The scene: I-135 and I-35 in Oklahoma. I’m cruising down the interstate, the day is getting hot, my lunch is sitting in my stomach trying to figure out what to do, and I’m listening to Christian radio because I need something to grate against. This is where I was when I decided to come up with a single question with which to stop all the Christian radio ranters I heard.

I needed just one single, solitary bit of rhetoric with which to undermine all the posturing, the pomposity, and the smugness so thick you can cut it with a knife.

At first, I thought it would be: “This is an A or B question. You have to choose one over the other. Do you actually care about people, or are you a santimonious asshole?”

But as emotionally satisfying as this question might be, it falls prey to itself. It’s also not doctrinal, and if these jerks are anything, it’s doctrinal.

I listened to one radio call-in that wasn’t really a radio call-in. It’s a guy who’s connected by phone to some other guy on the street somewhere (in this case, Hollywood of all places). His roving phone guy starts chatting up someone on the other end and says something like, “There’s a guy you should talk to… Here…” and hands off the phone. Then the radio guy does some patter and gradually starts trying to convert the hapless passerby to Christianity then and there. Sort of a spiritual bass fishing competition; hook ‘em and keep ‘em.

This is when I developed the question above. It was clear to me that he didn’t actually give a crap about his victims’ circumstance or even the status of their immortal soul. He just wanted the notch on his crucifix. In other words: He didn’t care, he was a sanctimonious asshole.

But I was listening to the way he was corralling these people in. It was with certainties. The certainty that God would punish sinners, the certainty that the only way out of sin is through Jesus…

So I developed the second question, the one that’s much better. The one that separates the love from the sanctimony. And it is this:

Is God mysterious?

If God is mysterious, then everything could change on a dime, as it did numerous times in the Bible. There are two testaments, after all. God is supposed to love you, but He also demanded that His chosen people commit genocide. The only way around these things is that God is mysterious. So is He?

If God is mysterious, then you’re free to love your fellow homo sapien on your own terms. You have no way of knowing for certain whether you’re pleasing God (the loving God who demands genocide). But if God is not mysterious, then your love is limited and proscribed, and you’re not allowed to actually love me, only to be a sanctimonious asshole who wants me to convert so you can selfishly benefit.

Discuss, if you feel like it.

I was gonna say something yesterday, but I can’t recall what it was.

OK, OK, it was a DOS attack, so no complaining…

DIGby! DIGby! DIGby!

Digby is a political ‘blogger who has remained anonymous up until this moment.

And to chase the bitterness of the previous post, here’s a cute dog, named Smidgen (AKA Widgeon, AKA Widgey)

Via digby, we get to Frederick Clarkson, who reminds us to put Paul Hill Days on our calendar.

Yes, that Paul Hill.

See, the fact that there’s a whole subculture that holds a double shotgun murderer in high regard because he murdered abortion doctors shouldn’t at all signal us that the right-wing in America sure looks like a bunch of terrorists.

Maybe I’ve just been on the road too long, flipping back and forth between Christian radio stations who alternately beg for money, tell women not to divorce their abusive husbands, beg for money, send out the message that people like me are dangerous, or that people like me are dangerous, or that people like me are dangerous.

Now, I don’t think I’m important enough to be the target of someone like Paul Hill because of my ‘transgressions,’ but chances are, neither did John Britton or James Barret.

…then happy father’s day.

So today the Colorado-based festivities wind down.

And in a little while, I’ll be zooming forth across the vastness of the Great Plains (which used to be covered with buffalo grass, and the buffalo to eat it, and then was covered with, well, nothing, which is why there was a dust bowl in the 1930s, and is now covered with invasive species like wheat).

I had originally thought I’d follow US 287 the whole way, as a sort of conceptual travel thing, but I’m just going to be boring (and bored) and take the interstate in order to make time. It’s hot out there. Salina, KS, here I come!

In the course of this party, I got a little too overloaded and I had to get a motel room. I should have just gotten the room from the outset, because this happened last year, too. I also came down with a sore throat for reasons of not getting any sleep. Usually the sore throat waits until I’m in Texas, but this time it came out early. Emergen-C and Odwalla and lots of water are my friends.

This bridge (OK, not a great picture):

Used to be here:

The upper is Lyons Ferry Bridge which crosses the mighty Snake at it’s confluence with the Palouse, erected in 1962 from the remains of a bridge over the Columbia that was replaced in 1953 when they build the Wanapum Dam, which created Wanapum Lake.

Update for clarity: Here are two pages from HistoryLink that tell the tale better than I did.

Elk Mountain, Wyoming

(See also, and here too. That Xanga has separate tags for photos and ‘blog entries makes no sense to me.)

In that last post, I mentioned the Salmon Highway, which is the road that goes to a town called Salmon, Idaho. Here’s the Salmon Highway traveling through the Big Empty of the Lemhi valley:

The town of Salmon is on the Salmon River, which, if you look on a map, runs all the way up into the mountainous eastern-central Idaho. It winds through the mountains and dumps out into the mighty Snake near Hell’s Canyon.

It’s called the Salmon river because, well, for the obvious reason. Salmon used to make their way through the mountains. They also used to spawn in the desert almost as far as Nevada, on the Owyhee river. But of course all that’s over now. Maybe to come back later, but we’ll see.