healing our brokenness inadequately (part 4): season’s greetings from your state legislatures

“…The heart of the sons of men
is full of evil,
and madness is in their heart
while they live…”
(Ecclesiastes 9.3)
 
Wherewith shall I come before the LORD,
and bow myself before the high God?
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good;
and what doth the LORD require of thee,
but to do justly, and to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with thy God?
 (Micah 6.6, 8)
​

​healing our brokenness inadequately (part 4):
season’s greetings from your state legislatures
jeremiah 6.14
​

  introduction

In his famous soliloquy and song, “If I Were a Rich Man,” Tevye dreams of a “big, tall house with rooms by the dozen,” with a “fine tin roof with real wooden floors.” Outside the house, he dreams of a “yard with chicks and turkeys and geese and ducks.” He dreams of a wife with plenty to eat and “a proper double-chin.” As for himself, Tevye dreams of having “the time that I lack to sit in the synagogue and pray… discuss the holy books with the learned men, several hours every day” To him, “that would be the sweetest thing of all.”
 
We all have dreams. Even at nearly 70, I still do. One of my dreams involves Hebrew prophets. I wish they would come back; return in a renaissance of prophetic discernment and courage. Prophets like Jeremiah, Amos, Micah, and Isaiah. Today’s religious leaders—whether the go by prophet, priest, or pastor—seem not up to the task, lacking both discernment and courage. They seem utterly blind and mute to sin, unless it involves human genitals.
 
This Mad State post is the third in an ongoing series entitled, “Healing Our Brokenness Inadequately” The title takes its cue from Jeremiah 6.14 in which the prophet laments the ineffectual and specious ministry of Judah’s prophets. In this series, we explore specific examples of individual and societal sins about which religious leaders remain willfully blind or, if sighted, stubbornly mute… and therefore complicit. With these examples in mind, we will imagine what a Hebrew prophet might have to say if he were to come to us from the past. Here, then, is our next example.
 

  season’s greetings from your state legislatures

Christmas Season 2023 is off to a rip roaring and jolly good start.
 
There’s the Ohio state legislature’s unreasoned rejection of the basic laws of physics. The more molecules in a fixed space, the more often they collide. The more cars on the road, the more accidents. The more guns in the state, the more shootings and deaths. Elementary math.
 
But after passing a new pro-gun law about every 15 minutes for the past ten years, the Ohio legislature has determined that gun ownership is still insufficiently protected in the wild, wild, rootin’ tootin’ state of Ohio. Hence its latest foray into madness—the highfalutin sounding “Second Amendment Preservation Act.” 
 
As any good Hebrew prophet might say,
 
Unsatisfied to have merely placed targets on the backs of its citizens 
that can only be seen in the light of day, 
the legislature wishes to slap glow in the dark targets on the backs of its citizens 
so that they can be shot to death in the dark of night as easily as in the light of day.
It is madness.
Irrational beyond description.
A sickness of the heart.
A cancer on the American soul.
May those who act so cynically as to create and pass such murderous laws find no preservation.
No, not for a second of any moment.
 
Meanwhile, a quick 15-minute magical sleigh ride to the southwest brings us to a land of make-believe pro-lifers whose laws force a mother of two, who very much wishes to be a mother of three, to carry a fetus that has no chance at life and threatens the health of the mother as well as her future prospects of having that much desired third child. And, of course, the jolly little elf of a State Attorney General who is so intent on enforcing the state’s godforsaken abortion laws that he would criminalize anyone who has the audacity to seek or practice healthcare that secures the health of women is, himself, a criminal of the first order.
 
You can’t make this stuff up.
It is madness.
Irrational beyond description.
A sickness of the heart.
A cancer on the American soul.
May these power hungry 
exercisers of unrighteousness dominion over woman
be made to carry their heavy burden of wickedness to full term
only then to have heaven abort them 
into the dark underbelly of hell.
 
But, of course, as is par for the course, prophet, priest, and pastor remain as silent about these abuses of human dignity as the silent night on which the One they claim to represent was born. They do and say nothing to heal the brokenness. Far from joining the angelic choirs in signing “peace on earth, good will to men,” too often, when they do open their mouths on such topics they only add to the disease, assist the cancer to grow.
 
So, already, barely half-way through the advent season, I can hardly sleep, so anxious am I to see what other gifts America’s wacko state legislators, governors, and supreme courts will bring us this Holiday Season.
 
Ho. Ho. Ho, everyone. And a Merry Christmas!