Well, Maybe I Am an Anarchist

    Summer’s nearly gone and now we’re in those in-between days filled with those little black bugs that bite like fire and an endless stream of political mailers to be delivered. Changing leaves and falling rain. I came home from another day on the postal routes and sat on the porch to rest and to play with the little cat Leto who’s often waiting for me to return.

    The cat was clambering over my lap when Gunner pulled into the driveway in his noisy pickup truck. Leto bolted under the porch to hide.

    “That’s a new cat, isn’t it?” Gunner called out as he approached.

    “He’s relatively new,” I affirmed. The strays come and go as they please. We feed them and play with those that are friendly enough to approach. “I haven’t seen you in a while, Gunner. What’s it been? A month? A month and a half?”

    “Listen. I’m busy with other things, Carter. I’ve got a job and a family to raise. I can’t spend all my time correcting you and your pigheaded heresy.”

    “Porcinecephalous, eh?” I grinned.

    “Cut it out, Carter.” Gunner sat down on the porch next to me and continued. “You criticize Trump and his administration a lot for someone who calls himself a Christian.”

    “Yeah. I suppose I do. But I was critical of Biden, and Obama, and W. as well.”

    “Then it’s just as I thought,” Gunner laughed. “You won’t submit to any government. I remember that you told me once that you were kicked out of seminary. It’s that way with you. You are rebellious at heart. You refuse to submit to any legitimate authority.”

    I didn’t say anything in response to his challenge. I just made pss, pss, pss, noises for Leto under the porch.

    “Yeah,” Gunner smirked. “I knew it. You’re just another of those liberals who can’t respond when he’s confronted with the truth. You’ve got no viable way to respond. Just another…”

    I interrupted him just then. “No. I’m just trying to figure out which is applicable here. I don’t want to get down in the mud with you. I’ve had a long day and I was enjoying the cat. So the biblical instruction, ‘Do not answer a fool…’ seems to be the way to go.”

    “Typical,” Gunner snorted. “You should try reading that Bible you keep claiming to know. It actually says, ‘Answer a fool, lest he think himself wise.’”

    “Well,” I sighed. “If you insist.” I paused briefly, then said. “Do you think you’re the first to accuse me of that kind of thing? Do you think you’re the first to lay those charges at my feet? Be serious.”

    His smirk widened and he laughed again. “So you confess that you’re an anarchist.”

    “Well, maybe I am an anarchist. But it’s more of a Leo Tolstoy, Noam Chomsky, Peter Kropotkin kind of anarchy and not the Johnny Rotten, Sex Pistols kind of anarchy.”

    “Use whatever legitimization you think will cover your pride, but what you need is to learn to submit to authority. Like Joseph in Egypt. Like Paul in prison. Like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Look at them. They lived in an evil empire, but they didn’t rebel. They served in the Babylonian court. They didn’t raise a fist. They obeyed.”

    It was my turn to scoff. “You’re not the first to accuse me of being rebellious, but you are the first I’ve heard use Daniel and his friends as an example of obedience to empire. That’s a pretty wild take. Even for you, Gunner.”

    Leto poked his head out between the steps and looked at me. I reached out to stroke his head but he ducked back under.

    “Romans 13,” Gunner said.

    “What about Romans 13,” I asked.

    “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God,” Gunner quoted. “Anyone who rebels against the government is rebelling against God. And you have a rebellious heart.”

    I could see that Leto wasn’t going to come out from under the porch so I looked around. I saw Gunner’s truck in the driveway. “Gunner. You’ve got a couple of flag decals on the windows of your truck. An American flag and a Confederate battle flag. I know you’re a patriotic kind of guy. We’ve talked about that. But the leaders of those nations began with rebellion, yeah? Especially the Confederates – the rebels. By your definition, they would have been rebelling against God.”

    “That was different,” he stammered.

    “Yeah. It probably was,” I said. “Tell me, Gunner. How did Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah – or Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, end up in the furnace? Which act of obedience led them to that? Or Daniel. Tell me how he ended up in the lion pit. I’m not sure what you’re reading, but the book of Daniel in my Bible is start to finish about resisting empire.”

    “That’s different,” he said again.

    “And one more. What’s on Thomas Jefferson’s seal? Rebellion to tyrants is what?"

    “Obedience to God.”

    I looked again for the cat, but he was either gone or hiding far under the porch. “Back to Romans 13,” I said. “The only thing I owe anyone is love. Love fulfills the law, even when tyrants rule. And love resists evil. If I’m an anarchist, I’m an anarchist because of love.”

    I could see that this line of argument hadn’t set well with Gunner. He looked at his watch and slapped his thighs. “I told you I was busy, Carter. I’ve gotta get home to have dinner with my family.” He stood and walked down the porch steps and back to his pickup truck.

