Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Digital Delay
So, we can't help people being foreclosed upon, we can't keep up freeway bridges so people don't plunge to their deaths, we can't even make sure sick people aren't dying on our streets, but we can accommodate those too stupid to realize that they need a digital converter box by delaying the switch for four months? As if television were some sort of necessity, even? Boy, ain't we cool, huh?
Steve
Steve
Labels: Religion, Social Commentary
Friday, January 23, 2009
What Happened Here?
To begin with, you can blame George W. Bush on Lyndon B. Johnson. They’re both from Texas, so maybe there’s some connection from that direction. I doubt it, though. Still, odder things have happened. George W. Bush, for instance, is a descendant of Franklin Pierce, who got to be president due to the efforts of an old college buddy. Go figure.
It isn’t that LBJ worked on W’s behalf, of course. He’s too dead to do such a thing. But LBJ is the guy who so pissed off the Southern wing of the Democratic party, then known as “Dixiecrats” for lack of a better term (and there probably is no better term.) The Dixiecrats were represented by people such as George Wallace (not the Vegas comedian, the other one) who blocked the schoolhouse door and shouted “Segregation Forever!” Wallace changed his mind before he died, but a lot of people stayed true to their segregationist principles for all of their lives. And those folks felt betrayed beyond belief by the Southerner who pushed through the Voting Rights Act and other bits of law they found dangerous to their way of life.
Well, if the Democrats were through with them, and at that time nobody wanted to actually admit that they were racist enough to support the good-old Dixiecrat constituency, then they knew that they had to get sneaky. You remember the “Moral Majority” back in the day? Well, they may or may not have been either moral or in the majority, but they presented the old segregation forever crowd with an opportunity. By linking with religious conservatives who were bothered by what they saw as the moral decay of American society, the folks who brought you back of the bus segregation could hide their anger, and their true agenda, while getting influence back in Washington. It worked, as can be seen by the political scene since Reagan.
Reagan was a great speaker who was recruited because, well darn it, people liked him. He certainly wasn’t one to support overt racism, but he did like to talk about smaller government (which was, in fact, not what he gave us.) Smaller government meant a government that would allow a public school to open the day with a prayer, or so hoped the religious Reagan backers. To the Dixiecrats it might mean a chance to get back to keeping some people in their place. Particularly Washington people, who had no business telling honest, hard-working Southern people how to run their state.
Reagan begat George HW Bush, a far better President than I gave him credit for at the time. George HW got elected by promising famously not to raise taxes. Finding the government broke, however, meant that he had to propose, and sign, a tax increase. So in came the man from Hope, William Jefferson Clinton.
Clinton angered people in a way that no other president I’ve lived with ever has. Something about the story of the poor trailer boy from Hope who made it all the way to the White House really frosts some people’s shorts. I think it might have been due to his refusal to cater to the good-old-Dixiecrat crowd that started the rumors that led him to be so publicly reviled. To bad for them, all they could catch him at was cheating on his wife with one of his employees. A sad and sordid tale, but hardly criminal. They did, however, manage to get him impeached.
That is because the alliance of religious conservatives and old-time Southerners united in using morality as an issue. Plenty of Presidents have done worse things to their marriage than Clinton, but the Moral Majority wasn’t backing the opposition at the time. The Republican Party found itself, maybe not for the first time, proclaiming itself as the protector of public morality in the United States. That is questionable, but not as questionable as the supposed history of the Republican party as a champion of smaller government and states’ rights. Egads, has no one ever heard of Lincoln, the poster boy if there ever was one for large, central government at the expense of the states? Six percent of the men of military age in the country died in a war to ensure that the big-government party, the Republicans, prevailed in their effort to save the union.
The states’ rights plank was tacked on by the old Southern contingent, with the backing of the religious conservatives, for the reasons listed above. Less government meant less interference, right? Well, not to hear the complaints about W. Bush that have been sounding out in the past couple of years. The amusing part, for someone who knows some history, is that the complainers are actually surprised that the Republican party has expanded, not shrunk, the Federal government. Folks, I hate to burst your bubble, but that’s what Republicans have always done. It’s not bad, it’s debatable, but it’s Republican and that’s all there is to it.
