The Joy Of Our Faith

I know a gay man with AIDS who probably doesn’t have long to live. I also know his family. They look at him as an as an object of pity. They feel sorry for him and blame the 'homosexual lifestyle' for his condition. They are very conservative and always vote for Republican candidates that denounce his lifestyle. They supported measures that made sure he would never have the same right to marry and have a family. They go to a church that would never accept people like him. And in their hearts they are proud and thankful for 'family values.' They feel good about themselves and their own particular lifestyle, because they didn't end up like him

Just imagine how painful it is to grow up in a family that will never accept you as God created you. It may be all the worse, and all the more cruel, when families only superficially pretend to accept what they will never condone. Love the sinner, while hating everything that you stand for. They don't reject you outright because they don't like to think of themselves as terrible people. But neither would they allow you to have the same rights - and the same chance at happiness - that they have.

It must be kinder and more merciful to reject someone you cannot love and respect as an equal, than to dishonestly pretend that your hatred and bigotry is love. There is nothing crueler than that. At least in rejecting them you might also set them free, and give them a fighting chance to find out what real love is all about. Rather than teaching them how to love their family by hating themselves.

There's this thing that abusive people and families often do where they mistake their guilt for love. They are often cruel and feel guilty about it, but they mislabel the guilt they are feeling as if it were love. So instead of motivating them to change, they only become more abusive and shameless over time. But love is more than a mis-labeled feeling - it's how you treat other people.

I tried to warn him that his family would never be able to love and support him in the way that he needed. That he should stay away and live his own life, because they were destroying his self-esteem. You cannot be around people who hate who you are without some - or a whole lot - of it rubbing off. Sometimes the only way to save yourself is to stay away from your dysfunctional family. At least until you're strong enough, after you've discovered what the word "love" really means.

But he desperately needed and yearned for the kind of love and support that only a family could give, but that his family was never going to give him. He was caught in an impossible bind where he needed for them to accept and love him as a gay man, before he would finally be able to accept and love himself. He used drugs to deaden the excruciating pain of being hated and rejected by the people that he loved and needed the most.

I asked myself: How can I be a Christian when there are so many people just like him – gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered - being destroyed by people calling themselves Christians? How can I call myself a Christian when so many other Christians are emotionally crippling their own children, brothers, and sisters?

I'll tell you the truth - I really wanted to call down the wrath of God upon that family’s head. I would have liked that the Lord put that entire family in his place, so they would finally know what their hatred felt like. I wanted to see justice! Why is it that God allows some of the most heartless people in the world - who often call themselves religious - to triumph over what is right?

Then I remember how He allowed it to happen to His own Son. I remembered the Pharisees and what they did to Jesus. And I remember what Jesus said before it happened:
"These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." (John 15:11)

Jesus had just told the disciples that he was going to be crucified, and yet he was full of joy. And if Jesus was full of joy it means that God must also have been full of joy - and not in spite of the cruel injustice that was about to be acted out, but because of it. Jesus was joyful because he was going to the Father, and it would be like a homecoming. God was joyful because He was about to overcome all the sins of the world through the blood of His Son. And His disciples should have been joyful, because they would never again need to be afraid of death or injustice.

And neither should we.

I was angry because, like the disciples, I was looking at the situation as the final act rather than just the beginning. A lifetime of injustice is a hard thing to carry around inside. It ends up breaking and destroying many people. But a lifetime of injustice is nothing when compared with an eternity of joy in the presence of God.

"Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh. Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets. But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep. Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets." (Luke 6:21-26)

I suddenly realized that I should have felt worse for the family. They are the ones about to miss out on all we will have one day. People are only on earth for eighty or ninety years at best, and even the best life on earth still has its ups and downs. But what about the life that is always up, always joyful, forever?

I hope you pray for that family, because they're the ones who may have a much tougher time of it, and forever. They’re the ones we should pity and pray for. Because I have a feeling that, in spite of going to church, they don't believe in God's righteous judgment. That's why many outwardly religious people act as if they can get away with anything. They have no shame because they really don't believe, in their heart of hearts, there will be consequences for what they have done.

I strongly believe that fundamentalist Christianity is the result of a horrendous lack of faith. They don't really believe that God will righteously judge the world, or they wouldn't be doing the things they are doing. Like Jesus said, "By their fruit you know them."

When we truly believe we have joy, and we love in the right way. But when we really don't believe in the things that we say we do, everything that we do is wrong and sinful, because none of it was done in faith, and even what we call love isn't really love at all.

"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone." (Mt 23:23)

The reason that so many fundamentalists feel the need to judge and condemn homosexuals is because they really don't believe there is a God who will do it - if and when it needs to be done. They persecute others to prove to themselves that they have the kind of faith they really don't have - or they wouldn't be hating and persecuting others. They need to establish their own version of justice right now, and in their own cruel way; because they really don't believe that God will ever get around to doing it, His way. They need to force everyone to believe what they do, so they can finally believe it too. They are always struggling to hide their lack of faith by condemning and persecuting others. They refused to put all their trust in God, and consequently, they needed to prop up their weak and disabled faith by judging and punishing others.

We all struggle somewhere between faith and doubt, joy and despair, anger and forgiveness. I am still somewhere between feeling angry towards that family because of the evil they’ve done, and realizing that I need to pray for them. Being a Christian means that none of us is perfect and we are all sinners. But as Christians, we either struggle to believe, or we struggle to hide the fact that we've already given up and refuse to believe. Hopefully, we will never fall into that black hole of faithlessness where religious hypocrites hang out. There is no real joy in that kind of faith because there is no real hope for a better life to come. There is only a kind of sanctimonious smugness that too often passes for joy in many fundamentalist churches today.

Being a Christian means living in the joy of knowing that our life will go on forever in the presence of God. And whatever injustice we may suffer now, we should think of it as a cause for celebration, knowing that God is just, and that those who are unjustly despised and dishonored today will one day be honored and rewarded in heaven.

That family will probably go to their graves thinking they did the right thing. But whether they repent or not is not really the point. God is just, and the point is that today we can rest in Him. We don't need to waste our energy being angry at religious hypocrites. We don't need to make everyone that hates us and does us wrong, feel guilty about it. We can wait for God to deal with them His way, in His own time. And because we know there will ultimately be justice, we should already be celebrating, and living in the joy of our faith.

Accepting Hardship

In the serenity prayer there’s a line that says “accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.” That’s quite a statement because it’s counter-intuitive. Our common sense tells us that if only we could solve all our problems and eliminate all hardships, the causes of stress in our life, that we could find peace and serenity. We tend to believe the reason for our anxieties lies in circumstances over which we have little, or no, control; and that by gaining more control and solving all our problems, we could then have serenity. That’s why we struggle so hard to gain control over difficult people and impossible situations, to finally find some measure of peace and serenity. But what we inevitably discover is that the more we struggle against circumstances over which we have little or no control, the further we are from peace.

The real problem is that we are looking for serenity in the wrong place – in our circumstances rather than in our relationship with God. We foolishly act like gods ourselves, pretending that we can control everything, rather than admitting we’re only human and giving that control over to God, where it belongs. We secretly tell ourselves that we will only be happy once we become more omnipotent like God; but what we become instead is dysfunctional, desperately trying to manipulate people and things over which we have no control. We will only find peace in our relationship with the God, who is already in control of everything.

The serenity prayer is saying it is precisely by accepting hardships – rather than by struggling against them - that we find peace. By accepting hardship we are giving that control over to God and acknowledging His authority in the matter; and this is the only thing that can bring us peace with God and serenity within ourselves. The reason for our anxiety lies not in our circumstances but in whom we are trusting: it’s a matter of whether we’re trusting in our own limited powers and resources, or trusting in God’s. Peace is the by-product of trusting God. Real peace means resting in God instead of struggling with some imaginary power we have to control everyone and everything, and ending up failing and upset because we always fall short in one way or another.

Jesus said “Peace I leave you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world gives give I unto you.” The peace that the world offers will always be temporary and conditional since it is dependent upon circumstances that necessarily change. None of us can forever avoid accident, illness, or death, to name just a few. The question is: are we struggling to find the kind of peace that is fleeting at best? Or are we looking for the kind of peace that can never be taken away from us? We can discover serenity in the midst of hardships once we know where to look.

By accepting hardship, we are beginning to look at it in terms of God’s will rather than our own. Whenever something bad happens, our first instinct is to receive it in terms of how much we would like it to go away, and this is measured by the level of anxiety and stress we are feeling. It’s not the thing itself that makes us feel anxious and depressed, but how we are choosing to react to it. The more resistance, the more anxious we feel.

When Jesus began praying at Gethsemane he was overwhelmed by anxiety, so that he was sweating “great drops of blood.” Though the son of God, he was also a man like other men and he didn’t want to suffer and die. Jesus wasn’t a masochist and he wasn't suicidal. He wanted to go on living, and was struggling in prayer with God’s will, searching to see if there was another way for us to be saved, rather than to be crucified. He prayed and struggled three times, and yet each time he finished his prayer with “nevertheless not my will, but thine be done.” Jesus ultimately faced crucifixion with peace and serenity because he embraced God’s will rather than his own.

It’s fine to struggle with God in prayer, and there’s nothing wrong with bringing Him our problems and being honest about how we feel. But the goal of prayer is not to get God to do what we want – which is just another way of trying to impose our will and taking control – the goal is getting us to do what He wants. The happy result is once we accept God’s will in trials and hardships, we find peace and serenity. We’re no longer putting ourselves – and our will - in conflict with the will of God.

It’s certainly much easier to accept God’s blessings, and it’s often wise to focus upon those instead of all our problems; but blessings alone can’t bring us serenity in a troubled world. If blessings and an easier life equaled peace and serenity, the rich and famous would be most serene rather than, very often, being the most anxious and depressed. If having the most control over people and events meant serenity than kings and presidents would have the least stress of all. If peace could only be experienced by those whose problems were eliminated, none of us would have serenity.

We will never have control over all the challenges we experience in life. The only way to find serenity in the midst of trouble is to accept God’s will for us. Moreover, the greater the hardship we can accept in faith, the greater the serenity we will have in this life. Accepting hardship is the path to greater peace because it teaches us Who to trust, rather than trusting too much in our ability to solve every problem.

We need to stop looking at hardship as a barrier to serenity and begin looking at it as the pathway to a much deeper and more enduring kind of peace; the kind not dependent upon passing circumstances, but only upon the faithfulness of God. We should not be aiming at the quick alleviation of all our problems, because that will never happen. Instead, we should be thanking God for hardships and challenges which, by accepting them, can lead us to a much greater peace in the presence of God. Not that we need to go looking for trouble; but when trouble comes looking for us and there is nothing we can reasonably do about it, we should know that it was meant to lead us to the peace that is God. Hardship is God’s way of teaching us serenity; it’s the pathway to peace that we’re on.

If you’ve ever gone on a long hike, you know the importance of staying on the trail. The trail is what keeps us from getting lost in the wilderness, so we can arrive safely at our desired destination. Often the trail is steep and very difficult to follow, and there are times when we feel lost, and feel like giving up. But we also have a certain faith in whoever made the trail that we’re on, and we know that if we just keep following it, rather than trying to find our own way, we’ll eventually come out at a beautiful place. Hardship is like that. It’s our way through the wilderness, so that we don’t get lost, and can arrive at a more beautiful place. And the bonus is that once we accept it’s going to be a difficult hike and stop complaining about it, we can look up, and begin to enjoy the scenery along the way.

The Pentagram & the Pachyderm

The elephant/flag symbol on the left is the official icon of the GOP/Republican party. The red and white bars and three white stars on a field of blue are supposed to represent the American flag. But there’s a problem. The stars are inverted, and instead of pointing up they point down. In that sense, it is the representation of an upside-down American flag.

There’s no criminal penalty because it’s considered free speech. Still, it’s technically illegal to represent an American flag with the stars upside down.

