IT’S AN OMNIPOTENTBLOG CHRISTMAS!

Before there was the tour de force/world power that is Omnipotentblog, there was an obnoxious teenager that pondered questions like, “Why pray to Jesus? Isn’t he the #2? Isn’t he, like, God Jr.?” Then I matured (sort of) and kind of figured it out. But then I came across this:

What is your level of spiritual understanding?

A. What’s the Trinity?

B. I know a little bit about the Trinity.

C. I think I understand the Trinity.

D. I don’t understand the Trinity at all.

A friend cautioned once that if you think about the incarnation too much, you become Catholic. I’m not worried. But long ago I came to believe Catholics have it right in one respect: The crucifix is way better than the Protestants’ barren cross. Aesthetically, it’s macabre and artistic. That’s enough. But I also never understood the big deal about the resurrection. Jesus was God. God cannot die. It wasn’t a miracle; it was a foregone conclusion. But the thought that God, or a piece of God or God’s co-equal partner or….something, would leave Heaven where the temperature is always perfect and where, presumably, his favorite snacks were always on hand to become a dirty human, is unimaginable.

 

We’re comfortable thinking about Christ’s divinity, but what about his humanity? In an era with no showers and a dearth of hygiene products, the Lord of heaven and earth would come out of a woman’s body covered in the usual stuff and land in Joseph’s unwashed hands in a barn filled with the sounds and smells of animals pooping. The God of creation became a helpless baby who needed to suckle at his mother’s breast. God….GOD…couldn’t walk. He needed his bum wiped. Did he potty train early? Did he have childhood friends? And when they played kickball, did they complain of his being a stickler for the rules? Challenging authority and testing limits are natural parts of child development. Did Jesus go through the Terrible Two’s? Did Jesus ever need discipline at all? He was without sin. But Isaiah 7 says there will be a time when the boy messiah does not yet know “…to reject the wrong and choose the right.” This suggests an age of moral accountability. Jews now mark it with a Barmitzvah.

There is often an image of Jesus that runs through Christians’ minds, something like this:

 

 
Or maybe this:

 

But what about these?

 

 

"Buddy Christ"

 

The first is from a miniseries that showed Jesus running and laughing and splashing water on Peter. The second is sacrilege, of course, but was Jesus a good buddy? Probably. Did Jesus have a sense of humor? Why not? There’s been a lot of funny Jews. Why wouldn’t the best Jew ever be funny? If so, what kind of jokes would Jesus tell? Nothing racist or dirty, of course. Knock-knock jokes? But what about his looks? Was he good looking? Messianic prophecy Isaiah 53:2 says, “…He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.”

Some scholars say he probably looked like this. (Notice the confused look they gave him.)

 

Jesus healed others. What about Himself? Did he ever catch a cold? Did he have bad breath? Cavities? Did he ever hit his thumb with a hammer or get calluses? We know he rested and fled the crowds so he wasn’t super human. Did he ever get food poisoning or have bad gas and then when Andrew said, “Jesus! Was that you?” Jesus said, “He who smelleth it first…” Or maybe He laughed and blamed it on Judas.

The moment of Jesus’ baptism when the Holy Spirit descends on him like a dove is interesting. Why then? Did he not have the Spirit before? Was that the moment of his spiritual maturation, the fullness of his divinity? Was it just symbolic? If so, why have Jesus go through a maturation process at all?

Martin Scorsese underscored Jesus’ humanity in “The Last Temptation of Christ”. The controversy was that Jesus, suffering on the cross, wondered what it would be like to reject His role as suffering savior and live as a man, marrying a woman and having relations with her. Christians went berserk. Jesus’ fantasy sex scene, mild as it was, was certainly shocking. But the idea itself is only blasphemous if all sexual thought is lust. Is it? Isn’t the sex drive a natural, God-given desire that, like all desires, can be perverted? Now, the line where Jesus mentions John’s tongue being in his mouth, that was ridiculous. But we know Jesus was so terrified of crucifixion, he sweat blood. Is it so inconceivable he didn’t have thoughts of rejecting it all and living a normal life? “Take this cup…Yet, not my will, but Yours be done.”