So how did all this misinformation get spread around? By faith, of course. Faith is, so they say, a wonderful thing. It can move mountains. Well, horse hockey I say, but that’s just about the moving mountains part. The trouble with true belief is that the believer’s view of the world is distorted by the belief until the poor sod doesn’t know reality any more. In the mind of a true believer, a fundamental Christian world view is the majority view, and no amount of objective statistics will convince the true believer otherwise. Former President W. Bush has returned to Texas with his “values intact.” Great. So long as you’re not deciding the fate of the world, you go. But when belief rather than objective reality influences national policy both foreign and domestic, you end up with some very stupid things getting done. Like invading a country at a time when we really needed to be catching a terrorist, or like abstinence-only sex education, which results in more, not less, promiscuous and unprotected sex amongst teenagers. Faith may be wonderful, but not as the basis for national policy.
So that’s what happened: LBJ pissed off some segregationists who then used some religious folks in a successful effort to temporarily hijack the government. This resulted in record debt, economic doldrums, and thousands of dead soldiers. Somebody may like that, but not I. All the faith in the world doesn’t change reality one little bit. And lying to another constituency in order to sneak your way back into power is about as low as American politics gets. I feel sorry for the religious conservatives, I feel sorry for George HW Bush. I feel sorry for the Republican party, and I feel sorry for Ronald Reagan, even. And most of all, I feel sorry for the country I love so much.
Please, old Dixiecrat guys, just dry up, okay?
Steve
It isn’t that LBJ worked on W’s behalf, of course. He’s too dead to do such a thing. But LBJ is the guy who so pissed off the Southern wing of the Democratic party, then known as “Dixiecrats” for lack of a better term (and there probably is no better term.) The Dixiecrats were represented by people such as George Wallace (not the Vegas comedian, the other one) who blocked the schoolhouse door and shouted “Segregation Forever!” Wallace changed his mind before he died, but a lot of people stayed true to their segregationist principles for all of their lives. And those folks felt betrayed beyond belief by the Southerner who pushed through the Voting Rights Act and other bits of law they found dangerous to their way of life.
Well, if the Democrats were through with them, and at that time nobody wanted to actually admit that they were racist enough to support the good-old Dixiecrat constituency, then they knew that they had to get sneaky. You remember the “Moral Majority” back in the day? Well, they may or may not have been either moral or in the majority, but they presented the old segregation forever crowd with an opportunity. By linking with religious conservatives who were bothered by what they saw as the moral decay of American society, the folks who brought you back of the bus segregation could hide their anger, and their true agenda, while getting influence back in Washington. It worked, as can be seen by the political scene since Reagan.
Reagan was a great speaker who was recruited because, well darn it, people liked him. He certainly wasn’t one to support overt racism, but he did like to talk about smaller government (which was, in fact, not what he gave us.) Smaller government meant a government that would allow a public school to open the day with a prayer, or so hoped the religious Reagan backers. To the Dixiecrats it might mean a chance to get back to keeping some people in their place. Particularly Washington people, who had no business telling honest, hard-working Southern people how to run their state.
Reagan begat George HW Bush, a far better President than I gave him credit for at the time. George HW got elected by promising famously not to raise taxes. Finding the government broke, however, meant that he had to propose, and sign, a tax increase. So in came the man from Hope, William Jefferson Clinton.
Clinton angered people in a way that no other president I’ve lived with ever has. Something about the story of the poor trailer boy from Hope who made it all the way to the White House really frosts some people’s shorts. I think it might have been due to his refusal to cater to the good-old-Dixiecrat crowd that started the rumors that led him to be so publicly reviled. To bad for them, all they could catch him at was cheating on his wife with one of his employees. A sad and sordid tale, but hardly criminal. They did, however, manage to get him impeached.
That is because the alliance of religious conservatives and old-time Southerners united in using morality as an issue. Plenty of Presidents have done worse things to their marriage than Clinton, but the Moral Majority wasn’t backing the opposition at the time. The Republican Party found itself, maybe not for the first time, proclaiming itself as the protector of public morality in the United States. That is questionable, but not as questionable as the supposed history of the Republican party as a champion of smaller government and states’ rights. Egads, has no one ever heard of Lincoln, the poster boy if there ever was one for large, central government at the expense of the states? Six percent of the men of military age in the country died in a war to ensure that the big-government party, the Republicans, prevailed in their effort to save the union.
