Tom’s Big Picture

Sandra Bernhardt is a Jewish lesbian hater who loathes Sarah Palin so badly she makes jokes about gang-raping this mother of four.  And who is hosting her performance?

Well, it’s a venue called “Theater J” in Washington, DC.  What is Theater J?

Hailed by The New York Times as “The Premier Theater for Premieres,” Theater J has emerged as one of the most distinctive, progressive and respected Jewish theaters on the national and international scene. A program of the Washington DC Jewish Community Center, Theater J works in collaboration with the four other components of the Washington DCJCC’s Morris Cafritz Center for the Arts, which include the Washington Jewish Film Festival and Screening Room, the Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery, the Program in Literature, Music and Dance, and Nextbook.

So the Washington DC Jewish Community Center, a supposedly religious organization, is hosting a foul-mouthed comic who, as part of her act, ridicules Palin for taking the Old Testament literally and tells her to “don’t you touch MY Old Testament, you b–h.”  Ari Roth, who runs Theater J at the Jewish Community Center, had this to say about her performance:

There is a message of hope and ecumenical tolerance at the heart of what we’re trying to achieve here. Even in Sandra’s show. It’s complicated. It isn’t hate ful. There’s hope for all of us.

What?!  You talk about wanting to see someone gang-raped because of their background and religion and this is somehow a message of “hope and ecunemical tolerance”?!  No wonder Jesus got so angry at these people and their upside-down sophistry to justify just about anything.

Now, could you imagine a Baptist church hosting a comic who makes fun of Jews in such terms?

More pointedly, if a religious organization is hosting this kind of obscenity, what kind of religion are we talking about exactly?  What kind of religion delights in rape and sexual perversion?  As Dana Carvey’s Churchlady might say, “possibly SATAN?”

Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.  John 8:44

The sad thing is that dispensationalists like Palin will probably ignore this provocation, continuing to think that this group of people are the true heirs of Abraham and Moses.  Earlier generations of Christians unpolluted by the Scofield Bible would see plainly, that these are a hate-consumed people worthy of pity and prayer, not praise and sycophancy.   But dispensationalism distorts this most natural observation, that the heirs of Abraham are those who have Abraham’s faith, i.e. Christians.

Meanwhile, another few hundred American soldiers will die fighting wars for Israel this year, enabled by a false theology, when in reality the entire Middle East is not worth a single drop of American blood as long as their dictators still like living in obscene luxury and are willing to sell us oil to make that happen.

There are a few dispensationalists who are able to see things more clearly.  One friend of mine says that even though he’s a dispensationalist, he believes Christians are not supposed to treat Jews differently than any other non-Christian people.  He says that the Old Testament promise of “I will bless those who bless you” has become a fetishistic talisman for Christian Judeophilia, a position in conflict with the explicit instructions of Paul in Romans, in the very proof-texts themselves of dispensationalist thought:

As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the father’s sakes. Romans 11:28

In other words, even though God may have a future plan for the Jewish people (something most Christians believe), until that plan is providentially fulfilled, they are enemies, just like any other false religion.  Jumping the gun and trying to prime the Armegeddon pump to bring about the rapture is nowhere authorized in Scripture.

Bottom line: They hate Sarah Palin because she’s one of us.  They hate us because they hate Christ.

The best so far, from Chris Ortiz:

But Palin frightens those on the looney Left, and the only strategy they have is to make her appear as a tongue-talking theocrat.

Again, this will not work, because you’re attacking her where she’s strongest. You’re also assuming that most of America are northeastern, latte-sipping liberals with a penchant for gay rights. You’re soooo wrong. America is much more disturbed by gay marriage than the Assemblies of God. This too will backfire.

I really like Chris’s optimism and triumphant language.

Pentecostalism is one of those things common in the Heartland, but seems very frightening to liberals in big cities.  I don’t endorse their their theology, but they’re nothing to be afraid of, and maybe they’re the means a few of the elect are brought into the hidden Church.  By making Pentecostalism a bug-a-boo, the Left shows how out-of-touch with Real America they are, while also making the more mainstream conservative denominations uncomfortable, because we know what they really think about us, don’t we?

Next is a critique of her religion from a different angle over at Lew Rockwell.  I agree somewhat, as I find support for a foreign nation far more disturbing than pretending to speak in tongues:

So, Sarah Palin proudly displays an Israeli flag in her office in Juneau, and her “Pentecostal” faith makes supporting the state of Israel a central tenet of belief, possibly even more important than the Gospel itself (you know, that odd little fact that Jesus Christ was crucified and raised to redeem humanity from its sinfulness).

This got me to thinking. Flying the flag of another country, pledging allegiance and loyalty to another polity, this is not the behavior of politicians in a powerful, world ruling empire — it’s what people in conquered nations, colonies and satellite states do. I can imagine Czech communist party officials in, say, 1980, having the Soviet flag in their office, of groveling before the USSR and the CPSU. No serious politician in Moscow (the head of the Soviet-Czechoslovak Friendship Society is not serious) would fly or wear the Czech flag — it was clear how power flowed, from Moscow to Prague. Or Senegalese politicians in the 1950s pledging their loyalty and love to France, but no one in Paris caring much about Senegal.