The Godfather

The veins were bulging in his self proclaimed “eighteen inch neck”.  His pointed, shaking finger meant to be smack in the face of every man in his church.  And then he said, this was not from him…this was from God the Father, the Holy Spirit…these men in his church, it seems, are pissing off God and Seattle’s trendiest young media darling pastor is mad as hell and not going to take it any longer.  Hearing this on my iPod on the way up I-5 from Portland, I had to pull over so I could watch the video of this moment.  Here he was the paragon of the Gen X pastors screaming at a room full of millennials until he was horse, and claiming them as losers, whimps, babies, mommas boys and worse.  For over an hour!

Holy crap, as the saying goes!  This very intelligent, and accomplished young man totally missed the irony of this bombastic moment in a sermon where he largely exhorted the seated men to stop being macho, screaming, threatening bullies.

It was a classic high school moment — the school thug showing off for the girls in the audience. It was also a classic OT moment renewing the false perception of a vengeful God just waiting for us to screw up so he could smite us.  It did not remind me at all of Jesus giving up his right to life for us.