Lying for Jesus

The Roe v. Wade opinion leak has exposed another example of how far Conservative Christians have moved from the teachings of Jesus.

Jesus was killed for challenging the Jewish Temple's power to dictate to Jews how they must think and behave.  Jesus rejected that authority, preaching each individual must find God for themselves, and the Temple leaders had no special authority to set up rules for life.

I have never seen a single word in the Bible attributed to Jesus which suggested he thought God had delegated the right to prejudge sin to prevent it.  The parable of the good Samaritan says absolutely nothing about stopping the wrongful attack, or punishing the bad guys.  It was all about helping the victim - regardless of his religion. Jesus's message throughout his ministry was focused on teaching people to answer only to God and treat those around us with love, respect and honesty.  Government is a different world than religious belief.

That's not the MO of modern Christian Conservatives.  Achieving their agenda trumps respect, honesty and letting each person develop their own relationship with God. 

Justice Clarence Thomas downplays his Christian conservativism to maintain the appearance of neutrality but now that abortion is before the court the judicial tradition that a judge must avoid "even the appearance of impropriety" to maintain faith in the judicial system is an irritation to be ignored.  He waves off the notion he should recuse himself from the deliberations on Roe v. Wade even though he has been an active participant in Christian Conservative events, and his wife has been a vociferous advocate for overturning Roe v. Wade.  His mind is not open to other views.  The apparent impropriety is overwhelming. 

Justice Kavanaugh, about 4 years ago when he sought to get appointed to the Supreme Court, sat before a Senate Committee under oath and in direct response to a question about whether he would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, said that the case was "settled law".  He committed a Lawyers lie, lying in an indirect and deliberate manner to give the impression he was answering no.  Now he joins the majority in proposing to overturn Roe v. Wade.  He lied to get the job so he could enforce Christian Conservative sharia law.

Both seem to be of the view God has given him the special right to pre judge the sins of others.  If they need to lie to achieve their objective, the ends justify the means.

The Republican party Christian wing has become so sure they know it all, so disdainful of any view other than what's dictated from Christian Conservative church pulpits, that political corruption in the name of Jesus is now acceptable - from voter suppression to lying to get on the Supreme Court, to "believing" the January 6 invasion of the Capitol Building was justified because the election was stolen by evil Democrats.

In the 1970's the Democratic Party that had controlled Congress for decades let their success lull them into overlooking corruption in their biggest voting bloc, labor unions.  The public didn't overlook it and that opened the door for Ronald Reagan to begin 42 years of Republican dominance. 

Will the Conservative Republican current tolerance of corruption lead the public to reject them?  I have faith in the American people so I hope so.  If not we are on our way to becoming like those Jewish temple leaders of Jesus's time, or fake democracy's like Russia or China in our time, who value power and the ability to crush dissent from the ideas they preach, over the soft power of fairness and tolerance.

These Days a Christian Republican is an Oxymoron

Defintion of Oxymoron - where contradictory terms appear in conjunction

Definition of Christian - a person who follows the teachings of Jesus.

The history of Christianity (like many religions) is conflict between two basic approaches to God.

1.  Those who think how we should live is dictated by God, and they know what that way of living is and are therefore authorized by God to enforce their belief.

2.  Those who think each person should find God, and be tolerant of the path other people chose in their life.

The first notion of God is represented in Leviticus in the Bible's Old Testament.  No reported words of Jesus support this first approach to God, and Jesus's Sermon on the Mount was an explicit rejection of this first notion of God.  Jesus was ultimately crucified because those who espouse this first view of God believed he was comitting heresy in rejecting their authority to dictate God's law.  Virtually every word reported to have been spoken by Jesus fits comfortably in the second view, that we must find God as individuals and our duty is to be tolerant, compassionate and kind towards others.

Which view is consistent with Republican party ideology?

