The contemptible American Family Association is no more Christian than Satan himself. The latest remarks from their evil leader Bryan Fischer about how Jesus would have allowed the Cranick's home to burn are just plain evil. Indulge me, please, as I address my response directly to this sad excuse for a hollow human. I started this post intending to refute his screed point by point and soon realized I didn't really want to subject you all to a Biblical pissing contest.
John Amato touched on this yesterday in his post on "Feminized Christianity" identifying Fischer as the proponent of this nonsense. Fischer supposes that Christians have gone all soft on humanity and stuff, embracing their inner woman instead of the strong, authoritative man person lurking in all of this.
There's only one word for this kind of Christian: toxic. Toxic. Toxic, as in nuclear waste spread over the entire country in varying degrees of potency until the cancer takes over and subsumes the entire society in a wave of hate, fear and loathing. This isn't Christianity; it's a sick authoritarian hateful person masquerading like a wolf in sheep's clothing. Yeah, the Bible has some things to say about impostors and pretenders in society and the church, too.
Fischer missed the point of the passage he relied upon to make his case entirely. The point of the parable he told is simply to say "don't be complacent." Don't assume you can proclaim faith without actually doing something with it. That's the point, and it's made in three different parables. What Fischer demonstrates is exactly what is being preached against, not "feminized Christianity".
And then there's his closer, which makes me gnaw my fists in frustration.
(Essentially what Mr. Cranick wants is “guaranteed issue” for fire protection. This is the same thing that is going to destroy the health care industry, as it is already starting to do under RomneyCare in Massachusetts. If you can wait til you get sick before applying for insurance, and the insurance company has to provide it, everybody will just wait til they get sick to get insurance and pretty soon nobody will have insurance or health care, either one.)
No, actually what Mr. Cranick wanted was grace -- the ability to pay whatever he needed to pay at that moment and in that time to get them to turn on the damned hoses. What he wanted was someone to say yes, we will accept your perfectly good money and turn the water on for you. What he wanted was forgiveness, which is above all else, the foundation of Christian values and principles. That's what Mr. Cranick wanted.
The guaranteed issue argument is just Fischer's way of playing politics with a spiritual issue, but that's nothing new for this detestable organization. This is the same Bryan Fischer who blamed the Sea World trainer for her own death because Sea World didn't kill the killer whale after it killed the first time, suggests that children of lesbians are somehow damaged, advocates for nullification and defends Taliban Dan Webster against Alan Grayson, calling Grayson a "miserable creature".
Whether one is a Christian or not, Fischer does a great disservice to those of us who embrace that form of Christianity he derides as "feminized." Those of us who believe we shouldn't judge our neighbors, should forgive those who do us wrong, and share what we have with others are being painted with Fischer's broad, ugly, stinky brush.
We don't know what Jesus would have done if he were in the vicinity of Gene Cranick. We don't generally send rabbis out to fight fires, after all. It's likely he probably would have called out to the crowd for someone to help the man put out the fire. But there is no example in the bible -- NONE -- where Jesus stood by and let someone suffer to teach them a lesson. Jesus suffered, but he did not bring suffering on others. He fed them. He taught them. He led them. But he did not hurt them.
Bryan Fischer's version of Christianity is not one I recognize. It feels far more like Old Testament cruelty, brought down on the poor and disenfranchised in order to consolidate power. It feels like evil.