The states’ rights plank was tacked on by the old Southern contingent, with the backing of the religious conservatives, for the reasons listed above. Less government meant less interference, right? Well, not to hear the complaints about W. Bush that have been sounding out in the past couple of years. The amusing part, for someone who knows some history, is that the complainers are actually surprised that the Republican party has expanded, not shrunk, the Federal government. Folks, I hate to burst your bubble, but that’s what Republicans have always done. It’s not bad, it’s debatable, but it’s Republican and that’s all there is to it.
So how did all this misinformation get spread around? By faith, of course. Faith is, so they say, a wonderful thing. It can move mountains. Well, horse hockey I say, but that’s just about the moving mountains part. The trouble with true belief is that the believer’s view of the world is distorted by the belief until the poor sod doesn’t know reality any more. In the mind of a true believer, a fundamental Christian world view is the majority view, and no amount of objective statistics will convince the true believer otherwise. Former President W. Bush has returned to Texas with his “values intact.” Great. So long as you’re not deciding the fate of the world, you go. But when belief rather than objective reality influences national policy both foreign and domestic, you end up with some very stupid things getting done. Like invading a country at a time when we really needed to be catching a terrorist, or like abstinence-only sex education, which results in more, not less, promiscuous and unprotected sex amongst teenagers. Faith may be wonderful, but not as the basis for national policy.
So that’s what happened: LBJ pissed off some segregationists who then used some religious folks in a successful effort to temporarily hijack the government. This resulted in record debt, economic doldrums, and thousands of dead soldiers. Somebody may like that, but not I. All the faith in the world doesn’t change reality one little bit. And lying to another constituency in order to sneak your way back into power is about as low as American politics gets. I feel sorry for the religious conservatives, I feel sorry for George HW Bush. I feel sorry for the Republican party, and I feel sorry for Ronald Reagan, even. And most of all, I feel sorry for the country I love so much.
Please, old Dixiecrat guys, just dry up, okay?
Steve
Labels: Politics, Religion, Social Commentary
Monday, June 09, 2008
Life Is Like a River
It's a new funny page with serious postings interspersed with a funny story. Honest. Anyway, it seemed to belong with the humor more than it did with the rants, so that's where I put it.
Right Here.
Right Here.
Labels: Religion, Social Commentary
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Sex, Anyone?
Okay, two posts in two days. Going for a record here. But I read this story and I just had to say something about it . . .
I just read a story from Reuters that casts doubt on the "Technical Virginity"
theory that teenagers are engaging in oral and anal sex in order to remain "technically" virgins.
In short, the article says that while teenagers are doing those things, they’re having plain old sex too. This does not surprise me. For one thing I teach high school and see the students, most of whom appear to be healthy humans. Healthy humans above the age of thirteen, sometimes younger, engage in some sort of sex. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be healthy. For another thing, the wave of "abstinence only" sex education we’ve been indulging in since Reagan, in some cases longer, is the biggest crock of un-useful scam on the youth of America since the war on drugs.
I really was abstinent in high school. Want to know why? Because I was a cowardly mama’s boy, that’s why. I’d have been hitting on anything remotely like a girl if I’d had more nerve. I knew almost nothing about how things really worked, so the odds are that I’d have made some girl very unhappy, made myself very unhappy, maybe both, or plain old ruined a couple of lives if I’d had sex. If I’d known what was what in terms of sexuality I might well have still been celibate, but for good reasons. (Cowardice is no good reason for anything.) If I hadn’t been celibate I’d have been careful not to cause any harm. If, that is, I’d know what was what with sexuality.
So how is one to know? Certainly not by listening to stupid lectures about how abstinence is the only way to go. They lie, those people, by saying that condoms are not reliable (they are) and by overstating any emotional damage that might accrue from sex as a teenager. I’ve had a lot of friends who were sexually active before I was, and they have been at least as well adjusted as I am. Maybe more, since they weren’t obsessed with their lack of sexual experience during a crucial time of life. One might know by getting the actual facts about sex and sexuality. As a matter of fact, if you know the facts, abstinence until you’re ready to marry whomever you have sex with is a reasonable thing to choose. You don’t have to, but with all the dangers inherent in having sex as a child, you might just decide to. Let’s face it, there are some really nasty sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) out there, a couple of which will surely kill their victim. And there’s the emotional toll that comes with sex.
