Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Mixing the Christian "Christmas jihadists" with the Prosperity Gospel

... and you get something like this:

The story smacked of religious bias during the Christmas season: An elementary school allegedly suspended a second-grader, it went, and required the boy to undergo a psychological evaluation after he drew a picture of Jesus Christ on the cross.

...

She [Julie Hackett, superintendent of Taunton Public Schools] said it was unclear whether the boy -- who put his name above his stick-figure portrait of Christ on the cross -- even drew it in school.

"The inaccuracies in the original media story have resulted in a great deal of criticism and scrutiny of the system that is unwarranted," she said.

She said the boy's drawing was seen as a potential cry for help when the student identified himself, rather than Jesus, as the figure on the cross, which sparked the teacher to alert the school's principal and staff psychologist.

...

Amid the flurry of media attention, the boy's father held court today at his girlfriend's apartment here, demanding the school district compensate him for his family's pain and suffering.

"It hurts me that they did this to my kid," Chester Johnson, the boy's father, told the Globe. "They can't mess with our religion; they owe us a small lump sum for this.''

The dude's apparently more concerned with cashing in than with what it might mean that his son identified himself as the crucified stick figure. And let's not even get into the moral side of what kind of message this father is giving to his son by "holding court at his girlfriend's apartment." My question here is why isn't this "religious" dude with his son's mother? I wonder what his "religion" might have to say about that. All it takes for this dude to find out who is really messing with his religion is a quick look in the mirror, because I don't know of any Christian religion that looks kindly upon divorce, separation, or shacking up with the new girlfriend. Now I'll concede that maybe I'm reading too much into Chester Johnson's presence at his girlfriend's apartment; but I somehow doubt it.

Anyway ...

I hate the damn Christmas wars and I despise the Christian "Christmas jihadists" who wage holy war against secular kinds of expressions of good cheer much, much more than I am bothered by anyone who dares to express any kind of discomfort with state-promoted Christmas messages.

It's these Christian "Christmas jihadists" who are the ones who ruin the festive mood for everyone. If they can't impose their own religious version of seasonal good cheer on everyone else, then, by God, they're going to be hell bent on making sure the world witnesses their fury during Christmas. (And how Christ-like is that?)

I recently received a forwarded email of a right-wing Christian "Christmas jihadist" re-interpretation of the classic Christmas poem "Twas the Night Before Christmas." I'm going to fisk this revised poem in another blog posting, and then I'm going to forget about it and not let these Christian "Christmas jihadists" ruin my holiday cheer.

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