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9.30.2003
Deep Breath There has been a thought that I have been wanting to write about for a while but felt it was a little too big for me to start. I will try to take it on in a few small nibbles instead. I hope that this will, in some small measure, hindered by my inability as a writer, help you understand my positions and the purpose for this page. I am not so vain as to entertain the idea that any of my ideas are going to be original. In the course of researching what I want to say here I have come across some nice articles that run along the same lines. I come at politics from a relative position of ignorance. It wasn't something that was really debated at my house while I was growing up. There weren't heated debates about race or education. I was sent to a small catholic school and moved on to go to the bigger catholic high school. My education in a religious environment didn't influence my politics directly either. I never recall the priest giving sermon's about taxes, abortion or who to vote for come election day. At least not that I paid attention to anyway. I do recall hearing the same gospels over and over again to the point where I knew which one was being started after just a few words. My father was a Democrat because of his union at work and because I think he was raised as one as well, though it was never stated. I do recall at one point learning that the word Reagan was the near equivalent to a curse word that a president's name could get. This was apparently due to the way Reagan's policies led to the eventually purchase and dismantling of the company where my father had worked for some 20+ years. This is enough biographical information for now. Suffice it to say that religion didn't directly influence my politics and I was never subjected to any direct indoctrination either. I could have come out of my upbringing with very different beliefs. I jumped into my own political education not so very long ago, but I can tell that even the basic core beliefs that I developed outside of politics influences me. In particular I feel that my education in the scientific field has been invaluable in helping me to approach politics with a skeptical mind. In the process of learning about cells, chemical reactions and developmental process I was practicing a very open minded evidence based approach to learning. This contrasted with the "end goal" based approach that I see other people using. What has come to baffle and intrigue me is the very bizarre alliance that has formed between fundamentalist Christianity and hard-line pro-capitalism, creating a strange ideology that centers around the god-granted system of capitalism in defiance of the Hell-spawned forces of socialism/communism. It was not until the nineteenth century A.D. that a man (Karl Marx) lived who so basically attacked the morality of God, as taught in the Hebrew-Christian Scriptures, that there is nothing left of the Eighth Commandment. Either Scripture is all wrong, or Marx is all wrong. Of all things, Marx was no petty quibbler. He was one of the greatest revolutionaries toward God who has ever lived. - Progressive Calvinism, April, 1957; The "Issue" Between Communism And Christianity; by Frederick Nymeyer This idea seems to be quite a stretch to me though I will make no claims to being an expert on Marx. What it does strike me as is politically useful. I have more experience with the Bible than with Marx but from what I know of the gospels I see plenty that indicates that Jesus himself wasn't so friendly towards those that held political or economic power in his day. I recall that he asked his disciples to forego their material wealth to follow him. This seems a marked contrast to the modern day message that garnering vast material wealth is somehow a service to Christ. I want to be extremely careful not to be misunderstood. I believe that Communism is a counterfeit that has its origins in hell. But all the pulpit-pounding and the sermon-screaming we have heard in recent years against the evils of Communism needs to be examined. Is God really as concerned about systems as much as He is about sin? - IS COMMUNISM REALLY GOD'S WORST ENEMY? By: Keith Green Even before I started my political studies I had already determined that organized religion at least as it is practiced here in America by most Protestants had horribly strayed from the message of Christ. The messages of the bible had been cut and pasted and reassembled in ways that gave undue weight to passages that reinforced political motivations. At that point, once confronted with this religious dissonance I walked away and declared myself an atheist. Doing so was very enlightening but I have since then settled on a more nuanced but less succinct way of describing my religious beliefs. I find the practice of trying to guess God's wishes beyond our current abilities. I find people that subscribe to the notion that nearly pre-historical man 2000 years ago not only learned of the true nature of God but did so in such a definitive way that God himself has seen little need to come back and clarify anything, whatsoever, odd. I tend to think that we have just seen the tip of the iceberg regarding human existence and our place in the universe that I don't see any reason to give up looking. Otherwise why do we continue to go on. The alternative, that we are wasted generations between biblical times and the apocalypse is depressing. So why the rush to bed for capitalism and Christianity? Well, I'll explore that in my next attempt to tackle this issue which I have tentatively titled "Reaganism or Why God is a Butterfly". Till then... | |
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