The Problem with Some Christians

This whole end of the world-Armageddon-Anti-Christ mass delusion some Christians have perpetrated on us is actually more damaging to America and the world than it is humorous or  good subject for ridicule. It creates in conservative Christians the need to be righteous and pious and to them, I believe, it means controlling us by stepping on the rest of us.

Believing in a Messiah is akin to a drug addict believing that someone is going to come and cure him of his drug addiction and he won’t have to do anything. That’s not how recovery works and that’s not how the world will work.

My theory is supported by something in the Bible, Psalm 95. According to Wikipedia: “A common modern rabbinic interpretation is that there is a potential messiah in every generation. The Talmud, which often uses stories to make a moral point (aggadah), tells of a highly respected rabbi who found the Messiah at the gates of Rome and asked him, "When will you finally come?" He was quite surprised when he was told, "Today." Overjoyed and full of anticipation, the man waited all day. The next day he returned, disappointed and puzzled, and asked, "You said messiah would come 'today' but he didn't come! What happened?" The Messiah replied, "Scripture says, 'Today, 'if you will but hearken to His voice.'”

I would argue that there is not only a potential Messiah in every generation but there is a potential Messiah in every one of us.

This messiah prophecy stuff was developed at a time of relative primitivism. The mindset that developed the belief that someone would come to their rescue like Superman was the same mindset that also believed in hell.

The belief that a Messiah will come down and everyone will be saved creates the psychology that those believers do not have to be responsible for themselves, or others, or to the world.

There will never be a Judgment Day and there will never be an End Times just like there was never a Biblical Adam and Eve. Those are myths designed to convey the author‘s political point. They were not real, living, historical human beings. Doesn’t one think with the fervency of Christian validation by Believers through the sciences, that someone would find the Garden of Eden?

Maybe the messiah concept is based on Ezekiel’s wheel and the space aliens are the messiah Judaism believes in; they are little grey men.

What Jesus said was very instructive and beneficial to creating a just world for all. But Christians are more concerned with oppressing others than loving others.

Christians don’t have the right or the moral authority to force anything on anyone until they first abide by Jesus’ words. One commandment that is fitting today is “Love thy neighbor as thyself”. Many Christians don’t seem to be capable of that.

Greed is one of the biggest problems in the world today. It’s one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Don’t you think Christians would charge around the world battling greed just as Jesus charged into the Temple to battle the money changers who turned his “Father’s house into a den of thieves”?

Gandhi said: “I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.”

”Love your neighbor as yourself” and “the Kingdom of Heaven is within you” are so very relevant today—and much needed. But for much of the rest of it, I believe it is important for humanity to get past these ancient beliefs because they do not serve us properly anymore. It’s like continuing to wear the same shoes as an adult that you wore as an adolescent. They hurt your feet and you cannot walk properly anymore

For those of us with a belief in “god” (I hate the word but it is easily understood by many) we must strip religions down to only what works and what creates a better world and discard the rest. We must only be interested in our spiritual reality. Our spiritual selves are bound by spiritual laws just as our physical selves are bound by physical laws. What really are those spiritual laws? And how do I, by using them, make myself and my world better for myself and others?

So, what next? Well, on to the next end of the world—October 21, 2011. And when that doesn’t happen, on to December 21, 2012.

And don’t blame that on the Maya for that. That’s a modern western interpretation of what is simply the end of a “baktun—a cycle in the calendar— in the Mayan calendar and is not meant to suggest the end of the world as the idiots would have us believe.

As a species we have always been very insecure about our origin, our destiny and our purpose. So we’ve created myths with our ability to reason in our limited ancient minds to answer questions we could not answer with science so long ago. We no longer have those ancient limitations and we must move forward. With globalism and the worldwide web, now is the time that we as humanity and we as a species take a quantum leap forward in understanding our spiritual reality and our true humanity.

Oil Things Must Pass

I went to the beach last weekend and stepped in a pile of asphalt that had been floating in Santa Monica Bay and had washed ashore after being dumped by a tanker at the oil refineries south of LAX. It made me mad. Oil companies get away with everything, including soiling my shoes.

Last week, the CEOs of the big five oil companies testified before Congress about why they needed their welfare checks while making record money from gambling. Because of Wall Street oil speculators, the price of a barrel of oil is driven up (in some estimates) $44 a barrel to about $100 a barrel.

Speculation has nothing to do with the hands on exploration and production of oil, nor does it have to do with supply and demand. Speculation should be made illegal or heavily regulated. Obama needs to rein in these speculators. He promised in June 2008 that he would do so. Do you think he will now?

Right. On to the next paragraph.

I believe big oil’s Gang of Five should pay for all wars fought in the Middle East. It is as obvious that Libya is not about human rights as it was that Iraq was not about WMD.

I also believe that in wars fought for oil by governments on behalf of oil corporations, the corporations should not only pay for the wars like a business expense, but they and their proxy governments should be liable for damages just like in business, but not like in oil spills. These are blood spills, so they would not be able to be passed on to the taxpayer, consumer and next generation American like BP is doing in the Gulf. Talk about your entitlements!

This means that killing innocent children in their profiteering wars would cost them monetarily in amounts much greater than the 1-2% taxpayer welfare they so hate to lose. One oil executive threatened to move their operation out of the US. I say “Go ahead! Leave! And don’t let your rig hit you in the ass on the way out!”

Necessity is the mother of invention and if America needs to invent a better way to do everything without oil and gas we will.

In fact, is it not a good idea to start a boycott of one of the big five to send a message and scare the hell out of the other four? Of course it is.

And hey, what about the sequel to Who Killed the Electric Car called Revenge of the Electric Car? Try to see it if you can. We need to change the world we live in. Maybe this is a way.

