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May 10, 2009

The theft of the neighbor's lawnmower

The preacher last night at the Union Gospel Mission made a powerful-seeming point which began when he asked the congregation, "If I steal my neighbor's lawnmower, will I have sinned?"

The question hung out there, like a dark cloud over the congregants, for heavy moments before men in the audience yelled out a few "yeah"s and "yes"es and "sure"s.

But with flaying fury, the preacher informed us that No, he would not have have sinned, for it's not the theft of the lawnmower that creates the sin, it is the nature of the sinner. It is desire to steal the lawnmower where the sin is posited.

It is only through spirit and Jesus and God's grace that the lawnmower remains sitting there quietly on his neighbor's overgrown, weedy front lawn, he told us.

This lawnmower example/parable/whatever-it-was had me looking askance at the fellow waving his arms around behind the cross-shaped lecturn. Only by being in God's supple arms was he deterred from kiping* Mr. Jones's** Toro***!?

Now, this preacher is already one I respect less than most. He evokes the Christian Trap, as I call it, more than any of the few who do so. The Christian Trap works like this: The congregants are told something on the order of, "All who doubt the Word are chained by their nose rings to Satan. Thus, you must never doubt for a moment the sweet mutterings that a God-sealed soul like I tell you. You must wholly repudiate the Satanic secular world which is evil and cunning and intent on nothing other than to drag you down into the fiery lake." [And I kid you not, some preachers, like the one at issue in this post, are fully this hysterical.]

Of course, most of the fellows in the mission congregation, while Christian, have their other foot in the secular world, and are not all that easily swayed by a mission preacher's hystrionics. Still, as accustomed as I get with some of the terrible-preachers' bloviations, I always worry that some of my friends in the audience bite the hook in the preacher's bait.

But what was most interesting to me about the preacher's Parable of the Lawnmower was that thing that we non-Christians find to be the most freeky about some Christian of the immature stripe. That is, they believe about themselves that, failing Jesus holding them back, they'd run rampant breaking the Ten Commandments in a spree of mayhem.

This preacher, captivated by tribalist hate thinking, has demonized the secular world and all of us in it. Very likely there's a lot of text in the Bible that supports this way of thinking, just as there is much in the Bible that repudiates it. Contrary to what many Christians, like this preacher, think, the Bible is chockablock with contradictions and verse that can be interpretted in different ways, which sadly allows haters that come to the religion to cherry-pick from it what they choose to believe that supports hate mongering. This is the fundamentalist problem that most religions have.

I submit that 99.999 percent, plus, of secular folk are not on the prowl to steal lawnmowers. And that the preacher last night, should he disavow Christianity [which is not something I'm advocating; I'm just supposing], would not go out on a lawnmower-stealing spree, either.

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor [including thy perceived enemies] as thyself." [I cherry-picked the preceeding sentence from the Bible, here, here, here, here, here & here.]
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* kipe: means "to steal" [It's a slang word that I like that dictionaries tell me is fading away.]

** I figure one's fictive neighbors should always be the Joneses, based on the old saw about "keeping up with the Joneses."

*** A good make of lawnmower that neighbors you want to keep up with are likely to have.

7 comments:

Mumon K said...

Ah...kiping Mr. Jones' Toro!

Yes, they named a lawnmower company after the Japanese word for tuna...

Unknown said...

Toro means tuna in Japanese!? I thought it meant bull in Spanish. And now it means lawnmower in English. What a world ... of confusion.

Mumon K said...

Indeed, Tom. Bull in Spanish. And lawnmower in English. But in Japanese, it's tuna sushi.

Especially ohtoro (大とろ) the fatty tuna, the evilly delicious stuff which is being fished out of the oceans at an alarming rate.

If it's any consolation to you (and I know it's not) nobody within spitting distance of middle class can even think of eating decent 大とろ in the States.

It's just not in the US.

Unknown said...

It DOES matter to me, Mumon. One day, perhaps, I'm be within spitting distance of being rich, and THEN I will order some 大とろ, hoping it doesn't taste like freshly cut grass.

By the way, if I recall correctly, ENCO gas company changed its name because ENCO means stalled car in Japanese. They were going to change their name to EXON, but that was the name of the governor of Nebraska, and they didn't want people getting confused and paying the governor to change their oil. So, they because EXXON, which is a mighty rediculous name, if you asked me.

I wonder how many consultions made enough money to eat good 大とろ during all that effort to find just the right name.

Unknown said...

"consultions" should be "consultants"

Mumon K said...

Tom:

That Exxon story kind of makes sense. And I'm sure much odd fish was eaten in that case. Fugu no doubt...

Anyhow, good luck on things!

Unknown said...

Somehow, it had to happen. A new restaurant in nearby Davis: Zen Toro!