Walter Rhett: Mocking God

[DemocratsForProgress]

This election, there’s a movement around the country to use the Bible and prayer in the wrong way. It makes God a political partisan. It associates God with vengeance and hatred, substitutes a personal or group judgement for God’s own as it despoils the idea of divine glory, and mocks God by asking God to grant divine intervention and authority to actions God condemns.

Put aside the impulse to run to the barricades of clichés, the library of platitudes about religion. Go outside free will, the failed standards of churches, the doubts about the existence of God, the comfortable substitution of superstition, the smug blindness by which we ignore the invisible, universal presence our ancestors were able to discern with slowly evolved awareness of its immanence. For all doubters, simply look to creativity–one concept–the endless, infinite, ever-changing, amazing creativity that is the world, things small and large, near and far, that are, even by our limited measure, eternal marvels of patterns and chaos that link light arriving to our eye before the earth was formed.

After creativity, morality is a universal set of human rules, tied to an afterlife. Sacred texts developed by communities coded behavior and designated good and bad. For Christianity, the Bible is a sacred text. Its words by many believers are considered the holy writ of God. And its believers, many people of power and influence, of education and means, are using its verses to pray for the defeat, death and the spiritual disembowelment of Barack Obama.

E-mails are being widely distributed with the title, “Pray Psalm 109:8.” Here’s the relevant section of Psalm 109 people are using to pray for Barack...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/08/08/digging-deeper-mocking-god/

[handmade34]

1. more like: 'exploiting' God

but what is god except for "personal or group judgement"

[dballance]

2. Once again proving you can find a Biblical Passage to support almost any Opinion

I guess I was lucky as a kid. My Southern Baptist church didn't teach hate or dwell too much on God smiting people or turning them into pillars of salt.

Sure every Sunday I got the required dose of "you're a sinner" and that "only through Jesus Christ" will you be saved. Praise the lord.

I think 90% of the people I attended Sunday School and Sunday Services with still believe "Christ" was Jesus' "last name" or family name and don't realize it's a title for Messiah.

But I digress. Fortunately for me my Sunday School teachers focused on Jesus and his love and forgiveness. I learned the lesson of sharing and providing for others through stories like the loaves and fishes where Jesus fed the masses. I learned of treating every human as a worthy human through stories like Jesus stopping the stone-ing of the woman by the well. I learned to eschew greed from the story of Jesus throwing the "money changers" out of the temple

Yep. I was lucky. My church taught love and acceptance. Isn't that really what we and religion should focus on?

It's really too bad so many "holy men" have turned toward evil and hate because they've become so comfortable in the riches their mega-churches bring them. Hate, singling out entire groups like Muslims or Gays sells well and brings in big profits. It feeds on the dark part of human nature that needs a "them" to despise and try to eradicate because "they" are not "us."

So much for "love thy neighbor" when he/she is not of your particular brand of religion.

[DionDem]

3. Sometimes I wonder if there's any difference

between politicians and priests.

Religion and government have been intertwined since both began, and separating them is next to impossible.

[cbrer]

4. The OP

Is a more spiritually enlightened work than the rights perversion of religion.

Whether one stipulates a god or not.