The Chrisitan Right: too afraid to help |
Don't scratch the veneer! |
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Americans, citizens of the USA, love cars: the faster, shinier and bigger the better. The USA is analogous to a Hummer Limousine that has a massive, powerful engine; an exquisite exterior veneer with hardly a scratch on it; and an interior that is a playground for the rich with absolute power. The citizens stand on the outside and debate about what is going on inside the limo. Some try to chip away at the shiny exterior to expose the corruption that lies within; others polish the exterior and try to keep away those that try to scratch at the shiny veneer.
During elections, politicians rise up from two sunroofs, one for Democrats and one for Republicans and they shout at the citizens outside of the limo. The politicians ask the people to vote for them because they will do a better job of running things inside the limo than the politician poking his head out of the other sunroof. During elections the politicians get out of the limo and walk amongst the citizens and help to polish the limo’s exterior. Whichever candidate can create the best shine gets elected, but once the elections are over, both candidates rejoin the corporatocracy in the limo, leaving the citizens behind. It’s a ridiculous system put we are too paralyzed by the fear of change to try and change it. The corporatocracy keeps us afraid of all alternatives so that they can keep on living lavishly on our money.
The corporatocracy tries hard to keep the public focused on keeping the surface of the limo shiny and clean; they do not want anyone to look inside and see the reality. The reality is in a word “corruption”. The people of the US are used like pawns to help the rich stay rich. If it was just a matter of money it would not matter as much because Christ said to serve God not money. However, the game that the rich play destroys lives and destroys the environment we need to live in. Sacrificing people’s lives just to add some more money to the pile is an insidious goal. Besides that, Christ commanded us to live as humanitarians: “Do unto others as you have them do unto you.”
Altruistic soldiers like the men at Valley Forge, Davy Crocket, Smedley Butler, Audie Murphy or Pat Tillman who believed whole heartedly in freedom and making the world a safer place for their fellow citizens were nothing more than pawns to help rich men get richer. The men at Valley Forge froze to death while their rich country men stayed at home, warm and safe, having paid $300 to avoid the fight that would make them even richer. Davy Crocket while serving under Andrew Jackson recognized that the Indians he was slaughtering were no different than himself and that the real goal was to remove the Indians so Jackson and his rich buddies could build plantations on the Indian land. He was sickened by the reality “inside the limo” that he was helping to cover-up. Same with Smedley Butler: after giving his life in service to the people inside the limo he saw the reality. He saw that he was just keeping the exterior shiny while the corruption party went merrily on inside. Audie Murphy kept the world safe from Hitler, truly a noble deed, but when he came home as the most decorated soldier in US History, he was forgotten and nearly became a vagrant. He was tossed aside like a broken toy that the rich have no use for any longer. Pat Tillman’s altruism was used by the people inside the limo to drum up recruits for the war in Iraq. His dead body was held up high by the corporatocracy as if it was they who had lain down their life. They tried to make him into a John Wayne type hero of Iraq. The truth was that he was killed by his own troops in the confusion of battle. The corporatocracy tried to do the same with Private Jessica Lynch. The people inside the limo try hard to keep the outside of the limo looking shiny with the sacrifice of these noble soldiers so that they can continue to gain more power and more money. Noble sacrifices for ennoble gains.
One group that works harder than any other at focusing on that exterior shine is the Christian Right. It is very ironic that this group, of all groups, should be so shallow. Jesus Christ worked hard to get across the message of morality. The Christian Right spends its time vilifying those that try to scratch the surface of the limo to expose the immorality going on inside the limo. Those that try to expose the corruption and immorality going on inside the limo are labeled “liberals” by the Christian Right. The Christian Right hates these liberals who are ruining the shine that they are trying to keep on the exterior of the limo. Thus the very people that should be exposing the corruption on the inside of the limo work the hardest to protect the veneer and the illusion that all is well.
It does not make any sense that the Christian Right labels themselves as “Christians” because Christ would “spew them out of His mouth”. Did anyone notice how the whole, “WWJD: What Would Jesus Do?” fad faded away in recent years? I guess you cannot have that strapped to your wrist while you are cheering on the bloodshed of the innocent Iraqi populace.
This whole scenario, the “veneer” of the USA that the Christian Right and the corporatocracy ask us to believe in, reminds me of the movie The Matrix. The facts are being laid out in front of the reader. The reader will decide whether to take the “red pill” and learn the truth “and nothing more” about the veneer, or whether to take the “blue pill” and keep on believing in the matrix of lies and that the veneer is the truth, simply because it is easier that way. Carl Sagan is quoted as saying, “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been so credulous”.
