Dear Fellow American Christians,

STOP WHINING! For Jesus’s sake (and I mean that literally), stop claiming that you are being “persecuted” for your faith! PLEASE! Knock. It. Off.

If you live in the U.S. and truly believe you’re being persecuted for being a Christian, one of three things is true. One, you do not understand the true meaning of the word “persecution.” Two, you have no basis for comparison between your experience and the experience of people who really are persecuted. Or three, you are an entitled, thin-skinned crybaby.

We can start with the first problem. “Persecution” is defined as punishment or harassment meant to inflict injury, grief, or suffering. Never in all my 41 years as a Christian has another person of any nationality, religion, or political persuasion ever hurt me physically or emotionally because of my personal faith. Not once. Have people annoyed me? Sure. (Usually my fellow Christians, though.) Teased me? Not that I can remember, but maybe. Certainly not enough to make a lasting impression, though, so I don’t see how it could qualify as “persecution.”

Alright, so the second issue stems from a lack of awareness. Perhaps many of you are just ignorant of what actual persecution looks like. Maybe you should reread your Bible. Jesus was persecuted. It was ugly, violent, nightmarish. He was beaten, spit on, nailed to a cross, stabbed.  Paul was imprisoned and beheaded. Many early Christians were tortured and executed. Real persecution was common for early followers of Jesus.

In modern times, true persecution is still ugly, violent, and nightmarish. You think that you’re persecuted as a Christian in the United States? Try being a Christian in Indonesia or Egypt. Try being a girl in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Try being gay in a rural or African-American community. Try being black in South Africa.

I’ve had the good fortune to work with an Indonesian man who is finishing graduate degree in social work. He is Muslim, but he is a liberal with many friends of different stripes. He told me about his Christian friends in Jakarta who have had to rebuild their tiny church three times in five years because the conservative Muslim majority keeps burning it down. I also was lucky to work with a young Coptic Christian whose family had to flee Egypt last year. Her father, an active member of the Christian church in her town, began receiving death threats after the Arab Spring. That is what Christians in other countries know as persecution.

You think you’re being persecuted? By whom? Jason Collins and the gays? Obama and the liberals? Jon Stewart and the Jews? Did ESPN hurt your feelings because they gave Jason Collins a couple days of attention when he came out as the first gay NBA player? After poor Tim Tebow got no press at all? Oh, wait. He did get press. Tebow got negative press? Well, not really. I’d say he got annoyed press. Tebow wasn’t the first Christian athlete, folks. In fact, there’s an entire Fellowship of Christian Athletes. And remember Kurt Warner? How about Joe Gibbs? Mariano Rivera? Derek Fisher? Or all the hundreds of athletes who thank God for their good fortune after a win? If Tebow did get negative press, it was because he acted like he was special, like he deserved attention for praying, like he was the only Christian on the field. And maybe also because he’s just not built for the NFL.

Jason Collins is the first guy to come out as homosexual in any major American team sport. And all the negative, mean-spirited comments I’ve seen about him have come from “Christians.” And while the press has been pretty kind in a politically correct way, I’d wager that fans, teammates, and NBA administrators will be less so. We’ll see. But if good, loving Christians can’t be supportive of Jason Collins, my guess is that he’s in for a rough time.

Hopefully, he won’t be beaten and left for dead like Matthew Shepard who was truly persecuted for his sexuality. Likewise, I hope poor Tim Tebow will never have acid thrown in his face for being a Christian as girls in Arab countries often do when they dare to go to school. I also pray no American Christians will have their businesses ransacked or burned as blacks in South Africa or Jews in Eastern Europe have often experienced.

See, THAT is what persecution looks like, my fellow Christians. It looks bloody. Burned. Broken. Anguished. Dead.

Which brings me to that third point. Y’all need to stop whining and grow up. Nobody promised you that, as a Christian, you’d never get your feelings hurt. Jesus certainly never promised that because he knew that would be a lie. You are lucky to live in the United States. You need to remember that. The next time you want to cry “Persecution!” because somebody teased you, questioned you, or criticized your faith, stop. Remember, we’re still the majority in this country if we don’t alienate all the potential converts with our entitled whining.

Shut up. Turn the other cheek. Remember what real persecution looks like.

It looks like a cross.

Endor and Naboo versus Tatooine and Hoth.

