16 October 2014 A.D. Houstunnization: “Petty Tyrants in a Tyranical Age”
Petty Tyrants in a Tyrannical
Age: Annise Parker
Annise
Parker is not the biggest problem my Church faces. So help us God, what a
better world it would be if this were true.
We support
a bishop in Syria who finds himself surrounded by ISIS, at the mercy of the
kind favors of Putin, and fired at with American supplied weaponry. Twenty-two
million of us died in the last century, were denied university education, and
lived as second class citizens for the crime of being faithful. Redshirt thugs
lash us in North Korea, in Sudan we are sold into slavery, and in Egypt we face
extinction in an ancient homeland.
Pray that
the “Houston Room” in a Syrian church used to feed starving people of all
faiths and named for the gifts of Houston Christians can continue to feed the
poor. American guns in terrorist hands surround this place and priests are
murdered.
Next to
these evils, the pettifogging Parker, a mayor with an overly eager legal team,
is not much. She
has decided our sermons, our emails, and our private
communications are “fair game” because we dare oppose immorality with morality
and moral confusion with moral clarity. We want to keep our bathrooms private,
but evidently the right to use the toilet of one’s choice is Constitutional, or
important, or something.
This
precious right to pick a potty is worth using the power of the courts, the
executive, and the law. And yet we know the real problem is that we will not
say that private immorality is moral in public. In fact, we dare publicly
disagree. We dare petition for redress. We suggest a vote on an issue
railroaded through a compliant and corrupt city government. Most leaders are
afraid to challenge the power of City Hall, hoping for government favors and
contracts, but pastors answer to a higher power than the mayor.
Our
morality is based in philosophy, theology, and history and not on our desires.
We do not even give ourselves the right to force people of our sex to share
their bathrooms with us. And yet, I can already hear certain pundits pronounce:
potty rights are not worth the fuss. Christians are being martyred. Why kick up
a fight?
One must
pause and ponder the injustice that those who respond to change forced on us by
politicians become accused of responding politically, but so it goes.
It is true,
utterly, absolutely, terrifically true that Parker’s power play is not
equivalent to the persecution my Church faces in Syria, Nigeria, Sudan, or
Iraq. Fighting ISIS is far more important than fighting Parker, but a nation capable
of defeating Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany simultaneously is surely capable
of dealing with ISIS while swatting back the unjust demand of Parker. ISIS is
Nazi ideology without the power of Germany and Parker hardly is worth the
bother if her petty tyranny did not transgress an important principle.
Don’t be
confused or distracted: Parker is trying to chill religious speech. Challenge
her politically on the basis of Christian ethics and she will come after your
Christian minister. She wants her morality publicly applauded and we call her
morality a false morality: immoral. She accuses us of making morality political
by making her immorality political. So while dealing with the real foes, ISIS and the
radical atheists of North Korea, we must pause to swat back Parker.
We must
fight not because we hate Parker, the Savior commands love, but because we love
the Constitution. Nor as urban politicians go is Parker a particular problem.
Parker is typical of the libertine left: willing to cozy up to the fat cat
network if bosses will allow personal vice to become political virtue. It is
not the decadence and influence peddling that stirs us up: decadence and
corruption are nothing new in Houston city politics, but an attack on the First
Freedom is.
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