So I saw this:
Hmmm. I thought that was pretty tough for Dr. Gushee. Sure, he avoids like the plague the universal support that Hamas has received from various leftwing activists, Palestinian protesters, and various Muslim and Arab pro-Palestinian advocates. He doesn't get near the signs with calls to continue the slaughter of Jewish people because they are Jewish. But at least he says it's bad, no excuses, no qualifiers, no appeals to context or moral equivalency.
But that made me wonder. I don't have Twitter, so I'm a bit hamstrung with looking at various Twitter accounts. Usually I go with what people send me in copied images. But sometimes I can dig and find recent Twitter posts. So after some fenagling, I got to the farthest back of his account I could, and saw this:
Wow. Note the date. Two days after the single worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. And this is Mr. "Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust"! You know, his book that cites those gentiles who rescued Jews from the Nazis while using that to hammer the majority of Christians who didn't. And what does he do within two days of the most horrible genocidal assault against Israeli Jews in recent memory? He goes after white nationalists who apparently don't believe in the right to vote?
What we're witnessing is a mental breakdown among the modern progressive revolution. That slick and careful and asinine narrative that is the basis for tearing down the Western tradition and its Christian roots has been shaken. That narrative exists by forever focusing on isolated molehills of facts while ignoring mountain range sized piles of qualifying and contradictory facts. By doing that, we have the oily Oppressor v. the Oppressed template that is being used now to, well, call for the extermination of Israel and everyone (Jewish) in it.
As a disclaimer, I should note that I was once a big fan of Gushee. Even when I could tell he tacked left of center, I saw in him someone trying to be sincere and courageous in standing his ground. Even though I could detect his sympathies, in a class filled with many liberal Christians, he admitted that for the Bible, homosexuality is typically presented as the ultimate deviancy from sexual morality.
When he wrote an article defining history as being between the Left (good guys) vs. the Right (bad guys), however, my admiration was shaken to be sure. That level of ignorance is hard to overcome in the matter or respect.
But when he wrote, in light of the legalization of gay marriage, that it's time for all to bow before the new dogma or get what they have coming to them, I suddenly realized whoever he was writing his book for, it wasn't himself. Someone who rose to prominence by brutally eviscerating those Germans who didn't stand up and risk death to oppose the Nazis - who now says get in line with the Left or pay the piper. Oh, and slaughtering Jews is bad, but let's not lose track of the really bad people who dare buck the Leftist State.
Once more, I'll repeat my oldest son's observation: With each passing day, it becomes easier and easier to sympathize with those Germans in the 1930s. And Dr. Gushee is about as good a case study for why this is true as I can imagine.
 |
| Perhaps Dr. Gushee can be reached - if he's paying attention |
My one FB friend who almost immediately posted on this topic, (basically that both sides are guilty of atrocities), I have subsequently noticed she took her post down. Or she hid it from me as I expressed about the same time my nausea at people unwilling to condemn Hamas' acts as evil in and of themselves. I was unaware how many of my fellow citizens are, apparently, pro-terrorist!
ReplyDeleteIt's because, perhaps without realizing it, we've already hallowed the Oppressed v. the Oppressor template for understanding history. And for the Left, nothing west of the Urals is anything but the Oppressor: Europeans, the West, America, whites, men, heterosexuals, Christians, and yes, Israel. Jews who keep trotting out the Holocaust, antisemitism in the Church, or America, or Europe, or racism as good as always, have their place. But in Israel, they are part of the 'West', which means Oppressor, which increasingly means they get what they have coming by any means possible, violence being on the table at this point.
DeleteThere is no such thing as 'Christian nationalism'. He doesn't understand the proper use of the term 'privilege' and no country in the world assembles voting registers without screening some people out. The man is one cheap sack of goods. Higher education deserves no respect.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's a shame. Again, back in the day he came off as sincere and willing to speak the truth even when it was clear he wasn't happy to do it. But somewhere the screws came off. Again, when he wrote that history - modern history at least - is basically the baddie right conservatives versus the goodie left liberals (though Deacon Greydanus also espoused that view, with liberals always being on the right side of history). But it was his 'accept gay marriage or pay the price' that was so stunning. Now I see this, written a few days after the slaughter, when before it was continuing to harp on the right of center. Perhaps the timing was coincidental, but the first post almost seems to be responding to someone (like almost frustration that he has to say it, perhaps because he never said it to begin with).
Delete