Emotional? Sure, emotional. Sex is really about how we feel about ourselves, and sometimes the way we feel afterwards if more important than the way we felt before. What I mean is that sex, like any meaningful activity, involves your whole self, and should not, therefore, be entered into lightly. I’ll confess here that I’ve tried casual sex, and it was okay, but no better than what I could get on my own, if you get my drift. There is, for me at least, no point in pursuing a casual sexual relationship. But, with a woman I really care about, sex is a wonderful way to make things even better. I learned all this though trial and error, over a lifetime. A couple of religious groups have a program that they call Our Whole Life (OWL), which is a lifetime learning program about sexuality and relationships. The groups are the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ. Okay, they’re to the left of the evangelicals, but as I said up at the beginning, the "abstinence only" approach many evangelicals advocate is just plain stupid. (To me, it’s an example of a situation in which idealism makes people do stupid things.) The OWL program is tremendously successful in a couple of crucial areas: preventing teen pregnancy and preventing teens from getting STDs. I seriously doubt that it stops teens from having sex, but when they do, the consequences aren’t dire.
I guess it depends on what you want: idealistic abstinence pledges, STDs and pregnancies; or teenagers who are healthy and not pregnant. I know what the idealists choose. Care to guess my choice?
I just read a story from Reuters that casts doubt on the "Technical Virginity"
theory that teenagers are engaging in oral and anal sex in order to remain "technically" virgins.
In short, the article says that while teenagers are doing those things, they’re having plain old sex too. This does not surprise me. For one thing I teach high school and see the students, most of whom appear to be healthy humans. Healthy humans above the age of thirteen, sometimes younger, engage in some sort of sex. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be healthy. For another thing, the wave of "abstinence only" sex education we’ve been indulging in since Reagan, in some cases longer, is the biggest crock of un-useful scam on the youth of America since the war on drugs.
I really was abstinent in high school. Want to know why? Because I was a cowardly mama’s boy, that’s why. I’d have been hitting on anything remotely like a girl if I’d had more nerve. I knew almost nothing about how things really worked, so the odds are that I’d have made some girl very unhappy, made myself very unhappy, maybe both, or plain old ruined a couple of lives if I’d had sex. If I’d known what was what in terms of sexuality I might well have still been celibate, but for good reasons. (Cowardice is no good reason for anything.) If I hadn’t been celibate I’d have been careful not to cause any harm. If, that is, I’d know what was what with sexuality.
So how is one to know? Certainly not by listening to stupid lectures about how abstinence is the only way to go. They lie, those people, by saying that condoms are not reliable (they are) and by overstating any emotional damage that might accrue from sex as a teenager. I’ve had a lot of friends who were sexually active before I was, and they have been at least as well adjusted as I am. Maybe more, since they weren’t obsessed with their lack of sexual experience during a crucial time of life. One might know by getting the actual facts about sex and sexuality. As a matter of fact, if you know the facts, abstinence until you’re ready to marry whomever you have sex with is a reasonable thing to choose. You don’t have to, but with all the dangers inherent in having sex as a child, you might just decide to. Let’s face it, there are some really nasty sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) out there, a couple of which will surely kill their victim. And there’s the emotional toll that comes with sex.
Emotional? Sure, emotional. Sex is really about how we feel about ourselves, and sometimes the way we feel afterwards if more important than the way we felt before. What I mean is that sex, like any meaningful activity, involves your whole self, and should not, therefore, be entered into lightly. I’ll confess here that I’ve tried casual sex, and it was okay, but no better than what I could get on my own, if you get my drift. There is, for me at least, no point in pursuing a casual sexual relationship. But, with a woman I really care about, sex is a wonderful way to make things even better. I learned all this though trial and error, over a lifetime. A couple of religious groups have a program that they call Our Whole Life (OWL), which is a lifetime learning program about sexuality and relationships. The groups are the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ. Okay, they’re to the left of the evangelicals, but as I said up at the beginning, the "abstinence only" approach many evangelicals advocate is just plain stupid. (To me, it’s an example of a situation in which idealism makes people do stupid things.) The OWL program is tremendously successful in a couple of crucial areas: preventing teen pregnancy and preventing teens from getting STDs. I seriously doubt that it stops teens from having sex, but when they do, the consequences aren’t dire.
