but wait there's more

I have graffiti on the front of my laptop (iBook G4, three years old, given to me by my sister). The graffiti consists largely of humanitarian statements by various people from Albert Einstein to Mother Theresa. There is a post card that states that a billion dollars spent on missiles generates 9000 jobs while a billion dollars spent on education generates 63000 jobs.

There used to be a bumper sticker with a quote from Edward Abbey that said “It is the duty of every patriot to protect his country from his government”, but I took it off a couple of months ago when I had to fly, figuring one of the crack TSA folks would read it, alert his boss and I would end up cooling my heals for the rest of my life uncharged and forgotten as an “enemy combatant” in GitMo (which, as I have mentioned, when history is able to judge without the veil of prejudice, will be regarding as one of the most egregious acts of human rights violations since the slave trade)

I still have two small stickers on my computer that tend to get nods of agreement from the people who read them:

“Jesus was a Pacifist”

And my personal favorite,

“Loving thy enemy implies not killing them.”

I don’t understand how so many so-called “pro-life” Christians can be so enamored with violence.

Let me say this, before the replies start flying before I get done. You want to be pro-life, fine. I’m pro-choice, being a man I won’t ever understand what it means to be pregnant, and I certainly won’t understand what it means to be pregnant and not want to be. Hence, I am pro-choice.

I think that taking a stance on something is admirable, on either side of the debate; as long as when you make a decision you avoid hypocrisy. I often confront members of PETA with the question of whether or not they are pro-choice. Most of the time they say they are, to which I then ask if that position doesn’t make them hypocrites. I personally believe it does. How can you support not killing animals and support terminating any other living being?

Which leads me to the “pro-life” Christians who do wacky things like eschew diplomacy and begin full-scale war that kills hundreds of thousands because 18 thugs committed mass homicide. What kind of Pro-Life stance is that? The last time a religious war such as the one we are engaged in occurred, the Crusaders lead the charge to purge the Middle East of the infidel Muslims and Jews. Pro-life indeed, the issue isn’t pro-life as much as it is George Bush’s interpretation of just whose life is worth saving.

Or there is the issue of another “Pro-life” Bush who has allowed the Florida legislature to broaden gun laws so that a registered gun owner can shoot someone if they “reasonably” feel threatened, thereby increasing the number of registered weapons in Florida from 25,000 to over 400,000 since the new laws were enacted. They should just go ahead and change the name of the state to Tombstone and let everybody shoot it out like the Sam Raimi movie “ The Quick and the Dead”. If that happens then perhaps the problem of too many guns would just take care of itself.

And of course there are the Pro-life folks who just can’t wait to execute a convicted felon…that’s the best form of Pro-life. With this “Christians” use the old “eye for an eye” biblical reference as justification. Whatever happened to turning the other cheek? Or Forgiveness?

Although, perhaps Florida is right, maybe we should just broaden the gun laws across the country, let every one own a gun who wants one, lets eliminate murder as a crime while we’re at it. That way, if someone pisses you off, or looks at you wrong or says something about your family, just shoot ‘em.

Jesus would love that.

Someone arrests you for speaking out against injustice, have your posse strike back and ‘bust a cap’ in all of them, that’ll get you right in heaven.

After all when Jesus was threatened, when Jesus was assaulted, when he was humiliated, tortured, sentenced to death and hung out to be picked apart by the vultures and the dogs with the power and full authority of God behind him, he…he…

Oh yeah…he forgave.

Good thing he wasn’t a Christian.

Peace,

REW

Labels: christian, forgiveness, gun laws, Iraq, Jesus, PETA

January 22, 2007

I have received a few responses to the relatively small number of blogs I have put up, and the most enthusiastic of them come from evangelical Christians and revolve around my calling the major religions of the world “credible”. I want to state here that this is not necessarily a religious blog, but do consider myself an amateur theologian. Spending a bit of my time reading from various religious and theological texts. I am most interested in the historical views of Jesus and the early Christians.

For the most part, whenever I speak with an evangelical Christian and mention my own belief in the validity of other faiths, they throw the Gospel of John at me. Hence I will respond to the e-mails I have received and then stay away from this topic for a while.

I have also gotten a few corrections in regards to my grammer, my defense is that I am originally from New Orleans where english is a second language. I use and editor for my "real" writing.

