… And apparently, He talks back:
[audio:http://horsesass.org/wp-content/uploads/susietalkstogod.mp3]Susie talks about her time as the weekend newscaster in Hawaii, and how demoralizing it was when she didn’t get the weeknight slot when it opened up. And so of course, she turned to God.
… And about that time I was so discouraged, I found myself on my knees to the Lord one day saying, “Lord, I am ready; I am professionally ready to move on. Why aren’t you doing it for me?”
And He told me something then that I have never forgotten, and I think it’s of tremendous significance to all of us no matter where we are, and He said: “It’s fine, I want you to be professionally ready for your job, but it’s also essential that you be spiritually ready for the next step.”
And I realized that I was going to be in the public eye, and as such I was going to be an ambassador in a sense for Him. And so, I realize that there are other things more important or as important as being professionally ready for anything. And that is to be spiritually ready.
I’ve got to admit that I’ve never really gotten the whole God thing, but a couple of things stand out to me, besides the fact that when Suzie talks to God, He matter of factly talks back. (I mean, if I started quoting God in my blog posts, folks would accuse me of being a liar or a lunatic… but maybe she just meant this metaphorically?)
First, what is this thing with Christians praying for touchdowns and lottery tickets and news anchor jobs, and thinking that God doesn’t have more important things to do than answer their petty, materialistic prayers? Children are starving, people are dying of horrible diseases, we’re on the verge of catastrophic climate change, and somehow I’m to believe that the Almighty Lord is taking sides in NFL games (regular season, no less), or advancing one news anchor’s career over another?
“Why aren’t you doing this for me?” Susie asks God, to which the appropriate response might have been “Leave me alone, I’m busy preventing a giant asteroid from wiping your species off the face of the earth.”
The other thing that strikes me about this snippet is the intended message… that there are more important things than being “professionally ready” for your job. And that is to be “spiritually ready.”
So I guess, in that sense, despite her utter lack of adequate professional experience, Susie believes herself to be perfectly qualified to serve as King County Executive.
UPDATE:
It occurs to me that I might still have a radio show today, if only I had prayed.
Like Sarah Palin
Ron Sims, our former King County executive was a Christian, an ordained Baptist minister who presumably talked to God. I don’t think he prayed enough.
Naw, you don’t actually have to pray… just talk about it. Incessantly!
If these goons really prayed that much, God would have surely struck them down with a bolt of lightning and a divine STFU!
Sounds like just a manner of speaking among people who want to show that they are true believers, coded language from one fundamentalist to another.
Fundamentalist preachers speak this way all the time, showing that they have so much faith and are so humble that they can hear God in their hearts.
So when you’re denied a promotion and you pick yourself up and get right back into the game, it’s God who told you to do that, and not your big ego. Nothing lacks a Purpose, so it goes.
While I believe Susan is a complete whack-job, I do think she meant “and He said” metaphorically. I.e. that she didn’t actually hear a voice.
A lot of fundamentalist Christians speak this way. That they prayed for something, didn’t get it, and explain it as “and God said ‘not today, Bob, I have another plan for you.'” It’s not literal.
Still a whack-job though.
Sarah Silverman is quitting as governor of Alaska? Pray God that it not be true.
When and where did God say he had a plan? Maybe his plan is for things to happen irrationally and without any ryhyme or reason.
Maybe progressive subversive libtardos need God to deliver the lightning so they can hear the thunder of His Word. Butt, God don’t work like that. God talked to Elijah in the still small voice. So when someone else claims to hear God speak to them, they go apoplectic.
It’s no wonder progressives never hear God!
8 Pud
You can’t hear a fairy tale. You can only imagine that you are the prince or princess in one.
Why smear prayer with a broad brush? It indicates a person with no capacity for quiet reflection.