The law entitled “Respect for the Flag,” US Code Title 4 Section 8(a ) reads “The flag should never be displayed with the union (the stars represent the union of the states) down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.”

There is also section 8 (g) “The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature” That would supposedly include superimposing the American flag upon any

design, picture, or drawing of an elephant.

And section 8 (i) reads: “The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever.”That would certainly include using the flag to advertise your party affiliation.

It seems pretty peculiar that the same party that every year tries to ram through a constitutional amendment to criminalize flag-burning and other desecrations, are themselves openly disrespecting the American flag in at least three different ways at once, and in countless millions of mailers, websites, and bumper stickers. But when is the last time you saw an American burning the American flag? Since there’s no law criminalizing political hypocrisy, Republicans might do better pushing through a constitutional amendment against it, thereby killing two birds with one stone.

The interesting thing about a star is how easily it can be turned into a satanic pentagram. When it’s pointing up it’s a star and a symbol for good. When it’s pointing down it’s a pentagram, a sign of evil.

"Let us keep the figure of the Five-pointed Star always upright, with the topmost triangle pointing to heaven, for it is the seat of wisdom, and if the figure is reversed, perversion and evil will be the result." Franz Hartman Magic, White and Black. (1895).

"A reversed pentagram, with two points projecting upwards, is a symbol of evil and attracts sinister forces because it overturns the proper order of things and demonstrates the triumph of matter over spirit. It is the goat of lust attacking the heavens with its horns, a sign execrated by initiates." Levi Eliphas Transcendental Magic, its Doctrine and Ritual. (1855)

The 5-pointed star is a symbol for man, and the points were originally associated with spirit and the four elements – earth, water, fire, and air. When the point or head of the star is facing up it’s symbolic of spirit ruling over matter, and when down, it symbolizes humanity overcome by our most destructive instincts like greed and violence. Facing up towards the heavens we are under God’s authority, and when reversed, under the devil’s rule.

In witchcraft the pentangle is used with the "head" of the star point

ed down, illustrating man worshiping Satan. When pointed down it also becomes the face of the goat. Satanists use a pentagram with two points up, often inscribed in a double circle to emphasize the exclusion of God, and sometimes with the head of a goat inside the pentagram.

Another website points out how “Symbologists (like that idiot Robert Langdon in “The DaVinci Code”) agree that the five pointed star, or pentagram, is an ancient symbol for the number “6”. Let me spell this out. Three pentagrams (on the Republican elephant) equals 666. This is the symbol for my arch-enemy, Satan, or his minion, the Anti-Christ. Why in the world would our symbol have the emblem of Satan on it?”

Why indeed. Why would an American president go around constantly flashing the devil’s salute? Why would a 'Christian nation' install as its leader someone who was a member of a secretive satanic cult called Skull and Bones? After 7 years of leading our country deeper into the squalid sewer of torture and political corruption, it seems a little late to be asking such questions. But for the record, my understanding is that the stars were inverted and turned upside down when Bush was appointed president. They weren’t like that before.

It should also be pointed out that using the elephant as a luck charm is a custom rooted in the Hindu religion of pagan India, where the god Ganesha, the elephant-headed son of Siva and Parvati, is worshiped as the god of good luck. The British overlords of India imported this pagan superstition into the west during the 19^th century in the form of various good-luck elephant knick-knacks that became all the rage. The front story is that the Republican Party adopted the elephant symbol because of some obscure cartoon that appeared in Harper's Weekly in 1874. But the truth is that the elephant god Ganesha had already been established in the west as the pagan symbol of good luck. One thing more - the other representation of the same good-luck god Ganesha is the SWASTIKA, the symbol adopted by the National Socialist German Workers (NAZI) Party in the 1920’s. The elephant god Ganesha bears the characteristic mark of the swastika in his hand.

The most remarkable thing about Bush’s state of the Union address (beside the fact that he never admitted to the drastically deteriorating state of the union, as he was Constitutionally obligated to do) was his mindlessly cheerful disregard for all the suffering and death he has caused – and is still causing. As one blogger put it, “Bush seems almost pathologically detached from any real understanding of the effects of what he says and does. If you're him, that's probably a good thing. If you're anybody else, it's horrifying.”

We live in a shallow, consumer-based society, and we are taught to focus on style rather than substance. We judge by the most superficial standards rather than considering their real effect. We see a leader who seems very cheerful and personable, and the fact that he’s bankrupted the nation to enrich his class by torturing and murdering about a million Iraqis doesn’t sink in. We look at a pagan Nazi elephant branded with three satanic pentagrams, and think it probably some innocent mistake, that perhaps it's more fashionable that way. We flock to hear a messianic candidate who says he’s going to bring us all together and do great things, though he never gets around to saying exactly how and what. The advantage of only looking at the surface of things is that you never need to find out what’s really going on. It makes life easier and less complicated in the short run, though it turns out badly in the end.

The Politician We'd All Love to Forget

First, thanks so much for the prayers and concern. My brother is back at home and doing reasonably well and I’m sure that prayers had everything to do with it. I’m sorry that I haven’t posted here in months – if indeed anyone is still reading this. I didn’t seem to have the time or energy, and just fell out of the habit. There are things that we do, or don’t do out of habit, even though we would or wouldn’t.

The news over the past few months has been all about the next presidential election and the candidates for that office. So much so that it seems like everyone’s trying to forget who the president really is - and will be for the next year. It’s almost like if we concentrate completely on the next president, the present disaster might go away. But it’s not going away.

The economy’s tanking, the price of oil is thru the roof, the stock market is in the crapper, and the government is still sinking lives and money into an illegal war with no end in sight. No wonder everyone is for change. But we can’t change the present by ignoring what’s really going on.

Bush said last week, "I'm sure people view me as a war monger and I view myself as peacemaker." But why would he would view himself as a peacemaker when he’s started two wars while concluding 0 peace agreements? It’s more evidence of an irrational stubbornness, one completely disconnected from reality. He’s a peacemaker. Why? Because that’s how he chooses to view himself. Though I suppose even a jackass has a right to view themselves as something other than a complete jackass. Though it seems silly, even for a jackass, to put their delusions on the same level as the cold, hard facts. Though it’s something that Bush does all the time.

Again, regarding Iran, he put his (mistaken) opinions about Iran on the same level of credibility as the facts. Concerning the recent National Intelligence Estimate that concluded that Iran had discontinued their nuclear weapons program in 2003. (that means they don’t have one), Bush said:

“I assured him (King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia) that our intelligence services came to an independent judgment (about whether Iran has a nuclear program). I reminded him of what I said at my press conference when we got involved with that story: they were a threat, they are a threat, and they will be a threat… (Why? Because Bush says so)

“I was making it clear it (the NIE report) was an independent judgment, because what they basically came to the conclusion of, is that he's trying -- you know, this is a way to make sure that all options aren't (??) on the table (misquote or Freudian slip?). So I defended our intelligence services (by dismissing their findings and facts as merely opinions), but made it clear that they're an independent agency; that they come to conclusions separate from what I may or may not want. (Presumably, what Bush wants to hear are the only facts he’s interested in.)

What Bush seems to be saying, in his own peculiar and disjointed fashion, is that he needed to “defend” the NIE report to the Saudis, while assuring them that Iran is still very much a threat. He seems to be indicating that – despite all pretenses to the contrary - the Saudi Dictators (as well as the Israeli government) want the US to do something about Iran before Her Fuehrer leaves office. They didn’t like the NIE report because it seemed to throw cold water on the idea. He was n Saudi Arabia to reassure them that, report or no report, he still sees them as a threat and a military confrontation with Iran is coming.

Saudi Arabia is very worried about Iran. They have been obsessed about their nuclear program, as well as their growing influence in Iraq. In 1987, when Saudi security forces suppressed a demonstration by Shiite worshippers in front of Mecca’s Grand Mosque, it led to the slaughter of 400 religious pilgrims, most of them Iranians. This, in turn, led to angry mobs ransacking the Saudi embassy in Tehran, and a complete severing of diplomatic relations that were only normalized when Iran’s mortal enemy – Saddam Hussein – also began to threaten Saudi Arabia. Iran has frequently called on Muslims to overthrow the Saudi ruling family, seize its oil wealth and strip it of its role as guardian of Islamic holy places.

According to one source, “The main reason for Bush's visit to four Gulf states … was to gauge how much diplomatic support and practical help the desert sheikdoms might give if the United States or Israel attacked Iran.” It certainly wasn’t to get them to pump more oil. The skyrocketing price of oil is the best thing that ever happened to Bush and his oil company cronies. The reason Bush removed Saddam Hussein was to stop him from flooding the market with cheap oil. This was a point I made nearly tree years ago in the post entitled “Oil, Iraq and the Antichrist.” You can read it here.

The consensus in Washington and the media is that it’s now politically impossible for Bush to attack Iran. But a year is a very long time, and a lot of things could happen, and it’s difficult to believe that a megalomanic frat boy who never let reality stand in the way of doing whatever he wants, is going to go away quietly and accept the fact that his was a failed presidency. After all the death and destruction that he’s caused over the last seven years, it’s difficult to believe that he’s through with us yet.

The Nobel Prize for Warmongers

warmonger (noun) plural warmongers; : 1. one who attempts to stir up war
2. see Dick Cheney

I was thinking how it’s a shame that the Nobel Committee doesn’t give out a prize for warmongers like Bush.

Sure, the Nobel Peace Prize is fine, and there’s nothing wrong with giving it out. But when you think about it, does it really matter? I mean, did Al Gore do everything that he’s doing about global warming because he was trying to win the Nobel Peace Prize? Of course not. Would he have become discouraged and stopped doing what he’s doing if he hadn’t received the prize? I don’t think so. How about Nelson Mandela or Jimmy Carter? No, and no.

The Nobel Peace prize doesn’t motivate the more virtuous leaders of the world, the ones really seeking Peace, because their own character and ideals are what motivate them. It doesn’t substantially change anything or help to promote peace in the world. It only rewards people who would be promoting peace anyway, even without any prize.

What we really need is to get at the root of the problem, and start singling out and humiliating all the warmongers of the world. It’s the warmongers that we need to focus on and motivate to change, since they are the ones purely motivated by ego. That's why we need to make a public spectacle of them.

The Nobel Committee would be much more effective at promoting world peace if they also handed out booby prizes to the most dangerous war criminals. How much more effective would it have been if, at the same time that Gore received his Nobel Prize for Peace, Bush were to receive the prize for warmongering? Much more effective! It would say that you can steal an election and become the most powerful man in the world, but you will still be a failure in life.

How could Bush keep projecting evil on other world leaders when he already had the Nobel prize for evildoers? And how could his hypocritical wife complain about the leaders of Burma after her own husband was awarded first prize for killing innocent people? There would be a lot fewer pots calling kettles black.

Rather than a medal cast in solid gold, bearing the image of Albert Nobel, the medal for warmongers could be cast in cow manure, bearing the likeness of Hitler. And rather than giving the recipient money, they could give the money out to his victims, one of whom could be flown to Stockholm to receive the medal by ceremoniously tossing it on the ground and grinding it under foot. This could be broadcast over the entire world to the ecstatic jubilation of billions.

It’s one thing when your political opposition calls you names. People like Bush are immune to that. It goes in one ear and out the other. It’s another thing an esteemed and leaned world panel gives you the most notorious prize for in the world. Imagine getting the same prize as Saddam Hussein and Pol Pot! Most leaders would do everything they could to avoid it.

Bush’s preoccupation with his legacy and what history will say about him seem evidence of how badly we need to give out such a prize. It might be the only thing that could make Bush face the truth about himself, before he ends up doing more damage. Nothing else has worked.

The thing about power is that some world leaders – those, like Bush, who have no character - come to believe that power itself is the proof of their goodness. They tend to believe that it was God or destiny that gave them power, and that they can do no wrong. They consider power their natural right, rather than the undeserved responsibility that it is. They define evil as anyone who threatens their power, or their right to more power. It’s easy to be corrupted by power when you don’t know who you are.