Ewoks and Gungans versus Sand People and Tauntauns.

Most Star Wars fans would readily admit that they prefer Tatooine and Hoth and their inhabitants to anything featuring Endor or Naboo. Among the geeks, the sappy ending of Return of the Jedi with its dancing teddy bears and Episode One’s ridiculous Jar Jar Binks are considered travesties that nearly sunk George Lucas’ epic.

Judging from my Facebook wall, though, most people seem to want to live on Endor or Naboo. They post all these maudlin, cheesy pictures of unicorns and rainbows. They share positive thinking memes with rainbows and puppies. They wish away winter for “flip-flop weather” and sunshine. And I fight my gag reflex.

Things that make other people giddy with joy leave me cold or make shudder. Let me show you what I mean. Here is a list:

• Morning
• Sunshine
• Warm weather
• Dogs
• Sleeping with windows open
• Dinners out with groups of friends

Does this list make you happy? You’re not alone. Seems like 99% of my 500 Facebook friends love all that crap too.

I don’t.

In fact, a few of those things would be on a list of things I despise. Mornings? Ugh. Sunshine, well, thanks to a childhood eye injury, bright light gives me a migraine. Warm weather? No, thanks. I’m always hot anyway, plus I don’t want to see my neighbor’s fat rolls in a tank top or Uncle Bob’s hairy, sweaty back as he mows the laws. Not to mention the fact that warm weather makes people temperamental, loud, and obnoxious.

Dogs would not be on my “hate list,” but their barking sure would be. You know that show, Inside the Actor’s Studio? And the host acts famous actors what sound they hate? Yeah, dogs barking would be on that list. Growing up, I was traumatized by too many nasty neighborhood dogs to ever truly trust any of them, but I have made a few canine friends over the years.  Still, I scroll right past most dog pics on my Facebook wall, and if you’re one of those people who has to rush home from a wedding, a holiday, or a party to take care of poor little Snookems who might be lonely because you’ve been gone for two hours, I’m not sure we can ever be real friends.

Now sleeping with the windows open does SOUND nice. We did have a long, cold March, so I understood when people were excitedly posting about getting to open up their windows at last. Unfortunately, in our house, leaving the windows open after sundown is an invitation for a major asthma attack and/or laryngitis.

Dinners out with groups of friends always sound like a great idea too. And I admit that when I see Facebook pics of some of my friends eating at a long table at some restaurant, I get a momentary pang of envy. Then I remember: I HATE going to restaurants with big groups of people! First, those pictures on my wall are lies of perspective. Sure, it looks great: all those friends gathered together, enjoying food I didn’t have to cook, smiling happily for the camera. But most of the time, if you’re actually sitting at the long table, you don’t get to talk to even half the people gathered. (Since I usually have to bring my kids with me, two of the people are always my own ubiquitous offspring.) That is, if you can even hear your friends. The kinds of restaurants where people tend to gather for such chatty, informal meals are usually so noisy, I can’t hear anyone beyond the person next to me. And then, there’s the problem of service. As a former server, I remember all too well the feeling I got whenever “a 10-top” or larger. I cringe every time one of my friends asks for another drink, sends back an order or makes a special request from the kitchen. Too many painful memories. So whenever my parents or husband ask what I want to do for my birthday, I tend to beg for a gathering at home. I want to be able to see ALL my friends, hear what they say and not worry about the server spitting in their drinks in an act of passive-aggressive frustration.

After all that, I guess it’s no wonder that my friends think I’m a morose freak.

Ahhh,  but here’s the twist. My friends hate things I LOVE!

• Long, dark nights
• Cold weather
• Snow
• Cooking
• Hosting large parties
• Grocery shopping
• Laundry
• Grammar
• Public speaking
• Writing essays
• Classic literature
• Brussels sprouts
• Snakes
• Old movies
• Teenagers
• Desolate, empty landscapes

So when my wall is full of whiny grumblings about how much people hate winter, how much they hate black and white films, how much they hate doing laundry or going grocery shopping, I’m shaking my head, wondering what is WRONG with these people?!

