I have to delineate this in three different perspectives, that of Christians who don’t preach that God tells us to kill people, people who say they’re Christians and that God DOES say to kill and torture people, and people who don’t claim the name of Christ and say that God doesn’t tell us to kill and torture people.
Since the issue was raised, why Republican makes such a huge difference:
They not only are making Torture and Killing the major part of their platform for the mid-term elections but for the 2012.
I brought up Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal because they’re both being considered as candidates
They also, like the entire leadership of their party and the only vocal members of their party, who are fortunately very loud in their screams for the blood of everybody who Is Not Them….
…claim to be the representatives of God on earth.
Literally.
I don’t listen to KVOR by choice, but the idiots who do like to play it REAL damn loud because that’s the only way they can convince anybody to listen to it.
and a loving God in His infinite mercy and wisdom failed to provide me with ear-lids.
Sarah Palin, for instance, is a lay-minister in the Assembly of God church.
Somehow the AOG has slipped a little in the past 40 years because they used to not allow their women to wear slacks… far less dressing like a crack whore.
Bobby Jindal, Gingrich, Vitter, the list goes on, Huckabee and Romney… aside from all of them being Chickenshit ChickenHawks who are all for killing people just as long as they don’t have to put themselves at risk to do it…
Claim to be Christians. So do the loudmouth rednecks on KVOR. Huckabee is a preacher. Romney took draft deferments because he was doing his Mormon missionary service. Gingrich converted to Catholicism so he could get an annulment from wife #2, thus wife #3 wouldn’t be judged as a whore. Kind of like Henry the Eighth.
He’s also considering a run for President in 2012.
All this in the name of God.
If the R’s hadn’t made these things their entire platform I would be entirely wrong to criticize them (almost) exclusively.
The Democratic Party doesn’t claim an exclusive right to speak for Christians…
Now, see, I AM a Christian, remember? It’s where I get the Brother part of my name.
That means I do have a horse in this race.
If I allowed the Christian version of the Taliban speak unchallenged on this or any other issue I would be betraying God.
And, like the boy scout oath, My Country as well.
A lot of Christians have about zero tolerance for outsiders telling them what’s wrong with with their version of what Christ said and did.
Let’s make that fair, eh? Those readers who are pagans, Buddhists, Jews, Muslim, Atheist, do YOU ever take it kindly when people tell you, speaking from THEIR faith, or the dogma thereof, what YOU as a pagan or Buddhist or Jew or Muslim or Atheist has to believe or how you’re supposed to act as representatives of your faith or lack thereof?
I didn’t think so.
Since I AM a Christian and not ashamed of Christ (although some of my fellow Christians make me queasy and uneasy) I am obliged to point these things out, not just “preaching to the choir” of people who agree with me but ESPECIALLY to Christians who don’t. I took His name, I have to stand against the Murderous blasphemy and to do it in His name.
Or be a collaborator and accomplice to their crimes, the ones they justify with their blasphemous use of God’s name.
The Republican Party are with a united voice claiming that any criticism of their policies is an attack against America and an attack against God.
I say that it is instead an affirmation in my faith and my patriotism to oppose placing my nation squarely in the wrong, and to oppose doing it in the Name of God.
That counts for the first perspective. Mine. And shared by millions upon millions of other American Christians who opposed the Republican agenda precisely on that ground.
The Republicans have a huge amount of available air time and their tame corporate press to spout their bullshit and they do it regularly.
That’s the second perspective and they express it … a LOT and very loudly. For them to deny it would be pointless and laughable.
The third is from non-Christians who have pointed out that God didn’t tell us to kill each other.
Here’s where the rubber meets the road (I’ve got a million unused cliches to tap into)
There’s a Fourth Perspective.
Just like a lot of Christians, and a lot of Atheists, and a lot of Other non-Muslims will say that Islam is a religion of purest hatred, and cite passages in the Koran which are based on very similar passages in the law of Moses…
A lot of non-Christians will say that God did teach murder and torture and other perversions.
And they’ll cite the same scriptures the Hate Freaks like Palin and Gingrich and Bush cited, and they’ll cite every “christian” who is Stupid Enough to follow them.
Follow them explicitly by tossing up the stiff-arm Salute and echoing their bullshit, or follow them implicitly by not opposing their murderous ways.
Some might argue that it began before George Dubya. Apparently the US public’s distrust of politics is placated by believing its fate is in the hands of someone they could feel comfortable having a beer with. I’d say it began in earnest with the cardboard figurehead Ronald Reagan, and continued through the wimp and slick Wimpy. The perceived acuity of the US president has since been diminished ad absurdum to an incoherent, uneducated, illiterate inebriate. The ascension of Barack Obama marks a change meant to refresh voter confidence, but clearly our government’s winning motif is taking a not so distant back seat. Americans need someone with whom to feel superior, if not in the highest office, at least among his foils.
While I’m inclined to think these caricatures are fashioned by the media’s framework, mano a mano performance like Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal make me a believer in the solo tour de force majeure, excuse me, grand malheur. Could Jindal’s rebuttal to President Obama’s congressional address have been any weaker? It’s hard for me to predict that SNL will give us anything other than the Palin treatment, lampooning Jindal’s insipid pitch by reprising it verbatim.