OUR GOD SAYS THERE AIN'T NO OTHER

I notice this daily: There is a direct correlation between the number of flags on an SUV and the pisces/"I ride with Jesus" stickers. These people, who seem challenged to comprehend the simplicity of "Thou shalt not kill," know that war and fundamentalist religion have a connect like kissing cousins, if only because they both FEEL so damned good.

Of COURSE there are exceptions, but for the most part I noticed no signs of grief at the supermarket on the days when children's arms were being blown off, not even the day the Anglo-American forces marched into Baghdad, killing thousands of young Iraqi men all on the same day, the vastness of the killing shocking our own soldiers who were THERE without a CNN filter. I watched, on several of the days. I saw laughing people hauling bags and bags of nitrate-jammed, high-fat, processed foods out to their cars. If they saw my anti-war tee-shirt, they pretended not to notice, as they climbed into their cars, so often SUVs with several cheap made-in-China, sometimes tattered flags attesting to their patriotism.

And a further look too often cemented the link. There it would be, on the bumper: "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it."

Click here.

One of the defining moments of my life was the occasion of my "being saved" in the spring of 1980--even though I no longer think of myself as a Christian and now see myself as more of an anti-fundamentalist than anything else, this ritual moment in my then pastor's office marked the beginning stages of my philosophical dedication to the causes of justice, peace, and love; I also now cannot help but live my life in terms of my ultimate rejection of the Southern Baptists and right-wing Christianity in general: that I was once one of them is something I will never forget.

Given current fundamentalist warmongering and bloodthirstiness, a brief exchange during the overall spiritual dialogue accompanying my conversion between myself and my then pastor now rings loudly in my memory. We spoke about killing. He asked me what I thought about it. I told him that killing was wrong; killing is a sin. With a concerned look on his face, he nodded in agreement and paused. After a moment, he then told me that God's prohibition against killing did not apply to the battlefield: in war, killing is not wrong. He reminded me of the righteous wars in the Bible and how God had blessed the Israelite warriors when their cause was just. He was, of course, preaching to the converted--I had been raised on a steady diet of WWII movies; Captain Kirk had already shown me what the Bible says in Ecclesiastes, that there is "a time to kill." I already believed that killing during war is not a sin.

Flash forward to the spring of 2003. I was trying to convince my mother during a telephone conversation that the true Christian position is anti-war--after all, Jesus was the prince of peace. It was not an angry conversation (we both respect each other a great deal), but it was emotional. We were walking on sacred ground for the both of us. We were discussing the Truth. I quoted as many verses as I could remember; I reminded her how Jesus healed the wound of one of the soldiers who had come to take him to what would eventually be his execution: Jesus refused to fight for even his own life.

Even though she was clearly moved by my passion, she was unconvinced. Unfortunately for the both of us, the same pastor who "led me to the Lord" twenty-three years ago had been preaching recently that the war against Iraq was a just war, righteous in the eyes of God. She told me that she didn't have the words to explain why Christians should support the war, but she would find them.

A week or so later, a bootleg CD of a sermon by the pastor of one of the nation's largest fundamentalist churches, Dr. Ed Young of Houston Second Baptist, arrived in the mail. My mother had found her words. As a favor to her, and hoping for some blogging material, I made a good faith effort to listen to the hour-long speech. To this day, I still love the traditional, emotional oratorical style of devout Baptist ministers--I was kind of looking forward to playing the CD. Sadly, I turned it off after about fifteen minutes or so. Dr. Young's attempts to turn "thou shalt not kill" into "thou shalt kill" made my stomach hurt.

I usually try to keep an open mind about such things--it's only fair considering that most Americans are now pretty narrow-minded about the anti-war views that I hold. The thing that made me lower my threshold for intolerance was that I was expecting to hear something that sounded even slightly rational. It became clear very quickly that I was going to be disappointed.

Dr. Young stated very simply that Jesus' imperative to "love your enemies, (and) do good to them which hate you" applies only to interpersonal relationships, not international relationships. I listened for a while longer to hear an explanation of his interpretation. There was none, and it was clear from the direction that his sermon was going that there was not going to be an explanation--he had moved on to another point. I was like, "That's it? Just a simple statement of interpretation without even any scriptural support? And no one notices this? My God!" Fundamentalists are able to say "love one another" on the one hand, and cheer the carnage of war on the other by using an Orwellian style of "doublethink." They do not realize that they believe contradictory ideas. They do not question the contradiction. The passion of their preachers somehow makes it all work.

Having once been a fundamentalist myself, I understand how "love your enemy" can be so radically warped into "kill your enemy," but it's difficult to explain because it makes virtually no sense. The above linked Counterpuch essay by Lisa Walsh Thomas does a much better job than I think I could of examining fundamentalist contradictions and their scary ramifications for our nation. Go read it.

Thanks to J. Orlin Grabbe.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$