing this?

There is a link between Rankin's words and today's society. Michael quotes from Matthew Fox's book, "The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine." (Emphasis mine)

Homosexuals offer humanity certain vital gifts that society would be
foolish to refuse. [One of these is] a flexible perspective on gender [which]
provides a kind of bridge between men and women. Heterosexuals in particular can become stuck in their society-created gender roles, and homosexuals remind everyone that sexuality exists in the realm of metaphor and not literalism.

When one’s sexual role is not determined by one’s body parts, life, imagination, and passion come alive. David Deida observes that “the gay and lesbian community is acutely aware that the sexual polarity is independent of gender. But you still need two poles for a passionate play of sexuality to persist in a relationship: masculine and feminine, top and bottom, butch and femme – whatever you want to call these reciprocal poles of sexual play.”

Gays and lesbians have much to teach the straight world about sexuality and about restoring passion to relationships. . . . [Also] there is a long history in many cultures of homosexuals as spiritual leaders. Many years ago, a Native American woman took me aside and said to me that it is well known among Native Americans that gay persons have always been the spiritual directors to their great chiefs.

Homosexuals, it seems, don’t just bridge male and female worlds, but human and
spiritual worlds. A homophobic society deprives itself of a deeper spirituality.
This same woman (who was also a Catholic sister) said: “When I give retreats to
gay people, it is always a deeper experience than just giving a retreat to a
mixed and mostly heterosexual crowd.”

No one knows about the sexual orientation of Jesus. But we do know many of his traits, and many homosexual men share them.

Jesus: God-like. Son of God. Or God. It doesn't matter. It was his mild, peace-loving, nature-admiring, male-bonding demeanor that made him like God. God is love, after all.

And it is what connected him to the Father.

Fox says,"Homosexuals, it seems, don't just bridge male and female worlds, but human and spiritual worlds. A homophobic society deprives itself of a deeper spirituality."

Native Americans recognized it. Our culture has become so far removed from the nature and teachings of Jesus, that we can't see that. But we are learning. We are progressing. We will get there.