Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire
whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is
nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself
will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy if anything can.
Trappist Monk, Father Thomas Merton
Dear J,
The article below is more
playful than insightful.
But it serves the purpose of
recalling Yeshua's most startling observation.
As he
went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him,
“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was
born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said
Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in
him. (John 9: 1-3)
"Christian"
conservatives are Shylock-intent on the exaction of divine retribution and
divine punishment.
These punitive
"Christians" assume -- always and everywhere -- that blame must be
assigned... and that they are the ones to assign it.
Indeed, most
"Christian" conservatives order their world view around the perceived
need that "evil people" and "undeserving people" get their
asses whupped.
Simply put, this passion for vengeance
befits a Mafia capo more than "Christians" who claim
that God and Love and coterminous.
Here's the nub.
Can a single one of us pass
"the celestial bar" without throwing ourselves "on the mercy of
the court."
And once we throw ourselves
on the mercy of the court, what sane human would make so bold as to
"draw the line" of God's Mercy?
The good Mercy Sisters
at St. Thomas the Apostle Grammar School in Irondequoit, New York,
taught us that Catholics need not believe a single human soul is damned to
Hell.
Rather, we are called upon by
God to hope and pray for the salvation of all - even Hitler.
As I see it, those
"Christians" who are eager to condemn their fellows to The Eternal
Lake of Fire are not devotees of the one who asks us to "love our
enemies," but rather are thralls to sadism.
Coupled with their lack of
compassion, such sadists may be at greater moral risk than the
"monsters" and "ner-do-wells" whom they quickly consign to
torment-without-end.
Note well.
The prostitutes and tax
collectors will enter heaven ahead of "the priests" and other
(technically) unimpeachable church-goers.
Senator Dick Durbin
states The Republican Party's motto: "We are all in
this.... alone."
Routinely, right-wing
Republican/"Christians" envision heaven as a dominance-submission
hierarchy where people "earn" their "individual" places,
and then spend eternity in incandescent face-to-face relationship with God.
Liberal Christians, on the
other hand, envision heaven as a mansion whose many rooms are occupied by
"all kinds" - including prostitutes, traitorous tax collectors and
the zealot Peter, who - right til the end - was champing at the bit to spill
infidel blood.
For liberal Christians, the
rooms of this heavenly mansion are banquet halls where people - including
nerdowells and purged monsters - gather to celebrate as a conjoined body. The
mansion is a "place" where wholeness is holiness and where wholeness
-- seen communally rather than from the exclusive center of one's self --
requires the eventual redemption of everyone. (See The Boddhisatva
Vow. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhisattva_vow)
If there are those who, in
full knowledge, finally refuse to join the communion, they will not, I believe,
be punished “eternally” but will, by The Divine Mercy, pass out of existence
altogether.
Whether this surmise is true
or not, a merciful view (that does not drool after eternal punishment for
"the other guy") is more closely allied with the lineaments of
God/Love than the ferocious determination of self-righteous
"Christians" who cheerlead the endless torment of their fellows.
At minimum, the following
question is in order.
Why are teachers of
"universal mercy" so often vilified, while "Christians" who
applaud torture get a free pass?
Pax vobiscum
Alan
- Dana Milbank
- Opinion Writer
Signs of divine intervention for Republicans?
Has God forsaken the Republican Party?
Well, sit in judgment of what’s happened in the past few days:
2443
Comments
●A report comes out that a couple dozen House Republicans engaged in an alcohol-induced frolic, in one case nude, in the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus is believed to have walked on water, calmed the storm and, nearby, turned water into wine and performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes.
●Rep. Todd Akin, Missouri’s Republican nominee for Senate, suggests there is such a thing as “legitimate rape” and purports that women’s bodies have mysterious ways to repel the seed of rapists. He spends the next 48 hours rejecting GOP leaders’ demands that he quit the race.
●Weather forecasts show that a storm, likely to grow into Hurricane Isaac, may be chugging toward . . . Tampa, where Republicans will open their quadrennial nominating convention on Monday.
Coincidence? Or part of some Intelligent Design?
By their own logic, Republicans and their conservative allies should be concerned that Isaac is a form of divine retribution. Last year, Rep. Michele Bachmann, then a Republican presidential candidate, said that the East Coast earthquake and Hurricane Irene — another “I” storm, but not an Old Testament one — were attempts by God “to get the attention of the politicians.” In remarks later termed a “joke,” she said: “It’s time for an act of God and we’re getting it.”
The influential conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck said last year that the Japanese earthquake and tsunami were God’s “message being sent” to that country. A year earlier, Christian broadcaster and former GOP presidential candidate Pat Robertson tied the Haitian earthquake to that country’s“pact to the devil.”
Previously, Robertson had argued that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for abortion, while the Rev. John Hageesaid the storm was God’s way of punishing homosexuality. The late Jerry Falwellthought that God allowed the Sept. 11 attacks as retribution for feminists and the ACLU.
Even if you don’t believe God uses meteorological phenomena to express His will, it’s difficult for mere mortals to explain what is happening to the GOP just now.
By most earthly measures, President Obama has no business being reelected. No president since World War II has won reelection with the unemployment ratenorth of 7.4 percent. Of the presidents during that time who were returned to office, GDP growth averaged 4.7 percent during the first nine months of the election year — more than double the current rate.
But instead of being swept into office by the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression, Republicans are in danger of losing an election that is theirs to lose. Mitt Romney, often tone-deaf, has allowed Obama to change the subject to Romney’s tax havens and tax returns. And congressional Republicans are providing all kinds of reasons for Americans to doubt their readiness to assume power.
The Politico report Sunday about drunken skinny-dipping in the Sea of Galilee gave House Republicans an unwanted image of debauchery — a faint echo of the Capitol page scandal that, breaking in September 2006, cemented Republicans’ fate in that November’s elections. The 30 Republican lawmakers on the “fact-finding” mission to Israel last summer earned a rebuke from Majority Leader Eric Cantor and attracted the attention of the FBI. The naked congressman, Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.), admitted in a statement: “[R]egrettably I jumped into the water without a swimsuit.”
A boozy frolic at a Christian holy site might have been a considerable embarrassment for the party, but it was eclipsed by a bigger one: Akin’s preposterous claim on a St. Louis TV program that pregnancy is rare after a “legitimate rape” because “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
Republican leaders spent the next 48 hours trying to shut Akin’s whole thing down, but after a period of panic (a no-show on Piers Morgan’s show led the CNN host to show his empty chair and call him a “gutless little twerp”), Akin told radio host Mike Huckabee on Tuesday that he would fight the “big party people” and stay in the race.
The big party people had a further complication: In Tampa on Tuesday, those drafting theGOP platform agreed to retain a plank calling for a constitutional amendment banning abortion without specifying exceptions for cases of rape. In other words, the Akin position.
For a party that should be sailing toward victory, there were all the makings of a perfect storm. And, sure enough: Tuesday afternoon, the National Weather Service forecast that “Tropical Depression Nine” would strengthen into a hurricane, taking a northwesterly track over Cuba on Sunday morning — just as Republicans are arriving in Florida.
What happens next? God only knows.
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