Elephant Puppets

Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus is shutting down after May 2017 due to a sharp decline in ticket sales.  It, of course, is not the only reason, but the decline corresponded with the removal of live elephants from the shows.  The elephants had become increasingly controversial due to animal rights groups allegations that the animals were mistreated by the circus workers.

The latest version of the show features life-sized elephant puppets named Queenie and Peanut. While the puppets look to be real it is obvious that they are puppets because the human operators are clearly visible. The audiences love them!

As ringmaster David Williamson says, "You can't tell the story of the circus in America without elephants."

Much the same thing is happening in many of America's churches. The true Gospel of Jesus Christ has been replaced by other emphases because some see the Gospel message as imperialistic, ethnocentric, depressing, at odds with their belief in the essential goodness of Man, or exclusivist.  On the contrary, there are strong reasons to believe that a Gospel-less Christianity is not Christian.

A Threatening Christian Assault!

At the start of 2017 one of my fellow employees placed a calendar in the employee break room. It featured beautiful high definition photographs of nature scenes. Along with each picture was a single praise verse from the Psalms. The overall tone of the calendar to a non-Christian would have been rather generic, along the order of a sweet Helen Steiner Rice poem.

Last week the calendar was taken off the wall.  The explanation from the supervisors was that there had been a complaint.  Someone had found the calendar to be offensive and threatening. Threatening?  REALLY???

Our national tradition in the United States is freedom of religion and a separation of church and state. Some have begun to believe that this means that any mention of religion must be removed from public sight.  Religion must be stifled and repressed.  Utter hypocrisy!

They, in effect, do what they accuse others of doing; they impose their religious view (agnosticism, humanism, or atheism) on others. They deny to others the right to practice or express their religious views.

Liberals and progressives scoff at and ridicule the idea that there is a War on Christianity in all corners of the United States.  In ways large and small, the evidence is ample and glaring that they are wrong or disingenuous.

Fairies Wear Boots

Fairies Wear Boots (1970) is a song by the rock music group, Black Sabbath, about a man who insists that you must believe that he saw “fairy boots” dancing with a dwarf. “You gotta believe me … I tell you no lies … I saw it, I saw it with my own two eyes.”

The lead singer of this song, Ozzy Osbourne, says that he has no idea what the song is about since he wrote the lyrics during a night of hard drugs and drinking. The only reason he knows that he wrote the lyrics is that his friends told him so. 

Goin' home, late last night

Suddenly I got a fright

Yeah I looked through a window and surprised what I saw

A fairy with boots and dancin' with a dwarf,

All right now!

Yeah, fairies wear boots and you gotta believe me

Yeah I saw it, I saw it, I tell you no lies

Yeah Fairies wear boots and you gotta believe me

I saw it, I saw it with my own two eyes,

Oh all right now!

Yeah, fairies wear boots and you gotta believe me

Yeah I saw it, I saw it, I tell you no lies

Yeah fairies wear boots and you gotta believe me

I saw it, I saw it with my own two eyes,

All right now!

So I went to the doctor

See what he could give me

He said Son, son, you've gone too far.

'Cause smokin' and trippin' is all that you do.

Fairies Wear Boots lyrics © T.R.O. INC.

In legal usage, eyewitness testimony is considered to be admissible evidence but it must be consistent with known facts, not fanciful, and the eyewitness must be examined carefully to ensure that the chance for intentional or even unintentional bias is minimal. Ancient Jewish practice insisted that eyewitness testimony must be provided by two men of unquestioned character before it could be believed.

Of course, some people will believe in almost anything (ghosts, visits by extraterrestrial beings, telepathy, fairy folk, etc.) just because someone adamantly insists that they “saw it with their own two eyes.”

Religious movements have sprung up around charismatic individuals. These movements seem to be primarily cults of personality, based primarily on the individuals themselves. The founders claim, with no verifiable proofs, to have seen visions (Edgar Cayce), or mysterious holy objects (Mormonism). Some claim to have met Ascended Masters who gave them messages for the world. There are at least twenty religions based on the UFO phenomenon. 

Christian belief in the Resurrection of Jesus is itself based on eyewitness testimony, but with a major qualitative difference. In the Bible, there are numerous reported post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus, one to a group of over 500 people AND there is even an implied challenge to naysayers. If most of the 500 were still alive at the time of Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church, all anyone had to do was hunt them down and ask them what they saw.

"After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep;"    1 Corinthians 15:6

Christians

Jenna Elfman: b. 1971, California State, USA. (aka: Jennifer Maria Butala Elfman). American television and film actress. She is married to the musician Bodhi Elfman. Raised in the Roman Catholic Church, she is now a member of the Church of Scientology.

Jeri Ryan: b. 1968, Munich, Germany. (aka: Jeri Lynn Zimmerman) American film and television actress. Roman Catholic Church.

Kate Mulgrew: b. 1955, Iowa State, USA. (aka: Katherine Kiernan Maria Mulgrew) American film and television actress. Roman Catholic Church.

Dakota Fanning: b. 1994, Georgia State, USA. (aka: Hannah Dakota Fanning) American film actress. Southern Baptist.

Elle Fanning: b. 1998, Georgia State, USA. (aka: Mary Elle Fanning) American film actress. Southern Baptist.