Christmas should make us ponder the whole glorious and mysterious nature of God. In C.S. Lewis’ “Miracles”, (which, admittedly, Omnipotentblog was too dumb to fully digest) he brings up some interesting questions. After the resurrection, what was Jesus’ actual “substance”? That he could eat fish yet disappear and walk through walls suggests a state other than purely physical or spiritual. Was the Transfiguration a preview of this state, of the new bodies we will have in heaven? Also, if God exists outside of time, which itself is a creation of God, what was Jesus’ reason for existence any time other than the incarnation? What do the Son and the Father “do” if it is the Holy Spirit that interacts with humans now?

Also, as we celebrate the birth of Immanuel-God with us, maybe we should consider not just his death as a sacrifice, but really his whole life. To be human is to be in pain. When life seems nothing but drudgery or intolerable grief and loneliness, Jesus went through worse. Yes, others were crucified. But none experienced the world’s sin on their shoulders and, after having had perfect communion with the Father, was then abandoned. “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” he shouted.

Ben Franklin, in his old age, once said he didn’t bother trying to figure out whether Jesus was divine anymore. He would see God very soon and he was excited to find out. But what was Jesus like when he was 16? And why the incarnation at all? And the whole Triune nature of God? What’s up with that? Presumably, Omnipotentblog has a ways to go. But I can’t wait to ask Him.

TURD FERGUSON

In a classic Saturday Night Live skit, Burt Reynolds, played by Norm MacDonald, insists Alex Trebek call him “Turd Ferguson” during a game of Jeopardy, because "it’s funny". Ferguson, Missouri? Not so much.

The riots were troubling but as long as there are people there will be riots. As Morgan Freeman in “The Dark Knight” says, “Some people just wanna see things burn”. Omnipotentblog’s four year-old son destroys any tower of blocks above 12 inches. His glee is a little disturbing but this destructive instinct is present in most boys. Watch any movie guy movie and count the explosions. One witness to the riots stated he saw a bunch of teenage boys running around having the time of their lives.

 What almost brought Omnipotentblog to tears wasn’t the small businesses in flames; It was a single interview. After the grand jury’s announcement of no indictment for the officer that killed Michael Brown, Fox’s Megan Kelly spoke to black radio personality Richard Fowler. St. Louis prosecutor, Robert McCulloch, had just finished laying out the evidence for 45 minutes. The physical evidence? Brown wasn’t shot in the back or while his hands were up. Brown had touched the officer’s gun, which had been fired in the car. A trail of blood led away from the officer, then back towards him. The witnesses? Most who alleged the officer murdered Brown were contradicted by the physical evidence or their own statements. Some admitted they hadn’t even seen what happened. Three black witnesses corroborated the officer’s story completely. What happened? Brown punched the officer, tried to grab his gun, ran away, then turned around and charged the officer, who shot and killed him. In a highly unusual and transparent move, all the evidence and testimony were released to the public. Omnipotentblog listened to the entire 45 minutes. It was solid, open/shut. But an outraged Fowler completely ignored the entire body of evidence and ranted about the murderous injustice of it all. Evidence be damned.

That the sheer weight of evidence can by so easily dismissed to favor a chosen narrative is utterly depressing. The truth just doesn’t matter. After the verdict came the usual clown parade, of course: Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Their criticisms were petty and procedural. That was predictable but when the head of the Congressional Black Caucus said on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives that this decision means cops can kill black people with “impunity”, it is a sad day for the country. 

Did activists apologize about George Zimmerman after they saw the pictures of his broken nose and busted head? No. Did they apologize to the Duke Lacrosse team after it was proven they were innocent of raping a black girl? No. Have they ever apologized for their outrage over any of the fake racism scandals, about two hundred of which are listed here? No. What they mean by justice is very different than what most of us mean. Justice, for them, is for groups. Justice is reparative, makes up for past ills. It balances the equation, redistributes wealth. Usually, justice means a person gets what they deserve. The guilty get punished. The innocent don't. But notice the left rarely uses the term “justice” alone. It is always “social” justice, “economic” justice, “racial” justice, “environmental” justice. You can be certain that when “justice” is preceded by another word, it is not justice.

 

The world is not a just place. The proof is that a man like Al Sharpton occupies such an exalted position. This is the man who gained fame when Tawana Brawley accused white men of a brutal and disgusting rape. Brawley and Sharpton later lost a defamation suit because…she made it up. Sharpton also incited riots that ended in the burning of Jewish stores and the murder of Yankel Rosenbaum after a Jew accidentally ran over a black kid. Sharpton has made many, many racist comments over the years and now it’s come out that he’s a tax cheat. His organization owes 4.5 million in taxes. But he goes to the Whitehouse to advise the president. His heart must be in the right place.

