I came upon this article from over four years ago, The Good Christian. It’s basically about how I don’t dislike Christians. I just dislike Christianity as I normally find it in America. Since then, I’ve written a number of articles about different aspects of this. I think, for example, that the Sermon on the Mount is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing ever. And it makes clear that religion and politics are really the same thing.
Any time someone claims that you are “politicizing” religion, what they really mean is that they don’t like your religion. Unless you are going to stick to theoretical discussions of ontology, religion is politics. And the sort of people who claim that it isn’t are exactly the kind of people who don’t even think of ontology as part of religion. For them, religion is dogma at best, and tribalism at worst. “I’ve been told that the soul enters the fetus at conception, and that’s that.” They really ought to change those bumper stickers that read, “God Said It, I Believe It, That Settles It.” It would be more accurate to say, “My pastor told me, I believe it, that settles it.” Because there ain’t nothing in the “literal word of God” that says the zygote has a soul.
In looking for images for another article, I entered “Liberal Christianity is” into Google and it offered the suggestion, “Liberal Christianity is not Christianity.” There are almost 33 million pages for that search. If you enter “Conservative Christianity is” into Google, it offers the suggestion, “conservative Christianity is dying.” There are a half million pages for that search. “Conservative Christianity is not Christianity” provides only 19 million pages. But it does indicate that in the English language, conservative Christians really think that the basis of their religion is control of women and hatred of fags. (Is it any wonder conservative Christians hate fundamentalist Muslims so much? They are almost the same.)
My Religion Isn’t Political!
There is a constant problem of my religion being obviously what God believes and your religion being obviously just what you want to believe. But the truth is that I value religion and I really am interested in the religious beliefs of others. I’ll be honest though, I’m pretty bored with the the whole “personal relationship with Jesus,” which is so common in this country. For one thing, it is a very recent invention. I don’t know the history, but I don’t think it is more than a few centuries old, and didn’t really catch on until the last fifty years.
But what it does is allow people to imagine that religion is easy — that they have a direct pipeline to God. So any notion that comes into their minds must be true. And this is how we get the vulgar displays of professional football players claiming that God was on their side. It’s vulgar because it belittles religion. It makes it all about the believer and not about God. The sports hero who wins the game had God’s backing, but starving Ethiopian children do not. (Note: Ethiopia is a majority Christian country.)
So you see: even the simple act of proclaiming that God is on your side is a political statement. It is a claim that the status quo is right. God wants the poor to starve. God wants the rich to flourish. We all know that God works in mysterious ways, but those ways lead us to where we are now — to the world as it actually exists. Now I have my own conception of God: a linguistic trick allowing us to talk about the nature of existence. That kind of religion isn’t political, because God isn’t something that has any interest in the world. How could it?! It’s a word! But for the vast majority of religious people here in the United States, religion is little but politics.
I listened to a little bit of the most recent Republican debate. And Ted Cruz used the same attack on Donald Trump again and again: that he sounded like Hillary Clinton. But I thought the attacks fell flat. It seems to me that Republicans hate Hillary Clinton because she’s Hillary Clinton; but they don’t think that every idea she has is a bad one. And that’s especially true on foreign policy because she’s well known as a hawk. People like Cruz (and honestly, Marco Rubio too), the Republican catechism is so well known, that they don’t realize it is more or less meaningless to most actual Republicans.
But it does lead us to the point where the Republican Party establishment can’t counter someone like Donald Trump by comparing hims policies to Hillary Clinton’s policies. Because the base doesn’t care. They hate Hillary Clinton. They don’t hate Hillary Clinton policies. It’s just like they hate Obamacare, but not Obamacare policies. I’ve noted this many times before. It’s amazing how popular universal healthcare is with Republican voters. It is only when they told that it is not something their side believes in that they have a problem with it. As it is, Obamacare is as conservative a law as you could have that would actually improve the healthcare situation. So why do conservatives hate it? Because they were told to.
Well, it’s Leap Day my friends. The only person I’ve ever known who was born on this day was my grandfather. It’s always seemed a curious way to deal with a calendar. But there is a lot about our calendars that I don’t care much for. I don’t like months being different lengths. And then February really screws things up not being static. And why February? Wouldn’t it make more sense to put it in December? You could start with January at 31 days, and then alternate 30, 31, 30, and so on. That would give December 30 days on a Leap year. At least it would make sense and everyone would be straight on the number of days in each month.