Everyone knows that Bush has lied us into an endless war for profit and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings. The entire world despises him and knows that he’s the greatest threat to world peace today. The real tragedy is that he doesn’t have a medal to prove it.

Note: My brother Don is in the hospital and having a pretty rough time. I would really appreciate any prayers for him to recover and be well.

Is Bush Threatening to Start WWIII ?

"So I've told people that, if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it
seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," said Bush.

Notice that he didn't say "prevent them from acquiring a nuclear weapon" but "preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." The difference is significant because even though Bush mixes up his words and syntax and he has trouble forming a complete sentence or keeping a coherent though in his head, he is careful about the substance of what he says.

For instance, even though we know (and many of us knew at the time) that Bush always intended to invade Iraq, he always said (for political reasons) that he had not made up his mind. Though if you looked closely at what he actually did and said at the time, he was never committed to peace, and everything that he said and did was to further the argument for war.

It seems much the same way now, concerning Iran. If anything, he seems to be pushing back the goal posts and making it impossible for Iran to avoid a showdown, the way that he did with Saddam. Saddam let inspectors in and even offered to resign - but it was all irrelevant, because Bush was determined to attack.

He knows that Iran won't have a nuclear weapon within the next year, even if it wanted one. He also know that last month's report by the Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran’s nuclear programs said that that Iran has neither the intention nor the capabilities to develop nuclear weapons. So what does Bush do? Does he breathe a sigh of relief? Does he admit to the possibility that he may have been wrong? Is he willing to let the next (more competent) president handle the issue? Surely you jest.

Instead, he starts talking about WWIII, and the fact that the Iranians already know too much. It's all about "having the knowledge." Knowledge that's available to anyone who really wants to look for it. Knowledge that the Bush govenment has already published for building a bomb, over the Internet.

Everything that he says - and that the US military is currently doing - seems to advance the argument for war. The only way to prevent Iran from having the knowledge and capability to make a nuclear weapon, at this point, is to go to war and destroy their capability, kill or imprison the Iranian scientists who have the knowledge and skill, and bomb the country back to the stone age.

What is so diabolical is that at same time Bush professes to be seeking a peaceful solution, he's steadily advancing the rational and rhetoric to justify war. He claims that he wants to avoid WWIII, all while making the argument for starting WWIII, regardless of what Iran does.

I don't think there's any question that Bush would like to go to war with Iran. The only question is whether he can manufacture the right opportunity. There was recently an article in Salon that argued "Why Bush Won't Attack Iraq." It might be useful to go over some of the points made:

"If he were (going to attack Iran), he wouldn't be playing good cop/bad cop with Iran and proposing engagement."

Why not? He did the same thing with Iraq. At the same time that he said that he wanted to go through the UN and achieve a peaceful solution, we know that he was determined for war. He went through the motions of trying diplomacy, even though it was irrelevant.

"If the bombs were at the ready, Bush would be doing a lot more to prepare the nation and the military for a war far more consequential than the invasion of Iraq."

Why would he think it would be far more consequential? Did he know how long, drawn out, and costly the War in Iraq would be? In spite of what his own military advisors were telling him - that he needed a force of at least 1/2 million - he still managed to convince himself otherwise. There is no reason to believe it would be any different with Iran. If we know one thing, it's that Bush has the peculiar ability to never learn from his mistakes. What he does is keep repeating the same ones, only making them much bigger, and digging the hole deeper.

"Bush met in "the Tank" with his senior national security counselors and the military's command staff and walked out with the impression that either the costs of military action against Iran were simply too high, or that the prospects for success for the mission too low. "

On the contrary: Bush has demonstrated that he eventually gets rid of the generals who don't agree with him. He trusts his gut, not his generals. He likely walked out with the impression that it was politically impossible to attack Iran as long as the joint chiefs were unanimously against the idea. That's why General Peter Pace is no longer Chairman of the JCS. It's not evidence that he's changed his mind. It only means that he must find another way - some other pretext - to go ahead with it anyway, in spite of what they think.

"We know Bush rebuffed Cheney's view and is seeking other alternatives."

How do we know that? Where is the evidence, when he's now talking about WWIII and stopping Iran from having "the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon" ? Certainly it's in his interest to be perceived as wanting to pursue a peaceful course, just like before the invasion of Iraq. Even though he is heading us in the other direction. The last thing that Bush would do now is openly side with Cheney; that's not how the good cop, bad cop game is played out. He must be for peace until the very end so that it can seem like he had no choice in the matter.

This idea that Cheney is the evil, warmongering mastermind while Bush is his innocent pawn is just so much media claptrap. They are on the same team and they think alike. But Cheney must play the role of bad cop because Bush is the president, and must always be seen in the role of the good cop - as someone on the side of peace, even though he obviously isn't. The act doesn't work the other way around.

I would not be surprised if Bush were even more of a warmonger, and more determined to attack Iran, than Cheney. Fortunately for him, he has Cheney to always play the foil. That's why they make such a good team. Whenever we start thinking that Bush and Cheney are working at cross purposes, they have already been successfully at accomplishing their real purpose. When you look at Cheney you're seeing the real Bush; and when you look at Bush, you're seeing a pathological liar and master of deception.

The question isn't whether or not Bush wants to attack Iran because he does. The question is whether he can bring it about without dropping the act and looking too much like the war monger that he is.

,

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Is the USA a Christian Nation?

WASHINGTON — Sixty-five percent
of Americans believe that the nation's founders intended the U.S. to be a
Christian nation and 55% believe that the Constitution establishes a Christian
nation, according to the “State of the First Amendment 2007” national survey
released Sept. 11 by the First Amendment Center.

Sometimes it seems like people keep arguing about things that entirely miss the point. Were the founding fathers really Christians? Did they want the United States to become a Christian nation? Who the heck cares? Because whatever you (mistakenly) believe the nation’s founders intended, and whatever you (ignorantly) think the Constitution says, the simple FACT is that the United States is NOT a Christian nation.

That’s not to say that America doesn’t have a lot of people who like to go around calling themselves Christians. We have more people going to church and calling themselves Christians than in any other country in the world. But that’s not the point, and that's not for any of us to judge, since Jesus will ultimately decide and judge who is and who isn’t a Christian. But what we can know and judge is what sort of country we are right now, by the kind of things we are doing. You know a tree by its fruit, and you know a country by its policies.

The issue is whether we are a Christian nation (if there is such a thing), and whether – as a nation – we exhibit those values and qualities that are uniquely Christian. If you want to keep arguing about whether the Constitution and the founding fathers intended to establish a Christian nation – it’s completely beside the point if, in fact, they failed miserably and were fools. You might as well argue about how many angels fit on the head of a pin. It’s not about what the founding fathers wanted, but about what we are doing as a nation. And we can’t blame it on them because they’re all dead.

I don’t believe the founding fathers failed or the Constitution has failed, but that fundamentalist Christians in America have completely failed to understand what being a Christian is all about; let alone what a Christian country might look like. They have no clue. That’s the problem.

A week and a half ago their president, George W Bush, vetoed the State Children's Health Insurance Program because it asked for $35 billion more in funding over the next five years than he wanted to pay. At the same time, he’s requesting another $190 billion over the next year alone, to keep killing more Iraqis. Is that what Christians do – deny their own children health care, so they can use the money to kill somebody else’s children? But that’s exactly what our country is doing.

Jesus said “resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” But our country spends more on resisting evil and weaponry than all the other countries in the world combined. And America is the only country in the world that has taken upon itself the right to preemptively strike another nation. America not only refuses to turn the other cheek, it insists upon taking the first shot.

Jesus said “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.” But America tortures those it calls its enemies. It holds them in concentration camps and in secret prisons, without any rights. And America has murdered 700,000 people who never did any harm to us.

Jesus said, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,” but our country is arguably the greediest and most materialistic society on face of the earth. He said, “you cannot serve God and mammon,” and yet Americans not only serve mammon with gusto, but they despise the poor for not serving mammon well enough.

Jesus said “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned” But many Americans think that by judging and condemning lesbians and gays, that they are demonstrating the moral quality that makes them Christians. But by making their hatred and intolerance the quality that is most distinctive about them as Christians, they’ve turned the Gospel of Jesus Christ completely on its head, and turned their hatred for their neighbors into a (sac)religious crusade.

They have transformed the ‘Good News’ that was intended for the poor and oppressed, into even better news for bigots and all the greedy people who like to call themselves Christians – news that they can keep on cheating and robbing the poor, just as long as they continue hating and discriminating against homosexuals.

The character of America certainly isn’t the character of a Christian. It’s the character of a selfish, arrogant, and lawless bully. It’s the character of the Antichrist, only pretending to be a Christian. It’s a reflection of the American people and their corruption by money and power. The people tolerate corrupt and lawless leaders because they themselves are corrupt and don’t care. They complain about their politicians being crooks, but never do anything about it, let alone, take a good hard look in the mirror.

If you want to see what a Christian nation might look like, look at all the countries that guarantee their citizens health care. Look at the ones who mind their own business and spend more on social programs and infinitely less on the military. Look at the few who treat all of their citizens equally – including homosexuals. Look at the countries that are not torturing people or holding them in secret prisons. Look at societies where money isn’t everything, and where the gap between rich and poor isn’t so extreme.

But please, whatever you do, don’t look at America, because America is about the furthest thing from a Christian country possible in the world today. And don’t ask Americans to look more objectively at their own country, because that’s why they keep arguing about the founding fathers instead. Because turning America into a meek Christian country is about the last thing that most proud and greedy Christians in America would ever vote for, or even tolerate.

The Washington Epidemic in Loggy-Eye Syndrome

Mt 7:3 “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

Any hypocrite who votes against making gay bashing a hate crime, and who consistently voted in favor of denying homosexuals equal rights, probably deserved to be exposed as a flaming hypocrite. But how exactly does that make Larry Craig any different from all the hypocrites in Washington who forced his resignation?

True, Craig pleaded guilty to a crime – misdemeanor disorderly conduct. Wow. I mean seriously - Bush pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in 1966, after getting drunk and stealing a Christmas tree – so when is Mitt Romney going to get around to calling Bush “disgusting”? Is there a statute of limitations on disgusting behavior?

More recently, Bush went into a bloodthirsty fit: lying about WMD’s, illegally invading a sovereign country, and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis. He’s still on a stubborn and disorderly, murderous rampage. So when is Grandpa McCain going to get around to calling him “disgraceful”? After Bush is convicted of spitting on the sidewalk?

How is touching a man’s shoe with your shoe under a bathroom stall “unforgivable,” (in the words of minority leader Mitch McConnell), but turning a blind eye to torture is OK? Why is it that men can sexually harass and come onto women every day of the week, but when somebody comes on to them in the restroom, all hell breaks loose? I ask the question, not because I don’t already know the answer (homophobia), but to point out how incredibly hypocritical it is. The tragic thing about Larry Craig is that the same people he spent his entire life emulating and trying to please - were the first to toss him under the bus the first time he got into trouble. The cold-blooded political calculation is chilling; even more because they seem so proud of it.

Then there’s David Vitter from Louisiana - the married Senator who pays prostitutes to diaper him before having sex. (Vitter also co-authored the “Defense of Marriage” act.) There’s no law in Louisiana against diapering a Senator. So obviously, in the estimation of our elected officials, it couldn't be as “disgraceful, disgusting and unforgivable” as touching his shoe. Though how those prostitutes managed to get Vitter's pants off without touching his shoes, I’ll never know. It’s emblematic of an attitude that says anything is OK, just as long as you’re straight and get away with it.

Newt Gingrich recently admitted to having an affair with a woman (and lying about it) at the same time that he pushed through a resolution in the House of Representatives, impeaching Bill Clinton for lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Gingrich finally resigned after being reprimanded by the House ethics panel over using tax-exempt funds to advance his political goals.