A recent caller to the Michael Medved show ranted about the evils of America. What country is better? “The one that doesn’t exist yet”. And there it is. Liberals hate conservatives because we stand in the way of utopia, the Great Society where everyone will finally come together as one people. Conservatives, filled with fear about the future, are stuck in the past. It's the visionary, smart liberals who know how to create this brave new world (Obamacare anyone?). So, the riots from Ferguson and other unfortunate incidents are because of two things. 1. So many black people really believe in the total ubiquity of white racism. It’s an easy scapegoat. The alternative of owning the sicknesses in their community like anti-intellectualism and the epidemic of absent fathers is too painful. 2. The entire political strategy of the left rests on the underclass being in a constant state of agitation, believing the group on top hates them. Blacks aren't wrong about a racist America; They're just hopelessly behind the times. It's only been a generation since the Civil Rights act but times have changed. Racism has been chased, as Mark Davis states in “The Real Lessons Of Ferguson”, into the dark, attitudinal caves where it belongs. Despite this truth, African Americans are used and manipulated in the most condescending, patronizing ways by Democratic elites to maintain power. Paranoid, you say? Read Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”. It’s one of the most cynical things you will ever read. Hillary Clinton and Obama were both disciples.

Booker T. Washington said, “There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public…these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.” After it was evident Brawley lied, Sharpton brushed it off. His partner stated, "I don't care 'bout no facts. I'm not going to pursue it legally. I'm going to pursue it politically." Sharpton stated, “We beat this, we’ll be the biggest niggers in New York”. But Sharpton is more than just a huckster. He probably does care about black people and, like many good leftists, he’s a true believer. Obama’s former chief of staff said it well: “Never let a crisis go to waste”. You see, when there’s a revolution to be had, you can’t let the facts get in the way.

"SAMSON, THE PALESTINIANS ARE UPON YOU!" PART III

“We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”

Golda Meir

Critics provide endless examples of Israel’s racism and hatred. Indeed, probably most are true. The difference between Israel’s sins and those of the Palestinians is that the Jews justify them, excuse them, regret them, even repent of them. But they call them what they are: sins. The Palestinians call them virtues.

To judge a nation’s sins, you have to address the context because…everyone sins. It’s easy to look at the corruption and ugliness of a people and say they are bad. But bad compared to whom? Why is Israel judged by some super standard?

Are there coffee shop discussions in Israel with a “kill ‘em all” rhetoric? Surely. But how are Arabs really treated? 20.7% of Israeli citizens are Arab. There are more who refuse citizenship to avoid recognizing Israel. There are Arab political parties, some of whom openly call for Israel’s destruction. There have been several attempts to ban any party calling for Israel’s destruction but the bans are always voted down because Israel values free speech. There is an Arab on the Supreme Court and there have been many notable Arabs in the highest levels of society including the Cabinet, military (some generals), and Foreign Service. Arabs currently hold 12 of 120 seats in the Knesset.

In 2009, Israeli Arab Journalist Khaled Abu Toameh, declared to a Muslim audience, "Israel is a wonderful place to live and we are happy to be there. Israel is a free and open country. If I were given the choice, I would rather live in Israel as a second class citizen than as a first class citizen in Cairo, Gaza, Amman or Ramallah." 

Ishmael Khaldi is an Arab citizen of Israel and the nation's first high-ranking Muslim in the Israeli Foreign Service. He wrote, “I am a proud Israeli – along with many other non-Jewish Israelis such as Druze, Bahai, Bedouin, Christians and Muslims, who live in one of the most culturally diversified societies and the only true democracy in the Middle East. Like America, Israeli society is far from perfect, but let us deal honestly. By any yardstick you choose – educational opportunity, economic development, women and gay's rights, freedom of speech and assembly, legislative representation – Israel's minorities fare far better than any other country in the Middle East”.

Can you imagine this scene in any Muslim country?

Israelis make constant overtures of peace. One of Israel’s hospitals recently treated the daughter of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Gazans are frequently flown to Israel for emergency treatment. After Israeli civilians murdered 16 year old Mohammed Abu Khder in retaliation for Palestinians kidnapping and murdering three Jewish teens, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu actually called the Palestinian victim’s father personally to apologize and express outrage and solidarity. The mother of one of the Hamas suspects, however, was proud of her son for the murders. “My boys are all righteous, pious and pure. The goal of my children is the triumph of Islam.”

