I've got post basketball scream throat. This is the third game in a period of a week of which I would cause heart palpitations to a speech therapist. My son plays and I coach the team. I view sports in many ways similarly to art and music. As a game, basketball would seem to have certain immutable rules to guide its play like art and music have timeless standards to judge each of them. These rules would not really need to change; their continuity over generations bonding participants of the past with those of the present. And I'm not bonding with the present; thus, the throat of doom with a tenderness in an odd spot that suggests I forgot everything I learned in voice and diction class. People might call me all sorts of things: old school, basketball purist, curmudgeon, living in the past, dinosaur, or extinct species.
The contestants play differently and the authorities in charge of enforcing the rules, the referees, do that in a new way too. Sometimes I look at these arbiters of the hardwood with an incredulous tilt to my head as they allow violations immediately before them without a hint of a call. I consider if their whistles may malfunction. I muse that they actually see a game in a different dimension of space and time. This makes it difficult for me sometimes to judge what is happening. Sometimes it makes me wonder if the game might alter itself like a mutating bacteria into a wholly different one right before my eyes. One game this year, I was reminding the official of a fine point out of the basketball statutes, a long-time rule that generally had one understanding, and the opposing coach yelled, "Let the boys play." I looked over at this twenty-something coach and thought of Picasso. Maybe when an art critic looked at Picasso's painting, as he began to voice criticism, some new savant of paint yelled, "Let the boy paint." And then Picasso smirked as he continued to brush another eyeball onto the figure's thigh.
This is all difficult for me. Can you tell? I refuse to walk in lock-step. It reminds me starkly of the new zeal at which I can pray the prayer, "Thy kingdom come." Jesus will judge everything aright. He won't interpret his laws subjectively based on a new artistic value. That once was traveling with the ball, but now it is an exciting addition to the game. That was at one time called a reach foul, but now it is an important allowance for improving the flow of the game. That new dent on the back of my head wasn't someone going over my back, but hard to the rack. As the notes tumble together into heavily flawed composition, I must appreciate a new perspective or point of view. If I get it, people will appreciate my tolerance. If I say something, many will whisper a subtle bigotry. I keep my mouth shut and hum with a new age transcendence, joining the throngs of mind-numbed liberal fascists who have dumbed the world into their own discordant melody. And I repeat their mantra, "It's all relative."
p. s. I didn't write this out of frustration. We won by 18. Or did we?
We need to learn something about tolerance and the king haveing no clothes. Enjoy my open letter on the subject available at www.gsbaptsitchurch.com click on flag for humanism. God Bless
ReplyDeletePastor Rice
Open Letter
In their words, "Humanism is an atheistic progressive philosophy of life that affirms an ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity." A philosophy that deals with ethics, and with the questions; “Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? and How do I get there?” is a religion. Humanism is a religion of life that has already obtained an unconstitutional teaching monopoly in our public schools and wants one on the whole 'public square.' This religion has as it's god the 'atheistic naked square' that they would substitute into our pledge to eliminate 'One nation under God.” An 'atheistic naked square' that they would idolize and substitute for the motto that founded this great country, the motto on our currency, “In God We Trust.” And an 'atheistic naked square' that they would drape over every court house occurrence of the Holy Bible's commandments, although those commandments form the basis for all law in this great country. This religion will not stop until it has only its atheism brandished and lauded in every avenue of public school, public property, and government. They want every prayer banished and every other free exercise of religion prohibited.
They, with their ACLU, already pretty much own our judicial branch of government. It will require strong legislators, senators, congressmen and representatives to take back the stronghold these atheist secular humanists have on our public schools. Yet these are falling daily to the humanists who twist the hate crime legislation, malign the 'Separation of Church and State' clause founded, paid, for and secured by Baptist in this country, and demand that every form of immorality be 'tolerated' which is their tongue tying code word for silencing all Christian preaching in the public square. When a teenager named David went out to slay a giant named Goliath he started with the question “Is there not a cause?” and concluded with a statement “The LORD that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.” Baptists have been delivered out of the paw of the Roman lion with the clause “Separation of Church and State.” Now Atheist Humanists wield this clause as a giant judicial sword to cut out the tongues of Christians with their Bibles in the public schools and public squares. Is there not a cause?
The Baptists who founded, paid for and secured the 'Separation of Church and State' and the concept of 'Individual Soul Liberty' need to step up again and stop the unconstitutional government favoritism of one religion, humanistic atheism, and their prohibition of the free exercise of other religions. What will you do to help? With our nations attention focused on our supreme court justices, it is a good time for you to speak up. We need a grass roots education that this thing called secular humanism is an intolerant prohibitive monopoly seeking religion that owns the ACLU, Senator Kennedy, our own Senator Schumer, and all the progressive humanist liberal democrats. It is a religion united with a state and it would burn Baptists at the stake as much as the Roman and Protestant religions did. Please speak for certain on this issue. There is a cause.
Pastor Ed Rice of Good Samaritan Baptist Church in Dresden NY, across the street from the Counsel for Secular Humanism's holy shrine “Robert Ingersoll's Birthplace Museum.”