Without X my life would be awesome. I hate X. It is s/his’ fault. X has all the privileges. S/he is above the law. X has all the money and power. X is stupid bougie and that’s not fair. If only I could make X the same as me I’d have his or her’s wealth, power, and privilege. It’s gonna be so amazing once X is stripped of everything about him or her that I hate. Getting this done is easy. All I have to do is accuse X of everything I hate about him or her. Job done.
If only it were so. The world we exist in doesn’t bend to our will easily. It is especially contrary when the demand comes from resentment. Remember this? You get more from honey than vinegar. Yet we stock up on vinegar and eat the honey. Bully God? Tell God to come correct? Good luck with that. He made us. Eve ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge and fed some of that fruit to Adam. Did knowing of good and evil make Adam behave better? No? Funny thing, that.
God has authority we don’t have. Remember Jacob and how he wrestled with God? That match ended in a tie. So you think you can win against God’s creation and God himself? Do you, boo. I’ll keep improving my surrender and discipleship with that martyred Nazarene stone mason, Jesus.
I Hate X But Everybody is In
Yes, we are very capable creatures. We learned to master fire. We’ve built an amazing life for ourselves with unimaginable luxury and comfort. So much success that now our enemies accuse us of being gluttonous, arrogant, and in need of being knocked down. We won and some are pissed about that.
It’s so bad that the fashy thing for some is to fantasize that they are not the gender they were born with. Boys cosplay in women’s clothing, get breast implants, and cosmetic surgery to make a sausage look like a clam. Women claim to be men and also get surgery to take on the cosmetic appearance of an idealized man. Their surgery tries to take clams and make them work like sausages. It doesn’t stop there.
It started with L. Then G got mad because they were left out of the clique. So they merged to become LG. Well, LG was all fashy and fun and left B out. So B being B, s/he threw a tantrum and demanded to be included. LG, wanting to be kind, agreed and got together with B. Then the drag queens and trannies found themselves in no one’s land, belonging to no one. So they too threw a fit and accused the LGB of being haters. Can’t have that. The fashy set grew to become LGBT. Satisfied? No. So many cliques have demanded to be included that currently, the set of letters is lgbtqia2s+
There will be more. So many more that the fashy set will become too large to have any distinction. They do have three membership requirements: a grievance, a malady, and a kink. If you can say, “I hate X” then you’ve got one requirement. All my maladies aren’t fashy so I fail there. And kink? I’m over it. My life has settled into routines and unfashy things like daily prayer and reading. I can’t say I hate X because I don’t. Mostly, whatever X is the fashy thing to hate isn’t my circus nor my monkeys. And I’m old, so there is that.
The Wind Blows Where It Will
Codependency. People, the World, God, everything has to come correct so that the codependent or addict can be happy. It is a frustrating habit to have. Yet the Woke True Folk who identify as fashy are addicted to authoritarian rule over the wind and the water. They demand that everything and everyone have at least one grievance, a malady, and a kink. No one is allowed to deviate or worse, just run a manageable pace on a rat wheel. That’s not self-actualized enough.
So, as you might imagine, the WTF are tormented. God and his creation don’t bend to the whims of the WTF. The climate changes whether we use the correct grocery bags or not. The WTF chant incantations about the evils of ICE engines and insist that we can electrify the world so that the climate won’t warm too much. And one season to the next, the weather does what it will, ignoring the rituals and habits of the WTF. These fashy folk curse God so he’s not in the mood to be helpful. St. Lucifer? That old boy is contrary so good luck with bullying him around.
Hating X has a half-life similar to an addiction. It works for a while but over time is less and less effective. This is where we are. Marx, Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Gueverra, name your revolutionary. They are all dead. Their revolutions are a faded history. This current administration under Joseph Robinet Biden is the grandchild of the last socialist heyday that peaked in 1969. The Boomers are all old and getting older. The fashy outrages get more trifling with each iteration. Fighting God and the wind has turned out so well.
But I’m Entitled to My Tantrum Because I Hate X
So . . . there was a time when I thought I was correct and God was not. My grievance was against my Dad. It was his fault. What was his fault? Everything. My malady? Nothing, really. Everything a mid-century boomer twenty-something declared to be wrong with me. My major malfunctions were first-world problems. If you talked to my grandmother it was my Dad’s fault for demanding that I use my right hand when clearly I was left-handed. My Dad said I had a birth defect where my optic nerves didn’t cross-connect at the optic chiasm. So tasks that required me to use my non-dominant eye gave me trouble. And for good measure my baby sister thinks that I have Asperger’s Syndrome. Kink? Yeah, for a time.
While I lived with my grandma Catherine I was a SHYT for gay men. I got hit on by far more greying queens than women. I’m not gay. There was that weekend in Mendocino where the guys that invited me laid plans to seduce me. There was some kissing but it didn’t take me long to figure out that making out was the same regardless. So if kissing a guy was the same as kissing a girl but the guy wanted to use my shithole well . . . hard pass.
God was there the whole time. My electrical engineer and social worker Mom had some answers to my questions. But these were of the world. For my Dad, there was an equation or a system that could be designed to satisfy timeless questions like sin and suffering. It all had to be rational. But I still can’t accept that everything is reducible to syllogisms and mechanical drawings. Some of what I’ve experienced is absurd. My gay paramours? Their answer was more whiskey and sex. Eeew.
The God-Sized Hole Where Jesus Lives
My Mom framed everything in terms of a case management plan. The answer was in a SWOT analysis, some psychotherapy, and weekly follow-up meetings to measure progress. There is an X I hate. I’m not a client. I’m the son of Robert Byron Webb and Virginia Lee Picker. Jesus tells me I am a son of the Most High God. So that SWOT analysis pisses me off. And shut up with the psychotherapy and follow-up meetings. I’ll figure it out and make my own way following Christ.
So here we are. Popular culture teaches me that I hate X. What is X? Anything I choose. But I came to a choice point twenty years ago. I could hate my son’s Mom and seek vengeance against her. Or I could forgive her and take the high road. Thank God I listened to friends of mine at church and chose the high road and Christ. Forgiveness saved my life.
This isn’t a sermon or evangelism. I come from a family that doesn’t take well to demands. Get pushy and demanding with us and we get our backs up. We might even want to do what you demand. But you got in our faces and threatened us. So now we don’t care what it is you want us to do. We ain’t doing it. So I won’t demand you do anything. It is a testimony and a bit of a lament.
The End and the Beginning
We are at an end. My generation is old and getting older. We had a good run. But our time is fading. 1969 was over a half-century ago. We spend those fifty years building a young following who would accept hating X as the path to nirvana. That project has hit its half-life. More outrage is producing less progress. The elites in charge of this are as old or older than me. Age is hurting them as it will.
So there is a spiritual battle afoot. It is between the old revolutionaries of fifty years ago and a new generation that can’t fill the God-sized hole in their hearts with the orthodoxy of the Woke True Folk. God is winning. I know it doesn’t look like it. It never does at the climax of a Hero’s Tale. Have a little faith. Light is overcoming Darkness.
I am hopeful. Every time the world destroys itself God shows up. The story turns and the final battle is won just at the moment when Thanos is victorious. Goodness and light win. That’s where we are. And that’s why I don’t hate X but I do see the victory on the horizon.