The common narrative is that Israel has no interest in peace. Yet, they evacuated Gaza, ripping hysterical and grieving families out of their homes. They’ve offered to do much the same in the West Bank. In 2000, Bill Clinton moderated and sponsored the Camp David Summit. Israeli Prime Minister and former IDF General Ehud Barak bucked public opinion, offering all but a sliver of the moon to Yasser Arafat. Palestinians would receive sovereignty over 86-91% of the West Bank, 100% of Gaza, most of East Jerusalem with custodianship of all Islamic Holy sites, and the dismantling of 63 settlements in the West Bank, the only ones remaining to be the ones with large populations. The main sticking point was the full resettlement of Palestinian refugees, the so-called “right of return”. Israel offered the repatriation of 100,000 and financial aid to a 30 billion dollar international fund to resettle refugees within the new Palestine and surrounding Arab nations.

Arafat’s counteroffer was the second intifada, a years-long episode of rock throwing and suicide bombing. Most observers view it as an epic mistake. Some thought the intemperate and foolish traipsing of the hawkish Ariel Sharon all over the Haram-Al Sharif/Temple Mount, the third holiest site in Islam and the holiest site in Judaism as the catalyst. But many Palestinian officials as well as Arafat’s wife admitted Arafat planned it all along. The widowed Suha Arafat said on Dubai television in December 2012, “'Immediately after the failure of Camp David (negotiations), I met him in Paris upon his return...Camp David had failed and he said to me, ‘You should remain in Paris.’ I asked him why, and he said, ‘Because I am going to start an intifada. They want me to betray the Palestinian cause. They want me to give up on our principles, and I will not do so.’” Today, there could be a member of the nations called Palestine but Arafat, who had grown incredibly wealthy by being an international victim, was not ready to take on the burden of running a country.

 The “Nakam”, meaning “vengeance”, were a group of Jews who, after WWII, travelled Europe silently dispatching those with Jewish blood on their hands. Then they hatched "Tochnit Aleph", an astounding plan to repay eye for eye and tooth for tooth, millions of guilty and innocent alike. They would poison water supplies all over Germany, forever putting the world on notice that to spill Jewish blood would invite pain. They enjoyed strangling former SS officers and Auschwitz guards but regarding this plan, one question nagged them: "Who set you as leaders among us?" So they sought the moral approval of the prominent Chaim Weizmann, the future first president of Israel, and the heads of Hagana, the future Israeli Defense Force. The plan was blessed. They would soon carry out what would certainly be the most consequential act of revenge in history. Except, as Abba Kovner boarded a ship, he was arrested. Betrayed. The Hagana intercepted the group’s members at water treatment plants all over Germany to stop the “dishonorable” plan. Less than a year after the bitter pill of the holocaust, the Jews chose forgiveness over vengeance, creation over destruction. Bring the temple down on their own heads? Unthinkable. The Jews were sick of dying and wanted to live. Someday, God willing, the Palestinians too will get sick of dying.

“SAMSON, THE PALESTINIANS ARE UPON YOU!” PART II

“You will kill ten of us. We will kill one of you. In the end, you will tire of it first.”

Ho Chi Minh

 

During the Korean War, Mao Tse Tung ordered many thousands of young men to storm entrenched American positions, assuring their certain death. He thought there were too many men in his country anyway so it was convenient. Iraqi machine gunners in the Iran/Iraq war were psychologically traumatized when Ayatollah Khomeini sent tens of thousands in “suicide brigades” to be mowed down in glorious martyrdom. Yet, while the Palestinians share a similar collectivist attitude about the meaninglessness of individuals, there seems more to it. Many are willing to die for the cause but this is nothing new as Kamikaze pilots and virtually all revolutionaries throughout history were willing to do the same. No, what is different here is that this willingness to die seems more of a death wish. Frequently repeated on Palestinian television is the phrase, “We love death more than you love life”. Maybe we should take their word for it. Maybe theirs really is a culture of death.

 

It’s an oft-repeated canard: “If Arabs laid down their weapons, there would be peace. If Israel laid down their weapons, there would be no Israel”. Is it true? Arab rhetoric, while admittedly hyperbolic and cartoonish, is frightening and often genocidal.

