Asymmetrical Evangelicals

I heard an interview with Republican Senator and presidential candidate Ted Cruz not long ago in which he proclaimed — and this is a direct quote — that the problem with the US Supreme Court was that it was full of Harvard and Yale educated lawyers and "not a single evangelical Protestant."

He's right, of course. The law schools of Harvard and Yale probably — and this failing could be corrected with the inclusion of some evangelical Protestants on their respective faculties — taught them nothing of law and never even touched on the issues of Virgin birth and impermanent death. How can anyone expect to responsibly and judiciously arbitrate legal questions that affect the entire country without the prior consultation and approval of an invisible overseer who monitors (and judges) the thoughts and actions of every single person on earth? The very idea that humans are responsible for conducting their own affairs is ludicrous, not to mention blasphemous. And it's not just Supreme Court justices out there who are operating without divine sanction either. All over the country, people in positions of power and authority are willy-nilly making decisions that directly affect the lives of evangelical Protestants without celestial endorsement or supervision of any kind.

Take airline pilots for instance. Every day they zoom around the skies — God's bailiwick, by the way — relying on navigational computers, satellite information and air traffic control centers instead of prayer to guide them. With evangelical Protestants on board, Who knows how many tragic plane crashes could have been averted had the pilots only forsaken the global positioning system in favor of the evangelical Protestant system? I don't, because I'm not omniscient, but Somebody does and He knows.

There are doctors all over the nation who prescribe pills rather than prayer, who issue the laying on of hands in favor of surgery and who regularly cast their eyes upon the unclothed forms of their patients. Why? Because there are no evangelical Protestants in the AMA or on the medical certifying boards.

Engineers and technologists are applying scientific principles to practical ends without giving the barest thought to being born again which means the smartphone you spend so much time with was conceived and constructed without benefit of any of the principles of evangelical Protestantism, establishing direct lines to hell.

There are people educating our children who are not only not evangelical Protestants, but may in fact adhere to religious principles in opposition to those of evangelical Protestants. I don't have to tell you how potentially damaging this is to the youth of America. Or do I? Here it is in a nutshell: if our children, our legacy, the future custodians of our great nation, are exposed to ideas and instruction which run contrary to the expressed doctrine of evangelical Protestantism they could end up believing in things like evolution and gravity and the metric system. Imagine watching young Timmy and Sally, healthy blond teenagers, prepare for an afternoon outing. Where to, pray tell? An ice cream social, perhaps? Maybe a promenade down by the old mill stream? Nooooo-sirree-bob. "We're off to see our friends Jim and Joe get gay-married down at the Unitarian Church. It's only a few kilometers away and the Prius is fully charged."

I'm sorry if I frightened you and I realize this is a terrifying scenario but the truth is that the foes of evangelical Protestantism are lurking everywhere, ready with the twin Satanic prongs of science and reason to inculcate your children with logic and rationality, subverting all the doctrine you've worked so hard to jam down their throats. Your children are empty vessels. You can fill them with the sweet, invigorating sarsparilla of evangelical Protestantism or you can poison them with the intoxicating moonshine of secular humanism. Your choice. When your son comes back from Harvard with a husband and a degree in witchcraft, don't say I didn't warn you.

What's got Mr. Cruz so worked up is, of course, the two recent Supreme Court decisions regarding same-sex marriage and the Affordable Care Act. These are the issues that define both his campaign and worldview. Not any of the various malignant pathologies currently metastasizing throughout the country, not the horrors and injustices currently being visited on innocents around the world, but a couple of laws designed to help and include people. Which leads me to the conclusion that Ted Cruz is not a nice person. Oh, I'm sure he's a good husband and father and treats the help fairly, and observes all the course protocols that make a satisfying and civilized round of golf possible. But anyone who goes out of their way to make other people unhappy, be it through public policy or schoolyard bullying, is not a nice person. Bottom line, I believe Ted Cruz is a bully with the heart and soul of a sissy who's trying to take revenge on all the cool kids who despised him for being a fussy, supercilious melvin. He's not the first nor will he be the last to use bitterness and rancor as fuel to propel himself into a position of power from which to lash out and exact retribution for all those swirlies and missed proms. Adolf Hitler and Joseph McCarthy come to mind as do Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and Kenneth Starr. Uptight, uncool nerds who, because of their own inability to have fun, have to spoil everyone else's.

What exactly are these two laws saying anyway? What's got Ted and his intolerant ilk so damn incensed? Well, one thing they're not saying is No. Unlike most laws, which are variations on the Don't, Stop, You Cannot Have/Smoke/Do/Say/Read that theme, these laws are saying: Yes. They're saying, You there. I know we've treated you unfairly in the past and for that we're sorry. Your inclinations, while not in keeping with the majority, we acknowledge as valid and just another part of the rich tapestry that is humanity. You are hereby invited to participate in the same absurd sanctification rituals as everyone else and enjoy the concomitant legal benefits (and detriments) that derive from them. Welcome to America, you gays. It's a nice thing. It's an inclusive thing.

They're saying, You there. We decided, upon consideration, that your life, despite being unencumbered by loads of disposable income, is just as valuable and worthy of maintenance as the lives of those who can afford the exorbitant cost of health care. You can stop using the emergency room as a family doctor and dying young of preventable diseases. No longer must you prioritize core needs over the security that we all desire and deserve. Welcome to health care, you working poor, you disenfranchised, you strugglers and strivers. It's a nice thing. It's the right thing. And furthermore —

Those who are immodest can't / Be evangelical Protestant / ’Cause skin is antithetical / To Protestant evangelical / A symbol of the intolerant / Is an evangelical Protestant / ’Cause gayness is heretical / To Protestants evangelical / There ain't anything more adamant / Than an evangelical Protestant / Who finds a law inimical / To Protestants evangelical / He wants to be predominant / The evangelical Protestant / Establish a kingdom biblical / For protestants evangelical / Does the Taliban seem consonant / With the evangelical Protestant / I'd say damn near identical / With the Protestant evangelical.