How Far They Have Moved Right...

Bono Speaks!

Very interesting interview with Bono, lead singer of the band U2, regarding Jesus Christ from a couple of years ago. He says many things with which I agree and some that I do not.

My understanding of the Scriptures has been made simple by the person of Christ. Christ teaches that God is love. What does that mean? What it means for me: a study of the life of Christ. Love here describes itself as a child born in straw poverty, the most vulnerable situation of all, without honor. I don’t let my religious world get too complicated. I just kind of go: Well, I think I know what God is. God is love, and as much as I respond [sighs] in allowing myself to be transformed by that love and acting in that love, that’s my religion. Where things get complicated for me, is when I try to live this love. Now that’s not so easy.

Agreed. Trying to live up to the perfect love that Jesus had for mankind and what he tasked us to do is indeed very difficult.

His next bit is very interesting.

But the way we would see it, those of us who are trying to figure out our Christian conundrum, is that the God of the Old Testament is like the journey from stern father to friend. When you’re a child, you need clear directions and some strict rules. But with Christ, we have access in a one-to-one relationship, for, as in the Old Testament, it was more one of worship and awe, a vertical relationship. The New Testament, on the other hand, we look across at a Jesus who looks familiar, horizontal. The combination is what makes the Cross.

Also agree. God is different in the OT than the NT and that's because of Jesus Christ. It's pretty simple when you think about it. Right before this, though, he says this:

There’s nothing hippie about my picture of Christ. The Gospels paint a picture of a very demanding, sometimes divisive love, but love it is.

Christ may have not been the hippie his artistic portrayals make him out to be but he was a man of peace. I don't think that God's love is all that demanding, at least from the standpoint from Him as an authority figure. After all, it is your choice to believe. For me, having faith is the easy part, I guess.

No Waving it Around!

Oh Really?

The Bible?

Like many Christians in America, I tuned in to watch the History Channel's epic mini-series, The Bible. After a few minutes into the first episode, I realized how naive I was in thinking that it would be even mildly intelligent. I mean, Noah was Scottish, for pete's sake!

They made a small effort to make the characters...ahem...browner...but really, the main ones were white with Jesus looking like the usual seventh member of the Allman Brothers Band. Worse, the devil was black and looked like...well...

Can we ever get to the point in this country where being a Christian means taking an honest look at the historical times of the Bible and chucking all the western myths that go along with it? I'd like to see some scholarly and intelligent depictions as well ass analyses of the stories of the Bible rather than the those like this series from the History Channel which are made for someone with the maturity of a second grader.

An Easter Reflection

Of all of the holidays we celebrate in this country, I find Easter to be the most disconcerting. I think the main reason for this is the lead up, particularly Good Friday. Far too many Christians seem obsessed with the brutal death of Jesus. They seem a little too much like modern day snuff film devotees and that disturbs me.

I find His death to be completely disgusting and horrible. I don't need to relive it over and over again. Nor do I feel the need to be reminded of His resurrection. I've accepted his death into my heart and believe that he died for our sins. Anything after that strikes me as repetitive and insecure. I guess I'd much rather focus on the amazing way He lived His life and how we can expand His message of peace around the world. I suppose that makes me a lousy Christian in the eyes of many but I don't care.

Being a believer doesn't carry with it the requirement that other people approve of your faith.

Healing

The recent cover story of the Christian Science Monitor is simply magnificent and speaks very deeply to great power of community in times of crisis. The local church as an extension of supportive faith is vital to healing and Newtown United Methodist is an excellent and most illustrative example of how well this can work.

I was very moved by this piece and took a great deal of comfort in how much love there is in Newtown in the face of unspeakable horror.

Best Picture: Life of Pi

My daughter and I went to see Life of Pi a few months back and both of us were very, very moved by this inspiring story. I remember several points throughout the film looking over at her and watching her face run the full range of emotions...wonder...terror...sadness...joy....intellectual satisfaction...all of these are present in this amazing film.

The films tells the story of Pi Patel, first in his quest to know God and become a devotee of all religions and then in his fight to survive after the ship he is on sinks, killing his entire family. We left the film with many, many things to talk about. My daughter thought it was amazing that he was a  Hindu, Christian and a Muslim at the same time. Pi, in the movie, explains this.

