Stop

Stop.

Please, stop.

Please, stop beating your chest like a war drum in the face of anyone with whom you disagree. Stop yelling and arguing and condemning. Stop with the farcical history lessons and the condescending sneers and the brow beating and the bible thumping. Please, stop.

Please, stop playing the martyr. It is entitlement, not blood, that you are oozing. Stop posturing and manipulating. Please, stop.

Don't you understand how insane this is? 

The One you claim to follow, the One whose "champion" you aim to be, He gave up everything. He gave up status and privilege and honor and dignity and took up humility and scorn and shame and disgust. He gave up supremacy for servility. He gave up his rights and his home in order to love -- to serve -- those who despised Him.


He was falsely accused

                                                          and beaten

                                                                                    and crucified

 
...and the only thing that poured out of him, aside from his own blood, was a plea for mercy - not for himself -- but for those who had accused and beaten and crucified him.

He stood up for the harlot. That woman who had been dragged into town, her infidelities exposed, her clothes torn from her to heighten her shame -- when all the world would have gathered around to gawk and heap their own scorn upon her -- he stooped beside her and spoke tenderly. 

Don't you see how your Lord treats those we might all be tempted to label as outcasts or unclean or unfit?

When they tempted him with politics, tried to stir him to rebellion, reminded him that Jewish coin was being paid to maintain the empire of a man who claimed to be god -- if there was ever a reason for fire and vengeance and crusade surely this was it, if there was ever a man-who-actually-was-god who had a right to call for that crusade it was him -- he wanted no part of it. He ceded even to Caesar the preposterous claim of ownership over materials he himself had breathed into existence.

Don't you see how outrageous it is for us to act like we own anything?

They quoted scripture at Him, too. They shook their scrolls and spat those holy words through clenched teeth. "Don't you know what is written?!" they screamed -- to the One who was himself the very Word they now presumed to wield against him. Calmly -- Calmly! In the face of the vilest insurrection creation has ever known he still was calm -- he reminded them his words were for us, they were to guide us and to uplift us and to free us.

Don't you see how absurd it is that we use them to batter and berate and imprison?
 
How dare we?

How dare we, who supposedly love and honor and follow Him, act in ways that are so thoroughly contrary to the example that he set? How dare we demand our rights and then claim to follow One who gave up all rights? How dare we presume to subdue an empire and then claim to represent the One who swore His kingdom was not of this world?

You want to be a hero? You want to be a crusader? You want to stand on the steps of the court and shout about how right you are and how wrong they are?

You'll have to find a companion other than Jesus. 

You can't serve two masters. You can't serve both Jesus and your own self-righteousness, your own status or self-worth. You will, you must, eventually love one and hate the other.

So, I'm begging you, stop. Stop the vindictiveness; stop the arrogance; stop acting like you -- and you alone -- have the power to stop those sinners, by whatever means necessary, from doing whatever it is they're doing.

And please, please, stop thinking this country owes you the right to do so. 
 
Just... stop.