Jerry Tenuto: OUT OF THE BLUE -- Despite what too many of our elected and not-quite-elected public officials might think, we citizens of the United States are not all of the Christian variety, or believers in a supreme being at all. It is one of our "certain unalienable rights." Still, without checks and balances these ideologues would turn our Government into a theocracy. Or is this just a ruse to sway the Religious Right?

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I DON’T BLAME JESUS FOR “CHRISTIAN” POLITICIANS

The past few weeks it seems that I may have been a little harsh on one Mr. Christ who hailed from Nazareth some 2000 years ago, give or take. If anything I wrote brought offense to some readers, please know that was never my intent.

I have the utmost respect for this Man who was the first known as Jesus.

It is they who distort his words, pervert his actions, and shame his existence to suit their own narrow agendas with whom I take umbrage.

Jesus may have been God and Man, as the sweet Franciscan Sisters of the Blessed Kunegunda (I’m not making that up) beat into my head on a daily basis for eight years; He might have been something else altogether, as modern science and “Star Trek” tend to suggest.

Whichever theory is correct, of what we know Jesus always spoke gently and of kindness. At least, that’s what His biographers remembered decades later.

One thing the Sisters were up front about was that the Epistles and Gospels were not set to “paper” until many years after Christ’s time had passed. Unfortunately, far too many fundamentalist, evangelical preachers tend to omit this fact while instructing their congregations as to which righteous candidates they must vote for.

How convenient the fundamentalists’ selectivity in Biblical passages, failing to mention how Jesus looked at a coin and noted folks should leave the business of Caesar to Caesar, the business of God to God.

Hence, because the Roman Catholic Church is pragmatic in its non-verbatim approach toward acceptance of the The Bible, both Old and New Testaments, most evangelicals deny inclusion of Catholics as true members in the realm of the “faithful” Christians.

Not only is that blatantly un-Christian in spirit, it is antithetical to Christ’s own words (taking them as literally as the modern evangelicals): “Thou art Peter, and upon this Rock I shall build My Church.” Peter was the first Pope, making him the founder of the Catholic Church of Rome.

There was no other Christian church until Martin Luther protested and broke from Rome in the 16th Century. This is why all non-Catholic Christian religions are called “protestant.”

Here, though, we see the first pitfall in a long list of abominable bastardizations of “your opinion doesn’t count” in the name of Jesus – Americans who belong to the original Church established (allegedly, I’ll admit) by Jesus’ own words are not even considered Christians by religious fundamentalists; folks so addled by blind faith mixed with fear of hellfire and damnation they are possessed of an inability to employ common sense reasoning while misunderstanding their mandatory daily Bible readings.

We know today that our elderly suffer from any number of a wide range of debilitating impairments – strokes, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, adult ADD, just to name a few. It’s also pretty much accepted among Catholics that the 12 Apostles were not learned men, and most likely could neither read nor write. There wasn’t a secretary taking notes when Mr. Christ was speaking or performing miracles.

Not that He didn’t truly make brilliant statements and use wonderful parables, mind you, giving mankind a wealth of valuable concepts to ponder and live by. As to the miracles, well, by the time those were actually documented, the remaining loyalists were spread out all over the Holy Roman Empire. So many years had elapsed that all logic dictates the likelihood was few if any who had witnessed Jesus in the flesh would have been around to dispute the accounts.

When considering the life of Jesus Christ, one has to realize there was no mass communication, no formalized system of education existed, and, out of all the thousands upon thousands of people who witnessed Him (Jews, Romans, Arabs, et al), only 11 Jewish followers passed the story along.

At that, the documentation was not forthcoming until at least 20 to 30 years after the fact, when dictated to scribes. So, the possibility arises for errors from lapses in memory.

The various scribes may have misinterpreted events and facts, or added embellishments to make the stories more interesting, creating more misstatements of fact. These stories weren’t inked all at once, but over long periods of time, leading to more flaws in accuracy.