Okay, so here goes:

Now, here’s where I really piss off the fundamentalists, because I take the personal view that the Book of John is more of a Kitty Kelly unauthorized biography of Christ, or, more to the point, a book of political propaganda, used by the early church to separate itself from its ties to the Jewish faith, than an actual “witness” to the life and words of Jesus of Nazareth.

First and foremost is the fact that the book of John was written somewhere near a hundred years after Jesus died. It is the only one of the “four” Gospels to contain the phrase ‘I am the way the truth and the life…” and is the most anti-Semitic of the Gospels. Which makes sense because the first two, Mathew and Mark, were actually written by Jewish authors. The Gospel of Luke was written by a Gentile like John, but was written 30 or so years earlier, before the desperate need for safety and organization by Christians got to the point of their creating hostility towards all things Jewish, (it was the book of John and its use by the church of the middle ages that lead to the slaughter of millions of Jews and Muslims in the Crusades).

My personal preference in Gospels runs to Mark first as it was the earliest, then Mathew and Luke. I tend to leave John to the Catholics and the fundamentalists.

I have taken to calling fundamentalists either “Paulists” or the “New Sanhedrin” as they prefer to point to the New Testament writings as “Law”. Flying directly in the face of Jesus' teachings that told us that we should not get lost in the law and that all of God’s people were free to come to his table. True followers of Jesus of Nazareth, understand that he did not come to enslave people under the law, but to free them to follow their hearts, and to use those hearts to make the world a better place for everyone.

It was those who came later, (particularly Paul, a convert/zealot who battled James and Peter for the direction of the church, read Acts) those who sought to organize a new religion under extremely dangerous conditions, who deliberately narrowed the words of Jesus to exclude those of other faiths or even those who had differing opinions regarding the Christian faith, such as the Gnostics and the Coptics.

When “Paulists” begin spouting that the only way to heaven is through belief in Jesus as the “one true” Son of God, they become no better than radical Muslims who believe that theirs is the one true faith or any religious zealot for that matter.

As Christians it is imperative to remember that Jesus taught that above all things we must first and foremost have a love of God and second we must have humility and tolerance to all. Those I believe were his words or as close to his words as we can get. The book of John is filled with words of political punditry and fear, and not likely from Jesus.

Peace,

RW

June 27th 2006 was the date of my last blog. I don't know why I stopped. It's not like I don't like to write, I do. Any way, as part of my New Year's resolution I am starting up again. Mostly because I will be publishing my first book and having a web series pilot out this spring, I figure can use whatever meager publicity this will get me.

There is so much to write about these days that narrowing down to one topic is difficult, but I just watched a vid from CNN on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., since his holiday is Monday I figured I say a couple of things in and around him.

It's hard to imagine Dr. King not wanting to march these days considering how violent we've become. As a nation we are inundated with violence and death. Two days ago, a US gunship flew over the Somali countryside and sprayed bullets on a village killing 20 or so people in a matter of minutes in the name of the "War on Terror". The President has asked for 20000 more troops for a failing war effort in Iraq where 3000 kids have died in just under four years and another 22000 have been wounded. Not to mention the 100000 or so Iraqis killed.

Here in America, my hometown of New Orleans has suffered through 9 murders in the first 12 days of the year. If that pace remains they will have 274 murders this year or roughly a hundred and fifteen or so more than last year. Making New Orleans by far the most violent city in a country where 30000 people die each year as a result of gun violence.

Yes, there is no question, to me at least, that Dr. King would march. His biggest dilemma with so much going on would be which cause to march about. With ten times the number of dead here at home on an annual basis than the war in Iraq has cost us in four years, perhaps he would see that as a nation we need to begin to search within ourselves for an answer to violence first, before we can go to other countries and point out their faults.

Like the citizens of New Orleans did yesterday, perhaps Dr. King would call our politicians to the mat, turn their heads away from the oil rich fields of the middle east long enough to recognize that the crisis of faith in this world does not pit muslims, christians and jews against one another, but person against person.

Dr. King would push us to recognize that the violence that culminates now in the streets of Baghdad, begins in the fear that is grown in our own cities, and in the mindset of our own people.

Dr. King would also remind us Jesus said, we need to remove the log from our own eyes before we can remove the splinter from our neighbor's eye.

Peace,

RW