However, Carl Sagan also said, “It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring” (en.thinkexist.com). I find no satisfaction and no reassurance from knowing the truth about the veneer, however the truth is freeing, just as Christ said it would be (John 8:32). I wish I could believe that the corporatocracy is the way the Christian Right believes it to be, altruistic, but this belief does not stand up to any test of reason. This leads to why I think the Christian Right believes that the veneer of the limo is the true reality of the US. In a word, it is “faith”, but it is much more complex than just faith alone.
Christians are caught in a web of their own making that keeps them from seeing anything except the surface of any given situation. This “web” is complicated, but it is important in helping to understand why Christians are the corporatocracy’s best defenders and polishers of the veneer on their limo of corruption. In a nutshell, Christians believe that doubting the existence of God is a sin; that faith is believing in something when logic tells you otherwise; and they believe that they are “not perfect, just forgiven”. They apply these three “tenants” not just to their “religion”, but to everything they encounter in life. They also mistrust anyone who is not a Christian and they assume that all white conservative politicians tell the truth.
I believe that a true “Christian” would try to peel away the veneer to expose the corruption or at the very list not polish the veneer. Therefore, since I am trying to expose the corruption it makes me more of a Christian than the Christian Right who are standing there with their polishing cloths. If today, Christ walked into “the temple” and turned over the tables of the money changers you can be sure that the Christian Right would be there to right the tables, dust off the money changers and drive Christ out of the temple.
The Christian Right has gone astray and they are caught in a web of their own making that is far more complex than it needs to be. The method for “salvation” is a simple one: whoever believes in the sacrifice made by Christ at Calvary will “not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). However, the Christian Right has added a slew of amendments to this simple message that work to keep their flocks in a constant state of fear so they are easily manipulated to follow the will of the leaders.
For example, they insist that their flocks believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. They tell their congregations that if they do not believe in a literal six-day creation of the universe and that the world is only about 6,000 years old, that they will be tortured for eternity in hell. To believe that God set evolution in motion and that Genesis was simply man’s way of describing this creation of evolution is heresy. The Christian Right believes that a scientific interpretation of what God created invalidates the existence of God, for a very twisted reason.
The “twisted reason” is that the Christian Right believes that science negates faith. In other words, science is testing faith and to test faith is a sin. Only evil would ever try to shake a person’s faith by putting it to a test. When one believes in something whole heartily there is no reason, except pure evil, to measure the extent of that person’s faith. Therefore, to “give in” to the idea of evolution is the same as giving up faith that God created the universe in six days. Giving up the idea that God is powerful enough to create the world in six days is to give up faith altogether, because faith is believing “that all things are possible through Him” even when your brain cannot understand how He did it. The leaders of the Christian Right tell their followers that if they do not have faith in creation they will burn in hell. So to save themselves from eternal torture, the followers have faith that God created the world in six days just as Genesis records.
Evolution, adaptation, is an amazing process, why the Christian Right cannot give God credit for creating it is even more amazing. They view evolution as man’s futile attempt to understand God which is a colossal waste of time and a sin against faith. Therefore, if a “Christian” accepts any part of evolution they are stripped of Christ’s sacrifice for their sins and they will go directly to hell.
Doubting is another form of the same “stumbling block” as lack of faith. The Bible says that having doubts about the existence of God is a sin. The leaders of the Christian Right twist this into: having any doubt about anything that the Christian Right holds to be true is grounds to render John 3:16 null and void. Doubt is a pet peeve for me. I don’t get why doubting is “bad” and I do not believe that a rational God would think it was “bad” either. Let me explain why.
I cannot for the life of me understand why people have such a hard time with “doubt”. I know that religious people, especially the Christian Right, like to deal in absolutes, I can’t and I won’t. I can only tell you what I know based upon the facts I have available to me. Therefore, I want to gather as many facts as I can and, therefore, I cannot base knowledge on faith.
When it comes to my “faith”, I cannot swallow absolutes. Muslims contend to know the absolute truth as heartily as Christians claim to know it. If I base the level of commitment to a belief upon actions, the Muslims win hands down with their suicide bombers. I mean that’s commitment! They never even stop to consider, “what if they’re wrong?” What if they are following the wrong God? Why don’t they ask that question? Because doubt is a sin; they are locked in, no way out. Christians have to believe the same way for the same reason: doubting is a sin.