I guess it depends on what you want: idealistic abstinence pledges, STDs and pregnancies; or teenagers who are healthy and not pregnant. I know what the idealists choose. Care to guess my choice?
Labels: Politics, Religion, Social Commentary
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Goodbye, Farewell, and, um, Amen?
Today John Edwards bailed on the Democratic race, and Rudy Giuliani left the Republican field. That leaves a much smaller bunch running, after Richardson and Kucinich had already signed off. I think that leaves Obama, Clinton, McCain, Romney and Huckabee still striving mightily. So, pedantry front and center, let me analyze, dissect, consider, and opine about what is going to happen now.
On the Democratic front, I'll bet that super Tuesday will be a split. Neither candidate will be a front runner next week, any more than they are now. Much like in Nevada, where Clinton won but Obama gets one more delegate (the press knows nothing of Nevada, obviously, since they didn't know what to make of that), Hillary and Barak will both have something for which to claim victory. They will both be wrong.
On the part of the Republicans, McCain is, as I said before, their best hope. It may not be a great hope, as for one thing the man is older than you can imagine anyone being who is trying to be President, but still he's their best hope. That said, he may well not win. Or, he may. This is a hard to call hors race here. Huckabee is playing to the traditional base of religious conservatives, which unfortunately for him limits his backing a lot more than he'd like to believe. On the other hand, Romney is a Mormon, which doesn't bother anyone in Nevada, but probably does among, well, Huckabee's base, for one group, and maybe others. There's not a Mormon polygamist in the known universe, but that will come up, just you wait, and it is gnawing at the back of a lot of people's minds. Personally I don't find Mormon beliefs any stranger than a lot of people's, but that's just me. My point it that Mitt will have trouble because of his religion, and Mike will have trouble because of his base (and their religion) which actually might give McCain a real boost, assuming he doesn't go broke within the next week. Super Tuesday would likely knock Romney out, but he's got a lot of cash and he isn't afraid to spend it, so I suspect he'll stick around no matter how the day comes out. Huckabee might fold if he does badly enough, but odds are he'll take a enough states to keep his hat in. McCain will either come out looking good, or looking like a loser. I'm thinking the former, but hey, you never know.
On the Democratic front, I'll bet that super Tuesday will be a split. Neither candidate will be a front runner next week, any more than they are now. Much like in Nevada, where Clinton won but Obama gets one more delegate (the press knows nothing of Nevada, obviously, since they didn't know what to make of that), Hillary and Barak will both have something for which to claim victory. They will both be wrong.
On the part of the Republicans, McCain is, as I said before, their best hope. It may not be a great hope, as for one thing the man is older than you can imagine anyone being who is trying to be President, but still he's their best hope. That said, he may well not win. Or, he may. This is a hard to call hors race here. Huckabee is playing to the traditional base of religious conservatives, which unfortunately for him limits his backing a lot more than he'd like to believe. On the other hand, Romney is a Mormon, which doesn't bother anyone in Nevada, but probably does among, well, Huckabee's base, for one group, and maybe others. There's not a Mormon polygamist in the known universe, but that will come up, just you wait, and it is gnawing at the back of a lot of people's minds. Personally I don't find Mormon beliefs any stranger than a lot of people's, but that's just me. My point it that Mitt will have trouble because of his religion, and Mike will have trouble because of his base (and their religion) which actually might give McCain a real boost, assuming he doesn't go broke within the next week. Super Tuesday would likely knock Romney out, but he's got a lot of cash and he isn't afraid to spend it, so I suspect he'll stick around no matter how the day comes out. Huckabee might fold if he does badly enough, but odds are he'll take a enough states to keep his hat in. McCain will either come out looking good, or looking like a loser. I'm thinking the former, but hey, you never know.
Labels: Politics, Religion, Social Commentary
Sunday, January 20, 2008
A Christian in the White House?
