FAIR WARNING. This is not even close to my usual light-heartedness. It is political and strongly worded. Any request, therefore, to be removed from this mailing list will be honored without question, although it will lead me to sigh with sadness.
"The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness is like a villain with a smiling cheek, a goodly apple rotten at the heart. O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!"
William Shakespeare
The Merchant of Venice
If you've traveled with me via this website you know that I like to paint pretty things and write quirky observations regarding them. It's not deep or edgy. My stuff generally makes no stronger statement than you'd hear in a conversation between Mr. Rogers and Aunt Bea. This painting veers from that pathway, so I suppose this blog entry might as well be disruptive too.
I am not a biblical scholar or theologian by any means, but experience informs me that Shakespeare was spot on in the admonishment excerpted above from The Merchant of Venice. There is no action or speech so vile that one cannot find a single bible verse to "justify" it. Not in association with the Bible itself, rather by the cold blood sometimes found in the human heart.
So, though I am not a biblical scholar or theologian, I do at least recognize that Romans 13.1 must be read with all of Romans 12 and 13 in order to even begin to place it into the perspective Paul presumably intended. I won't get into those details here, as scholars, theologians, and clergy have done so eloquently for centuries. They've had to - because folks keep insisting on plucking verse 13.1 out of the rest of Paul's missive to justify genocide, racism and violence. It happened notably in Nazi Germany, under Apartheid, and as part of the U.S. history of slavery and Jim Crow. I cannot speak for intentions, I can only observe that it has been done repeatedly, and there is that commonsense wisdom about what happens to those who forget history.
I had really really really hoped we'd gotten beyond all that. So I was shocked to my core that in 2018 the Attorney General of the United States would in a public speech do exactly what all those slavers and gas chamber jockeys of the past did. He told his minions that Romans 13.1 makes anything the government does okay. Governments and "laws" are not simply peachy keen, they are God-mandated peachy keen. This is not citing scripture for a purpose; it is utilizing scripture as a weapon.
It is unfathomable to me that the highest legal counsel in the country would have such misguided intentions or downright disrespect for the Constitution, the people, and scripture itself. That he would apply such a long ago discredited biblical interpretation as a tactic. Moreover, it is unacceptable. Something has gotten royally screwed up in this nation if even one person considers this appropriate governance.
The title of this painting is Paul Weeps. I painted it during one furious session. It's quite imperfect. My version of Paul lazily maintains the stereotype that biblical folk all looked like Caucasian hippies. I acknowledge that, in my haste, I painted his tear with an amateurish and very heavy hand. But I wouldn't want to change a thing in this one. I purposefully rendered "Romans 13.1" to look as though it was painted on a wall with blood. I think people who use this verse to justify suffering do just that with the symbolic blood of those they choose to oppress.
I have found it impossible not to add my voice to those who are aghast.