#8 Er…I can’t speak for progressives or any other group. But I don’t hear your god because it’s not real. It’s just story dude. Get a grip. I don’t hear fictional characters in my head. Supernatural tales told 3,000 years ago to explain lightening made sense at the time. But the fact that so many people still believe in a magical invisible sky being is sad. I know a LOT of people believe in magic, left right and center (including Bush, Obama, the 9/11 hijackers, and all of Mississippi)…but my personal take is, grow up.
Now if she prayed to the ONLY true god…the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM, all praise his noodley appendages) then she’d have gotten that job!
@10: He’s not smearing prayer with a “broad brush”, Joel. He’s condemning folks that confuse God with Santa Claus.
The voice Butt Putty hears belongs to *Bull Dog and the words he hears is “bend over and grab your ankles.”
*You know, that mysterious reporter who got front stage at Bush Admin press briefings and who turned out to be a professional male escort.
@8 Uhhhhhh, Puddy? Those voices you’ve been hearing?
They’re not God. There may be medication that can help.
@12: THWACK! Well done.
Joel’s Catholic, which really means he doesn’t know diddly about church history and apparently escaped the notice of the local pedo…, er, priest.
Some of us think of God not just in narcissistic terms as a human persona, but rather as the sum total of positive principles governing us and the universe, by which, from the first glimmer of our universe things somehow led to us sitting here at our computers debating how we should best get from one day to the next. It’s also a tenet of many religions, including the one I ascribe to, that God in his/her/its wholeness is something that we in our state of earthly consciousness couln’t possibly comprehend. We see bits and pieces, rather like the blind men trying to describe an elephant.
To many of us, the appearance of our Creator in human form who walked among us 20 centuries ago, telling people to love their neighbors and getting tortured and killed for his trouble, is an important part of it. So, to many of us, is quantum physics.
To stick up for her a bit – it does say (paraphrasing) that “God will give you anything that you ask for in Jesus’ name.” There isn’t anything about spirituality in there. You can imagine her shock when he had the gall to make her wait.
@15 Actually, Joel’s Episcopalian. I’m Catholic, thank you very much, and no, it hasn’t escaped my attention that my church has some serious issues and bad apples–just like every other human institution since the dawn of history. We’re all imperfect, and so is most everything we do.
The point is to keep trying to do better.
The christian bashing is getting boring. How come nobody has some good zingers about about hindu, islam, “mother earth” or dream-catchers?
Oh, and what was all that jesus talk at Obama’s inauguration?
As a progressive and a spiritual person I feel I must respond to Joel…
I find prayer and spiritual reflection a personal part of my life; one that does not need affirmation or validation by bringing it into the public sphere. When I see people prance their religion into the open, I must pause to consider their motives. My comment, however crass, was meant to show this. Recent events involving the blatant hypocrisy of supposed Christian leaders illustrates my point.
It’s all a show. A circus with clowns, freaks, and tightrope artists using slight of hand, pious words, tears and long faces to grift the masses. I firmly believe the only true Christian is the one who practices it in silence. Those who shout it from the mountain top do so to drown out their own shortcomings.
I am no longer Christian for that reason. My faith has but one disciple. I am Pope, priest and alter boy in a religion of one. I seek no followers nor devotees.
The history of the world would have been a might less bloody had Jesus’ followers taken this approach.
Christians believe that God is omnipotent, all powerful. If this is true, then it only follows that He is able to speak to each of us. God should be capable of disseminating His message without any filter, true? Why would such a powerful deity need intermediaries? What purpose do priests and ministers serve with respect to delivering God’s message?
Religion is personal, like bodily functions. You don’t want to hear about mine and I certainly don’t want to hear about yours.
Liquid Arty Farty, Are those racetracks messing with your mind again?
Hmmm… some day you will be shocked and amazed at the two witnesses who will proclaim God and Jesus just before Jesus comes again. Then your “fairy tale” will have the full truth in it. You’ll look up and say “ut oh, Puddy was right”.