Mike Huckabee's comment to the faithful in South Carolina really seems odd. Easier to amend the constitution than change the will of the everliving god. Yeah, but I get to choose the god, if you don't mind. But it was a comment from a voter in that state that really struck me. The person said that we needed a "Christian in the White House." Well, then so far as I can tell, we've had one for quite a long time. What in heck did that person mean, really?
I'm one of those contrary Unitarians, as I've said before. I was raised in the Methodist church, though, which I'm not sure that person in Carolina would agree, but which most would, is a Christian organization. I'm even sort of proud of that old firebrand Wesley, and his brother Charles wrote a good hymn too boot. But my point is that I've read the bible, more than once, and I've heard the Apostle's Creed recited, and recited it myself, a whole lot of times, and I really wonder what the issue is with the Christianity of the President. See, I know that all you really have to do to be Christian, at the bottom of it all, is accept that Jesus died for you, and that he rose from the dead and now lives in Heaven. That's really it. Accept Jesus and you're Christian: there is no other qualification mentioned in the book.
So, to an outsider, anyone who says he or she is a Christian must be. I don't read minds, so when such diverse people as JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and every single current candidate tells me that they've met the qualifications of being a Christian, well, then that's okay with me. They may not agree with all the other Christians in the world on everything, in fact I guess it's a pretty good bet that they don't. But they are Christian if they say so, unless I can somehow prove beyond a doubt that they're lying about it. So what then, I ask myself, is the problem with the person in Carolina who doesn't think the incumbent is a Christian? He never visits your church? Well, he lives a long way off, you know. He doesn't spend his time reaffirming how right you are about things? Well, that's nobody's job, you know. Heck, you could even be wrong once in a while.
From my point of view, it's pretty scary that a candidate would be playing to a crowd that has such a narrow definition even of Christianity that they exclude all but a select few. I mean, is that faith, or is it more like Narcissus and Echo? You may say it's faith, but I think only Echo could love someone like that. Maybe, it occurs to me, that's what they're really worried about.
Meantime I'll rest assured (or not rest but still be assured of this at least) that our next President will be, no matter what else he or she may be, Christian. For what that's worth.
I'm one of those contrary Unitarians, as I've said before. I was raised in the Methodist church, though, which I'm not sure that person in Carolina would agree, but which most would, is a Christian organization. I'm even sort of proud of that old firebrand Wesley, and his brother Charles wrote a good hymn too boot. But my point is that I've read the bible, more than once, and I've heard the Apostle's Creed recited, and recited it myself, a whole lot of times, and I really wonder what the issue is with the Christianity of the President. See, I know that all you really have to do to be Christian, at the bottom of it all, is accept that Jesus died for you, and that he rose from the dead and now lives in Heaven. That's really it. Accept Jesus and you're Christian: there is no other qualification mentioned in the book.
So, to an outsider, anyone who says he or she is a Christian must be. I don't read minds, so when such diverse people as JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and every single current candidate tells me that they've met the qualifications of being a Christian, well, then that's okay with me. They may not agree with all the other Christians in the world on everything, in fact I guess it's a pretty good bet that they don't. But they are Christian if they say so, unless I can somehow prove beyond a doubt that they're lying about it. So what then, I ask myself, is the problem with the person in Carolina who doesn't think the incumbent is a Christian? He never visits your church? Well, he lives a long way off, you know. He doesn't spend his time reaffirming how right you are about things? Well, that's nobody's job, you know. Heck, you could even be wrong once in a while.
From my point of view, it's pretty scary that a candidate would be playing to a crowd that has such a narrow definition even of Christianity that they exclude all but a select few. I mean, is that faith, or is it more like Narcissus and Echo? You may say it's faith, but I think only Echo could love someone like that. Maybe, it occurs to me, that's what they're really worried about.
Meantime I'll rest assured (or not rest but still be assured of this at least) that our next President will be, no matter what else he or she may be, Christian. For what that's worth.
Labels: Politics, Religion, Social Commentary
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Religious Rant
Now that the fundamentalist whackos have been subdued a bit, and you can actually read a bit of news here and there about religious people who, while religiously conservative, are actually generous, socially liberal (that’s not a bad word, honest) and the sort of people you’re happy to be sharing the world with, I think it’s time for an overdue rant about some peoples’ children’s’ religious beliefs.