I try to toe the line, though. People get mad if I post about how much I love snow; contrariwise, people get mad if I complain about the travesty that is Daylight Savings Time. Instead, I keep my preferences quiet these days, posting on individuals’ walls rather than on my own. I know the few soul mates who share my love of the long, cold nights of winter, classic books and films, homework and Tatooine-like deserts. I share my strange loves with them individually. We are a dark and twisted group, but there should be room in the world for us. We’re heavy, so we provide some balance to those light-hearted folks who cannot sustain their smiles in shadows.  Even George Lucas recognized that a universe with too many goody-goody Jedi Knights could not be maintained. The Force must have its Dark Side.

If you are not a fan of either team in the Super Bowl (nor of the halftime act), you have a few options to make the show more fun. You can host a party, go to a party, or make bets on the game (or pretty much on any aspect of the broadcast). If you just sit at home and watch the game in the same way you watched 60 or more previous regular-season games, you have a more objective view of the whole event. That was me this year. My hubby is on call this weekend, so we couldn’t do much of anything. I made some snacks, and we watched the game on the same couch, in the same room, in much the same way as I watched nearly every other game since August. Overall, it was okay.

The Game

As I said, I didn’t have strong feelings either way. My hubby did. He hates both teams; they make a lot of dirty tackles. The game was, as Bob Costas euphemistically put it, “chippy,” even early on. The refs kept pretty busy separating players, and one of the officials got shoved for his efforts. The first half was a rout. Things got a little more interesting in the second half, but if you were an objective, experienced observer, you could see that San Francisco had a slim-to-none chance of pulling this off. The 49ers kept making sloppy mistakes that led to costly penalties. Baltimore’s defense was getting away with murder. Kaepernick was a nervous colt. Flacco was having a good night. Over the years, I’ve watched many games in which I had no favorite that got me excited nonetheless. Last night’s game wasn’t one of them.

The Commercials

A friend of mine who is in marketing tweeted, “Creativity is dead.” I agree. This year’s crop of commercials was, overall, safe and predictable. The standouts were either disgusting (Thanks a lot, GoDaddy, for running my son out of the room) or weepy (the Budweiser Clydesdale made me tear up). Many of the ads were out weeks ago on the web, so the punch lines were already stale. I did laugh at the M&M “I Would Do Anything for Love” spot, but that was very early on. Many other ads were just derivatives of previous spots (still with e-Trade baby?) or pop culture trends (I like “Gangnam Style,” but can’t we be done with it now?). With just a couple minor exceptions, I agree with Amber Lee’s evaluations.

Halftime

First, let me announce loud and clear (because some of my friends are already really annoyed with my opinion on halftime) that I like Beyonce. I have a couple of her songs on my iPod. She’s beautiful. She’s a great dancer. She’s got a great voice. But I thought the halftime show was just okay. First, I have long believed that the Super Bowl halftime act should be mainstream, American pop-rock. Prince, Springsteen, Michael Jackson, Tom Petty, Madonna. Good. Country, hip-hop, and non-American acts marginalize your audience. You have a really broad spectrum to appeal to, and very specific musical styles aren’t going to do it. I knew three of the songs Beyonce did, and “Halo,” while a pretty ballad that she performed well, was a low note on which to end the show. She brought out Destiny’s Child, only to make them sing HER songs, which seemed a bit rude. The special effects were cool, but the sound was AWFUL. (My musician hubby was very annoyed.) Overall, I was a bit offended by the peep-show quality of the performance. The whole stage was full of beautiful women. There were some “musicians,” but only a couple were actually playing; most weren’t even holding the instruments properly. All the others were decked in sky-high heels and black leather a la Madonna in the “Open Your Heart” video, dancing and vamping for the men in the crowd. Ew. But at least Beyonce didn’t lip-synch; that seemed to the most important thing about her performance. And she was definitely better than the Black-Eyed Peas.

The Power Outage

Up to that point, the blackout in the Super Dome was the part of the broadcast I found most entertaining. I needed a break from Phil Simms. (Does ANY NFL fan like Phil Simms? What’s he doing broadcasting the championship anyway? All I can say for him is that he’s marginally better than Chris Collinsworth.) Watching the CBS crew scramble was the best play up to that point. I live in Indianapolis, so my Facebook and Twitter instantly lit up with “Well, at least Lucas Oil Stadium pays their light bill,” “Our Super Bowl had electricity. For the whole game.” and “This year’s Indy 500 will be well lit.” “Ray Lewis killed the lights” and variations on that theme popped up quite a bit. The whole situation was an amusing diversion.