Remember libtardo progressives call on Jesus when it’s “appropriate”. But have you noticed after 42 years the Air Force is not allowed to attend The God and Country Family Festival in Nampa, Idaho becuz of “the messiah” and his crew said so. Yet, these same bozos used the Air Force and flew over NYC, caused a mini 9/11 panic all because they wanted “image shots”.
Go figger that!
I have a story to share.
I have a close relative who is of the evangelical sort. Goes to weekly Bible Study and early Sunday Service and serves as a Sunday School Teacher after.
Several years ago, in his words, he “Prayed long and hard and put life in God’s hands.” He left a well-paid job to start his own company because that was, “What God wanted me to do.” (Funny how 99% of the time God wants the individual to do EXACTLY what the individual desires.)
So now, I have a close relative who’s 40, had to sell his house at a financial loss, has next to no income and lives by the graces of a friend in a spare bedroom.
Now if that sort of faith brings you inner peace then who am I to judge. But I can’t help thinking listening to God wasn’t the best move.
(It also amuses me that some folks who like to talk about “personal responsibility” also feel that God has a plan for them so any bumps on the road aren’t due to their, actions, “It’s God’s plan.”)
WWBD?
Jesus Fucking Christ.
I’m with brother David @ 20.
the puddybiotch can take his silly superstition and jam it up his ass.
Speaking of Sarah, Peggy Noonan wrote the following:
I’m sure that Puddy, the last hope of the Republican party, will soon be by to explain how Peggy Noonan is really a liberal-fascist Democrat, in the same wing of the party as Alan Greenspan, no doubt.
@26 Puddy doesn’t appear to be able to explain his way out of a paper bag. If he were a preacher, it would be the biggest boon to atheism in decades.
Oh, wait…maybe he thinks he is. He probably thinks we’re his oh-so-attentive, devoted flock.
Well, sometimes God sends people on strange ministries indeed.
Quite a few of the antics and babblings of the right-wing Darbyites rather suggests something other than honest faith. I can’t help but think that most of ’em, deep down in their hearts, know that the whole neocon manifesto is unworkable, that a purely capitalist society based on greed is unsustainable, and that most of ’em aren’t going to experience some Horatio Algeresque climb up the ladder of wealth and social status. In fact, like many of us they’re scared shitless that they’re going to die hungry, sick and alone in a world that’s fouled up and falling apart. Rather than face that head-on, they choose to cling to mutual support of a magical belief system that says the earth will somehow cough up unlimited resources, or that because they’ve partaken of Christ’s flesh and blood they’re oh, so extra “special”. So special, in fact, that they’re going to be rescued by The Rapture before the going gets really tough. Either that, or God’s going to somehow funnel the world’s goodies their way and that all those “other” people can go suck an egg.
Most of you know I’m no fan of the likes of Sarah Palin, neither am I a fan of a lot of the televangelists in this country, or those that seek to combine religion and politics in this country (usually with poor outcomes for both). Heck, I’m even a Democrat!
But as I have also said before, I am an Evangelical Christian, and I do pray. I try for the bibical goal to “pray without ceasing”, (I Thessalonians 5:17), but I do fall far short of that. And I do usually receive answers from God, answers which I receive in my spirit, or in the form of future events, not audibly.
There was one time, however, when walking through a tree-lined path on a college campus, when I was praying and I heard an audible answer form God. But I wouldn’t call it a wonderful experience – it wasn’t even particularly pleasant. It was a warning that I had to change my heart and actions, or suffer dire consequences. It stopped me in my tracks, my chest felt like it was gripped in a block of ice, and I was sweating from fear on an otherwise cool day. To say that I repented immediately is a bit of an understatement.
So I wouldn’t dismiss Hutchinson’s story, it’s personal to her. But that doesn’t mean I would vote for her. (I couldn’t anyway, I live in Snohomish County.)
