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Mr. Pitts, as is typical for leftists, completely misrepresents the Bible and the people who believe it. Interestingly he is happy to judge Pence's sin.
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Mike Pence was right. At least, inadvertently, he was.
In a commencement address Saturday at Liberty University, the Christian evangelical college in Virginia, the vice president warned graduates that they should expect to be “shunned or ridiculed for defending the teachings of the Bible.”
“As you go about your daily life,” he said, “just be ready because you’re going to be asked not just to tolerate things that violate your faith, you’re going to be asked to endorse them.”
And yes, an argument can be made that this was sound advice, albeit not in the way Pence intended it to be. (Mr. Pitts does not actually supply us with the reason this is sound advice.)
Take, for instance, Jesus’ admonition that “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor.” Anyone who supports the idea of giving to the poor should expect to be “shunned or ridiculed” by the likes of Mitt Romney, who said 47 percent of us don’t want to work, (Mr. Romney did not say this. I wonder what Mr. Pitts believes about bearing false witness? The quote:
"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it -- that that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. ... These are people who pay no income tax. ... [M]y job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."Nowhere in this comment did Mr. Romney say that 47% don't want to work.)
former South Carolina lieutenant governor and fired CNN pundit Andre Bauer, who said the poor are like stray animals begging at the back door for food, (Again Mr. Pitts gets it wrong:
"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals," Bauer said during a town hall meeting, as the Greenville News reported over the weekend. "You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."Nothing here about begging for food. Mr. Bauer was rather indelicately making the point that giving people free stuff is a disincentive from proper behavior. We shall not defend these remarks, but we will illustrate what appears to be Mr. Pitts' increasing penchant for misrepresentation.)
and Pence himself who, as a congressman, voted against increased funding for affordable housing. (Hmm. Remember Mr. Pitts' Bible quote? “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor.” Perhaps Mr. Pitts might explain how funding affordable housing has anything to do with selling one's possessions?
And by the way, has Mr. Pitts sold all his possessions?)
Or take this exhortation from the book of Hebrews: “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” (Let's quote the passage:
He. 13:1-7 Keep on loving each other as brothers. 2 Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. 3 Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are ill-treated as if you yourselves were suffering.
4 Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. 5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” [Deut. 31:6] 6 So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?” [Psalm 118:6,7] 7
Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.Now, do you see anywhere that this applies to government activity? Do you see anywhere that this is a call to Christianize government? Neither do we. The writer of Hebrews is clearly commanding the church, not Donald Trump or any president.
A little later, in Hebrews 13:7, we read, "Obey your leaders and submit to their authority." Does Mr. Pitts take this admonition to heart when it comes to President Trump and Vice President Pence?)
Follow that command and you will be “shunned or ridiculed” by people like Donald Trump, who has caged “strangers,” taken their children from them, condoned violence against them and called them “animals.” (Well, no. Even the liberal "fact check" site Snopes acknowledges that the pictures of caged children were from the Obama era, and were actually "holding centers.")
And Snopes also confirms that President Trump was referring to MS-13 gang members.)
You will also run afoul of Pence who, as governor of Indiana, tried to block Syrian refugees from that state. (He said he was directing all state agencies to stop resettling Syrian refugees in Indiana until the federal government can provide assurances that "proper security measures are in place.")
But again, when Pence warned the graduates about being derided for their beliefs he obviously had neither the poor nor the outcast in mind. (Apparently there is some sort of hypocrisy Mr. Pitts is attempting to point out. What that might be is anyone's guess, since elected officials should not be expected to implement Christian doctrine.)
No, as everyone who heard him surely understood, what he was tacitly telling them is that they should expect to be condemned for being hostile toward the LGBTQ community and blaming it on God. That’s what faith devolves to for so many these days: a requirement to oppose gay rights. (You either celebrate gays or you are anti-Christian. Too bad Mr. Pitts doesn't bother to elaborate on the Scriptural principles involved in this hyperbolic rhetoric.)
No surprise. As modeled on the political stage, religion seldom has much to do with the revolutionary dictates of the Christian Bible and everything to do with giving aid, comfort and theological cover to small, mean and exclusionary impulses. (Did either President Trump or Vice President Pence say they were doing these things because the Bible said so?)
In warning them that they will be “shunned or ridiculed,” what Pence offered those students was a faith hunkered down within itself, a victim’s faith, a whiny, put-upon, self-pitying faith disconnected from a world grown too complex and frightening to engage. (Yes, it's always irrational, narrow-minded fear; it's never principled, thoughtful consideration of the issues.)
He offered them faith as foxhole.
It is faith that should embarrass the faithful.
A nation where the stranger is demonized and the poor exploited, a nation where justice is obstructed in plain sight and public lies hammer public confidence in public institutions, a nation of nonstop emergency and commonplace crisis, (Does Mr. Pitts think all these things suddenly appeared on the world stage in the last two years? Does Mr. Pitts think that Democrats are uniquely exempt from blame? Does Mr. Pitts think his own version of Christianity ought to be implemented as law?)
a nation that has retreated from the high ground of ennobling ideals and sacred creeds, is a nation with far more to worry about than whether men have sex with men. (Few, if any people spend any time worrying about men having sex with men. It's only when it's shoved in their faces, it's only when people are forced to comply with the issue de jour, it's only when people are incessantly told they are haters, bigots, and intolerant that they begin take issue.
They simply want to be left alone, but the the LGBT community isn't interested in that. LGBTs have brought the fight to the regular man, and the regular man is simply tired of being endlessly called names.)
And a nation facing all those challenges would seem to be a nation where there is plenty of work for the faithful — indeed, for all people of conscience — to do. Such a nation stands in dire need of the energy and inventiveness of the rising generation. This critical juncture is a time for all hands on deck. It is not a time for some of us to hunker in foxholes.
It’s too bad the vice president didn’t say something like that to the graduates. He would have been right to do so.
And not just inadvertently.
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