Pointing the moral finger at somebody else’s lifestyle is something done primarily by those looking to avoid any scrutiny of their own. It’s not that some politicians are much better at discerning right from wrong (though they’d like us to think so). It’s that they’ve become experts at diverting our attention from what’s really going on. In Jesus’ day, the Pharisees made hypocrisy their religion – they said one thing and did another. Now, the religious right and their flunkies in Congress have stepped into their shoes.

What they look at as a moral failing in others is most likely only a projection of that log in their own eye, which keeps growing and adding more rings year after year, so that they can never see the matter clearly. Till finally, one day, they end up like Larry Craig: campaigning publicly for heterosexual marriage in Washington DC and Idaho, while playing footsie in public restrooms at stopovers in Minneapolis. What we presume to be someone else’s moral failure is, more often than not, something visually enhanced and magnified by that unacknowledged log in our own eye. That’s the point Jesus was making.

Though no definitive studies have yet been done, it would be no surprise to discover that the more people are having affairs, the more they are secretly involved in pornography or prostitution, the more completely they’ve abandoned their souls to greed or lust for power, the more heartless they behave towards the poor and persecuted, and the less likely they are to do anything meaningful to aid the sick and suffering of the world … the more stridently they champion ‘family values’ and rail against the ‘homosexual lifestyle.’ The people most likely judge and condemn others for their perceived moral failings, are those most motivated by their need to draw attention from their own sins and shortcomings.

It’s fine to have a political party dedicated to doing the same sort of things that Jesus did – like helping the poor, healing the sick, and loving (rather than killing) your enemies. But whenever politicians pretend to have the inside track on morality, it’s like watching pigs throw mud: the ones throwing the most are always the deepest into their own.

Washington is the last place we should look to for moral guidance. Not only because politicians spend most of their time collecting bribes from special interests, but because it’s not their job to be our spiritual councilors. It’s not what they were hired to do. They need to stay OUT of our private lives, OUT of our bedrooms, OUT of our churches, Mosques and Synagogues, and just attend to public business. It is NOT their job to be our Priests, Confessors, and Inquisitors.

Politicians are little more than highly-paid, overly-dignified prostitutes; they are paid to protect the Constitution, say what we want them to say, and do what we want them to do - not tear down the Constitutional separation between church and state, while informing us that’s what God wants. We pay their salary, and their job is to represent us – not squander more lives and money in a war that 72% of the public wants ended.

Some politicians have gotten as good at manipulating our fears and prejudices as they are at exploiting cultural and religious divisions within the country. Perhaps if they didn’t rely so heavily upon the money of special interests, and maybe if public service wasn’t just first step to making much more money in lobbying firms, they wouldn’t need to find ways to avoid doing their job.

What we call privacy and personal freedom is the secular side of the liberty that we have in Christ as Christians, and just because some people may abuse that freedom to their own harm, doesn’t mean that we all must live under religious tyranny. To advocate laws that infringe upon the private lives and personal liberty of others is to stand in direct opposition to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Passing laws that restrict the rights and freedom of homosexuals and others, is not a way of establishing God’s law; it is a way of putting a lot of demonstrably corrupt and ignorant pastors and politicians and their Newly Revised Mosaic Law over us, and taking the liberty guaranteed by the Gospel out of both religious and secular life. It’s building up again what Christ died to free us from.

The original Mosaic Law was a combination of both civil and religious laws, because at that time there was no separation between church and state. Why not? Because at that particular time, the mediator between God and humanity was not Christ, but the Mosaic Law itself. The same situation exists in some fundamentalist Islamic states today, in their enforcement of Sharia law. At one time in history, the idea of personal rights and moral freedom simply didn’t exist, because the Gospel had yet to be preached. The Mosaic Law instructed people not only in how they should live together in a just community, but also how they would honor and worship God, and what sort of personal moral standards they should practice and uphold.

However, the Gospel tells us that there are no written laws that could show us how to more perfectly worship God in spirit and in truth, and there are no laws that could enable us to love our neighbors as we ought to. That sort of information and that kind of ability can only come directly from God, through the love of Jesus Christ working within our heart. As it says in Jer 31:33 “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts.”

Strictly speaking - because a Christian answers directly to a ‘Higher Law’ through faith in Jesus Christ, he/she is completely free - not only from any religious laws, but from civil and secular laws as well. That isn’t to say a Christian is free to be a rapist, an anarchist, a troublemaker, a murder, or a thief. But Christians refrain from rape, theft, and murder, not because there is a law against it, and they’re worried they might get caught and end up in prison, but because they are already obeying the law of love that is written in their heart.

Certainly what Larry Craig did was wrong, but whether he is gay should not be the moral concern of our government (unless he is discriminated against or beaten up because he is gay, and in a way, he has been). It’s between him, his God, and his own conscience. And the total lack of any pity or compassion by his hypocritical Senate colleagues demonstrates exactly why they are the last people we should look to for moral or spiritual guidance, because clearly, they don’t have the love and grace of God in their hearts.

The Stink That Won’t Go Away

Alberto Gonzales wears a perpetual smirk that seems to say, “Don’t you realize how much fun it is to keep telling these lies to people who can’t do a single thing about it?” It’s just as if he and Bush were cloned from the same ugly smirk. He’s lied so many times under oath before Congress that even Republicans need a shower after questioning him. They could replace all the furniture and fumigate the Judiciary committee room, but the stink won’t go away until he does.

Alberto makes you question the sanity – let alone the logic - of putting anyone at all into prison, just so long as crooks like him are still roaming free. There are about 12 million Hispanics in the country illegally, but he’s the only Hispanic I have ever seen with such complete contempt for America, our Constitution, and the rule of law.

The idea that he heads up the most important law enforcement agency speaks volumes about our government, and it means that the biggest crooks are now in charge of putting lesser crooks in jail. The most sadistic men in prison are probably not responsible for as much pain and suffering as torture-boy Gonzales. Our justice department has become a criminal conspiracy unto itself, and most of its time and energies seem devoted to rationalizing illegal torture, detention, and wiretapping, and covering up the crimes of Gonzales, Rove, Cheney, and Bush.

For all practical purposes, the Justice Department has been transformed into the legal arm of the Republican party. It's comprised of taxpayer funded lawyers supplied by the right-wing ‘federalist society,’ whose political mission it is to convict Democrats and cover-up the crimes of Republicans. In that sense, justice in America is now on the same level as justice in Cuba, North Korea, Communist China, or any other one-party state.

Remember the good old days? There was once a time when a crooked government official would resign gracefully after being caught in the web of their own lies – perhaps as a way of accepting responsibility and minimizing the damage to the nation. Their quick departure told us that they still had enough decency to realize that what they did was wrong – they weren’t complete sociopaths - and they were willing to begin paying the price.

But previous crooks were saints compared to the dedicated sociopaths that now plague the halls of government. Where there is no honor left there is no shame either. Now they tell us they accept responsibility, but then hang onto public office like a cancer. Accepting responsibility has become merely a public relations ploy: They say mistakes were made so they can continue making the same mistakes and committing the same crimes, while blaming everyone else for the consequences. They’re essentially saying to us, “Yea, I’m a crook. I know it. So what are you going to do about it.?” The question is…what are we going to do?

Yesterday, the New York Times ran an editorial calling for Congress to impeach Gonzales if the justice department fails to appoint a special prosecutor. But one of the reasons that Bush won’t fire Gonzales is because he and the Solicitor General will never appoint a special prosecutor to look into the administration’s crimes. So that only leaves the other option.

Article Two of the Constitution outlines the powers of the presidency, and the final section reads: “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

Notice that it doesn’t say that the Congress can remove officers of the executive branch for high crimes and misdemeanors if they feel like it – it specifically says that they “shall be removed.” It is an imperative and a Constitutional obligation that Congress remove corrupt officials from our government, in the event that the Executive branch refuses to do so.

It is significant that this Constitutional obligation for Congress to impeach, try, and remove corrupt officials is not listed under Section 1, which lists the powers of Congress, but under Section 2, which lists the powers of the executive branch. The founding fathers purposely included this section as a vital check on executive power, and as a way of warning the executive branch that even though they have been given the power to enforce the laws, they themselves are never above the law. It was their way of both warning the president and obligating the Congress to enforce the rule of law. It was their way of ensuring that everyone remained equal under the law.

It follows that if Congress refuses to do its duty, they then become co-conspirators in breaking down the rule of law. They cannot complain that Gonzales is perjuring himself and breaking the law and yet refuse to carry out their own duty under the highest law in the land – our Constitution. The politics involved should have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on whether or not to enforce the law. How can the Democrats complain about the manner in which the Republicans have politicized the Justice Department, if they themselves refuse to impeach Gonzales because they’re afraid of the political fallout? It’s just another way of sacrificing justice on the alter of political expediency.

Indeed, the Democrats really ought to be much more afraid of the political fallout than they are. They seem much more optimistic about their future than they have any right to be. Because if Democrats fail to uphold the rule of law, they will ultimately be seen as just as corrupt in the eyes of the American people. Any moral advantage they may seem to have gained over a corrupt administration will then have been squandered. Making every Republican in Congress choose between their own party and the rule of law is like saying “heads I win, tails you lose.” Because those who blindly choose their party will surely be punished at the polls.

It ultimately doesn’t matter in the long run whether Gonzales (or Bush and Cheney) can actually be removed from office – or if there are enough votes to pull it off in the Senate. What really matters (and what the American people are watching to see) is whether there is a party in Washington that cares about the rule of law. Because if there isn’t, than we are all sunk.

Sometimes you have to do the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do. The Constitution was written by people who pretty much knew what they were doing. They certainly weren’t perfect, and the Constitution isn’t Holy Scripture, but it established a framework for maintaining the rule of law and resolving political crises. Believing in the Constitution means having the courage, not only to defend it, but to do what it says. It involves a certain measure of faith. Our political leaders talk a lot about the Constitution, the trouble is, they don’t seem to have any faith in it.

Political parties have come and gone, been up and down, while constantly changing their positions throughout the history of the Republic. Only the Constitution is the same. Our government is so caught up in the political game that they have forgotten that their primary obligation under the Constitution is to maintain a government accountable to the people and accountable to the law. Democracy and the rule of law are two sides of the same coin, and you can’t deface one without making the other side worthless. A government that’s not accountable to the law is no longer accountable to the people either.

There is a grass roots movement for impeachment in America because people can feel their government slipping away from them. That we continue to escalate a war, which most people know has been a tragic mistake from the beginning, is symptomatic of the contempt that our government has for us. The American people understand that if we have been left to choose between two corrupt political parties, both of which refuse to obey the Constitution and uphold the rule of law, that we no longer have any meaningful role in selecting our government. A corporate aristocracy has assumed that role, and our new Constitution is their bottom line.

Down In the Bunker With Bush

Though some people are offended when you compare Bush to Hitler, as a practical matter, there is no other politician within the American experience left to compare him to. He long ago surpassed Nixon in breaking laws and grabbing onto power. Only last week, Bush claimed not only that he had the right to turn his nose up at Congressional subpoenas, but that if Congress files a contempt citation, his justice department will not enforce the law.

Nixon allowed John Dean to testify, even though he knew it would be a disaster. He knew it meant the end of his presidency, but Nixon was not willing to cross the Rubicon and become an outright dictator. Bush has already crossed that bridge. The difference is that Bush is quite willing to keep breaking more laws and grabbing onto more power to cover-up the laws he’s already broken. He’s the only leader we’ve had who acts so much like a dictator, that we can only compare him to other world dictators. His actions are so completely outside the mainstream of American political experience that we can only understand his actions, as well as predict his future actions, in terms of other totalitarian leaders. Otherwise, it’s like comparing apples to oranges.

At this point, psychologically speaking, George Bush is much like Adolph in his bunker at the end of WWII. Like Hitler, Bush seems completely oblivious and out of touch with reality, and still expecting to win a war that’s already lost. While Hitler pretended to be in control of armies that no longer existed, Bush surges troops that he really doesn’t have by extending the tours of those already in Iraq.