First here’s a bit of background. When I was a mere lad back in Ohio, we had a big old family bible. It weighed several pounds, and a really great feature was the list of ancestors inside the back cover. They went back quite a way, several hundred years at least. But, when I wasn’t tracing my lineage back to wherever that was, I used to actually read the thing occasionally. That’s where I became the professional heretic that I am, I suppose, because this bible had the words attributed to Jesus of Nazareth printed in red, whereas everyone else, no matter how revered a prophet, had his or her words printed in black ink. Dull old black ink. So, curious child that I was, I decided one day just to read the red ink. From the point of view of some people, that was a bad mistake.
The red words were what Jesus said, or so the Bible tells us. Here are a few quick facts: The number of times Jesus mentions Heaven: 1; the number of times Jesus mentions Hell: 0. Jesus mentioned heaven when talking to a thief on the next cross; he never once mentioned Hell. So, why, I wonder, are some people, who call themselves Christian, so obsessed with Hell? You know, the ones who hate Halloween because it’s pagan, so they put together “Hell Houses” where they show the eternal torment that awaits those not pure of heart and mind. Funny, but Jesus never mentioned such a thing. He did say that you should turn the other cheek, love your enemies, sell your jewelry and give the money to the poor, stuff like that.
You know, the most Christian actions, based on Jesus’ words, that I’ve seen lately in the news was those Amish people forgiving the man who killed several of their children in school. I couldn’t do that, but so far as I can tell they genuinely did. Now that you can find in the red print. Hell, well that’s not in there, yet there are those so obsessed with Hell that apparently they want to go there. Or something, I really don’t know. I don’t want to sell my stuff and be poor either, for the record. I’m poor enough, so far as I can tell.
Now, those people obsessed with Hell have always been around, but somehow they got hold of the Republican Party and twisted it all to, well, Hell. I’m hoping that now the people I think of as the “real” Republicans, who I may disagree with or agree with, but always have been able to respect, will take back the party and chuck those idealist, oddball, Hell-obsessed, and lets face it, two-faced lying so-and-so’s out of the power structure. I’d feel better, and I’ll bet most of you would too.
First here’s a bit of background. When I was a mere lad back in Ohio, we had a big old family bible. It weighed several pounds, and a really great feature was the list of ancestors inside the back cover. They went back quite a way, several hundred years at least. But, when I wasn’t tracing my lineage back to wherever that was, I used to actually read the thing occasionally. That’s where I became the professional heretic that I am, I suppose, because this bible had the words attributed to Jesus of Nazareth printed in red, whereas everyone else, no matter how revered a prophet, had his or her words printed in black ink. Dull old black ink. So, curious child that I was, I decided one day just to read the red ink. From the point of view of some people, that was a bad mistake.
The red words were what Jesus said, or so the Bible tells us. Here are a few quick facts: The number of times Jesus mentions Heaven: 1; the number of times Jesus mentions Hell: 0. Jesus mentioned heaven when talking to a thief on the next cross; he never once mentioned Hell. So, why, I wonder, are some people, who call themselves Christian, so obsessed with Hell? You know, the ones who hate Halloween because it’s pagan, so they put together “Hell Houses” where they show the eternal torment that awaits those not pure of heart and mind. Funny, but Jesus never mentioned such a thing. He did say that you should turn the other cheek, love your enemies, sell your jewelry and give the money to the poor, stuff like that.
You know, the most Christian actions, based on Jesus’ words, that I’ve seen lately in the news was those Amish people forgiving the man who killed several of their children in school. I couldn’t do that, but so far as I can tell they genuinely did. Now that you can find in the red print. Hell, well that’s not in there, yet there are those so obsessed with Hell that apparently they want to go there. Or something, I really don’t know. I don’t want to sell my stuff and be poor either, for the record. I’m poor enough, so far as I can tell.
Now, those people obsessed with Hell have always been around, but somehow they got hold of the Republican Party and twisted it all to, well, Hell. I’m hoping that now the people I think of as the “real” Republicans, who I may disagree with or agree with, but always have been able to respect, will take back the party and chuck those idealist, oddball, Hell-obsessed, and lets face it, two-faced lying so-and-so’s out of the power structure. I’d feel better, and I’ll bet most of you would too.
