Beck-oning for a Revolution

“You can surely tell you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” -anne lamott

My feelings toward Glenn Beck are not a secret. Any length of time spent scanning my facebook page would reveal any one of Jon Stewart, the dailykos or the Huffington Post reaming the Fox News personality for the latest black-hole-stupid thing he’s said.

If you’ve ever watched or listened to a select piece of his TV or radio program, you’ll know that Mr. Beck sincerely loves his country. So much so that he is willing to willingly broadcast complete falsities with no repercussions or accountability from his network or fans to make sure that his country doesn’t fall into the hands of those he hates.

For months now, his program has featured an actor dressed up in Communist garb sitting on the set waiting to answer a fake phone from…somebody. I’m not really sure what this act of pure grandstanding seeks to accomplish to be honest. His radical claims that the Obama administration is slowly ushering in socialism, communism, Nazism, or any other –ism you can think of goes not only unchecked, but also unchallenged by the viewers of his program.

It was no surprise, then, that this week Beck urged Americans to leave any church that preached a message of social justice.

I am now convinced that Glenn Beck is merely a tool of the Dark One to focus my attention away from anything important and to get me so riled up that I can’t even think straight.

As I discussed this on the phone with Pops yesterday, he said as he laughed, “Well, I guess Jesus would have to leave His own church.” I guess He’s right, assuming we’re talking about white-skinned, red-blooded, apple pie eating, brown flowing haired American Jesus. That assumption wouldn’t deal with Jesus the Christ at all.

The Gospel without a message of social justice is simply no Gospel at all. Rob Bell says in Jesus Wants to Save Christians that God always fights for victims of injustice. For Glenn to assert that churches, synagogues and parishes that preach social justice are just veils of communism and Nazism is to surely say, as Anne says up top, that he, much like many Americans, has created God in his own image.

When we use our American Tea Party hermeneutic to interpret Scripture, we will most certainly come to the same conclusion that those who tune into the Glenn Beck Program experience. When we read the Bible objectively, being as faithful to the historicity of the text as we are able, then we see that Jesus was ALL about justice…even social and economic justice!

What it comes down to, though, is that no matter our philosophy on government, no matter what party and politician we align ourselves with, the call of Christ remains that we are to love our God and neighbor with all that is in us.

Even those that seek to divide the country with false information and vitriol, without so much as a college degree to back it up.

Even, much to my dismay, Glenn Beck.

For more views on this check out "An Open Letter to Glenn Beck" by Jack Hinnen at A United Method