Since the 1980's an alliance between many Christians and the Republican party has produced Republican policy dominance.  When one looks back on what Republican's have done with their power over the last 40 years it is apparent all they ultimately care about is tax cuts for the very rich.   Every single time the Republicans controlled Congress and the Presidency, they cut taxes on the rich.  To get elected they also have vilified gays, immigrants, people fearful of an unwanted pregnancy and once their tax cuts were in place made efforts to create laws to impact those folks.   But only after the rich political donors have been mollified.  

What did Jesus think of taking care of rich folks?   In Matthew 19:24 he is quoted as saying "...it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!"  He saw fundemental contradictions between the behaviors that make one rich and the values he promoted.  

What did Jesus think of the powerful being the only conduit to God?  The idea of using the power of the state to vilify or make illegal individual behaviors that have no impact of their fellow citizens is simply rehashing the notions in Leviticus that Jesus's rejected.

A compassionate Christian would value affordable and compassionate healthcare that is available to all.  But Republican's for 100 years have believed the best healthcare comes from folks seeking maximum profit, and if you can't afford it you don't deserve it.  As a result the US, the economic leader of the world, spends twice as much per person on healthcare, with statistically mediocre results - people in some dirt poor dictatorships have lower infant mortality rates and live longer.  When President Obama finally created a universal health care system, it was only after compromises that weakened its effectiveness, and it was then used to villify "Obamacare".  It became a talking point as they sought (successfully) to regain control of goverment.  They were successful and (of course) Donald Trump immediately cut taxes on the wealthy.

A compassionate Republican would want a tax law that produced a country that lifted everybody up.  We had that law from WW II until the early 1980's, we paid down the debt from World War II even as our economy grew consistently (an average of near 3% per year) and wealth was spread broadly across society.  But when Ronald Reagan bought into an Ivory tower notion that cutting taxes on the wealthiest would build a better economy the countries fortunes reversed course.  Tax cuts became the centerpiece of the Republican exercise of political power.  

In the early 1980's when Ronald Reagan started cutting taxes the National debt was at about 30% of GDP, down from a high of 116% of GDP at the end of World War II.  The National debt has gone up every year since and now is about 140% of GDP, by far the highest is has been in our countries history.   At the same time the super rich have attained unprecendented levels of wealth even as the numbers of people living an the margins of society, or destitute, grows each day.

Political activism has turned Conservative christians into the reincarnation of the Temple leaders who implored the Romans to crucify Jesus for challenging the Temple's right to dictate how people behave, and our country has been financially and morally weakened by their activities.

 

 

We Need a Worldwide Organization of Democratic States

 The last 100 years have demonstrated that simply creating a democracy is not enough.   Without strong education systems, informed voters and economic fairness democracies can be converted into a sham democracy where there are elections but one party or person controls who can run for election, and often manufacturers pretexts to jail the most popular opposition leaders.  A despot in a sham democracy may then look for pretexts to engage in good old fashioned empire building (as we see Vladimir Putin doing now in Ukraine and as China theatens to do with Taiwan).

The last century has also demonstrated that free democracy's tend to be much more productive and economically stable, so in the long run Democracies are economically stronger countries than despotic regimes or sham democracies.

The United Nations is a solution from the pre-connected world that has proved a weak and often useless organization in forwarding democracy across the globe because it includes a lot of countries controlled by strongmen who do not want to be answerable to their people.  NATO, another solution from the per-connected world, also has been incapable to effectively addressing aggression against non-member Democratic states.

We need to create a new organization, an organization of Democratic States.  

The organization should set up objective criteria for membership to insure verified free elections where all adults citizens can vote and all those who want to can run for office.  Any country that qualifies and is admitted will then be part of a organization wide free trade zone, and an organization wide mutual defense pact.  Fake democracy's or outright despots who want to bully a smaller democracy will face a united world democratic community.

Any country that moves away from being a free democracy should be expelled.

The history of the world is of a world run by Darwinism, the strongest and most brutal often dominate.  Despots believe that is still the case.  We have the brain power to provide a world where all persons are free and secure, but that will only happen if those who believe in Democracy band together.