In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends. MLK
The participation by those who silently stand by and watch, perhaps in horror, as our safety, security and freedoms are simply "taken" from us, who make it all possible simply by their [YOUR?] failure to "represent" what you claim to believe and your personal failure to stand up and draw a line in the sand and pick a side to stand on and stand firmly and resolutely on it.
So, where are the people who marched literally or spiritually with Martin Luther King? Where do they stand?
Where do you stand?
Do you share his "dream"?
Are you someone who believes we should be good to each other and work to promote the interests of our neighbors and expect they will do the same for us when we need it?
Are you some bible clutching scaredycat praying for "God" to do all the charity you are not willing to do yourself and praying all your xenophobic dreams come true - for all the people who don't think exactly as you do - to be entirely excluded (perhaps by slaughter if er....um......necessary!) from your personal, social and national sphere.
Or are you some fanatic bargaining with your God over how you will be His perfect servant - even murdering in His Name - if you think you feel like you think God somehow wants you to - for which perfect service and humility (though it looks arrogant as hell to everyone but you) God will make you His Special pal and (even though you likely will be "above" such base desires) give you a trough to yourself in His own private goody bin forever.
And even though you won't really want the servants and sexy slave girls and lavishment galore in Heaven that God knows you Deserve, you really can't disappoint God after all, by turning down His Tribute to you - and it would be rude to not appear to be enjoying it. (I mean, really - would you Diss God's own gift?)
So, if you must force yourself to take the 70 virgins or a Throne as a lesser God over thousands of wives and endless worlds and children of your own creation, just to show God (and the world) how perfectly devoted you are - then you are a dupe and need to wake up!
That is all a bunch of crap!
Every person basically wants and needs, enjoys and fears about the same things.
Our fear of people who look different, talk different, worship different than us is not only lame, stupid and counterproductive, it is also, for anyone who pretends to "believe" in the Old Testament God, which would include all Jews, Muslims and Christians as well as a host of other individuals and groups that also make such a claim a veritible slap-in-the-face to the God you pretend to believe.
You can pick any God you like but I like the saying "If you love me - keep my commandments."
Jesus explained that there was in his mind only ONE commandment. (the 1st)
He further explained that the way to live the ONE AND ONLY commandment and way to "love God" was to treat other people the way you honestly would be treated yourself.
According to Jesus then, all the rest of scripture, lecture, rape, torture and seduction, etc. is simply commentary on those two commands - the 1st being the "order" and the 2nd being the method of execution.
So when "comedy" Jesus said that if He could write the Bible all over again, it would be just one page and all it would say is "Don't be a dick!", well, I could really relate to that, because that is basically exactly what the real "purported" Jesus is purported to have said in the so called, Golden Rule.
And isn't the real message not that you can get a "free ride" on Jesus, but rather that if you actually become a "doer of the word, and not hearer's only." that you might actually find the love and beauty and personal fulfillment which though it surrounds you, somehow escapes you?
When are we going to stop believing in a "something for nothing" kind of world?
It doesn't exist.
Everything maintains it's balance.
Everything is paid for in one way or another.
If you put degenerate energy into motion, that energy may negatively impact others, especially those closest to you, in manners and magnitudes you could never, ever begin to imagine, eventually returning back from whence it emitted - to you.
Balance and the polarity that demands and controls that balance so perfectly permeates all the known universe and all it's parts that it would be silly for any human to expect themselves an exception, especially as basic science holds a pretty strong argument that if it were not for that polarity and balance, your cells would all fall away from each other and where would you be then?
So, as I always told my kids; if you plant shit you are going to eat shit.
Just like Jesus said. "As you sow (plant), so shall you reap (harvest/eat)."
True that.
What you plant is what's going to grow.
Give it up, ok?
If you are an asshole, guess what kind of seeds you are sowing?
What should you expect in life?
Yeah, you know that someday it's all going to catch up with you.
What are you going to do about that?
You could change your asshole ways and make good on your past stupidities.
You could decide it's just too much and you are just too good at being a prick to just throw all those years of prick polishing away, and so you will just be a bigger ass and expect a real blow someday, hopefully (you think) way down the road.
A lot of people take that route.