I don’t think God minds it when we bring to him our rather petty problems – like a good Father, he wants his children to talk to them about what’s troubling them. I found it rather liberating when I realized I could talk to God the same way Tevye did in “Fiddler in the Roof”:
Quotes for Tevye (Character)from Fiddler on the Roof (1971) on IMDB
Erratum: “Leave me alone, I’m busy preventing a giant asteroid from wiping your species off the face of the earth” should be, “Leave Me alone, I’m busy preventing a giant asteroid from wiping your species off the face of the earth,” just in case.
I think you missed her point, Goldy. She just told you what her agenda will be if she becomes King County Executive: “I was going to be an ambassador in a sense for Him.” In other words, she views the office as a pulpit.
Where does this broad get off assuming God is a male? Everyone knows God is a “She.” Apparently Hutch didn’t get the word on that. Which makes me think she’s bullshitting when she claims to have conversations with God. Next time I see the Great Mother Rabbit Spirit, a/k/a God, I’m going to ask Her about it.
@5 If these Bible-thumpers speak about God metaphorically all the time, why do they take the Bible so literally? Seems like a contradiction to, on one hand, say you heard God speak to you when you didn’t, but on the other hand, to believe the Earth was created 6,600 years ago when overwhelming scientific evidence says it wasn’t.
For example, we know dinosaurs existed because we find their bones; but if the Earth is only 6,600 years old, how come the people in the Bible who lived thousands of years ago didn’t see dinosaurs?
@10 Who’s smearing prayer, Joel? Goldy is only criticizing people who abuse prayer by praying for things unworthy of God’s attention.
I can prove God exists. Last October I prayed Obama would win, and he did! Then I got greedy and prayed the Democrats would get 60 seats in the Senate, and they did! So, when something is really really important, sometimes you can get it by praying for it.
Now if a Republican tells you God is on his side, ask him if he prayed for McCain and Palin to win, and if he says yes then ask him how that worked out for him.
I’ve never met a Republican who didn’t think God is on his side. In World War 2, some Nazi soldiers went into combat wearing belt buckles that said, “Gott mitt uns.” We know this because our soldiers took the buckles off their rotting dead bodies. Just because someone thinks God is on his side doesn’t mean She is.
You’ll be better off if you spend some time trying to figure out whether you’re on God’s side.
@30 “those that seek to combine religion and politics in this country”
You forgot to mention those that seek to combine religion and money.
The real problem I have with someone saying they have had a conversation with God and that he (she?) has answered is how to prove it. I mean if it real then maybe I should change to that particular brand of Christianity. But what if it is just a lie? Or if we have a case of insanity? How do I tell the difference? How would anyone else know? Think Jonestown mass suicide or Waco Texas. Did God tell them to go off the rails?
Televangelist Kenneth Copeland can prove God exists, too. He prayed for “his” and “her” private jets for himself and his wife, and now the Copelands own 7 airplanes. But God works in funny ways because the Copelands are also now being investigated by the IRS.
Goldy, you should never scoff at the power of prayer! Kenneth Copeland prayed for a Citation X jet, and here’s a photo of Copeland’s tax-exempt ride:
http://purgatorio1.com/wp-cont.....ationx.jpg
If it can work for a slimeball like Copeland, it can work for you, too! I know what I’m gonna pray for! I don’t have much use for a personal jet, but I’m gonna pray for three hundred quadzillion trillion billion million million million million rabbits! Yes, it’s gonna take a lot of fucking to get that many rabbits, but God helps those who help themselves!!!
So I’m gonna go help myself to some nice cute fluffly female rabbits right now!
@40 Years ago, when I became an orphan and was all alone in the world, I prayed for more rabbits. God said, “Let there be rabbits,” and Eureka! now Green Lake Park has lots of rabbits. What more proof do you need?
re 10: Do you think that publicly describing your personal prayer-fest-wallow is in any way like ‘quiet personal reflection’?
Maybe you should see what Jesus had to say about the Pharisees and the Saducees and their public prayers.
