Helping the less fortunate is the most Christian of values

I read with interest this article on how government checks during the pandemic have helped ease the suffering of many Americans.

I've been working and paying taxes since I was 14 years old.

Other than Pell Grants in college, there is not one time I've taken a dime of money in direct public aid. Not unemployment. Not welfare. Not HEAP. Nothing else. Not once.

Do I resent that I work hard and pay taxes to help out those less fortunate?

NOT ONE DAMN BIT.

Even though a small minority might take advantage of it?

Still NOT ONE DAMN BIT.

No reason to throw the baby out with the bath water.

The reason why is very simple.

I've personally known a lot of people who have been unemployed and were the furthest thing from lazy. I've seen proof of the old saying that you work harder when you're trying to find a job than when you have a job. I've seen the shame and humiliation these good people felt for a situation that, quite often, was no fault of their own. And that's even without privileged jackasses crapping on them.

Do I resent that I was working hard to ease their misfortune?

NOT ONE DAMN BIT.

But the reason is simpler. I was raised in a household with Christian values. I recall the old saying "There but for the grace of God go I."

If I lost my job after working hard for all those years and some schmuck crapped on me for it, I wouldn't be too thrilled.

And if after paying into system for over 30 years, someone called me lazy or a leech because I tried to get a fraction of that back, I might well punch them in the mouth.

I try to have empathy for others - except the cruel - because my luck might run out at some point and I would want others to be decent to me in such a situation. It's the civilized human being thing to do.

There are literally thousands of things I resent my tax dollars going toward. Corporate welfare. Imperialism. Funding foreign armies who commit human rights abuses.

I would much rather my tax dollars go toward easing human suffering than causing it. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/06/02/nation/stimulus-checks-substantially-reduced-hardship-study-shows/?p1=BGSearch_Overlay_Results&fbclid=IwAR3LqKe53Yn3z4uHjHzNIdvUuz8H-OD4Gd17QLFtS0uE2ANmwrESgeyfwCI

There, but for the grace of God, go I

"When I give food to the poor, I'm called a saint. When I ask why they are poor, I'm called a communist." -Archbishop Dom Helder Camara.

America claims to be a Christian nation yet the very un-Christian trend is in vogue these days of snottily looking down on folks who aren't in great situations. It's hard for me to express how much this angers me.

We assume by default that they deserve their misfortune because they are lazy or dumb or made a bad decision at some point in their life or are otherwise less decent than our flawless selves.

I was raised in a Catholic household and was taught to be humble and empathetic toward those who were in less favorable situations than myself. And this chart shows why. There's a very good chance that at some point, that person in economic difficulty may well be you.

Christians rejecting Christ, part 9349

"When I give food to the poor, I'm called a saint. When I ask why they are poor, I'm called a communist." -Archbishop Dom Helder Camara.

The Atlantic's website had a really interesting article regarding US Christians, Jesus and the death penalty. It cited research related what American Christians thought Jesus Christ's opinion on capital punishment would have been.

Personally, I suspect he would've been against execution for two reasons. First, he was, unlike so many Christians in this country, consistently pro-life. And, he had first-hand experience of how easily an innocent man can be murdered by the state.

But that's not the part that really intrigues me.

The article cited polling which found that only 10% of American Christians as a whole (and only 2% of Catholics) believe Jesus would've supported capital punishment.

Yet the Pew Forum found that a comfortable majority of white Christians supported the death penalty. Smaller numbers of black and Hispanic Christians supported the death penalty but the figures (in the 35-ish percent range in both cases) were still several times higher than the number who thought Jesus Himself would support the practice. It found that 71% of Republicans, the party most associated with the fusion of Christianity and politics, supported the death penalty.

The overwhelming majority of Americans believe Christ would have opposed capital punishment. The overwhelming majority of Americans claim to be Christian. The overwhelming majority of those Christians reject the position that they themselves believe their own Prophet would've taken.

I used to assume that religious beliefs instructed personal beliefs. Increasingly, I'm starting to think that one's personal beliefs dictates one's religious beliefs more than the contrary.

What would Jesus do?

"When I give food to the poor, I'm called a saint. When I ask why they are poor, I'm called a communist." -Archbishop Dom Helder Camara.

What would Jesus do?

Good question.

My guess is that he would NOT steal the meager possessions of homeless people.

I’ll also go out on a limb and suggest that he wouldn’t bloviate on the “sanctity of marriage” and then say a man was justified in divorcing his wife forwithholding sex.

 

Secularism and civilization

The riots in the Islamic world over an anti-Islamic video (ie: people responding to vile accusations against them by proving them true) have reinforced one thing for me. The biggest single indicator of a civilized society today is the degree to which that society is influenced by the separation of church and state.

People have every right to follow their religious faith in their own lives. They do not have the right to impose their faith on everyone else. Civilized societies recognize this. Regressive ones do not.