The Mandarin Candidate

Given that all the Republican candidates are head cases, the only viable Republican seems to be John Huntsman. However….

Yeah, if my beliefs are correct it could be interesting.

Huntsman knows he won’t get the nomination in 2012. But he’s putting his name out there because he knows the Republican-Tea Party self-destruction and the deconstruction of America won’t be tolerated much past 2014 which, by then, the Republican-Tea Party cabal will have brought America to the brink of armed insurrection on a multiple statewide level. That’s right, unemployed gun carrying yahoos firing at the Florida statehouse and governor’s residence (among a few other red states) recalls with extreme prejudice.

If Obama is a shoo-in for re-election because of the Bin Laden killing and other things—and Huntsman knows it—he’s positioning himself to be the best-qualified Republican to run against Hillary in 2016—again, after the coming Republican collapse.

Huntsman went to Wall Street for fundraising, to DC for strategy, and to South Carolina for the Gong Show. Perhaps we can derive from his attempt at a candidacy that the political winds are blowing from a different direction.

Or, perhaps we can derive that Huntsman is just another egotistical politician with delusions of grandeur and the usual maniacal desire for power.

Or, Huntsman is a brainwashed tool of the Chinese—the Mandarin Candidate—come to cart off of America the last of what the Republicans and the corporations have already given them.

Or, perhaps the Koch Brothers are trying a different political strategy—that Huntsman will run as a charming and smart independent to draw votes away from Obama like Perot did in ’92 for Bush 1 and President Richard John Santorum will be sworn in on January 20, 2013.

Children and War

We are human beings with some control over our shared destiny. The world is getting smaller. We are all becoming closer. I have no misconceptions about being able to end war anytime soon. However, is it not possible for all of us to resolve that children should never ever die in a war?

According to an April 14, 2009 article in The Telegraph, of the people killed in US air strikes whose gender could be determined, 46 percent were women and 39 percent were children. The same article states that a sizable number of children killed in Iraq were killed as part of warfare between ethnic and religious rivals.

Regardless of whether its smart bombs or sectarian bullets, the death of children is wrong. It doesn’t matter if today’s religions consider it a sin or not. When I look around the world I don’t see that today’s major religions are making the world better—in fact, their effect is quite the opposite.

A 1996 report from UNICEF titled “Children in War” stated that “Recent developments in warfare have significantly heightened the dangers for children. During the last decade, it is estimated (and these figures, while specific, are necessarily orders of magnitude) that child victims have included:

2 million killed;

4-5 million disabled;

12 million left homeless;

more than 1 million orphaned or separated from their parents;

some 10 million psychologically traumatized.”

That was from 15 years ago.

And then there are the drug cartels. Last April 9 The Washington Post ran an article titled “Mexican drug cartels targeting and killing children”. Read it. The details are abhorrent.

For children who survive war, there’s The Children and War Foundation. You may be interested in finding out more about them and other similar organizations.

From Qaddafi’s grandchildren last weekend, to all those kids killed in Vietnam, to those Hitler destroyed in camps, to the American Indian children massacred by the US Calvary, to the children Herod killed, to all children killed since the beginning of time, killing children for any reason is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. There are some things that should be sacred globally. Loving and nurturing children should be high on that sacred list.

The point I’m trying to make is this: I believe we are supposed to evolve and progress into becoming a peaceful and passive species. If others also believe that, can we not choose to progress toward that eventuality? Is it not a mixture of belief and destiny that controls our fate anyway?

And can we not at least resolve to try to protect children as a step toward eradicating war forever and as a step toward that peaceful, passive destiny?

We may not be able to bring peace to the world, but can we not begin to bring limits to war? To scale it back? I may sound naïve. I may be naïve. But to change things for the better, we must start with what is considered impossible.

The global pro-peace, anti-war movement is within all of us. We just have to choose to follow it and build it. It may not be easy, and it may take a long time, but it can be done.

The first, arguably, attainable goal we must make toward realizing that goal is: no more children will be killed in wars for oil. Maybe we should begin counting the price of a barrel of oil not in dollars, but in the number of bodies of dead children.

And we can strengthen that decision by choosing to permanently move away from oil for all its uses and purposes.

Obama sin laden

Yes, this title, a silly play on words, is intentional.

On Saturday afternoon I was angry at the news that three of Qaddafi’s grandchildren under the age of 12 were killed in a missile attack which also reportedly killed Qaddafi’s son. Then came disagreement in the some parts of the blogos-fear (clever, aren’t I?) whether he was or was not the evil, older son. A cursory view just now of some liberal websites to verify, clarify and research for this writing has become frustrating because the news of Osama’s killing is everywhere in a multitude of aspects and angles serving its purpose as collective conscious and unconscious distraction.

The death of these kids was the result of a NATO strike. But don’t we own NATO? Should we, the superior “Christian valued nation”, firstly, not go to war, and secondly, not kill children? Now here’s the infuriating question: for oil???!!!

The possibility/probability (your choice) that these kids (and many others around the world in many different wars and military and “police” actions we’ve fought) died for oil is on par with being godless…unless our god is oil and/or geopolitical control.

There are human rights abuses in many places around the world and there have been human rights abuses in Libya for a long time. Suddenly the US is involved? Suddenly NATO is passing resolutions and sending missiles?

Oil.

And each and every child killed in a war for oil (or Halliburton or the US Chamber of Commerce or Walmart), the loss of their lives are, each and every one, an unconscionable sin that Obama is quickly becoming laden with.

For oil.

The old adage is fight fire with fire. But sometimes that strategy cannot and should not apply. How can you fight human rights abuses with human rights abuses? And if a NATO missile killing children doesn’t violate these kids’ human rights I don’t know what does.

Oil.

Have I said it enough?

Oil?

Barack Hussein Oilbama.

What a silly word play.