The point is that that these right wing Bible-thumpers don’t know the first thing about the religion they profess. But with Bible-thumpers, knowing always takes a back seat to believing.
I have a question for our Republican friends. It’s against the law to tell people you’re a cop when you’re not. How come it isn’t against the law to tell people you’re God when you’re not?
I know some women who pray every time they have sex. They yell, “Oh God! God! God! God!”
I wonder if praying real loud like that gets Her attention quicker?
Zotz, you klutz, I’m an Episcopalian . . . and you sound like an anti-Catholic bigot.
So rujax (rude jackass) what say you about rhp6033’s God experience? Care to swear your head off at him moron?
rhp6033, thanks for the story.
Pelletizer@48, damn now we can add voyeurism to his attributes list. We all know the dumb bunny needs a crane!
Look at the hate in Goldy’s post, beginning with him condescendingly calling Susan “Susie.”
Funny thing about hate and contempt. It has a way of finding its way back to the one who’s dishing it out.
TrollTurd @53, you mistake lack of respect for hate.
But then you probably think we hate you also. I can assure you that is not the case. You are too insignificant to have earned either hate or contempt. You are mildly amusing, however.
Moron @ 51
Ok fool. Why is rhp on our side of the fence?
Go ahead Moron, call him a “schizo” or some such like you do to me for just having the common sense to guide my kids towards a fruitful and fulfilling adulthood and certainly not in any hedonistic sense. There’s not a liberal parent in the North Seattle I know that plays to your sick, ugly fantasies.
Why didn’t God send rhp down a different road towards loving Raygun like a believer would love God himself? Why didn’t God guide rhp towards voting for execrable chimpanzee twice like you did?
It’s thoughtful people like rhp that prove the lies of the right wing garbage you bring here.
I just finished talking to God and he instructed me to go out into the world and spread the news; Republicans are evil and George W. Bush broke the law by violating our civil liberties.
Therefore, all Republicans are commanded by God to repent for their sins of practicing Reagan Republicanism and to stop voting for conservatives . . .
Sorry gotta go, God’s calling me again.
OK, I’m back. God just wanted the betting line on the Mariner’s game this weekend.
Of course I’m taking the Rangers and laying the lumber, I mean, hey, God’s money spends just like everyone else’s. Know what I mean?
Now, where was I, oh yeah, stop worshipping evil doers like Sarah Palin, Gov Sanford, Sen Ensign, Sen. Craig, Sen. Vitter, Rep. Foley, Rep. Ney, Rep. “Duke” Cunningham, Karl Rove, Jack Abramoff, you get the picture.
Do as God has commanded — NOW!
Or, like could just be a series of chemical reactions which is why you have no memory of anything before birth and when you die, i.e. the energy for the chemical reactions ceases to exist you die.
And, at the final moment of conciseness you realize . . . “ahhhhh, shit, there ain’t no life after death.”
**fade to black**
Maybe, people have a natural fear of dying and make up Great Mythological stories to help relieve their fear of death.
@53 You know what? Susie deserves to be mocked because she’s trying to deceive voters into believing she’s “nonpartisan” when in fact she’s a radical with an aggressive political agenda that’s drastically out of sync with the values of this community. She does everything she can to avoid talking about issues or being interviewed by the media because she doesn’t want people to know who (and what) she really is. She’s a sneak who’s trying to con voters. A candidate like that deserves no respect and will get none from me.
@58 You mean Hell is a myth? Damn. I was hoping there really is a Hell for Republicans to burn in.*
* Just kidding! Ann Coulter joke. I don’t understand why so many Republicans hope for a hereafter, because they’ll be much better off if being dead is nothing more than just being dead.
@32 “In other words, she views the office as a pulpit.”
DING! DING! DING! DING! And that’s the problem: That’s not the gig she’s signing up for.