Then there were decades and centuries of copying by hand, translations, numerous deviations based upon religious orthodoxy – Roman Catholic, King James, etc.

Now, here we are in the 21st Century and Jesus Christ has been injected, painfully and wrongly so, into the decision-making process of the United States Government.

Or so some in power have hoodwinked many into believing.

From all we know about Jesus of Nazareth, He was a Man of Peace. He never exactly said He was the “Son of God” – man laid that title upon Him. When queried on the subject, I believe His answer was, “My Kingdom is not of the Earth.”

“Turn the other cheek.” Who are the biggest warmongers in our Government? The guys who get the most political mileage, and voter support, out of spewing chunks about what great Christians they are: George W. Bush; Wayne Allard; Kit Bond; Tom Coburn; Thad Cochran; John Cornyn; James Inhofe; Pat Roberts; Jeff Sessions; et al. These are also the dudes who think torture is a good thing.

Jesus personally ran the moneychangers out of His Father’s Temple. (He said on numerous occasions that God was Father to us all.) Has anyone seen one of these multi-thousand seat mega-churches? Have you been inside one? Some of them are like malls, complete with shops, snack bars, you name it.

Then guys like Smilin’ Tom DeLay repeatedly uses the altar and bogus self-serving Christian-based charities to prop himself up as the “Holier-than-any-of-the-other-Guys” Congressman. For the uninitiated, Smiler DeLay was one of the first to hop full-force on the “Impeach Clinton” bandwagon; ran with Jack Abramoff and created the “K Street Project” which made him a multi-millionaire while receiving a paltry U.S. Congressional paycheck; is currently under several indictments, with more possibly to come, making him number one contender for “Most Crooked Politician of the Millennium.”

These schmucks, and others in the cabal, just keep getting richer and fatter off the backs, blood, sweat, fears and anxieties of average, everyday Americans. They are directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands – I’d venture a guess at somewhere around 99% or more innocent noncombatants, aka collateral damage. With every death, their personal Earthly fortunes increase. Somewhere King George XLIII and the rest missed the passage about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a man of wealth to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

These Republicans who keep telling us what good Christians they are do nothing to show us that we should believe them. First, Christ was emphatic about how much more it meant to pray alone than in large groups – yet the really, really good Christians who hate Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Blacks, immigrants, anyone else who isn’t one of them, keep building bigger and bigger churches to show everyone precisely how faithful they are.

Christ was instructive about keeping one’s faith to one’s self, as well as caring for the Earth. Yet, wherever I go there is no shortage of overpriced gas-guzzling, road-hogging SUVs and luxury sedans with some sort of Christian sticker or, what really irritates me, license plate. Jesus has absolutely no business on a license plate! Then there are those idiots who wear bloodied Christ t-shirts to places where folks go to have fun, like baseball games and theme parks! (The last time we went to a Six Flags it was noted that these types of clothing had been included in the “inappropriate attire” rules.)

When reading or listening to news sources outside of the U.S., they can’t understand the level of fanaticism that has sprung up here. It’s like a virus, and I myself can, but at the same time don’t, comprehend why so many people allow themselves to be so easily swayed by preachers. Our friends and allies, the average citizens of England, Germany, South Korea, for example, are frightened, as am I, at the effect of evangelicals over Government in the U.S.A.

Do you think for one minute Jerry Falwell or Oral Roberts or many of the others would be so “fervent” if there weren’t huge bucks to be made, not to mention White House and other red carpet invitations? These guys, virtually all preachers who take to the airwaves, have egos and appetites of Godlike proportions in need of constant feeding and sating.

The same is true, possibly more so, with the little guys who run these off-the-wall churches with maybe 100 parishioners, give or take, one finds all over – mostly in small rural communities. These churches generally broke away from already hardcore religious groups because the folks who comprise them didn’t think there was enough harshness in the regular church’s interpretation of The Bible.

