Talk about your mind numbed idiots! I bet Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Jimmy Carter, Millard Fuller and all the folks over at Habitat for Humanity, (BTW, read Fuller’s book Theology of the Hammer!), Anne Lamott (Read any of her books, they’re great), Rev. Billy Graham, and billions of Christians present and past are kicking themselves after reading this article! Add to those numbers the billions of past and present Buddhist, Taoist, Jews, Muslims, Hindu and other suckers of organized religion. Don’t let anyone tell you this article is about the beliefs of conservatives, or Republicans, or the right wing, or anything else, because all you have to do is read all the way to the end, as I did, and look at the “related” articles My favorite is “Organized Religion: A Tool for Ignorance, Power, and Control”. To be sure, every faith has had its share of charlatans. One of my favorite quotes is from the Christian band DC Talk, all the way back in the twentieth century. “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, and deny him with their lifestyle. This is what an unbelieving world finds simply unbelievable.” I think the reason this quote is so poignant to me, as well as the song “What if I Stumble” that follows it, is that far too often my own behavior has been more like a rock on the path creating stumblers. Even if I have to take the televangelist, the heretics, the slime who pervert the message to their own ends, those who ignore parts of Jesus message when it is convenient, and even folks like me as part of the package, I would still prefer faith. The writer of this article, and those who’have shared its view that faith as ignorance, certainly have the right to do so. I’ve just not seen any society without God that I find a better alternative to one with God. I don’t want to live in a society that believes it is like a good idea to sterilize those with unwanted traits to protect the gene pool. Our own Uncle Sam did this far too frequently in the 20th century. (When you need to throw-up, but don’t have any ipecac on hand, go read Skinner v Oklahoma or Buck v Bell.) I don’t want to live in a society like China where the government can decide to abort a child based on its gender, regardless of what the parents want. I don’t want to live in a society like North Korea where starvation is used as a means of control. I don’t want to live in any society that has as its foundation the ideal of Mr. Marx that “religion is the opiate of the masses.” Even though the faithful have often acted with the very behavior they have condemned, faith offers an aspect not found among the forward thinking, enlightened, progressives - hope. The faithful know that while we often choose anger, selfishness, hypocrisy, and any manner of barbarism over the faith we claim to espouse, there is none past God’s power to correct it. Time and time again, we have seen Him send folks like Dr. King, Rev. Graham, Mother Teresa, or even knuckleheads like Jonah, Peter, maybe even you or me to be the hands and feet of His love. Thank God for ignorance!
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 20:05:48 +0000
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