That being said, now I’m going to steal the trolls’ thunder and point out that Ron Sims didn’t quite seem to get that one right either. Not that I haven’t found some of his speeches-cum-sermons inspirational, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with being open about one’s faith as a motivator for working hard and seeking justice. On the other hand, speaking about “taking care of the least” while yanking the funding for the Public Health clinics seems…well, kind of a contradiction.
I’d sure like to see someone running the county government who sees his or her primary function to be to best apply the common wealth to benefit the common good.
@50 S’Okay, Joel. I’m not sure most people know the difference…or that there really is one.
@18: OK a Tudor Catholic, then. Same issues.
@59…RR…
“…a radical with an aggressive political agenda that’s drastically out of sync with the values of this community.”
What a great description of Dow, Larry, and a few of the others who bend over backwards to pander to every looney-left outfit in the sewer.
That Susan Hutchison will get no respect from you probably comes as a great relief to her since your “respect” is tantamount to an endorsement from Joe Stalin.
If you had any decency, you would do America a favor and RESIGN from life.
(Keith Olbermann-like commentary).
The Piper
Resigned from life?
Sounds like the definition of taking a job at EFF.
@30 RHP
Dang!!!!!!! Good on you. Thank you for sharing this.
Much respect RHP, very much appreciate your story.
The “tolerance” on display is wholly expected whenever ****draws deep breath********* religion or God is discussed.
Someone asked ” When did God ever say he had plans for anyone?”
He does, Jeremiah 29:11 ” I know the thoughts that I think toward you saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” God knows what he wants for humanity- we are the ones who don’t want to listen or even care to seek for his wisdom.
god told me to eat a pb&j with strawberry freezerves just now. so i did. it was delicious!
God told me that only people too weak or too stupid to believe in themselves turn to a poorly written, one dimentional story book character for strength. Oh, wait a minute. It wasn’t god that told me that. It was the person inside me. The same person that’s always willing to throw around the words “god” and jesus” as long as I can sucker some knuckle dragging shit-for-brains douchbag out of some money, goods, or services. Damn those people are gullible and stupid at the same time!
David, it appears you’ve swallowed some of that venom you’ve been spewing for so long. The way you dismissively write about people of faith speaks volumes about you as a person. Lonely. Miserable.
Referring to Hutchison as “Susie”? Talk about chauvinism. Talk about condescension. Talk about patronizing.
But you’re probably happy to wear all of that as some king of perverted badge of honor. Got to give your readers enough slop and drivel to wallow in.
G-d forbid a reformer, who happens to be a person of faith, is elected to clean up the cess pool that Ron Sims and Dems before him created in King County govt. Speaking of people of faith…what about Ron Sims, an ordained Baptist minister. Does he pass your test for people of faith who can serve in elected or appointed office? Oh wait…
The jig is up, David. Those who’ve followed your pitiful attempts to make yourself relevant by putting out the hits that the campaigns won’t, know EXACTLY what this is all about. Hack.
Geez, Has Roger Rabbit ever had an unexpressed thought? It would seem not-he is apparently inlove with his own voice, or should I say with his own mind. I love mine as well, I just don’t think everyone needs to know EVERY thought I have ever thought.
clueless wonder farts:
Why call rhp6033 a schizo? He readily admits he loves God. We disagree on abortion and other issues, but he’s certainly not like you a real schizo. You on the other hand exhibit some strange thought processes and you are an atheist.
When the discussion gets deep, rujax (rude jackASS) is always MIA. Notice how he has nuthin to say about rhp6033 and being a God fearing person.
IDIOT @ 72
Why call rhp6033 a schizo? For the same reason you do to me. rhp is a believer but DOES NOT jackboot to your right wing bullshit.
I’m involved in my kids’ lives. You call that “conservative” yet I don’t dittohead and see no rational basis for unquestioning belief in some kind of omniscient supreme being.
You’re all about projecting your ugly fears and fantasies on others.