16 October 2014 A.D. Houstunnization: “Petty Tyrants in a Tyranical Age”
16 October 2014 A.D. Houstunnization:
“Petty Tyrants in a Tyranical Age”
Reynolds, John Mark. “Petty
Tyrants in a Tyranical Age.” Pantheos.
15 Oct 2014. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/eidos/2014/10/petty-tyrants-in-a-tyrannical-age/#ixzz3GJvYWpXJ. 15 Oct 2014.
Petty Tyrants in a Tyrannical Age: Annise Parker
Annise Parker is not the biggest problem my Church faces. So help us God, what a better world it would be if this were true.
We support a bishop in Syria
who finds himself surrounded by ISIS, at the mercy of the kind favors of Putin,
and fired at with American supplied weaponry. Twenty-two million of us died in
the last century, were denied university education, and lived as second class
citizens for the crime of being faithful. Redshirt thugs lash us in North
Korea, in Sudan we are sold into slavery, and in Egypt we face extinction in an
ancient homeland.
Pray that the “Houston Room”
in a Syrian church used to feed starving people of all faiths and named for the
gifts of Houston Christians can continue to feed the poor. American guns in
terrorist hands surround this place and priests are murdered.
Next to these evils, the
pettifogging Parker, a mayor with an overly eager legal team, is not much. She has decided our sermons,
our emails, and our private communications are “fair game” because we dare
oppose immorality with morality and moral confusion with moral clarity. We want
to keep our bathrooms private, but evidently the right to use the toilet of
one’s choice is Constitutional, or important, or something.
This precious right to pick a
potty is worth using the power of the courts, the executive, and the law. And
yet we know the real problem is that we will not say that private immorality is
moral in public. In fact, we dare publicly disagree. We dare petition for
redress. We suggest a vote on an issue railroaded through a compliant and
corrupt city government. Most leaders are afraid to challenge the power of City
Hall, hoping for government favors and contracts, but pastors answer to a
higher power than the mayor.
Our morality is based in
philosophy, theology, and history and not on our desires. We do not even give
ourselves the right to force people of our sex to share their bathrooms with
us. And yet, I can already hear certain pundits pronounce: potty rights are not
worth the fuss. Christians are being martyred. Why kick up a fight?
One must pause and ponder the
injustice that those who respond to change forced on us by politicians become
accused of responding politically, but so it goes.
It is true, utterly,
absolutely, terrifically true that Parker’s power play is not equivalent to the
persecution my Church faces in Syria, Nigeria, Sudan, or Iraq. Fighting ISIS is
far more important than fighting Parker, but a nation capable of defeating
Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany simultaneously is surely capable of dealing with
ISIS while swatting back the unjust demand of Parker. ISIS is Nazi ideology
without the power of Germany and Parker hardly is worth the bother if her petty
tyranny did not transgress an important principle.
Don’t be confused or
distracted: Parker is trying to chill religious speech. Challenge her
politically on the basis of Christian ethics and she will come after your
Christian minister. She wants her morality publicly applauded and we call her
morality a false morality: immoral. She accuses us of making morality political
by making her immorality political. So while dealing with the real foes, ISIS and the
radical atheists of North Korea, we must pause to swat back Parker.
We must fight not because we
hate Parker, the Savior commands love, but because we love the Constitution.
Nor as urban politicians go is Parker a particular problem. Parker is
typical of the libertine left: willing to cozy up to the fat cat network if
bosses will allow personal vice to become political virtue. It is not the decadence
and influence peddling that stirs us up: decadence and corruption are nothing
new in Houston city politics, but an attack on the First Freedom is.
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