Color Me Disgusted

New favorite bumper sticker, spotted this morning on 6th Street:

"Where are we going?

Why am I in this handbasket?"

Not bad. So glad there are creative people still out there. Now on to our scheduled rant.

I was raised in a Christian home. I consider myself a Christian. My fervent prayer is that my heaven is nowhere close to that heaven where the fanatical right-wing, so-called Christians are planning to spend their eternity. A more narrow-minded, bigoted, group I can't imagine. What happened to that ideology that we should love our fellow man, warts and all? I love the old Kris Kristofferson song "Jesus Was a Capricorn". Sums it up pretty well.

"Jesus was a Capricorn, he ate organic foods.

He believed in love and peace and never wore no shoes.

Long hair, beard and sandals and a funky bunch of friends.

Reckon they'd just nail him up if He come down again."

I get a strong feeling that Jesus wouldn't be too popular with the right-wing folks if he showed up today.

These fanatics can twist the scripture to mean anything they want you to believe, but I sometimes wonder how they reconcile their gay-bashing, liberal-hating, "my way or the highway" attitudes with some basic verses that I remember well from my church-going days:

Matthew 7:1 (KJV)
Judge not, that ye be not judged.

Matthew 22:39 (KJV)

And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

John 8:7 (KJV)
So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

Romans 12:19 (KJV)
Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

I mean, really, what do you think of first when you hear these idiots braying their opinions? Love of their neighbor? I think not. These loud-mouthed jerks, piously proclaiming their Christianity while every action speaks the opposite, do more to drive people away from the Church than bring them to it. I really don't think that when the Lord directed his followers to go out and be missionaries that he had in mind for them to sit on your chest and push their beliefs down your throat until you gagged.

You know, it strikes me how similar the fanatics of the right-wing Christian movement are to their fanatical counterparts in the Holy Land who are blowing each other up right and left. God forbid we should try to see the other person's point of view if it differs from ours. We're right, by God! So you're wrong!

Unfortunately many of these clowns are Baptists, as am I. There are days when I seriously consider hitching my religious wagon to the Quakers. There is something seriously wrong with a group that makes me feel, by association, that I have to hang my head in shame. That's one reason I no longer attend worship services.

I stopped going to church the day I found myself so incensed by an ill-educated substitute pastor, who felt the need to personally take on the subject of evolution vs. creationism, that I came very close to standing up before God and everybody and calling him a moron. I decided that if that was the type of feeling I got from attending worship services, I was in the wrong place. Now to feel God's presence, I go out in the woods and drink in the sounds, sights and smells of nature. One of the times I've felt closest to God was when I stood on the brink of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado. Church isn't a building full of people, but the feeling you get in your heart when you stand in the presence of the wonders of nature.

People come to God in their own way and come to terms with God one on one. Some never find him and it's a true tragedy. Others never really know him because of the constant drone of the narrow-minded who drown out the inner voice that connects directly to God. I can only pray that they will someday stop listening to the pious hypocrites and start listening to God.

LSW