Irrelevant Importance Life, art, politics, technology and the meaninglessness that matters to me.

Jesus, Protect Me from Your Followers

or...why I, and others like me, have so much beef with so many Christians.

The folks on the right talk so often and loudly about Jesus, and claim him as their own. It's impossible these days in America to separate religion and politics. So lets talk about that guy that got nailed to a tree that the Republicans claim to love so much.

Two things to note, first of which is the obvious: I am not religious. I have a love for Buddhist and Taoist philosophy and writings but I would be lying if I called myself one. I was raised Lutheran, which is Catholicism with less bullshit and less Mary. I drifted away from that pretty young though. Too many questions that could not be answered, too much doubt, too much emptiness, too much hollow.

Second, I am basing all that follows on the belief that religion is not something you do for an hour a week. It’s not something you dabble in. Sitting in church doesn’t make you a Christian, just like sitting in a garage doesn’t make you a car. It is what you believe, to the core. The guiding principles of your life. Christianity is defined so differently by so many people, but when you strip away all of the bullshit, the ceremonial trappings and inter-sect squabbles, at the heart of it all the point is to follow Christ’s teachings and example as best you can. To try to be the light of peace that he was. All the rest is just trim.

And right there is my beef. So many (most?) on the Right just use their religion to justify how they already feel, to rationalize their prejudice and hate. And so Jesus becomes a reason to discriminate, to hate gays and Muslims, to wage war...to do all manner of things that he was blatantly against. I don’t like the Vatican much, but damn it was nice to see the pope call the Iraq war for what it was.

If you think Christ’s highest priorities, were he alive today, would be eradicating Muslims, stopping abortions, and keeping gays from getting married, you really need to evaluate your priorities. Maybe he would care about those things, maybe not. But I am damn sure that ethnic cleansing in third world countries, the thousands of innocents dying in Iraq, the destruction of the environment, the greed and avarice and sickening chasm between the haves and the have-nots all across the world would all be much bigger blips on his radar.

So why doesn’t the party who claims Jesus as their own, who brings up religion the most often and proclaims it the loudest, care more about those things? If you claim Christianity as your religion, why isn’t helping people, all people your priority; your highest priority, as it was for Jesus? I don’t see the most vocal Christians calling to help those who need. I see them calling for more suffering. More war. More weapons. More death. More torture. More oppression.

...why?