TD Jakes, Dallas based megachurch pastor and televangelist, wrote in a column for CNN earlier this month that as he listened to Barack wax eloquently during his victory speech he got “goose bumps.” This comment by Jakes, an evangelical minister, in turn gave me goose bumps—as in the bad ones.
You’re familiar with the icky chills, aren’t ‘cha? It’s that weird, tangible, frightening freeze you get when you wake up to the demon ghost of Leona Helmsley hovering over your bed in a Victoria’s Secret teddy at 3 AM or when you accidentally drink from the beer can your dipping buddy has been using for a spit cup. That’s the kind of tingly feeling I got when I read Jakes’ Barack goose bump bumbling gaffe.
Goose bumps, Mr. Jakes? Please. Isn’t all this “Barack gives me goose flesh” coming from male journalists, basketball team owners and now you, a bishop, a tad tweed?
Goose bumps? Have ministers and pundits been reduced to giggly fourteen year-old girls who discern Mr. Right based upon horripilation? If so, then I’m voting for 7/11’s giant cherry slurpee for president because not only did it give me severe chicken skin the other day when I was wailing on it, but I also had a 30 second brain-freezing drooling moment that was simply awesome.
Ah, the divining wand of goose bumps.
I remember an acquaintance of mine who married a whacked girl three years ago, much to his friends’, pastor’s and family’s disapproval. I asked him why the heck he was going to plow ahead and marry this chick even though all his closest friends didn’t dig her, and he said, “I can’t help it, she’s magnetic, bewitching, and she gives me goose bumps.”
Yep, it was because of this vixen’s voodoo that he “knew, just knew” that she was “God’s will for his life.” Well, 36 months later not only did she give him goose bumps but she also gave him Chlamydia, panic attacks and a whopping credit card debt, along with a little heart ache when she left him for a 19 year-old multi-tattooed girl from Starbucks.
Exactly what are we, the unenlightened cattle, to deduce from the reflex erection of the hairs on Jakes’ arm while he was watching the Obama pep rally? I tell you, heathen, what you’re supposed to construe: As a Christian who has been a part of charismatic church, when the pilomotor reflexes start popping during a church service, or a meeting, or while watching TBN, that feeling is a “sign” of the Holy Spirit’s presence, and thus God’s approval (never mind the fact that both the flesh and demons can counterfeit such a sensory experience).
As a Christian who takes the Scripture seriously, I don’t care what an accomplishment it is for Barack to win his party’s nod. In addition, I don’t give flip how great a speaker the uber-liberal junior state senator from Chi-town is, either. Nor do I care whether or not he says he’s “filled with the holy ghost and fire,” loves Jesus, babies, kittens and candy canes. What I care about is his incessant anti-Scripture/traditional American values voting record, such as . . .
1. Abortion being available to mommy in all nine months of her pregnancy (how goose bumpy, eh? Except of course for the innocent kid that gets snuffed. No goose bumps for them).
2. Parents not being notified when their 13 year-old girl goes in for an abortion (this, too, is such a goose bumpy little ditty. What progress! It’s what we’ve all been longing for, right Bishop Jakes)?
3. Opposing any and all bans on partial birth abortion, an act that includes delivery of the baby up to the head, the crushing of the baby's skull, the vacuuming of the brain matter and then completed delivery of the child's deflated cranium (chilling. How a minister can stand by a candidate who supports this is way, way beyond me. But who am I to judge? I’m a critical white Calvinist male who doesn’t have a megachurch and who is, according to the secularists and the ministers who support them, stuck in a time warp).
4. Advancing the radical homosexual activist lobby in their pursuit to destroy traditional marriage and voting against the defense of traditional marriage (sassy goose bumpages on this one, eh padre?)
5. The creation of “special rights” for people who engage in homosexuality for the sole purpose of putting them at the front of the line on issues of employment, housing and litigation.
6. The advancement of all “hate crimes” legislation, which ultimately could be used to silence pastors who believe—according to their own convictions—that homosexual behavior is . . . uh . . . wrong . . . and preach the same from biblical texts (be careful what kind of “change” you’re hoping for and supporting, Mr. Jakes).
7. The continued funding of Planned Parenthood clinics in our nation's inner cities, which are performing genocide against the populations of African Americans living there (y’all feelin’ the chills on this one?).
8. And last but not least, the goose bump generating, now well-known revelation of Obama attending a church for the last 20 years (until shamed into leaving) that propagates anti-white, anti-American and anti-Jewish blather, zany 9/11 “was our fault because we’re racists” rancor, and a “black value system,” all via a pastor who hung out with Qaddafi and honors Louis Farrakhan (I’m getting goose bumps, howzabout you?).
Finally, I have a couple of questions for all the ministers/ministries that look to or follow Jakes as a source of biblical and political inspiration: What are you going to do now that your good bishop has wandered off the scriptural path by giving mad props to Obama, who has the most liberal (anti-biblical) voting record of all U.S. senators? Do you agree with Jakes’ take that he’s the man? Do you also get goose bumps when you hear Obama speak? Do you disagree with Jakes? If so, are you going to say or do something about it, or are you just going to sit there like a good boy and say nada?
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