"I just wanted to be as close to God as possible."

She was very moved by his spiritual quest.

The rest of his journey across the ocean is filled with adventure and suspense coupled with that innate, human characteristic to survive at all costs. Life of Pi is definitely one of the best of the nine films that have been nominated for Best Picture.

Love Thy Neighbor

Can You Spot the Difference?

Since it's Sunday, it's only fitting that we turn to spiritual matters and this recent piece by Slate is..well...just what I have been saying all along.

A sample question.

Women cannot handle power. It is not within them to handle power. ... The real and true power comes from God and God is the one that gave man the power and the authority over the wife.

Was this an Islamic fundamentalist or a social conservative?

Click on the link above to find out!

As opposed to pretending reality isn't reality...

Perplexed

I don't understand why the Right is up in arms over the disagreement over whether or not the word "God" should be included in the Democratic Party Platform. Or the disagreement over whether or not Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Huh?

It's a surprise that there are people in the Democratic party who believe God is a fairy tale for infant minded people? Heck, there are people in my comments section that think that.

It's a surprise that the Democratic party has Muslims in it that feel that the Palestinians have been treated unfairly by the Israelis? Perhaps here there is a hope that some undecided voters will be scared off by the Moose-lems!

Or is it a surprise that Democrats don't march in lockstep on an issue?

I guess my initial thought is that it's none of those things and the Right is simply doing what they always do...not taking responsibility for something (their own truly awful platform) and bloviating, "Well, their's is worser and stuff!!!!" in typical juvenile fashion.

I really don't get it. What's the dig supposed to be?

A Hard Sunday Lesson Learned

Caught this headline the other day and laughed my pants off

Republican Horrified to Discover that Christianity is Not the Only Religion

But one Louisiana Republican is learning the hard way that religious school vouchers can be used to fund education at all sorts of religious schools, even Muslim ones. And while she's totally in favor of taxpayer money being used to pay for kids to go to Christian schools, she's willing to put a stop to the entire program if Muslim schools are going to be involved.

Well, that has to suck for her.

I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America's Founding Fathers' religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools. I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school.

Uh, there's only one problem there, Ms. Hodges.

As The Friendly Atheist points out, the brand of Christianity currently espoused by many in the religious right wing would be pretty unrecognizable to the Founding Fathers, who were pretty high on Deism and pretty low on Christian rock concerts/ talking about The Children's collective virginity/ having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. But whatever. Facts are immaterial at this point.

The Founding Fathers came from many different religious backgrounds and were products of the Age of Enlightenment. Many viewed Christianity as I do...that Christs's moral teachings are just as important as his holiness.

And didn't Thomas Jefferson have a copy of the Koran?

Sunday's Message

11 million hits on YouTube so far. This one is making a lot of people nervous.

Good.

Death Cult Recognized in England!

Two news stories caught my eye earlier this month. The first was about England recognizing Druidry as an official religion. The second was about a study of religious belief in the United States.

The English really are going to hell in a handbasket. They have this death cult that practices ritual cannibalism and ritual vampirism¹. (Some subcults of this religion have even discarded the notion that the cannibalism and vampirism are ritualistic, and posit they are actually eating human flesh and drinking human blood!²) They venerate an instrument of torture and death as their holy symbol, which in their temples often has a corpse hanging on it³. This religion's entire belief system is predicated on human sacrifice; the belief is that one person must be killed in order to grant another eternal life⁴. This cult became the official state religion in England about a thousand years ago. They call it "Christianity."

When I first read an article on the local paper's website about England recognizing Druidry -- a nature-worshiping religion that existed long before Christianity and perhaps even its predecessor, Judaism -- there were reader comments about how terrible England was for recognizing a pagan religion that practiced cannibalism, human sacrifice and worshiped Satan (Druids don't believe in Satan, who is a Judeo-Christian godling). Which struck me as ironic given Christianity's roots.

