A God With Whom I Am Not Familiar: Tim Wise

[beetbox]

A God with whom I am not familiar

By Tim Wise
Online Journal Guest Writer

September 5, 2005—This is an open letter to the man sitting behind me at La Paz the other day, in Nashville, at lunchtime, with the Brooks Brothers shirt.

You blessed your chimichanga in the name of Jesus Christ, and then proceeded to spend the better part of your meal—and mine, since I was too near your table to avoid hearing every word—morally scolding the people of that devastated city, heaping scorn on them for not heeding the warnings to leave before disaster struck. Then you attacked them—all of them, without distinction it seemed—for the behavior of a relative handful: those who have looted items like guns, or big screen TVs.

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I watched you wipe salsa from the corners of your mouth, as you nodded agreement to the statement of one of your friends, sitting to your right, her hair neatly coiffed, her makeup flawless, her jewelry sparkling. When you asked, rhetorically, why it was that people were so much more decent amid the tragedy of 9–11, as compared to the aftermath of Katrina, she had offered her response, but only after apologizing for what she admitted was going to sound harsh. "Well," Buffy explained. "It's probably because in New Orleans, it seems to be mostly poor people, and you know, they just don't have the same regard."

She then added that police should shoot the looters, and should have done so from the beginning, so as to send a message to the rest that theft would not be tolerated. You, who had just thanked Jesus for your chips and guacamole, said you agreed. They should be shot. Praise the Lord.

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Your God is one with whom I am not familiar.

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/090505Wise/090505wise.html

[Berry Cool]

1. It all comes back to the same question:

"Who would Jesus drown?"

[shaniqua6392]

2. Thank you for posting that.

It was beautiful and does attest to how some in this country view themselves as "christians". I am a christian and have been weeping for my fellow countrymen who have been abandoned. I will pray to my God that he will bring comfort to his children in the Gulf Coast.

[yellowdogintexas]

3. Jesus would slap the shit out of them. (the man and the woman) nt

[Skittles]

4. I know people like that

they call themselves Christians but then they believe, say the most despicable things - I reserve my depsicable talk in decribing people like this - they make me sick