Chamblee54

This content was published November 19, 2008. … Last friday night, The Justice House of Prayer went to Castro Street in San Francisco. They do this on a lot of friday nights. They will sing and play guitar, and sometimes they will preach. They are “Christianists”. … Last friday night was not an ordinary friday night. Ten days earlier, the voters of California voted to pass Proposition 8, which bans same sex marriage. The people on Castro Street were angry. The message of JHOP was seen as a provocation. A mob developed, and the police had to escort the JHOP to their vehicles.
There is plenty of blame to go around for this ugly incident. The video shows the police leading some people away from an angry mob. It makes the mob look ugly, and indeed there seems to be excessive reaction here. … But what about the JHOP? They knew what they were getting into. Were they looking to create Goodwill for Jesus, or were they looking to pick a fight? Why couldn’t they just take a couple of weeks off until the passions over Prop 8 cool off?
What does this say about Jesus? Anyone can read from the bible. Anyone can talk about Jesus. There needs to be trust for the person listening to the message to believe what the preachers are saying. JHOP seems to have forgotten this essential first step. They seem to be looking for a confrontation. … Jesus worship is often seen … with a lot of justification … as preaching hatred against gay people. Many of the Castro residents have struggled with Jesus worship, and come to the painful decision that they simply don’t agree with it. Others agree, but want to live the way God made them.
There are all sorts of ways to take this message, and many of them cause pain for the people being preached to. For a group of people to come into someone’s home and preach a painful religious message … without gaining the trust of these people…it just isn’t right. It does not speak well for Jesus. … When you preach to people without their trust, you speak in vain. When you do so out of lust for confrontation, you speak in vain. When your preaching causes pain to people, you speak in vain. … The third commandment speaks to this…”exodus 20:7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.”
This content was published November 16, 2008. … At about 1:30, PG called Uzi, and said to meet behind the waffle house. Today, the sunday walk was going to be in East Atlanta …. PG was true to form in making a wrong turn on the freeway, forcing a drive down Spring Street to North Avenue. There was little traffic, and soon the men were on Moreland, crossing I 20, and making that weird turn off Moreland onto Flat Shoals. … The East Atlanta shopping district is not very big. It can be covered on foot in a few minutes. There are plenty of unused buildings, and former parking lots with a fence in front. The transitionality of the neighborhood is a work in progress.
There are plenty of places to get a drink in East Atlanta. While PG was taking pictures of graffiti on the side of the Earl, Uzi said that he never did care to be in a bar on Sunday afternoon. PG thought back to his drinking days, and agreed. Sundays are for riding bikes, hiking, watching football, not cigarette smoking drunks. … On the way back to the car, Uzi saw a tree stump in a vacant lot. He decided to count the rings on the stump. By his reckoning, the tree was 130 years old when it was murdered. There was some serious fighting in this area during the War between the States. This would have been 144 years ago, or before the tree was planted.
There was once a band leader on the Tonight show named Tommy Newsom. Johnny Carson had reports of Mr. Newsom going to Central Park, and taking charisma lessons from a tree stump. The stump in East Atlanta is utterly lacking in charisma. Reports of local musicians taking charisma lessons from this tree stump are not to be believed. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Howard Liberman took the social media picture in September 1942. “Gloucester, Massachusetts. A vessel unloading fish. The man at the “niggerhead” with a rope is controlling the canvas basket that brings fish up from the hold” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah