O how it hurts me that Christianity is used for a tool of oppression. In the grand pantheon of ways to be Christian, I figure you and God are working it out.
Unless you are using the Gospel to preach hate or oppress someone, because that right there people, is heresy. Heresy is using the Gospel for the opposite of its purpose.
Hate instead of love and Oppression instead of freedom are pretty much it.
But it hurts, because I benefit from oppression. I’m white and I have to deal with my whiteness. I’m cis-hetereo and I have to deal everyday with the fact that my so-called normalcy gives me an advantage.
And Jesus isn’t about the normal people. The more we normalize Christianity, the more we make it about power. In a slatespeak discussion a couple of weeks ago, my colleagues mused that Imperialism is when we are mistakenly convinced that God only talks to those in power.
Heresy, again I cry heresy.
I cry heresy to the core of my soul, but Christianity has been entrenched and tied to Power forever. Only Christ can save it. Only Christ can save us.
Because, we are the nation “trumpeting our righteousness”, even as we sin. We only fast “to quarrel and fight”
So this is the FAST that I choose
to loose the bonds of injustice–against the Trans, Muslim, Autistic, Lesbian & Gay, Deaf, Jewish, Sikh, Genderqueer, Blind, People of Color, Mentally Ill, Asexual, the poor and the children.
To undo the thongs of the yoke of the overworked, the under appreciated, the homeless, the victims of violence, the helpless, the depressed, the lonesome
To Let the oppressed go free and to break every yoke.
The way to do this is to share my bread with the hungry, to bring the homeless poor into my own house and cover the naked.
water, food, shelter, medical care, clothing, treating each other as human beings
water, food, shelter, medical care, clothing, treating each other as human beings
water, food, shelter, medical care, clothing, treating each other as human beings
the most basic and essential of prayers for all peoples
To somehow empower without enabling, to be gracious in an unjust world and to magnify those voices that society tries to erase, ignore or unnamed.
For then the light shall break forth like the daw, and healing shall spring up quickly.
Heal us, break us our from our own heresies, entrench us instead in love.
http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Isaiah+58
katyandtheword 