First, you should know that I was raised in the Christian church. I have studied the bible. I respect it as a piece of historical literature. I reject it as a code to live by for the most part, yet there are some parts I embrace-- I do believe that Jesus Christ was a guy who didn't really have any bad ideas; love thy neighbor as thy self, take care of the sick, the poor, widows and orphans and foreigners. Not a bad code to live by, however the parts where people are killed for wearing two different fabrics, women are sold into slavery and the rest of the insanity makes it impossible for me to accept the book as divine mandate. Not to mention that science has debunked much of it, so I do not accept it as absolute truth. It simply is not. Still, the way Jesus taught us to live is not a bad concept. He was a good man.
It's a shame that a bunch of guys got together centuries ago and decided that they could profit off of his teachings, and that their way was the right one and anyone who didn't go along would be damned--and then killed into the bargain. And so it was with the crusades, so it was throughout history, and so it continues today.
Modern Christians just don't get that this country was not founded on Jesus Christ--it was founded on the principle of religious freedom...the right to worship any god one so chooses. Buddah, Vishnu, Ra, Allah, or Jesus. Pick a god, worship whom you will. You're free to do that. Matters of faith should be a personal thing. Jesus did say to pray in your closet and not out in the street.
Religion should never be used as a cudgel to beat your fellow man over the head with, until he is bloodied into submission and forced to see things your way. Faith doesn't work like that. It never has and it never will. Religion has no right to impose its will and its system of values and edicts on those of us who do not embrace it or embrace a different set of values from a different god.
Yet today's Christian right beats all of us over the head with their bibles and religious system of belief in the form of restrictive legislation. Their god says it is so, and so it must be for all of us. NO, NO, a thousand times NO. Their god is not my god. Their system of belief, and their book of rules do not apply to me. I do not believe as they believe and my right to abstain from their moral code is bestowed upon me by the Constitution. I don't have to follow along.
The great men who formed this nation warned us about the dangers of the state meddling in the matters of church. It also warned us of the dangers of the church meddling in the affairs of governance. The religious right is not listening and seeks actively to impose their bible on us all. I will fight them to the death for my right to worship any other god or no god at all rather than bow down to the lord they wish to impose upon me. I would rather die a free human being than to be bound by their religious ignorance that steals the rights of my fellow human beings and forces them to adhere to their antiquated sense of morality.
I have a message for all of the ultra-right-wing-conservative-Christians: You're just as bad as the Muslims that you vilify. How dare you stand there with your pseudo-righteous indignation ranting at a group of different religious zealots when they are so much like yourselves? It is wrong and deplorable to fly a plane into a building and kill innocent people. It is equally wrong to stand in front of a health center and murder one man in cold blood because he dares to offer a Constitutionally protected service to women. And before you say that the death of 3,000 human beings is far worse than the murder of one...it is your bible that says all sin is equal in the sight of god. And these things are not wrong because god says so--it is wrong because it breaks the rules of a civilized society with laws that say it is so.
It is equally wrong for a group of "god fearing" men to attempt to legislate women's health services. Sorry, men...you will never know what it is like to be a woman. You will never, ever know what it is to be one of us. You have no right, not here on Earth, and certainly not bestowed on you by heaven, to legislate women's bodies--or anyone's body. I reject your heaven and your so-called divine authority to impose your will on my body. The Constitution (which you claim to hold in as high esteem as your bible) grants me the right to decide what happens to my body. Abortion is legal and Constitutionally protected. Rape is rape and is never the victim's fault. No matter what. You can label it all you like, you can define it and redefine it, and it's all the same. I will fight for the laws that protect my body.
I refuse to accept the marginalization of a group of citizens based on their sexual orientation because your bible tells you so. I reject your bible and your imagined moral authority once more. Your bible also tells you that you can sell your daughter into slavery and take our neighboring countrymen into slavery. I have a feeling Canada might not agree with that bit of scripture. I don't see many daughters on the American market, but I would never put it past you religious zealots to try. None the less, if you reject one tenent of the bible as outdated socially, then the same principle must apply to all the edicts of the Bible. Is that really what you want our country to become?
I live in a world of fact and tangibility--science and technology. Your belief in an invisible man in the clouds watching over you does not negate my truth. As the great Neil degrasse Tyson once said, "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it." You don't have to believe in science, and I don't have to believe in your god. I have provable facts on my side. You have faith in a deity you have never seen and have no direct evidence of. That is your choice. It is not mine however. Why can't you get that? You do not have, nor have you ever, had the right to enact legislation based on your personal religious beliefs. Governance is secular. Jesus, Mohammed, Buddah, Allah, and Vishnu free. None of them have any business in our public policy.
To be quite honest, while Christianity professes to be a religion based on love, it has become a religion based on bigotry and exclusion. Not by design, mind you. It's what the leadership has made it. they've taken the bible and the words of Christ and twisted them. They've turned what should be a matter of quiet faith and loving ways and turned it into a billion dollar industry that preys upon the weakest and most vulnerable among us. To be fair, if the churches in this nation want to participate in public policy, it's high time they put some skin in the game and paid taxes. In fact that's the law.
Pat Robertson, televangelist and former Presidential candidate, who recently warned his viewers that atheists are miserable and want to make Christians miserable as well, is worth an estimated $30 million dollars. He's not unique. Pastor Rick Warren (author of the best selling book, The Purpose Driven Life) is worth an estimated $25 million, and the list goes on and on. Do they not remember that passage about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than to enter the kingdom of heaven? I guess that doesn't apply to Robertson or his political funding arm, The Christian Coalition.
If you really want to see the obscenity of faith, you need look no further than the Vatican, whose net worth is estimated between $10-16.5 billion dollars. The Vatican is invested in real estate, construction, steel, chemicals, banking, and insurance. Although a significant portion of their vast wealth goes to the Catholic Church's charitable enterprises, an even more significant portion goes to this:
Just imagine for a minute the number of homeless people who could be provided shelter, how many hungry people could be fed for what this cost to construct? Is this what the simple carpenter of ancient days wanted his belief system to become? Is this ostentatious display what Christianity is all about? What hypocrisy, what absolute self-aggrandizing, utter hypocrisy. And this is the reason I cannot take Christianity seriously. It is a mockery of itself. The simple fact that religious leaders are (pardon the pun) hell-bent on inserting themselves into public policy, shows me that there is an ulterior motive to their actions that has nothing to do with the teachings of Christ and everything to do with their investment portfolio.
I find it ironic that Jesus never once mentioned homosexuality in his writings and teachings--yet he told his believers to pray in their closets. It's time that Christian radicals went back in the closet and stayed out of public policy and government.
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