Hitler was unable to take responsibility for his failed war strategy; instead, he ended up blaming the German people for not having the strength and courage to persevere. In the very same way, Bush is going around the country constantly blaming the American people for losing patience and wanting to bring the troops home. It isn’t his fault – perish the thought! It’s our fault for ‘validating the strategy of the terrorists,’ and getting tired of war. Forget that fact that it’s taken longer to secure the road from downtown Baghdad to the Baghdad airport than it took to defeat Germany and Japan. Forget the fact that he shamelessly lied to all of us – how dare the American people ever think of cutting and running. Didn’t we know that the war was all about validating Bush’s role as our leader? We ought to be willing to sacrifice as many lives as necessary to prove that he was right.

It’s important to understand that Bush will never blame himself for leading the country into this disaster – that he is entirely incapable of doing so. Instead, he will – and he already does - blame the country for not being willing to spill more of our blood and treasure in Iraq. And just like Hitler, Bush will find a way to get back at the country for ruining his presidency.

What Hitler did to get back at Germany was to institute a ‘scorched earth’ policy called the ‘Nero Order,’ intended to systematically destroy the country and leave nothing for the allies. Hitler not only committed suicide, but he intended to commit total national suicide. He believed that the German people didn’t deserve to survive the war because they were weak. Unfortunately for him, Albert Speer and others disobeyed his final insane orders, so that even though Germany was in ruins, it wasn’t completely decimated and depopulated. But then, Adolph didn’t have a nuclear bomb like Bush does, and he was too busy gassing the last of the Jews to start in on the Aryan race too.

Anyone who thinks that Bush is going to allow America to betray his authority and leadership skills by getting out of Iraq – thereby making him into the worse president in history – they are deceiving themselves. He may currently believe that 100 years from now, historians will eventually look back at how brilliant he was. But unless he’s taking even more drugs that Hitler (and he may be) I doubt that he will be able to rest easy under that particular delusion for very long, as the magnitude of the disaster begins to dawn on him. And when he finally wakes up to see the shambles we’ve made of his presidency, what’s he going to do?

It seems significant that even now, with his job approval down to 26%, he’s still grabbing onto more power. Why? Because the goal of his entire presidency has always been power for its own sake. 9-11 was just an excuse to grab more power and commit more crimes than any other president in history. And it’s difficult to believe that a man so completley addicted to power, would simply to hand it off to Hillary Clinton a year and a half from now. It’s simply not in his character, and not his style, any more than admitting his mistakes.

The rush that comes with power, which undoubtedly comes over him every time he breaks the law, defies Congress or tortures someone - seems to be the only thing keeping him from crashing psychologically, and that’s why he continues desperately grabbing onto more power, the closer we come to when he is scheduled to give it up. As with any addict, I doubt that he can admit to himself that he can’t give it up. He’s only looking for an excuse or a reason not to have to give it up.

That excuse may come in the form of another terrorist attack on American soil, or it may come by way of attacking Iran or Pakistan, and by drawing the country into a much wider war. The point is that he’s become like Hitler crouching down in a bunker, now capable of just about anything. He’s ripped the Constitution into so many pieces that most people can’t remember what it said anymore. There’s no longer any yardstick with which to measure his insanity.

Crime is a relative concept, and after being constantly bombarded by scenes of violence and torture in the war crime more commonly called the occupation of Iraq, Congressional oversight no longer seems very relevant, as long as the Democrats keep bankrolling Bush's crimes against humanity in Iraq. War - which is always a kind of endorsement of absolute lawlessness - has a corrosive effect on the respect for the rule of law. This is truer the longer that the war continues, and the more unjustified it was from the start.

What Bush is incapable of understanding is that Americans want the war to end, not only because they worry about the lives being lost and the money being wasted, and certainly not because they’re afraid or weak, but because they can sense the corrosive effect this particular war is having upon the character of the nation and the rule of law. Democracies are naturally disposed to be against war because they are strongy in favor of the rule of law.

Like any person, any nation that persists in doing an evil thing cannot help but become more corrupt and evil over time. What we never would have tolerated five years ago, now we have simply learned to live with: Torture, illegal wiretapping, illegal kidnapping and detention – it’s all become a part of the endless ‘war on terror.’ The same way that Germany learned to live with the Holocaust, we’ve leaned to live all the crimes that Bush is doing in our name. We’re quickly sinking to his level, and the only question is whether we are strong and virtuous enough as a nation to stop him. Because make no mistake -he's completely incapable of stopping himself.

If the choice is between giving up power and admitting he’s a complete failure, or getting back at the country for betraying him and going out in a blaze of glory in some final Armageddon push against the axis of evil – he may not see this as a choice at all, but more as his patriotic duty and place in history, just like Hitler did. It’s only the country that’s still in denial about it.

Bush Saves Irving, Kills Karla

"I don't believe my role is to replace the verdict of a jury with my own." - George W. Bush explaining why he signed the death warrants for a record-breaking 152 inmates in Texas.

Bush is a man famous for his lack of compassion in issuing pardons, or anything close to it. Bush has NEVER before used his power to save someone from doing hard time in prison. He always liked to pretend that he was a tough, ‘law and order’ politician, and that when it came to showing mercy towards people convicted of crimes, that it was the criminal who should have thought twice before breaking the law. At least, that’s what he used to say.

US Department of Justice - Section 1-2.113 - Standards for Considering Commutation Petitions

A commutation of sentence reduces the period of incarceration; it does not imply forgiveness of the underlying offense, but simply remits a portion of the punishment. [Bush forgave Libby’s entire sentence in prison – he did NOT simply remit a portion of it] It has no effect upon the underlying conviction and does not necessarily reflect upon the fairness of the sentence originally imposed. [Bush wrongly stated the reason for pardoning his sentence was that it was unfair] Requests for commutation generally are not accepted unless and until a person has begun serving that sentence. [Libby never began serving his sentence] Nor are commutation requests generally accepted from persons who are presently challenging their convictions or sentences through appeal or other court proceeding. [Libby was currently challenging his sentence through appeal.]

On every single point, Bush brushed aside the law and the Justice Department’s own guidelines for issuing commutations. Bush has gone out of his way to put himself above the law, and that even applies to the issuing commutations. He needs to prove to everyone – but especially himself – that he is completely above the law.

Previously, Bush’s style was to look for a few people convicted of jaywalking or selling moonshine about 50 years ago, and almost as a way of mocking the concept of mercy, grant them a trivial pardon. But lately, the ‘law and order’ mask that he used to wear has been shredded in Congressional commitees - along with thousands of Carl Rove’s incriminating Emails, and all those cases of selective amnesia that keep sleepwalking up to Capital Hill. We are finally witnessing the Bush Crime Family in its utter and complete moral depravity.

In all his years as president, Bush has only commuted only 2 - that’s right TWO - sentences, and those were for people about to be released from prison anyway. Bush has NEVER before saved anyone from doing any time in prison. He has never before declared anyone’s prison sentence to be “excessive” or “harsh.” Irving Lewis Libby is the only one in America with that honor.

Martha Stewart, you'll remember, was convicted on four counts of lying and obstruction (about a measly stock sale) – and yet she went to prison and served her term, just like thousands of others do for similar crimes every day. Irving Lewis Libby was convicted on four counts of lying and obstruction and perjury, (concerning the far more heinous crime of exposing an undercover agent). Yet Bush and the far right screams: “It’s not fair, I tells ya! Not Fair!!”

If it was fair for Martha, than why wasn’t it fair for Irving? If Bush had no problem watching a woman go to prison, than why not a man? Is it because Martha was a Democrat? Or is it because she probably has more balls than anyone in Bush’s draft-dodging and piss-cowardly administration? There are individuals like Weldon Angelos who will probably rot and die in prison for selling a government informant $350 in marijuana (he got 55 years) – and yet Irving can’t do 30 months for repeatedly lying under oath to federal investigators and obstructing justice? Even Nixon refused to pardon top aids Haldeman and Ehrlichman over the same sort of offences; even he had enough respect for the rule of law that he wouldn't go that far.

Think of what this means for all the countless thousands of people who have gone to prison for things like smoking a joint, or stealing a bike or a pizza. Bush has just declared to America that there has never before been such a serious miscarriage of justice, or someone more deserving of being spared the horrors of a brief country-club prison stretch, than Irving Lewis Libby. All of their sentences were just right – only Libby’s was inexcusable.

In this administration’s estimation, the laws were only written for the underclass – for that guy who got 25 years to life for stealing a slice of pepperoni pizza, for example. But our laws were never intended to disrupt the delicate routine of those who are wealthy, and have political influence. At least, that’s Bush’s clearly-stated view on the matter. (I can just see him calling in all those world-famous historians and scholars just to ask: "Do you think our unpopularity abroad is a result of my personality?" Clue to the clueless: Yea George – it’s because of you and your sick, sociopathic personality.)

To understand Bush’s sociopathic reasoning and his newly-discovered well of compassion, you must understand the concept of 'honor among thieves.' What may be a clear violation of the law to most people, may seem very unfair from the perspective of those who have absolutely no respect for the law, and whose idea of fairness is grounded in whatever serves their common, and criminal, interests. Though perjury, obstruction of justice, outing an undercover CIA agent, and damaging our national security during wartime, may all seem like extremely serious felonies to us – to Bush and the far right it's just downright unfair to hold Libby accountable for anything, because Libby had already skated on the more serious crimes of treason and outing a CIA agent by lying to prosecutors and covering up the truth. He did his job and he was a good soldier. This wasn’t so much a commutation of sentence as a payoff for beating the tougher rap and keeping his lying mouth shut.

To criminals like Bush & Cheney, it seems unfair to hold a person on lesser charges, when they’ve already skated on the more serious ones. If they’ve already outwitted justice and basically beat the system, then you must give a thief their props. It’s petty to hold them up on lesser charges, or at least, that's the view of most sociopaths.

Criminals like Bush, Cheney, and Libby, look at the law as a kind of fixed game; if they’ve outwitted the law and cheated justice, it’s only fair that everyone skates. The law to them is like a game you play to win or lose – there are no in-betweens, just like there are no ties in baseball. Irving’s pardon was the final, tie-breaker inning in a game that was fixed from the start. Bush appointed both the judge and the prosecutor in the case, but since the result was not exactly what he wanted, that part needed to be fixed also.

While treason seems like a pretty serious felony when viewed from the perspective of folk willing to fight for their country (the suckers) - to Bush, Cheney, the far right fascist class, and to the entire organized crime underworld generally, it’s really only a felony if they can catch you red-handed at it. There is no such thing as the rule of law – there is only the rule of the most ruthless, clever, and well-connected among us. It only makes sense that Bush would show no compassion for other (much poorer) criminals – no matter how worthy their case or unjust the law, because they lost the game from the beginning (they were probably born into the wrong family). They are only getting what they deserve by being poor, and not having the right family connections, like Irving.

It’s just like the Soprano family, when Tony Soprano’s cousin Tony Blundetto went to prison for a crime that Tony Soprano bungled and never showed up for. It simply wasn’t fair, and things were never quite the same between them. Tony Soprano certainly would have commuted his cousin’s sentence if he could – so why shouldn’t Bush, since he can? Libby was a stand-up guy – he didn’t squeal – it was only right that Bush should reward him for his silence (and cover his own butt). Didn’t Tony Soprano set up Tony Blundetto after he got out, and do everything that he possibly could to make things right (until he had to murder him)? So why shouldn't Irving Libby get the same treatment? That’s what ‘honor among thieves’ is all about. It means that Bush can genuinely feel that Irving’s sentence was unfair, and that he did the right thing by pardoning him – even though both of them broke the law, and should probably be put away for a long, long, time – and even though they will both go down in history as the sociopathic scum and traitors to their country that they are.

Finally, let’s never forget Karla Faye Tucker. No, she wasn’t a traitor to her country, and she never damaged our national security by outing an undercover CIA agent in wartime. She was never responsible for breaking the law to defend an illegal invasion that ultimately cost over 600,000 innocent lives. But she committed a heinous crime nevertheless, and was ultimately convicted of murder.