The reasons I have doubts is because life’s reality brought them to me. As the “little brown boy” in the “Somebody Loves Me” story, was rescued by God, I have to assume that God is “omniscient” enough to understand my doubts and take them into consideration when judging me. That just seems plain and logical. I have learned over the years that my “doubts” are mainly just doubts about the Christian Right’s view of God. They want me to believe that God created the world, the universe and the humans just to see if the humans can act against the nature that He gave them, and swim “up stream” to Him. If they can’t do it, the punishment is eternal torture. According to the Christian Right’s view, humans have to figure out that there is only one God and only one path to get to Him or else they spend eternity being tortured. That’s fairly sadistic. However, as they have explained to me in the past, “You may not like it but that’s the way it is.”
So, some child that is born into the Muslim faith where he is not allowed to doubt that his religion is “wrong”, but who thinks that he is doing “good” by living a perfect Muslim life and whose example of Christianity is U.S. soldiers invading his country and killing his friends and relatives, will be sentenced to eternal torture? Unless what? What must he do to find his way to the Christian God? DOUBT! Right?! He must at some point have doubts about his faith; if he doesn’t, there is no way to find the Christian God. I therefore fail to see the reason why doubt is such a problem for people.
Yes I have doubt about the very existence of God, but to me that is healthy, not unhealthy or even sinful and certainly not a reason to send me to eternal torture. After all, John 3:16 states that I just need to believe in Christ’s sacrifice for my sins to go to heaven. But on the other hand, the Christian Right may be right. God may be just as shallow and narrowed minded as they describe. He may view things solely in black and white. I give Him more credit than that.
To me an “omniscient” God has at the very least the ability to understand human behavior to the level that I do. That is only logical. Therefore, if dumb old me can figure out that people who believe it is a sin to have doubt are trapped from ever seeing the truth and that therefore they should not be punished for “believing in the wrong god”, then obviously an omniscient God can reason out the same thing. Like the child in the “Somebody Loves Me” story, God can see when someone has been blocked from the truth and will not punish them for being ignorant.
Does that mean I think the Saudi hijackers from 9/11 went to heaven? Well they did if God is a Muslim fundamentalist; however, I think God holds a special place in Hell for those with the arrogance to kill in His name. If the Christian Right disagrees with my point of view that is fine, but they can not tell me that I am going to hell for my thoughts, because they just do not know for sure. From what you have read here, do you honestly think an omniscient God would sentence a person to “eternal torture” just for having doubt? If that is the “Christian God” then I really don’t want any part of Him. I’ll take the God to which I prayed to save my soul when I was six; He has room in His heart and heaven for human beings. I know that the Christian Right thinks that their views are the ultimate truth, but at the end of the day it is just an opinion. They should not condemn people to eternal torture based upon opinion. They should give others the benefit of “doubt”.
The last part of the “web” that keeps the Christian Right “polishing the veneer” instead of exposing corruption, is the concept that they are “not perfect, just forgiven”. I use to love that saying when I was young, because I thought it was very humbling. I believed that I was at the very least “forgiven” of my sins, but I still needed to work as hard as I could at being perfect. “Be you therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). The Christian Right has stood this idea on its head.
The Christian Right believes that they are perfect because they are forgiven. Christ said, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone” (John 8:7), the Christian Right takes the concept of being “forgiven” to mean that they can cast all the stones they want. Christ’s sacrifice absolved them of all sin, past present and future. Therefore, they can support the corporatocracy of the US (ignoring the command to serve God and not mammon) they can sit in judgment (ignoring “Judge not that ye be not judged”) they can cast stones (ignoring “he that is without sin…cast a stone”) they can hate their enemies and their neighbor (ignoring “love your enemies” and “love thy neighbor”) because they view themselves as above the laws of Christ. This piety is the very reason that the Catholic Church got out of hand in the Dark Ages. They built elaborate apparatuses to sadistically torture “non-believers” into “believers”. (Did you ever see a scientist torture a Christian into believing in evolution or that the Earth is round? When a fact is a fact, torture is not required for belief.)
Today the leaders of the Christian Right, empowered by their “forgiven souls”, add amendments to John 3:16 and sadistically condemn people who “scratch the veneer” of the corporatocracy. These “amendments” include: having doubts about anything the Christian Right leaders say; not having faith in a six-day creation; not having faith in the leaders of the USA, the corporatocracy; having doubts that the USA is anything except altruistic; and not having faith in the shiny veneer of the USA.
Thus the message of love that brought me to Christ at age six has been replaced by a self-righteous and self-serving web of hatred of Christ’s principles. Anyone seen preaching Christ’s principle’s of love is dismissed as a liberal. The veneer is kept shiny to hide the Christian Right’s true god of mammon within. To keep the veneer shiny and hide US corruption, the Christian Right supports the status quo. Whether the Christian Right does this because they too are part of the corporatocracy or not, does not matter. What’s supposed to matter most is recognizing and following Christ’s teachings.
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