 

 

 The cartoon above depicts rats wearing Stars of David and skullcaps. Arab News, an English-language Saudi state owned daily widely read by expats in Saudi Arabia, is widely regarded as moderate. The imagery may be inspired by a well known scene from the Nazi film “Jew Suess,” in which Jews are depicted as vermin to be eradicated by mass extermination.

 

Is Muslim anti-Semitism inherent or merely a result of the Nakba or “Catastrophe”, referring to the creation of Israel? Maybe both. There were periods of oppression and anti-Semitism over the centuries but Jews, while forced to acknowledge Muslim superiority and pay infidel taxes known as jizya, enjoyed relative peace and security in the Middle East. However, consider common statements like this: On 11/23/37, Saudi Arabia’s King Ibn Saud told a British Colonel: “Our hatred for the Jews dates from God’s condemnation of them for their persecution and rejection of Isa (Jesus, whom they regard as a prophet) and their subsequent rejection of His chosen Prophet (Muhammed).” He added, “for a Muslim to kill a Jew, or for him to be killed by a Jew ensures him an immediate entry into Heaven and into the august presence of God Almighty.”  A well-known Hadith (saying attributed to Muhammad) states that, “The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews. The Jew will hide behind stones or trees. Then the stones or trees will call: ‘Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’” A July, 2011 poll indicated a staggering 73% of Palestinians believe this Hadith must be fulfilled. Muslims frequently refer to Jews as apes and pigs. This comes from multiple verses in the Koran. Cultural attitudes towards Jews have ebbed and flowed over the years but when the climate heats up, the Koran and Hadith provide theological cover and encouragement for hatred.

 

How do Jews and Christians fare in Arab countries now? Terribly. The number of Jews living in Muslim countries is miniscule, a whopping .01% in Iran. Egypt may have 300. Total. After Israel’s declaration of statehood, systematic violence and expulsions along with the obvious attraction of Zionism essentially emptied the Arab nations of Jews, contributing to a mass exodus of 800,000 to a million Jews in the few years after 1948. 23 Arab nations could not abide by a single Jewish one. It is also widely recognized that the rise of militant Islam has led to a massive exodus of Christians. As of 2012, there were about 12 million Christians left in the Middle East but the exodus has been so drastic, this number is expected to halve by 2020. Christians are becoming extinct in the West Bank and the new crisis in Iraq with ISIS has led to expulsion, robbery, and crucifixion even. ISIS also burned down the oldest Christian church in the middle east in Mosul.

 

Countless news articles decry the death of hundreds of Palestinian children and civilians in the current conflict. Yet Hamas is openly genocidal. While Israelis go to extreme lengths to avoid civilian deaths, dead women and children are Hamas’ intent. Just since 2000, this list shows thousands of rocket and mortar attacks targeted at cities and villages. The Hamas charter states, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it…It firmly rejects peace negotiations…[Peace] initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions…are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement…There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad”. Even in the more moderate West Bank, they glorify terrorists by naming streets and squares after the likes of Yahya Ayyash, a bomb maker responsible for hundreds of civilian deaths and schools after people such as Dalal Mughrabi, a woman who attacked a bus, killing 37, twelve of them children.

 

Yahya Ayyash St.

 

 

Martyrdom posters, a staple of Palestinian culture, are plastered everywhere in cities and villages.

 

 

 They love their children.

 

Whether or not their cause is just, what is clear is that they suffer. Gaza has a 50% unemployment rate. U.N. designated refugee camps, which developed from tented cities to rows of concrete blockhouses to urban ghettos indistinguishable from their surroundings, now hold almost 2 million refugees. Since the Israeli declaration of independence in 1948, the number of refugees has grown from 750,000 to about 5 million mostly through birth rate. But what does this suffering mean?

 

Charles Krauthammer recently stated that most Americans who side with Palestinians do so out of ignorance. Maybe. More likely is that there are a large number of people who instinctively, with much passion but without much thought, equate suffering with righteousness, poverty with nobility, inequality with oppression. It is the kind of thinking that can make one side with somebody who commits murder, rape, or robbery. Somehow they find a way to pity him because he probably was never pitied or loved. It’s a good instinct, in a way, to automatically care for the downtrodden. But when this kind of thing is devoid of context, when it is applied rigidly and firmly, it can be destructive. And stupid. Yes, the Palestinians suffer. Here’s a thought: Sometimes people get what they deserve.