I cannot understand how they derive harshness and intolerance from belief in a Man whose message was gentility and understanding. Many religions disallow drink, yet Jesus’ first recorded “miracle” was turning water into wine. The fanatics insist it was without alcohol content, but the Catholic version described it as better than the store bought wine the hosts served.

The funny thing, when one of these extreme Christians tosses out a passage to make his or her point, more often than not it’s from the Old Testament! Say “God,” they reply “Christian.”

And, despite their incessant referrals to the Old Testament, many of them equate Jews with Satanists. As for Muslims, they’re just downright evil beings whom, as Ann Coulter put it, those who won’t convert to Christianity should just be wiped out.

Yes, these are the modern Christians of 21st Century America. It’s sad, but many are throwbacks to the 17th Century. The Republican Party, as led by Herr Ubermeister Karl Rove, planned correctly, banking on a group mentality. The GOP continues to, in addressing not only the fundamentalist Christian issues, prey upon the fears, no matter how irrational and unreal. According to the GOP, the party that cares not one iota about the individual person, Democrats are the godless enemy that will allow evil Muslims to destroy America and take away your way of life and freedoms.

One need only read a history of how the National Socialists stole power in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to comprehend where Herr Rove has taken Amerika so far, and intends to go with his nefarious plans.

Yes, these are good Christians, well-intentioned all, and I’m not disparaging anyone for their religion. Yet, they’ve been Bushwhacked by GOP propaganda, a lame-brained mainstream media, and self-serving preachers into voting for politicians who: Turn other nations into rubble for no good reason; allow the merciless torture of human beings (as long as they ain’t Christians); engage in secret dealings which cost the citizens more and more in taxes and out-of-pocket expenses, while their cronies get richer by the minute; have systematically dismantled our Constitution and severely limited the Bill of Rights; spy upon Americans without cause or warrants; lie on a daily basis; openly alter laws or renege on existing policies as suits their whims and needs; since January 21, 2001 have consistently acted neither in accord with the wishes of the people, nor kept the Nation abreast of the activities in which they have been engaged.

America, it’s time to wake up. The tyrannical rule from which George W. Bush said he was saving the Iraqi people -- killing countless tens of thousands of them in the process, plus some 2,300 American troops to date, while draining America’s financial and military resources to the point where we’re far less secure than in January, 2003 – well, that very same tyrannical rule is spreading across our Nation from the inside.

It began the day Herr Rove fixed the Florida elections, and the man behind America’s Fuhrerprinzip, Cheese Justice William H. Rehnquist illegally elevated the puppet to King George XLIII of Amerika.

But what the hell -- Glory Hallelujah, anyway! Everything George W. bush does, he does in the name of Jesus, don’cha know!

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it…” Milton Mayer -- Excerpt from pages 166-73 of "They Thought They Were Free" First published in 1955 (compliments to Information Clearing House)

Shalom, y’all.

AS OF THIS WRITING, AMERICA HAS BEEN HELD HOSTAGE FOR 1,907 DAYS – our White House and the Executive Branch are overrun by the Karl Rove-controlled Neo-con Fascist Regime.
Impeach George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, run the rest of their cabal out of our Nation’s Capital.

(This column has previously appeared in THE LONE STAR ICONOCLAST, Crawford, Texas, and at www.LoneStarIcon.com)

© 2006, The Lone Star Iconoclast

Authors Website: www.lonestaricon.com

Authors Bio:
An erstwhile Philosopher and sometime Educator, Jerry Tenuto is a veteran of seven years service in the U.S. Army. He holds a BS and MA in Broadcast Communications from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. For two decades Jerry filled the airwaves with rock, roll and banter as a disc jockey -- until greed, the rebirth of payola, and de-Reaganlation ruined that medium. Depending upon your taste in political stew, you can either blame or thank Jerry for his weekly "Out Of The Blue" feature in THE LONE STAR ICONOCLAST, Crawford, Texas, www.LoneStarIcon.com -- because somebody from that community has to do the world right.