    And I watched him go.

Previous Conversations: 

An Imaginary Conversation with a Real Troll (the first of the series) 
I Will Not Fight the Argument (the second)
Supermarket Wrestling (third conversation)
Do You Even Pray (the troll returns)
All Means All (A fifth conversation)
The Doctrine that Cannot Be Challenged (sixth conversation)
Toward Sodom - (a halfhearted seventh conversation)
Millions of Years of Death (the eighth conversation)
Truth with Untruth (the ninth conversation)
Bulls, Dogs, and Villains (the tenth conversation)
The Righteous Forsaken (the eleventh conversation)
A Sabbath Garden (conversation number twelve)
Doesn't Doctrine Mean Anything to You? (conversation thirteen)
Real Christian Men, Real Christian Marriage (conversation fourteen)
Allah Azeem (conversation fifteen) 

Rich in Mercy

    But God, who is rich in mercy, like an American billionaire, has hidden away his vast fortune in a variety of corporations, trusts, public-private partnerships, and foundations in jurisdictions with low taxes and strong privacy laws. In tax sheltered shell companies and offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands and in Swiss accounts. Concealed in other unlisted foreign accounts with falsified records and laundered proceeds.

    How else would he remain so rich?

Ephesians 2:4:

Memory and False Luminaries

    I was living a bifurcated existence, like most everyone in those debilitating, degenerate days, divided myself from the world, with one foot on the upward path and one foot on the pitch, on the city streets at night, walking in the flickering, projected light of digital advert displays. It was best to avoid looking at those lights. They are false luminaries. And to beware of the shifting shadows as well. They are whispering spirits.

    All the moist elements of murder were there: a woman with stolen money and a hole torn in her thin white blouse, her lover starting fires in the stairwell, her ex-husband, and a gun. It is commonplace, but untrue to say that there was no motive for the crime; some things just resist explanation. Some wounds never heal.

    The words blurred like an everflowing river.

    I was dreaming of a place with no memory and had no memory of my dreams, of a life of authentic choices made by the principles of determination.

    Meanwhile he was screaming outside their apartment, trying to get in, screaming from the stop and go streets. It might have been two or three weeks. Maybe six months to a year. It’s hard to remember now after so long. And the currents of time are unstable.

    He saw her kissing in the park. He saw the fire. He saw her walking hand in hand down the sidewalk. He saw the river. He saw her in a parked car with a stranger.

    I remember hearing about it – though I was very young at the time. I remember seeing the bloody photos. Why did my parents allow that? I didn’t understand it then and only later, much later, realized what had happened.

    He had unresolved issues, problems of aggression behind a cherub’s face, burning pitch behind a Boy’s Life smile. No one believed it. No one believed him. Even when he confessed to the fires.

    I remember the images on television: a woman, face down on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood, a message scrawled beside her. “We are deeply distressed by the brutality of this age.” Was that irony or confession? But I do not remember the midnight gunshots just before the hour. I don’t remember hearing them. As I said, I was very young then. Only a boy, but I read about the blood and the glass. And how he was screaming outside the apartment, trying to get in to see her.

Willful Belligerent Unknowing

    Outside the building’s stone black walls, the crowd had assembled. Not yet a mob. Not yet. A mob has a purpose. These were only waiting for instructions to strike. The austere apartments towered above them. I could push through the crowd. Retreat to soulless safety. Turn back. Turn back. Turn back again.

    “Listen up, you liberal twat. No American Christian has ever embraced socialism as a guiding principle. It has no place in this country. No value.”

    “But it was a socialist who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance,” I remind them. I was having my lunch, eating an apple on bus bench. “A Baptist minister, Francis…”

    “I don’t know where you studied history, sir, but I suggest you take another course from a different source. You couldn’t be further from the truth.

    The agitations of the crowd surged and rolled. They surrounded me on the bench. Knocked the half-eaten apple from my hand.

    “The United States of America is the protector and defender of freedom and democracy.”

    “But the US of A has a history of toppling democratically elected governments around the world.”

    “Liar!

    “Costa Rica, Syria, Guatemala Iran. Chile… I could go on.”

    “No! You’re not going to convince us to jeopardize our freedom and security with your leftist lies.”

    We don’t see. So we don’t know. Won’t see. It’s not ignorance but a willful, belligerent unknowing. Open eyes and shuttered minds. The lights shining in darkened corners have been snuffed. My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge.

Hosea 4:6

Oh, You Can't Get to Heaven

 

    I got a chance to be the bad uncle at church this morning - sharing a silly song with the kids. Start the video at the 14:30 mark.