What if you are a good "church" person and you think that life would be "near" perfect if everyone believed as you do and you support legislation that will preserve your rights to personal and religious expression, granted by some power "above" government and not to be infringed upon or legislated by government (according to the U.S.A. Constitution anyway) but which at the same time viciously attack in media and sermon and sometimes in fact, persons under the same Constitutional protections as you as you tear or attempt to tear from them the very rights you are claiming and exercising for yourself as if you only believed those protections come from a higher power, not subject to legislation only when they are applied to you, but that those protections can somehow be legislated and their free exercise reduced, controlled or forbidden for other people - at your pleasure?
That sounds like about every kind of "religion" to me.
Especially it sounds like the so called, "Religious Right" and thinly veiled and supposedly non religion sponsored action groups who do nothing but cry for ammendments to cripple the Constitution and provide a route for their hatred and bigotry and anti-American efforts to supplant our current government with a theocracy.
It doesn't sound like the behavior of people who are Believing Jesus!
No, I think most "christians" worship a baby Jesus that really is baby Hitler instead.
So, here's a math quiz for Christians.
If Jesus hated (and He only seemed to hate) religious Hypocrites.
How many of todays (and yesterdays) bible toting "Christians" would Jesus Hate?
Isn't it interesting that most "Christian" religions claim that all you have to do to be right with God is "believe" in Jesus.
I don't think it matters if you "believe in" Jesus at all.
What matter is that you "BELIEVE" Jesus.
People DO that which reflects their beliefs.
Where are the people who believe Jesus?
Where the fuck are they?
Here's another question for Christians.
Since nearly all "Christians" are such obvious "non-believers"; what if the Rapture already happened and all of us are the ones that got left behind to be burned as stubble?
Isn't it weird in a biblical kind of way, that when the water temperature goes up a few degrees, methane under the sea floor is released and bubbles up to the atmosphere?
And it will get really HOT then!
Oh, and no Oxygen to breathe. That will kind of suck.
Well, just something to think about.
We might do well to stop hating each other so much and put all that energy and money that is now spent on hate and murder/war/murder, rapine and genocide into preserving our own habitat by serving the best interests of our planet and all the things that live on it.
We should quit fighting at the shadow puppets with which our fear mongers endlessly plague us, and DO SOMETHING about the very REAL MONSTER that our human greed, ignorance and SILENCE has created.
Idiots in religion and gooberment are not the creators of our crises.
You silent mother fuckers who know better but won't represent are.
Don't wave your fake, magic, giant penis of a Jesus at me.
I don't fear the power of your fake devotion.
James, purported to be the brother of the man purported to be Jesus, purportedly said, "Be ye doers of the word, not hearers only, deceiving your own selves."
I wonder what people look for when they read their Scriptures, whatever religion they subscribe to, are they looking only for words of comfort and promises of joy?
I mean is that it?
Does anyone see the other words that open our minds to vision and understanding, compassion and responsibility?
I don't mean visions, but vision that you actually see life differently.
And you act differently because you believe differently.
On your own you come to conclusions of equity and charity.
You find personal injury naturally overcome by evolving empathy.
You know that no person can stand between you and your God.
You know that you cannot buy peace of mind or confidence or fulfillment.
No one can gift it to you.
You can't be a jerk till your last dying breath and then somehow clean the slate.
It just doesn't work.
You die a jerk and there is no "heaven" for you, just for everyone else, since now you are gone.
No one can run the race for you or drag you along beside them.
When times are tough, God does not pick you up and carry you.
Are you some little fucking baby to God then?
What a crappy Creator that kind of God must be!
All He can make is selfish, greedy, destructive, disrespectful, whining babies!
What an image of Eternal HELL that is to me, God sitting on His throne surrounded by trillions on trillions of whining, selfish, greedy, self-entitled, something for nothing, babies!
I can't buy into that bullshit.
Why can you?
Are you afraid God didn't make you good enough to get to heaven on your own?
Is God a "Fartist" then?
He accidentally made one "good" human, but all His other attempts were crap?
That would be a lame God indeed!
God, if there is such an entity - gave humans a brain and a body to drive with it.
Too many of us plan on returning to God, proudly presenting to Him, an untouched, unblemished, still in the original wrapper - brain, expecting to be lavishly rewarded for not dirtying, breaking or wearing out that too precious (to use) gift.
So, c'mon!
Crank up that grey goose just once!
And.
Believe Jesus!
Don't be a Dick!
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction. Albert Einstein
