Underneath the Bravado (Letters to KtB)

In response to “Michael Jackson, Mark Sanford, & the Synagogue of Satan,” Eric Reed writes:

Jeff got it all wrong! It’s not that the Family are the replacement Jews, it’s that Christians are the replacement Chosen of God. That’s why they hate Jews — Jews were supposed to have caved in and accepted Jesus and the New Covenant back in 400 A.D., or so. Instead, they just kept on being Jews, which calls the legitimacy of Christianity (i.e., Christian’s chosenness)into question, which proves that they are Limbs of Satan.
See?

Just ask me if you want any further points of Christian doctrine clarified. For instance, how you can have Free Will when God is omniscient and omnipotent. Just ask me!

Love,

Eric

Thanks for the clarification, Eric!

Speaking of Limbs of Satan, Yvonne Byron responds to Naomi Seidman’s “Raised by Jews” (featured in our new anthology, Believer, Beware):

Now I understand the sadness I always detected in Naomi’s eyes, underneath the bravado.

Thanks for the clarification, Yvonne!

In response to KtBnik Jeff Sharlet’s interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” Jenny Holland writes:

i found your site after hearing your interview on fresh air, and then listening to it again, today.
yours is one of the most exciting places to visit. as a buddhist, i was drawn to the name, natch, but also as someone who tries really really hard to walk the edge between what i desperately want to believe (as in faith) and the complete other-ness of what actually might constitute reality, i am so relieved to find people who talk and write about religion as adults not as wishful supplicants.
bravo. thanks a lot. i’ll buy the book, although it scared the hell out of me. genghis khan is one of christ’s chosen? give me a big fat break!

Also in response to that interview comes this “sozzled and radically Taoist” commentary from Taylor McIntosh:

Dear K.T.B.,

I read an article of yours on “The Family” and was astonished to learn of their prayer suggestions, literally written on the wall to damn Buddhism or other non-Christian religions. Personally, I find modern Christianity to be a non-Christian religion, but I’ll put that aside.

These are obviously people unconcerned with the Sermon on the Mount, probably writing it off as one of Jesus’ bad days. Or worse.

Anyways, what is so great about Taoism is that as a philosophy it always skirts criticism of this sordid sort and goes on and on and picks up momentum and acceptance over time by the wise. It is like pure socialism in that respect. I refer to a similar phrase in a Eugene Debs speech given in Canton, OH in the nineteen teens. A working class hero surely is something to see.

Power politics almost always value money and power brokerage over responsibility, and kindness. That is what happens when governance is influenced by and manifested through the undereducated. It is a shame that blunders like labeling a murderer as a chosen one by God still perpetuate themselves in the deeds and minds of people like those in “The Family,” but America is a nation of dark, underhanded illumination, after all. We’re still working at 5 watts, and our people are craving a government and officials to operate at 100 watts. I guess we as a people have always expected too much of the Constitution and the folks it has given us the power to elect. But honestly, not just anyone can be in the public trust, sadly.

I guess my commentary here is becoming loose and edgy, so I’ll cut it short.

Thanks for helping light the American bulb a few watts at a time through your work. Maybe one day we will organize enough to actually overthrow our human brothers who are insubordinate to the actual workings of the Creator of the Universe, whose trust has obviously been put in the wrong hands.

Or maybe I’m sozzled and a little radically Taoist on this fourth of July, a holiday which should commend such behavior and yearning for redresses of governmental grievances. We should petition those portly, rotund, smirking battleships on C street and greet them at the door with some humanity and lead them by example. We may get hurt or put underground, but at least we would have tried to lead by honorable example.

Plus, almost everyone has forgotten about nature and our impact on it, which makes them seem, atop their lordly positions, all the more ridiculous and inept.

Sozzle on, Taylor.