While in jail, she became a devout Christian, and for years Karla ministered to other inmates and led them to the Lord. She had already signed an agreement waiving any possibility of parole for the rest of her life in the event that her sentence was commuted to life in prison. Her record and work while in Prison had been exemplary. Even Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell knew about her work, and they were convinced that she was genuinely remorseful and rehabilitated.

Unlike Irving Lewis Libby, Karla Faye Tucker wasn’t asking to be kept out of the prison system – she only wanted to spend the rest of her life witnessing and ministering to others in prison. And unlike Irving, who has absolutely no remorse for his crimes, she very much did. But in the end it was Irving Lewis Libby who had his sentence commuted (eliminated), while Karla Faye Tucker was cruelly mocked and ridiculed before being put to death.

In an interview, Bush volunteered that he had watched Karla's nationally televised prison interview on Larry King. He said that King had asked Karla what she would like to say to Governor Bush. Carlson asked Bush what she said. "`Please,' Bush whimpered, his lips pursed in mock desperation, `don't kill me.'"

Bush thought it was absolutely hilarious that Karla would ask for her life – after all, she never had the money or connections necessary to game the system. She was getting what she deserved for being poor, and apparently for Bush, what made her all the more amusingly pathetic is that she didn’t even seem to realize it.

But Irving Lewis Libby's case was much different. He deserved, in Cheney words “a final result consistent with what we know of this fine man.” What we, a federal prosecutor, 12 jurors and a judge, all know about Irving Lewis Libby is that he’s a compulsive perjurer with no respect for the law, that he’s a traitor who conspired to exposed an undercover CIA agent in wartime, and that he has absolutley no remourse for any of his crimes. But we also know that he comes from a very wealthy family, and that he has the very highest political connections - so that must have been what Cheney was referring to.

When asked in her final days why she remained optimistic about having her sentence commuted, Karla relied, "Because my hope is in the Lord. He can change hearts." How foolish that seems in retrospect - after all, this was George W Bush's heart we're talking about. Maybe she should have been more like Irving and put all her faith in Dick Cheney – because he knows how to handle Bush. And the Lord undoubtedly gave up trying to influence either one of them a long time ago.

If I Broke the Law As Many Times as Bush..

What could we be charged with if we committed as many crimes as George Bush? Let’s pretend for a moment that instead of having the power to enforce the law (and the power not to enforce it against himself) that Bush was like any other citizen.

When an average American conspires to break one of our laws, he or she can be charged with conspiracy, whether or not they carry out their intentions. And yet, according to a GAO report, Bush has publicly flaunted the rule of law on numerous occasions, and specifically conspired to break no fewer than 1,149 laws through 126 illegal signing statements – and furthermore, he has already broken many of them.

If our local police found out that we were conspiring to break a particular law, we’d end up in jail faster than the speed of light. Yet Bush can brag to the entire world that he intends to break 1,149 of our laws because he can only be arrested and put into jail after being impeached and removed from office, and Congress already declared that “off the table.”

In 2002, Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the National Security Agency (NSA) to wiretap phone and email communications involving United States persons within the U.S., without obtaining a warrant or court order. Even Bush acknowledged (before he was caught) that this kind of surveillance is a violation of the fourth amendment of the Constitution, as well as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and that it requires a court order.

This particular program was set up to monitor and sort through virtually every domestic and international phone call as they are switched through key relay centers. In other words, we are all being illegally spied upon. The same kind of illegal surveillance would get an average American 5 years imprisonment and $10,000 fine for every occurrence. But since everyone is being illegally spied upon, and there are about 217 million citizens over the age of 16 making phone calls - even if you were to figure only one illegal occurrence per citizen, that still adds up to a total of 1,085,000,000 years in prison, and a $2,170,000,000,000 fine, (An amount nearly equal to the total annual federal budget).

Opening up someone else’s mail without a warrant – even if it’s your mail carrier- is a felony that would probably get most people another five years in prison and another $10,000 fine per count. We don’t know how many times Bush has actually done this since he declared that he could, because he doesn’t think he needs to tell anyone (including Congress) when he breaks the law. (What crook does?) But we can assume that he likes reading our mail just as much as he likes listening to our phone conversations or reading our emails. So all told, the accumulated felonies add up to another 1,085,000,000 years in prison, and another $2,170,000,000,000 fine.

Mail and wire fraud is illegal. It is a crime for anyone to use the mails or wires in order to advance an illegal scheme, or to violate the Presidential Records Act.. That includes emails. To violate the law by using separate RNC accounts, and furthermore, to use the accounts to advance an illegal scheme to politicize the justice department by dictating who should be investigated and what should be covered up - is a clear example of email and wire fraud.

The same cynical people who conspired to illegally monitor our phone calls and read our emails - even though we committed no crime - have themselves been involved in an ongoing criminal conspiracy to use their own phones and email accounts illegally, in the commission of a crime.

A conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud carries the penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each count, and each time they violated the law by using these non-govenmental accounts. At least 88 White House officials used the RNC e-mail accounts to avoid the record-keeping requirement of the law. If, like political adviser Karl Rove, they each illegally conducted government business by sending more than 140000 emails through the Republican National Committee's computer system, that would be a cumulative total of 61,600,000 years in prison, and a total fine of $3,080,000,000,000.

The Constitution strictly forbids the imprisonment of any person without due process of law, and another name for illegal detention or false imprisonment is kidnapping. There has been an estimated 800 people kidnapped and illegally detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; and hundreds more have undergone secret ‘renditions’ - a process where the kidnapped person is dumped in some third-world country, usually to be tortured. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 reinstated the death penalty for the crime of kidnapping. Conservatively estimating the number of people illegally kidnapped to be 1500, that means Bush committed 1500 counts of a capital offense by illegally detaining prisoners.

Another name for illegal torture is felonious assault. A violent assault that inflicts bodily injury would get most Americans up to ten years in prison along with a $5,000 fine. When Bush set up a policy to systematically assault detainees at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, those caught on camera phones carrying out his policy were sentenced to terms up to ten years. And yet Bush is certainly more culpable than they are, inasmuch as they were only following his (illegal) policy. There is also evidence of a vast, taxpayer-financed gulag of illegal torture prisons that have been set up for the purpose of assaulting Iraqi detainees, an estimated 90% of who are completely innocent of any crime. Several hundred thousand Iraqis are at these torture centers, a fact that goes a long way to explain the passion of the insurgency. If we were to conservatively estimate that 200,000 Iraqis have been tortured or sexually humiliated at least once as a direct result of Bush’s illegal invasion and torture policy, that would equal a sentence of 2,000,000,000 years in prison, and a fine of $1,000,000,000 for felonious assault.

Armed Robbery is the name commonly used for obtaining money or property through the use of force. If a poor man breaks into a rich person’s house, and proceeds to cause their death while making off with their valuables, that person will be charged with robbery and murder, even if they never intended to kill anyone. In the 38 states that have the death penalty, they would most probably end up on death row.

Yet no action was taken after two wealthy oil men from Texas illegally invaded the homes of the poor people of Iraq in order to plunder their oil reserves, even though they ended up murdering 655,000 innocent people in the process. No action has been taken against the mass-murderers in the White House, even after their alibi about WMD’s proved to be a lie. Bush is already on record confessing that “let's put it this way, money trumps peace, sometimes. In other words, commercial interests are very powerful interests.” A typical sociopath. He's also confessed that he's staying in Iraq because of the oil. This kind of cold-blooded and methodical killing for profit would certainly be a capital crime in Texas, where as govenor, Bush set a record for executing poor Texans for exactly the same sort of crimes. If he were to be prosecuted the same as they were, he could be tried and convicted for a capital offense 655,000 times over.

A violation of the federal Rico statute involves a``pattern of racketeering activity.'' The measure was intended to stop members of organized crime families from using legitimate businesses as fronts for their criminal activities. The penalties include 20 years for each violation, and the forfeiture of all assets attained illegally.

The Bush crime family has long been America’s most successful criminal enterprise. Prescott Bush, the grand-godfather, made most of the Bush family fortune when he conspired with the Nazis to profit from slave labor at Auschwitz, at the same time that the United States was at war with Germany. So profiting from the systematic murder of others is really nothing new to them. The Bush crime family (USA) is now conspiring with despots in the Saudi royal family (Saudi Arabia) to bilk American taxpayers and steal Iraqi oil, much in the same way that the fictional Soprano crime family (New Jersey) conspired with the Lupertazzi crime family (Brooklyn) on federal projects.

The war in Iraq can be best understood as an enormously profitable swindle. Bush even signed an executive order at the very beginning of the war making the companies engaging in racketeering immune from prosecution. We’re now in the fifth year of the of what has become one of the most expensive and corrupt wars in American history, and yet the Bush administration has not litigated a single case against a war profiteer under the false claims act.

More than 70 American companies and individuals won up to $8 billion in contracts (many of them no-bid) for work in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan over the first two years. They kicked up to the family boss (George Bush ) a little over $500,000 in campaign contributions the first year alone, to help keep him in power. A year ago, an audit by the inspector general found no evidence of work done or goods delivered on 154 of 198 contracts. Detailing all the graft and corruption involved – in Halliburton alone – would probably take volumes, though we know that Cheney’s stock options in Halliburton rose from $241,498 to over $8 million in only year. Meanwhile, Iraqi production of oil has plummeted, making both the oil companies and their partners in crime the Saudis, fabulously richer.

If Bush (and his criminal associates in Saudi Arabia, who provided the manpower and financing for the 9-11 terror attack) was prosecuted under the same Rico statute that put other mob bosses out of business, he would receive 20 years for every crooked government contract that was ever handed out to one of his political cronies, and all of his family's assets would be confiscated several million times over. But he isn’t being prosecuted or impeached, not even by a Democratic Congress. Why? Because if the Bush crime family were ever to be investigated and prosecuted for corruption, half of Washington – including all the crooked lawyers, lobbyists, politicians, media hacks and other bagmen - would probably end up in prison along with them.

When you add it all up - even without figuring in all the penalties involved for violating the Rico statute, for his illegal signing statements, or for conspiring to expose and cover up the outing an undercover CIA agent - it means 656,500 capital offences, a total fine of $7,421,000,000,000, and an additional 4,170,000,000 years in prison. But what does that really mean? It means that if average Americans had committed as many crimes as our 'chief executive,' we would need to pay a total fine that was equal to $24,736 for every man, woman, and child in the country. It means that our ‘chief executive’ – the man entrusted with the job of enforcing our laws – has actually committed crimes that are much more grievous and extensive, than all the people currently confined in US prisons COMBINED.

Figuring the total US prison population at about 1,500,000, it means that if our prison population were as lawless as George Bush, you could execute about half of them for a capital offence, while giving each of the rest 4,943 years in prison. It is a shame and a disgrace to think that prison bars are the only things separating the worse criminals in positions of power, from those doing time for much lesser offences. Tony Soprano’s only mistake is that he didn’t run for president.

When your nation's leaders are committing more crimes, stealing more money, and causing more death and destruction that all the people in prison – that is the definition of tyranny. Then you no longer live in a civilized country, and you no longer have the rule of law. Cheney is even claiming to be a fourth (corporate) branch of government. It’s just the latest example of how determined they are to operate outside the Constitution and above the law. Those who want to believe this extent of lawlessness will just end if/when Bush leaves office, are somehow missing the point. This is another story about criminals that doesn’t have a good ending.

The Moral of the Story

There is a lesson in the story of Job that gave meaning to his suffering. It’s that, "those who suffer, he delivers in their suffering; he speaks to them in their affliction." (Job 36:15) God is speaking to us through the bad things that happen to us - not to accuse us, but to draw us closer. There is a meaning and a purpose to the worst things that happen that can bring us closer to God. But whether they do or not depends upon our faith.