The Outcome

I still have a Jim Harbaugh jersey from his time as the QB for the Indianapolis Colts. I guess I would have preferred to see him win. (According to their brother-in-law, my beloved Hoosiers’ coach Tom Crean, the Harbaugh brothers are crazy-competitive, so I worry about their relationship now!) But Baltimore’s team includes a player from my high school, so it was nice to see a hometown kid get a Super Bowl ring.

Unfortunately, Baltimore also includes Ray Lewis. I feel the same about his winning a championship as I would if OJ Simpson had won one after he was found innocent of murder. And Lewis’ Bible-thumping, God-loves-me-best speeches seem to have no effect on his on-field ethics, but I’m sure he’ll feel quite justified now. As one of my minister-friends put it: “Positive outcomes do not validate bad theology. In other words, The fact that the Ravens won doesn’t PROVE anything. Just because Ray Lewis says God is on his side and his side won the game, doesn’t mean that God is on his side.” But he’ll retire now, on top, sure that his “journey” proves he’s been right about all the decisions he’s made. Even though some of those decisions involved a double-murder.

I avoided #52’s tearful farewells (and Joe Flacco’s f-bomb) by flipping the channel the moment the score was final. Then I watched the episode of “Downton Abbey” I had DVR’d. It was the best entertainment of the night.

Ugh, this topic makes me tired and slightly nauseous. In fact, after the nightmare of Newtown, I had to bail out of Facebook for several weeks. The posts, from both the anti-gun lobby and the pro-gun lobby, were pushing me toward a nervous breakdown. Every day I had to drop my baby girl off at her elementary school. I would wave to her principal (a wonderful man who had coached my son’s Little League team) and see Dawn Hochsprung. I would smile at her music teacher (a young lady I’ve known since she was my daughter’s age) and see Maryrose Kristopik. I would watch my second-grader walk through those doors and see all those precious children gunned down by a mentally messed-up young man whose mama loved guns and taught him how to shoot really well. To come home and read all these posts on my Facebook wall was too much.

So I left Facebook, quit watching the news, stopped reading my Reuters and NPR feeds on my phone. I prayed that everyone would calm down. At least they might stop bombarding me with posts about a subject that, even in the best of times, makes my heart race.

I hate guns.

If you have read my blog before, that’s old news. I won’t re-hash.

Recently, thanks to Alex Jones’ total meltdown with Piers Morgan, the pro-gun/NRA folks’ chief argument has become “We need to be armed against the possibility that our government is taken over by tyrants.”

Because that happens a lot.

But even if it did, we’d be screwed.

See, the irony here is that the same people who scream that we have to have guns in case of a dictatorial government takeover tend to be the same people who want a really well-funded military. So in the remote case that our government WERE taken over by tyrants, we are, pardon my French, totally f—ed. Those tyrants will have access to weapons of mass destruction, so happily funded by neo-cons, that Saddam Hussein could only have dreamed of. And nobody’s little arsenal is going to stand a chance.

Meanwhile, we have millions of people with ridiculous, unnecessary weapons. Yes, by and large, they are law-abiding citizens. I know several responsible gun-owners who would never bust into a school, a movie, theater, a mall, and start using innocent people for target practice. But let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, there was a woman. She was smart, well-educated, compassionate. She loved her husband and her child, and she would never let anyone hurt her family.

When she was pregnant with her second child, however, she got sick with a very rare condition. None of her doctors could figure out what was wrong. But something terrible was happening to the woman’s brain. She stopped sleeping. She started seeing “ghosts.” She started hearing voices. And those voices told her terrible things. They told her she could not possibly carry her baby to term. They told her she had to die. They told her that her husband and son would be sad, though, so she should take them with her. She argued with the voices. She couldn’t watch her beloved little family die. Poison. Fire. Kitchen knife. They were too slow. Too painful. Too dreadful. She couldn’t kill them like that. If only she had a gun…

Luckily, I didn’t.

And my husband found me in the kitchen with a knife and sent me to the E.R. where I was, by the grace of God, treated by a doctor who realized what was wrong with me. One pill a day, and I was right as rain.

Eight years later, I think about those nightmarish weeks when my brain didn’t feel right in my skull, when I didn’t sleep for weeks, when I saw things that weren’t there, when I heard scary little voice that told me to kill people. It doesn’t seem real. I hate guns, and I adore my family. I would never dream of hurting anyone. Could that have been me?