So when the study on US religious knowledge appeared I was curious to what light it shed on this question. It found that atheists, Jews and Mormons exhibit the greatest knowledge about religion in general. Hispanic Catholics and black Protestants are the least knowledgeable. Mormons and Evangelicals know the most about Christianity, while atheists and Jews know more about world religions. Finally, the most important factor in religious knowledge is education level.

So all the study tells us is that educated people know more stuff. Which we already knew.

That begs the question: why do people believe their religions are the one true path, when they actually don't know very much about their religions, they would be repelled by them if they did, and their core beliefs and practices hold so many contradictions and borrowings from other religions?

Christianity is just as creepy and crazy as any pagan religion, in large part because it has incorporated many of those practices -- pagan symbolism (Christmas trees), the idolatry of graven images (the cross), polytheism (Christianity -- the religion where 1 God + 1 Christ + 1 Holy Spirit = 1 God!, and then there are all those troublesome saints), fertility celebrations (the word Easter comes from Eostre, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of fertility, hence the bunny rabbits).

And then there's the whole genesis of Christian dogma. It was finalized at the Council of Nicaea, which was organized by the Emperor Constantine, who likely died a pagan but had chosen Christianity for the Roman Empire for political reasons. The Council picked and chose from hundreds of different competing versions of Christian writings, finally hammering out a final committee-approved bible. Pretty much the same process used to produce an annual corporate report.

But no one sees their own religion as creepy. They have conveniently forgotten or ignored the parts they don't like, and interpret it the way they want to. Many Christian practitioners insist they know the absolute will of God, though when bad things happen to good people everything suddenly becomes mysterious. Furthermore, Christianity is not a monolithic religion. Practically every tenet of every Christian sect's doctrine is considered heresy by at least one other Christian sect. It's hard to believe any of these things are true when Christians have been murdering each other for centuries over fine points of theological interpretation.

And this mindset doesn't stop at religion. Some Americans insist they know the absolute will of the Founding Fathers, that the Constitution is an inviolable holy writ that means only what exactly what it says. But the disagreements among the Founding Fathers are well documented; they did not all believe the same thing. They argued and comprised and came up with one of the greatest documents ever written. Even so, within 10 years of its writing there were huge disagreements among those same Founding Fathers about what it meant -- like whether the Constitution should allow the establishment of a federal banking system.

Which really gets to the heart of the problem: people don't actually understand or know what the literal text of the Bible or the Constitution is. Instead they take the easy way out and adhere to one prophet or another who claims to know what the ultimate truth is, and then do that prophet's bidding.

This the first mistake we all make: trusting that the judgment of the pope, or Muhammed, or Rush Limbaugh is superior to our own. The second mistake we make is going along with them for the whole ride. The pope, Muhammed and Rush are right about some things. They're not right about everything, and they're dead wrong about a lot of things. Our willingness to go along with them, right or wrong, is perhaps mankind's greatest tragedy.

Religionists keep telling us we can't pick and choose what points of doctrine we accept: as Catholics we have to believe everything the pope tells us to believe. As Mormons we have to accept everything in the Book of Mormon. But picking and choosing points of doctrine is what every religious leader has been doing since Day One.

So, for a better world, don't be a Dittohead.

Notes:

1) During communion Christians partake of wine and bread, which are symbols of Christ's blood and flesh. These are ritual acts of vampirism and cannibalism.

2) The Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation posits that the priest is performing an actual miracle and is literally converting the wine to blood and the wheat in bread to flesh. Which means either that priests should in a pinch be able to use communion wine for blood transfusions, or that the Pillsbury Doughboy is the Second Coming of Christ.

3) Christ was tortured and killed on the cross, which is the symbol of most Christian churches. Not all, mind you: the Jehovah's Witnesses think it's disgusting to venerate the instrument of Christ's death, and believe Christ was crucified on a pole and not a cross in any case. The cross in many churches also has a statue of Christ on it. This graven image is also a big no-no.

4) The entire basis of Christianity is that Christ died for our sins: human sacrifice. That he is human is sometimes disputed -- just as his divinity often is. That this was a real sacrifice is also disputed -- if he was divine and he knew he would be resurrected and granted eternal life, then three days of chilling out in a tomb is not much of a sacrifice. And there's the whole Abraham and Isaac sacrifice deal...