The story tells us that Job came to know God more intimately through his suffering. As he says at the end of the story, (Job 42:5) “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.” In the end, Job became wiser than he was before, mostly by understanding and appreciating all that he really didn’t know, simply because he wasn’t God. The tragedies he experienced ultimately strengthened his faith by re-centering his faith more completely in God alone, rather than trusting in his own understanding or his own righteousness. Of his own righteousness he now had to confess, (42:6) “I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” The more we know God and His righteousness, the worse we will seem to ourselves. Conversely, the better and more blameless we may believe ourselves to be, very often the more distant we are from God. The cost of drawing nearer to God is that we can no longer hold onto the delusions about ourselves – either about our righteousness, or about how much we really know about God.

Before these tragedies occurred, Job only knew about the Lord through all he had learned through reading and hearing about God. Like many religious people, he knew all about God, rather than knowing God more directly and personally, through his own suffering. It was through his suffering that Job came to know God much more intimately than before.

The Bible gives us a certain degree of insight into God’s ways. It tells us how God is a righteous God. So it was natural that Job and his friends would debate about how to apply what they knew about the Lord – that He is righteous, good, and just - to Job’s particular situation. If God is good, then how could He have allowed what had happened? His friends reasoned that Job must really be an evil person, while Job essentially argued that God was somehow asleep at the switch. They both assumed that they knew more about the ways and purposes of God than they actually knew.

This kind of presumption is very common among religious people. Not only do we think we know everything, but we often presume to talk like we were speaking for God. Religious people like to act as if they knew all there is to know about God. That’s one reason why there’s so much conflict and violence in the world today – not because most people believe in God, but because religious people want to believe that their Bible, or their Koran, or their Torah, tells them absolutely everything there is that’s worth knowing about God. Religious tolerance goes flying out the window primarily because most religious people don’t understand – or are unwilling to admit - how truly ignorant they are. That’s why God needs to humble us, in order to prove to us how much we really don’t know.

If everything that we know about God is in the Bible, than everything we really don’t know could probably fill ten thousand Bibles. As even the Bible says (Joh 21:25) “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.”

The point is that we can know something about Jesus by reading the Bible, but we only really come to know Christ intimately by participating in his suffering and persecutions – either directly through our own, or by ministering to those in need or distress. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” God speaks to humanity through the words of scripture, but he is speaking directly to each one of us through whatever trials and injustices we may experience in life.

Brevard Childs writes about the story of Job, "The primary effect of the concluded dialogue is to register the failure of human wisdom in its ability to penetrate into the mystery of human suffering"[1] The mystery of human suffering, and the mystery of God’s saving grace in Jesus, participate in the same mysterious transcendence of God. That’s also why we are able to know Christ more intimately through our own trials and suffering. "And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple." Luke 14:27

It didn’t make any logical sense that Jesus – who was certainly more righteous than Job - should have to suffer and pay for all the sins of the world. It doesn’t seem to make sense in terms of human justice and practical wisdom. That’s why it can only be understood and apprehended through faith. "Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men." 1Co 1:25

Why are some people struck down by misfortune or illness, rather than those who seem to deserve it more? The only thing that can stand in the gap at certain times is faith. Not faith as we would like to define it, by that warm and re-assuring feeling that we get whenever God has blessed our life - but faith that can seem like a cold, flickering light hidden deep within the darkness of our soul. It is by and through that kind of faith - sometimes described in Christian literature as the 'dark night of the soul' - that God is inviting us to know Him more directly and intimately.

Neither blessings nor the power of human reasoning can bridge the gap between God and humanity, or get us to where we need to be spiritually. Only at that desolate place where our religion, Bible studies, our good works, and all the powers of human reasoning, seem all to have fallen short and proven themselves completely useless - that is precisely where faith alone can bring us closer to God. As Martin Luther put it: “If reason not be killed, and all kinds of religion and service of God under heaven that are invented by men to get righteousness before God, be not condemned, the righteousness of faith can take no place.” What God is asking in times of trouble is not that we understand why it happened, but that we simply believe and have faith in His goodness and righteousness, regardless of how we may feel at the moment.

When parents lose a child (let alone all their children like Job), what can you tell them that would make sense of their loss? There is no reason you could ever come up with that might satisfactorily explain or justify what had happened. All that anybody can really tell them is to have faith in God. It is through their faith that God can then comfort their hearts, and eventually give meaning to their loss. Not that they will ever be able to figure it out intellectually, or even that their pain will ever go completely away; but the loving comfort that God gives can be victorious over all the pains and disappointments of life.

We should not assume that since Job eventually had as many children as before that he completely forgot and gave up grieving for the children that he’d lost. Time does not completely heal all wounds, at least not in this life; though time can make it easier to cope with misfortune. Yet the story indicates that Job’s life was much fuller and more blessed at the end than it had been before, and that he was eventually wiser and more righteous than at the beginning of the story. Not because he understood why God had allowed what had happened, but because now he was much more humble; because his faith and trust had been renewed and strengthened through adversity.

Job’s relationship with God was deeper and more intimate than it had been before because of what he suffered. The story doesn’t really explain why God allowed Satan to afflict Job. The Lord only reminded Job – and us - that the ways of God are not like the ways of humankind, and His reasons are not completley accessible to the reasoning power of human beings. That to have faith in God really means putting our faith in reasons that we often don’t understand, for the sake of a God whose overcoming love we can know and experience, and which strengthens us in times of trial.

[1] Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as
Scripture, 536

The Story of Job: Overcoming Guilt & Self-Pity

Many scholars consider the book of Job to be the oldest source text in the Bible. Whether or not that’s true or not, it’s certainly one of the most puzzling.

Job was a man visited by an assortment of tragedies and setbacks, though we are never told exactly why. Unlike most other Old Testament stories, where good and bad people usually get what they deserve, we are told that Job didn’t deserve what happened to him. He probably lived somewhere between present-day Israel and Iraq, about 1800 years before Christ and about 600 years after Noah.

Job may have been a contemporary of Abraham, and it’s interesting to consider that while Abraham was rewarded for his faithfulness in Palestine, Job had everything he had worked for taken away. Bandits, fire, and a tornado took Job’s children, his servants, and his possessions, all on the same day; he then lost his health, and was covered with an assortment of boils.

The story tells us that the Lord allowed Satan to do all these things to Job - not as a punishment for his sins - but to demonstrate that Job’s integrity was strong enough to endure anything. It gets even worse, because even his friends turned against him. Rather than comforting him in his time of need, they basically told him he was getting what he had coming; if he was afflicted by so many disasters - then ipso, facto - he must have deserved it. By failing to confess his sins and repent, Job had brought these tragedies upon himself, and now by maintaining his innocence, he was only adding to his transgressions, by accusing the Lord of being unjust.

Often when tragedy or illness strikes, even our closest friends don’t know the right thing to say. Partly it’s because they can’t find the right words; they may never have had the same thing happen to them, and so they don’t know how to deal with it. But it may also be that they are afraid of the same thing happening to them.

Rather than comforting Job, his friends were really comforting themselves with the false notion that they understood God’s ways, when in fact they didn’t. They were horrified at what had happened; they didn’t want to believe the same thing might happen to them at any moment. So they tried to reassure themselves with the notion that God would never afflict the righteous (or allow the devil to), even though He always punishes the wicked. It’s a comforting notion, though untrue.

As Job pointed out, the objective evidence seems to say otherwise: The wicked very often seem to go unpunished, while good and decent people can suffer such bad luck at times, that you would think their lives were cursed. It simply isn’t true that the wicked always come to an obvious bad end, and it isn’t the case that God openly and invariably rewards kind and highly principled people - at least this doesn’t always seem to be the case during their lifetime. Nor do good people always lead long and healthy lives, because just as the saying goes, ‘only the good die young.’

We could certainly argue that the good and the wicked will eventually get what’s coming to them on judgment day, in the next life – and in fact Job says exactly that, as he comforts himself with the conviction that - (Job 19:25-26) “ I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.” Job believed that the Lord would eventually judge him innocent. Nevertheless, none of us can honestly maintain that everyone will be justly rewarded or condemned for their actions right here, right now, and in this life.

The saying is that ‘virtue is its own reward.’ We can’t expect the world to reward us for doing the right thing. The wicked will very often prosper, and we shouldn’t expect God to strike them down before they get the chance to harm someone else - though they do have the tendency to eventually self-destruct. Life isn’t fair, even though we believe that God is ultimately just. This is something we can only know by faith, and believe in our heart.

Like Job, we can feel completely overwhelmed by misfortune, and by what seem like the basic injustices of life. Often, we can’t shake the feeling that God is somehow punishing us, the same way Job’s friends were trying to convince him of the same thing. The accuser - which is the devil - seems always to have a way of giving voice to his accusations, whether it’s through other people, or through the internalized voice of a morbidly guilty conscience. This is especially true among Christians, many of who see illness or misfortune as a punishment or recompense for sin.

There may also be a part of ourselves that would rather believe that we are being punished. Paradoxically, and like Job’s friends, we can begin to accuse ourselves in order to feel more secure in the world - especially when the alternative seems either that God doesn’t care what happens to us - or even worse - maybe there is no God, and human misfortune is completely arbitrary, like the atheists believe. Seen in this light, blaming ourselves can be seen as a way of avoiding the alternatives. We would rather blame ourselves, rather than believe that God could be cruel or unjust. We would rather feel guilty, rather than live in a world where human suffering was a only crapshoot, without any meaning or purpose. But it’s always wrong to jump to conclusions that are grounded more in all we really don’t know, rather than in what we do.

There are those times that we just have to hang onto to what we know about God, and how we have known Him. The Psalmist says how at those times when (Ps 143:3) “the enemy hath persecuted my soul; he hath smitten my life down to the ground,” that we should, (143.5) “remember the days of old; I meditate on all thy works; I muse on the work of thy hands.”
When our faith is tested, we should remember what the Lord has done for us in the past, and how He has always seen us through every difficulty. Or else go to a park or out in the country, and take a walk on a sunny day, just looking at all He has created. God’s creation is beautiful because our Creator is good. When difficulties pile up, we can maintain our faith in God’s kindness and good intentions towards us by meditating on what He has done for us, and at all the beauty of nature.

Faith is ultimately a faith in God’s goodness; it is not a faith that bad things can never happen to us, or that we will always feel good. Rather than weakening our faith, the bad things that happen will only help to strengthen our faith and hope in God, whenever we remember how good God is.

There are things that happen in life that we cannot explain; we struggle to understand why God could have allowed this situation to occur. The reason isn’t because He is punishing us, and He isn’t being unfair either: God is just, and He takes no pleasure in seeing people suffer. We can go around blaming the Lord for this, that, or the other thing, feeling like our life is cursed, or even that we are being persecuted by the devil. We can feel sorry for ourselves, just as Job was doing, and thereby implicitly accuse God of being unfair. But we do this only because our faith is still weak or untested, and we don’t really know God and his ways. To say that God is testing us, is to say that He is deepening and making our faith stronger, just as He was with Job.

Job’s friends argued that guilt was the appropriate response to human tragedy. Their explanation was that Job was guilty of sin, and now God was punishing him. Job, on the other hand, rather than feeling guilty, resorted to a kind of self-pity, which was really just as bad, and potentially even more insidious. Like his friends, Job couldn't understand God’s reasons. His explanation was that the Lord had made some terrible mistake which needed to be rectified; he wanted the opportunity to plead his case and prove his innocence. Job not only judged himself completely innocent of any wrongdoing, but he also implicitly accused God of being apathetic, lazy, ignorant of the facts, or blatantly unfair. When in fact the Lord is omnipotent, omniscient and altogether righteous; He’s always active and in complete control of every situation. He knows everything that’s going on, and He always does exactly the right thing.

Job’s problem was that, like his friends, he presumed to understand and know the ways of God. We can certainly sympathize with Job, much more than with his friends and their empty accusations. After all, it says quite clearly that Job was a good and righteous man, and we also know that his suffering must have been very great. Nevertheless, just because we don’t understand why God allowed something to happen, it doesn’t mean we have any right to judge, or to feel sorry for ourselves. Self-pity is always a judgment about God’s fairness.