And then I see “monsters” like James Holmes and Adam Lanza. “Bad guys” with guns who could’ve been stopped by “good guys” with guns. What a quaint notion. Obviously, these “bad” people weren’t ALWAYS bad. They went many years without killing anyone with their precious guns. At one point, they would likely have been considered the kind of people pro-gun folks WANT to own weapons. To protect people from the bad guys. Until they snapped. Then they become the bad guys. They wear black hats. Easy to recognize. Especially when they’re reloading their huge clips designed to kill lots of people fast.

Obviously, the kind of mental breakdown I experienced is far more common than a tyrannical government takeover. Most rational people don’t want to make all guns illegal, but this argument against ANY legislation is naive, paranoid and short-sighted. If the US government wants to take you out, your gun won’t save you. But if your mom, your brother, your husband snaps and suddenly becomes one of the “bad guys,” your gun will absolutely kill you.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I write to you as an independent voter from Indiana. Although I voted for President Obama, I also voted for several Republicans in last week’s elections. Since I started voting in 1990, I have prided myself on splitting my ticket, thinking carefully about the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate, regardless of party. Sadly, your party is putting forth fewer and fewer candidates who represent thoughtful, moderate politics, candidates who will get things done in Washington. Every election, my ballot becomes more and more blue, even though my opinions on the issues have not changed.

This year, your party went on a witch hunt against its own. Your constituents, fueled by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and other talking heads, went on a crusade for ideological purity and took down any moderate in their path. My state lost a Senatorial icon for whom I had voted in every election - Richard Lugar. He was replaced with the extremist Richard Mourdock. His comments on rape were bad enough, but the main reason I could never vote for him were two other more egregious comments: “I certainly think bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view” and “The highlight of politics is to inflict my opinion on someone else.” That took him off my ballot.

Mitt Romney, at least the Mitt Romney who was governor of Massachusetts, was an intriguing choice as your presidential candidate. Had he remained the Governor Romney of Massachusetts I had become familiar with, I might have voted for him. However, like John McCain four years ago, Romney was disfigured by your party. He had to pander to your base, which is growing ever more virulent. What some people saw as a “flip-flop,” I recognized as a Directive from the Committee: “Gov. Romney must say THIS, not THAT, if he wants to win our base.” Last year, as I watched your candidates’ debates, I hoped Jon Huntsman would win; he was brilliant, experienced and thoughtful. Now I’m glad he did not because you would have put him through the same machine through which you yanked McCain and Romney; I doubt Huntsman would’ve come out of your primaries a viable candidate, just as Romney did not.

But the real purpose of my letter is this: I am begging you to take control of your brand, your message and your base.

For too long you have allowed Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and the like to represent your brand and spread your message. It is not working. You will continue to lose more and more of the middle until you take back control of your brand.

You need to step up and speak against ridiculous pronouncements of doom by firebrand, right-wing ministers who insist that Armageddon is coming because the Democrats won the Presidency! You need to say SOMETHING when your extremist constituents start petitions to secede from the United States. (Didn’t we do that once? Poor Abe Lincoln must be rolling over in his grave, watching his own party undo the very principles for which he fought so valiantly.)

You need to insist upon some intellect from your constituency. The smart, small-efficient-government guys I used to love are being drowned out by the crazies screaming about “dropping off fiscal cliffs!” and “Obamacare is socialist!” and “the end of democracy!”

You have created a Frankenstein monster of cowboy capitalists, anarchist militiamen, atheist Ayn Rand acolytes, pro-life evangelicals, and paranoid old white folks who watch Fox News (a.k.a. Tea Partiers). If you don’t figure out a way to calm this monster down, it will to continue to frighten the moderates and alienate the rest of our nation until your party becomes completely obsolete.

I’m not trying to be cute or disingenuous. I truly want your party to be a viable option for those of us in the middle. As far as I’m concerned, the more parties, the better. But right now, as one of your more intelligent strategists put it, “”Republicans are a Mad Men party in a Modern Family America,” (Matthew Dowd as cited in Tampa Bay Times, 11/11/12). Stop letting the crazies and the well-paid talking heads be the face of your party.  Take control and bring some sanity back to the GOP for the good of the USA.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Mahoney