You call one of your small business customers and they bid you adieu with, "Have a blessed day".
You watch some news talk show on the boob tube and the commentator says, "Bless our brave warriors".
A lady at a retail store cashier line gets into a conversation about our (so called) 'Iraq War' and she states equivocally, "When someone breaks into your house, you have a right to kill them".
Churches throughout America have, ever since 9/11, been falling over themselves to make sure to, "Bless our brave troops", never beginning to focus on the tens of thousands of innocent civilians our 'brave troops' and drone missiles and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) have murdered in the name of this 'War on Terror'. This is madness amplified to the ninth degree!
This writer, for purposes of clarification in this column, happens to be a 'believer' in the Christ Spirit that was within Jesus and many other avatars of other eras. One of the greatest books ever written is Autobiography of a Yogi , written by Paramahansa Yogananda, the Indian yogi who introduced yoga to the West in the first half of the 20th century.
Yogananda, a Hindu, celebrated Jesus of Nazareth as the one who carried the Christ Spirit and taught that we ALL are sons of God.
So, when I see or hear so many so-called Christians who think they 'own Jesus', it turns my stomach! To read the New Testament, especially the Sermon on the Mount, one can see that he truly was 'The Prince of Peace'. How can so many Christians here in this empire have the audacity to think that Jesus would condone the evil that our government has done in the Middle East?
It is bad enough that we have to observe the hypocrisy that many Muslim and Jewish religious leaders and their followers spew out as well. To justify acts of cruelty by followers of those two religions is just as bad, as well as the caste system that still actually exists in places like India. The whole process is downright sickening, in my opinion.
Here at home in our nation, a nation that this writer loves for its true 'melting pot' and Constitution and Bill of Rights (even though the neocon mentality wants to subvert it)--- we need to be ever vigilant.
The forces of empire wish to use religion and the love of God to control the masses. These phony leaders and pundits hide behind mis-(and)-disinformation to make so many believe that God is on their side. What kind of a God would support preemptive wars and the continued use of collateral damage? What kind of a God would support super-rich folks keeping over 2/3 or 3/4 of what they earn, in the $tens and $hundreds of $millions (even $billions), while our working poor and shattered middle class cannot stay above water?
What kind of a God would condone millions of us to have to decide between paying our rent or mortgage or having necessary surgery to be able to function properly? What kind of God would sit back and nod approval as mega millionaires run our governments and our industries, while the masses are forced to compete in a Darwinian 'Survival of the fittest' each and every day?
We can read the history books about the Gilded Age in America (1870s to 1900) and perhaps realize that what we have now is even worse! To sit back and rely on 'blessing' each other or wait for this two party system to come to our aid....
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