The story tells us that God allowed Satan to torment Job to prove his faith and integrity – to prove that his virtue was not simply the by-product of all the blessings God had bestowed upon him. Job was correct in saying that these tragedies were not a punishment for sin, but he was wrong in assuming that God was being unfair, or that a righteous life must always be paid back with an unbroken string of blessings. In that sense - and though he knew differently - Job was making the same sort of assumption as his friends: The idea that worldly blessings are the payment-in-kind for righteousness, while calamity and illness are the inevitable recompense for iniquity. The only difference being that Job saw himself as someone who had somehow - by some tragic mistake - been put in the wrong line, and given the wrong payoff.

Self pity is a haughty spiritual condition wherein we assume to be in a position to judge God and His ways. Instead of accepting God’s will for our life, we presume to be able to judge ourselves completely innocent, and instead of seeking God's comfort, we try to comfort ourselves with the notion that God, or the world, is being unfair. We set ourselves up as judge and jury over the will of God, even though though the Bible says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” [Jer 17:9)

Though Job may indeed have been a very good and righteous man, his goodness in no way came close to God’s. As the Psalmist says, (Ps 16:2) “O my soul, thou hast said unto the LORD, Thou art my Lord: my goodness extendeth not to thee.” As Jesus also pointed out, (Mt 19:17) “there is none good but one, that is, God.” So rather than expecting nothing but blessings, (Lu 17:10) “So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.” If Job’s friends were presumptuous for judging Job, how much more presumptuous was Job, for judging the ways of God?

What if Job and his friends were wrong (as they certainly were)? What if God sends it to rain on both the just and unjust, and He causes His sun to rise on both the evil and the good (as He certainly does). What if God’s blessings should not be thought of as ‘payment-in-kind’ for our righteousness - as if they were something that we should expect and demand from Him, like wages for services rendered? What if His blessings are always a manifestation of God’s underserved mercy and grace, whether or not we think we are better than other people? And what if people suffer tragedy and illness in much the same way – not necessarily because we deserved it or had it coming to us(though there are certainly consequences to sin), but because God has reasons of His own? What if the meaning of human suffering - just like the logic of God’s grace - must always remain somewhat of a mystery to us, since it's outside the range of our control and understanding?

Job didn’t realize that God had allowed Satan to afflict him in order to prove how upright and faithful God believed him to be. But even that explanation doesn’t fully explain to us why God would have needed to prove anything to the devil. It’s the sort of explanation that gives way to a hundred more questions concerning the mystery of evil and the dilemma of human suffering. As it should, because the story of Job was never intended to fully explain the mystery of human suffering, or to map out and explain Satan’s role in God’s plan of salvation. It was only meant to show us how much we necessarily don’t know about God and His ways. We may think we know more than Job, but we really don’t.

All we really know is that when tragedy or illness strikes, the temptation to blame ourselves, blame other people, blame the devil, or hold God at fault, will always be very high. Why is that? Because as human beings, we want to understand what is going on, to get our mind around what’s happened to us. We want to be in control, and we’re more afraid of situations that we can’t understand. We don’t want to feel as if our lives are out of (our) control, even though they are to a large extent, especially when illness or tragedy strike. Nor do we want to give that control completely over to God, even though we need to, and in the end we must.

Instead, we employ all our powers of logic and reasoning to try to regain some measure of control - or at least the illusion of control that comes by apportioning blame. Unfortunately, the more we give into the temptation to blame ourselves, blame God, or blame other people, the more miserable we make ourselves, the further we are from God’s comfort, and the further we stray from the truth. The only way out of the trap the devil has set for us is by faith, and by trusting God unconditionally. Faith is the antidote to guilt and self-pity.

If we go around playing the blame game, we are only showing our ignorance by desperately trying to take control of a situation that can only be overcome by faith. Faith in God means trusting in a wisdom more perfect than our own, one that never fails or misses the mark. True wisdom is relying upon the wisdom greater than ours, rather than leaning too heavily upon our ignorance.

Certainly there are consequences to sin, and we should do whatever we can to avoid whatever consequences we can by repenting all our sins, whenever and wherever we can. But knowing God is realizing that He doesn’t punish people in the cruel and vindictive manner that many religious people would like us to think. To know God is to know that, even though we may never understand the ways of God through the faculty of human reasoning, we can know God by faith, and so come to love God as completely and unconditionally as He loves us. Knowing God doesn’t mean intellectually understanding all His ways, or understanding why everything happens like it does; it means understanding and experiencing how much God loves us, and this is especially true whenever things go very wrong, and for no apparent good reason.

So that when terrible things happen one after another (as they sometimes do), we can lean on Him time and again, more and more, and so come to rest more completely in Him, by trusting in His understanding, His love, and His good intentions towards us; rather than accusing Him in our heart of being unfair, or else feeling distant because we think God is punishing us. Understanding that even through our greatest trials, God has made a way that will lead us even closer to Him. Just as happened with Job.

Did We Lose the War? Let’s Count the Ways

Why is it when Harry Reid said, “the war in Iraq is lost” – why did it create so much hysteria? Is saying that America lost the war, a little like saying that Mt. Rushmore is a monstrosity? It may be true, but still, it’s unpatriotic to say it? Or do you either get the point of Mt. Rushmore, or you don’t?

That the war is lost seems not so much an opinion as fact. One that becomes more obvious every day, not only in terms of the various body counts, but in all the possible ways there is to lose a war.

Most people count Vietnam as another war that we lost. But even though we lost a lot of lives and money in Vietnam, we certainly didn’t lose everything there was to lose. We didn't lose the cold war, for instance. We didn't lose our basic rights. The United States was certainly divided by the war in Vietnam, but afterwards we continued on, pretty much as we had before. It wasn’t like when, for instance, the Japanese lost WWII.

The same, unfortunately, cannot be said about the war in Iraq. The kind of monumental defeat we’ve suffered there may seem, in retrospect, much larger and more comprehensive than what happened in Vietnam. Maybe that’s why many people refuse to look at it honestly – they seem to be confusing the kind of defeat they fear and dread so much, with the one that’s already happened. It may be time to begin taking stock of all we have lost, rather than arguing with those who believe that staying in Iraq - that is, staying in denial - is more patriotic.

#1) The war was lost initially by making it impossible to succeed. By going into Iraq under false pretenses, Bush effectively sent our troops on a fool’s errand. He set them up to fail. There was no way American forces could ever win the war by accomplishing their mission of disarming Saddam, when in fact he never had WMD’s in the first place. And changing their mission afterwards, into something that was just as impossible – ‘democratization’ - couldn't change that central fact. It’s like sending a fireman into a buring building, to rescue a child that you know isn’t there. The best anyone could hope for is getting that fireman out alive – and the best we can ever hope for is getting what's left of our troops out alive.

#2) The war in Iraq was also lost, insofar as it was part of the larger ‘war on terror.’ If indeed our underlying goal was to defeat the terrorists in Iraq – which is how Bush usually likes to frame it - all we have done is make more terrorists. Instead of defeating them, were’re actually breeding and making more of them - we've transformed Iraq into the fertile womb of terrorism - and we will keep on making more of them, the longer that we stay.

That’s why it’s not enough to say that we’ve lost an important - though completley unnecessary - battle in the war on terrorism, without underlining the fact that Bin Laden keeps screwing us, and breeding more terrorists, the longer that we stay in Iraq. This is the war that keeps on losing, because it keeps on creating and training more terrorists.

#3) We’ve lost the war from a strictly militarily point of view. War at its most basic level is all about destroying the enemy’s forces and resources, faster than the enemy can use up your own. The insurgents/terrorists – whatever you want to call them - have succeeded in stretching US military forces to the breaking-point. The so-called ‘surge’ only served to highlight this fact for everyone to see. It made America’s loss - and the limits of American military power - that much more conspicuous. At the same time, the insurgency keeps adapting, and shows no signs of giving up. They keep growing in their ability to launch new attacks, while our entire volunteer army is on the brink of collapse.

#4) We’ve lost the war strategically, in terms of America’s ability to influence and effect change in the Middle East, and in the wider world. The most important thing to remember about being a superpower is that the wars you don’t win outright, you automatically lose. It's the natural consequence of creating high expectations. By getting America bogged down in a war we cannot win, and by dividing American forces instead of finnishing the job in Afghanistan, Bush has compromised America’s credibility as a military power. The perception of America as the world’s preeminent super-power was not something that could be overthrown on 9-11. It was instead the kind of power that has proven to be empty and useless on the streets of Baghdad.

#5) The illegal war in Iraq also represents a terrible loss and setback in the court of world public opinion. Much deeper, and probably more damaging and long lasting than the military loss, or the loss of prestige and credibility, are the long-term consequences of preemptively invading a nation that was no threat to us. Without the trust and cooperation of other nations – and particularly other Arab nations - it will be impossible to deter terrorist attacks on the United States in the future. The war in Iraq represents the end of America’s role as leader of the free world, and the beginning of Bush’s vision of America as a universally despised bully. A preemptive bully that most of the world now considers the greatest threat to peace and stability in the world.

#6) The war in Iraq represents a profound moral defeat for the basic values that we used to uphold. It’s wrong to say that Americans haven’t sacrificed anything for the war effort, when the values we’ve sacrificed at places like Abu Graib, are something previous generations of Americans always fought to preserve. When shameful torture is being committed in our name – we are no longer a civilized people. We may still be a very affluent and technologically advanced nation – but we are only barbarians in business suits.

#7) We’ve also lost some of our most important rights and freedoms. Bush took an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign or domestic; he eneded up doing the opposite, by tearing up the Constitution, and making war on a nation that was no threat to us. Today, any American can be picked up, put in prison, held incommunicado, and tortured indefinitly; this is something that has never happened in this country before. In that sense, we’ve lost a very big part of what it meant to be a free, and under the rule of law.

#8) The loss in terms of the American military lives is about 3,350 to date. Though this is much less than the 57,000 killed in Vietnam, there is also a disproportionately high number of seriously wounded coming back from Iraq. In terms of civilian casualties, the Lancet study figured about 655,000 casualties in Iraq to date. By comparison, an estimated 365,000 civilians were killed in North and South Vietnam. What the numbers don’t show is how these civilian casualties - that are on par with many genocides - will translate into future terrorist attacks, with many more American casualties.

#9) There has been the unprecedented squandering of taxpayer dollars in Iraq. The Defense Department in the 1970s came up with a figure of $140 billion in direct military outlays between 1965 and 1974 for the Vietnam War. To date we have spent three times that - almost $422 billion in Iraq. Figuring out what that kind of loss really means involves more than just counting up all the dropped bombs, spent shells and wasted vehicles and aircraft. As General Eisenhower once said, ““Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

The killing fields of war has two sides, and what we don’t see every night on the news are the people who’ve died or been wounded from hunger, or lack of decent housing or medical care, primarily because our nation’s resources were funneled into killing rather than healing. We don’t see all the people who were never educated, the medical and scientific research that was never funded, and all the lives that were never given a chance. These losses are just as real as any on the battlefield. Instead of worrying so much about supporting the troops by keeping them posted where they don’t want to be, we should have been paying more attention to problems and issues and people who are getting no attention at all because of the war in Iraq.

Whether or not you think it’s time for American forces to pull out, there should be no debate about all the ways we have irretrievably lost the war in Iraq. General Sherman once said in the waning days of the Confederacy, “All the powers of earth cannot return to them their slaves, any more than they can get back their dead grandfathers.”

All the power that America has will never produce hidden WMD’s or a democracy in Iraq, and it will never stop motivating more terrorists in the meantime. It can never turn an illegal and unnecessary mistake into a legal and necessary war, nor can it restore our honor or basic civil rights, let alone get back our tax dollars, or bring back those who have already died in Iraq. If we still believe that it can, than we might as well be fighting to get back our dead grandfathers too.