rmjwell points to this wonderful article by Avadon Carol.
Consider the teachings of Jesus: He preached against public piety, against putting material wealth above the spiritual, against casting the first stone, against bigotry. He spoke up for the poor and told us to love our neighbors. He blessed the peacemakers and the merciful, and taught his followers to share. He preached love, hope, and charity. He was about forgiveness and redemption.
And so, as someone who, “was raised on the Good Book Jesus ’til I read between the lines,” it’s pretty much impossible for me to look at the modern GOP and the Christian right – and particularly at the Bush administration – and see any of Jesus’ teachings there. I don’t claim to know the mind of any god (which, after all, would be blasphemy), but it seems to me that Bush represents the kind of self-righteous, publicly pious, war-mongering rich men who Jesus warned us not to become.
Unlike Avedon, I wasn’t even raised in a religious tradition, and have always considered myself far more spiritual than religious. But even so, I read this and said “yes, this, this exactly, this is what I’ve been saying all along.”
Go read. it’s good stuff.
mihrimah
Hot damn. I like this guy.
If you take the things that folks-- meaning Bush and co.-- say are Morally Wrong about gay folks and replace the word ‘homosexual’ with black, the statements would be condemned as racist and bigoted.
That really pisses me off.
poltr1
This one’s a keeper.
This is great stuff, and totally in line with what I believe. If someone’s going to call themselves a Christian, they certainly should think and act in a Christlike manner, and treat each person they meet as if the divine spirit is inside every one of them. Including themselves.
So what happened along the way? Power groups formed, and they distorted the Bible to serve their ambitions. First the Vatican, and now the fundamentalists. If it was God’s intention for us humans to be sheep, blindly following our leaders, God would have made us sheep.
One of the people on one of the pagan lists I’m on often includes this tagline: “Religion is for those who are afraid of Hell. Spirituality is for those who have been there.”