Barbarian demands to dig up Muslim cemetery... and other musings

"If fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." -Sinclair Lewis

Religion is a strange thing. It seems to bring out either the absolute best in people and the absolute worst in people. For example, it was Christians who were instrumental in pushing the black equal rights movement. And it was also Christians who perpetrated the Inquisition and the Holocaust and, on a less severe scale, are the most vocal opposition to the gay equal rights movement.

I found interest a survey by the Pew Forum concluding that atheists and agnostics in America know more about religion than the religious. It reinforces my suspicions that organized religion discourages intellectual curiosity by its insistence on deference to a central authority.

But this isn’t that surprising. My experience as a Catholic growing up depended greatly on the priests at any given time. The good clerics drew out the religion’s humanity. The mediocre ones never went beyond the realm of theory and scolding. Though this variation was counterintuitive to the principle of a universal church.

I wonder why anti-Semitism is (rightly) considered vile and repugnant but Islamophobia is increasingly socially acceptable... if not mandatory in some circles.

And speaking of Islamophobia, I don’t think you can demand the desecration of cemeteries and call others barbaric and uncivilized.

The triumph of hate: the US plunges further into the Dark Ages

”There’s nothing more frightening than ignorance in action.” –Tom Smothers

There’s was a lot of optimism that the inauguration of a not completely regressive (in rhetoric at least) president and administration might reverse the Dark Ages the United States has been in for most of this decade. Sadly, it’s seemed to embolden bigots and other retrograde forces.

It’s clear that Muslims are welcome to build a mosque and community center ANYWHERE* in this great and free land of America.

(*-This offer is not valid in the lower 48 states, Hawaii or Alaska)

Opposition to the fraudulently named* Mosque at Ground Zero was supposedly motivated only by (hold hand over heart) the fact that it was “too close” to Ground Zero... without ever quite specifying what distance away from Ground Zero would be tolerable.

(*-The community center would not be at Ground Zero. And the multistory building would have a mosque but only as one of many components. Calling the whole project a mosque is like referring to a YMCA as a swimming pool)

Subsequent events have laid bare the real agenda of these people.

Some news items you may have missed...

-Bigots torched the site of a proposed Islamic community center in Tennessee... this was after NPR reported on the controversy. The chief opponent of the TN mosque proudly displayed his ignorance by declaring, “We're Christians and this religion represents people that are against Christians.”

-The New York Times reported on opposition to similar Islamic community center projects in places as diverse as Florida, Tennessee and southern California. Apparently, San Bernadino, CA, is also “too close” to Ground Zero.

-Former House speaker Newt Gingrich recently compared supporters of the “Ground Zero Mosque” to Nazis.

-The Associated Press quoted the vile Gingrich as again fanning the flames of hatred with his comment that “America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization.” The AP also reported that Days ago, a brick nearly smashed a window at the Madera Islamic Center in central California, where signs were left behind that read, "Wake up America, the enemy is here," and "No temple for the god of terrorism." This past week in New York, a Muslim cab driver had his face and throat slashed in a suspected hate crime.

-Because of his refusal to fan anti-Islamic hatred (and perhaps his failure to invade any Islamic countries), an increasing number of Americans now believe the falsehood that President Obama is a Muslim. It’s not just that 20 percent of the entire nation’s population believe this lie, but that most would view this lie, if true, as an evil, horrible state of affairs.


The overwhelming majority of Muslims in America are peaceful, law abiding. They are respectful of the communities they live in. They serve on school boards and coach youth sports and serve in the armed forces of the United States. They consciously chose to live in a secular republic with a secular Constitution, rather than in a theocracy. They chose to live in America because they felt it had some appeal, not because, as the despicable Gingrich suggests, they want to undermine.

It’s clear that the far right and forces of Christian extremism are hell bent in alienating moderate Muslims, in pushing them into the extremist camp, solely to advance their own political ambitions. This is truly sickening and disgusting. It is against everything the Real America (if not Sarah Palin’s America) is supposed to stand for. This is not what my country is about. These divisive hatemongers ought to read the Pledge of Allegiance. “...indivisible, with liberty and justice for ALL.”

It’s quite clear that the domestic forces of darkness and hatred and bigotry are a far greater threat to American values and civilization than some Muslim version of the YMCA.

The Year of Living Biblically

Alternet has a good piece by A.J. Jacobs on the author's attempt to spend a year living as strictly as possible according to the Bible's rules.

No word on if Jacobs attacked people with a broom.

The war of the brooms

I've always said that religious fanatics are dangerous regardless of which particular religion they were fanatical for. Fortunately, sometimes they are just idiotic.

Pope Benedict's annual Christmas message called for a just end to conflicts, particularly in the Middle East. Apparently, some members of non-Roman Christian churches didn't think the Pope's advice was worth heeding.

Members of rival Christian orders have traded blows at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, with four people reported wounded in the fray, reported the BBC.

Apparently, Greek Orthodox worshipers encroached on the Armenian Apostolic section.

The result: a broom war!

I'm sure Jesus would be so proud of these disciples.