In the beginning, God created skies and earth.
If you are here reading this, I am so happy for your visit and hopeful that you might be uplifted in some way.
It's depressing to read or watch the news these days. Radicals continue to stake out conservatism with the same energy they stake out patriotism. They speak absurdities into microphones eagerly thrust before them. The politicians, fearful of losing their power, pander shamelessly to them
The press seems to savor the brashest higgledy-piggledy-natural-law-and-common-sense defying proclamation just for the sake of entertainment. Microphones and cameras eagerly await the next outrageous stupidity that pops into the heads of those whom we elect allegedly to solve national, state, and local problems.
A statement that is just plain nuts, then appears on talk shows like Meet the Press or The Daily Show. The statement itself becomes news, and we laugh and talk about it and after it is said repeatedly it begins to sound viable. That is a dangerous precedent for a nation conceived in reason.
Depending on our point of view we scratch out heads and wonder how a human being can sound so much like a horse’s ass without anyone in the press corps calling him or her on it.
If we are sympathetic to the speaker we reason out by default how he or she makes sense.
The more incredible the stupidity uttered, the more gullibility must be whipped up to prolong the entertainment value.
For example, it was not so long ago that Time Magazine reported that 51% of Republicans believed our president was not born in the USA. That was fine and good for comedians if it were uttered by an individual, but it stinks when it takes on the validity of a cult.
Recall the campaigns Mr. Obama had run against Senator Hillary Clinton, and then against Senator John McCain. Surely, if there had been an inkling of credibility to the claim that Mr. Obama was Kenyan, either of those candidates would have screamed it to the rooftops and through our televisions. Neither said anything about it except Mr. McCain who famously told one of his supporters that Mr. Obama was a good American.
When the “birther” issue emerged again during the second election, Governor Romney was criticized for not denouncing it except among those partisan press members who wanted others to believe there was an issue even when they privately knew there was not.
Believing stupid things corrodes integrity. It makes normal, thinking people assume a default assumption that every statement must be scrutinized if it comes out of the offending person’s mouth or the political party’s press. Hatred, not logic or reason, seemingly drives such loony discourse as we are seeing these days.
The elevation of absurdity has certainly hurt Christianity through the centuries: from Docetism to Darbyism and current end times theology. I will not write of theology right now, though it has certainly set the standard for generating stupidities as truth.
Many self aggrandized Christians have been preaching that it's okay to spend billions of dollars and shed gallons of human blood to take out one tyrant, but not a dime should be given for health care. They proclaim that all people should arm themselves, yet forget that most of the citizens gunned down in our country cannot afford the CPR or ITC to revive them.
I am being a little rhetorical here. Then again… maybe not. When our House of Representatives votes to cancel the food stamp program, it makes me think that many among them would quite literally withhold every single dime spent for health care, and allocate it to those who are like camels traveling through needles.
It seems too enormous amounts of money is spent to persuade the rest of us that helping poor people is a dangerous plot that is destroying our nation.
The irony is we claim to be this great Christian nation. We have programs to help poor people that would make the prophet Amos shout for joy. Our government contributes to the sustenance of millions, and that would make us the envy of early Christians who lived during that dreadful time when they had to hide from their government in Rome.
Alas, we are such self obsessed Christians today with no good news for anyone except those we work so tirelessly to plunge further into their Mammon.
Are we praying for more war? I listen to some of our politicians who beat those war drums into Afghanistan and Iraq, and would now beat them into Syria. These same politicians descry food stamps as if they were citizen possessing devils and praise war as the will of god. These are the politics of those who profit from wars. This is what the Bible means when it talks about thinking like the world.
Let’s be honest here. We can be Christians who clamor for war and against the poor, but we are not following our leader. We love Caesar today as Caesar was loved before, and love not the peasant from Nazareth. All those same lies told to glorify Caesar are being told today to glorify the green, wallet sized American god and the politicians who defend him.
I hope you return for my next post. Blessings…
No comments:
Post a Comment