SO ... WE ARE GOING TO "COMPLETELY ERADICATE" RADICAL CHRISTIAN TERRORISTS FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH TOO, RIGHT?
April 28, 2017
I am "all in" for solutions to the radical Islamic terrorist problem in our world. In fact, just for Senator Ted Cruz's benefit, I will get this out of the way - I have no problem typing, or saying - radical Islamic terrorism. Radical Islamic terrorism...radical Islamic terrorism...radical Islamic terrorism. Now that should qualify me to appear on Fox News.
So what is a radical (fill in the religious blank) terrorist, anyway? Radical certainly suggests taking an extreme position or not following mainstream ideology. And terrorist is generally associated with acts using violence, threats, and power to cause fear, intimidation, and rendering others submissive.
There is no doubt Al-Qaeda and ISIS have been the poster groups for radical terrorists. The often times barbaric nature of their violent acts, and the heart-wrenching images of 9/11 are not easy to erase from our memory – “our” includes peace loving humans from every corner of the earth, and from every religion.
But what is the fixation with linking “radical” and “terrorist” to one specific religion? Or perhaps the tendency to at least exclude our own religion from the “fill in the blank” expression?
KNOW ANY RADICAL CHRISTIAN TERRORISTS?
Is this a difficult question for you to answer? If so, perhaps you just dozed off in history class a bit too much in high school. Or maybe you had someone teach you Christians do everything in the “name of God”, and are immune from scrutiny?
It really isn’t very difficult to start a list, and unfortunately, the list is WAY too long for this blog. Sadly, the list is alive and well, and continues today with people who reside in “powerful” positions in the world (and YEP, in the good ole USA).
A quick memory refresher:
· Christian religious leaders who initiated the crusades – some really barbaric stuff here, take my word for it
· Christian religious leaders who tortured women for being “witches” - better known as enlightened souls who entered female bodies
· Slave owners - son of a gun, it is not politically correct to disparage some of our founding fathers, is it?
· Hitler - remember this guy?
· KKK - wait a minute! These guys wore white robes; they had to be the good guys, right?
· Timothy McVey - well, I guess most of us would question if he was REALLY a Christian, huh?
· Dylann Roof – same as Timothy right? No - BREAKING NEWS – “Dylann was a DEVOUT Christian baptized in the Lutheran faith” (same as me by the way, the Lutheran part)
· The New York subway “graffiti artists” - they were just joking around when they drew swastikas and wrote “Jews belong in the oven”, right?
OK, but that incomplete list is all in the past now.
How about Mike Pence? OUCH, this one is not making me any friends among the 47% of voters who didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton in the latest U.S. presidential election. And hey, as a fellow born and raised Hoosier, I am trying to like the guy – he SEEMS friendly. Let’s get back to this one a bit later.
PICK ONE, CHRISTIANS: JESUS OR THE COUNCIL OF NICEA
If you aren’t real keen on my point of view, how about picking someone else to be the judge and jury of this discussion?
But you can only pick one. That’s right, there is only ONE vacancy in the Supreme Spiritual Court, and you have to decide right now:
1) Jesus – the one who your religion is supposed to be OF, and NOT about.
OR
2) The Council of Nicea. Or you can substitute the Pharisees who Jesus consistently referred to as hypocrites, or any future Christian leaders who have used the life of the Christ to form a man-made religion inconsistent with Jesus’s spiritual truths.
Do you remember the Council of Nicea? They were the religious leaders convened by the Roman Emperor Constantine nearly 300 years after Jesus’ death to attain consensus among the many factions of early Christianity.
Among their primary “accomplishments”:
· deciding the true nature of Jesus (Divine, human, relationship to God)
· establishing early canon law (sounds pretty human biased to me)
· developing the initial Nicene Creed (no consultation with Jesus here)
· removing references to reincarnation (humans figured this out?)
· deciding that Gnostic Gospels (Gospel of Thomas, Mary Magdalene, and others) wouldn’t make the cut in the New Testament
Have you picked yet? Jesus, or the Council of Nicea? No waffling here…
By the way, Pope Francis has weighed in on the radical Islamic terrorist debate a few times over the last 6 months. He basically said once individuals become radical terrorists, they no longer are aligned with the religion they claim to be acting out in the name of.
If you still aren't on board with the Pope and me, maybe the message from a family whose son was killed by domestic terrorists will give you a different perspective (Father wants Trump to Remember that America makes Extremists, Too.)
Contrary to the Pope’s extremely rational view, the 45th President of the United States declared in his inaugural address a plan to “completely eradicate” radical terrorists associated with one religion. I sure hope the new administration is taking seriously the need to track down the New York subway graffiti artists (and like-minded domestic hate groups), so they, too, can be “completely eradicated from the face of the earth.”
RADICAL, TERRORIST, RACIST, MISOGYNIST – DO YOU PASS THE TEST?
Hate to break the news to you…but we all have the same capacity for acting out our dark side.
Yep, absolutely does not matter what body, what ethnicity, or what religion your soul entered into in this human experience. Attaching the “Christian” label to yourself does not exempt you from being a radical terrorist.
Or as Jefferson Bethke expressed in his “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” rap/poem - “It’s like saying you play for the Lakers just because you bought a jersey."
I think Jesus would be really pissed off if he knew what had become of his universal spiritual teachings. Might upend a few tables again. And he certainly would not approve of the aspects of man-made religions that have produced continual conflict, wars, and hatred - passed on from one human generation to the next.
The person who came up with the bumper sticker “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ”, was truly onto something. You don’t have to cut off someone’s head to be a radical terrorist. What about passive aggressive radical terrorism directed at the LGBT community? What about that, Mr. Vice President? Did you pick Jesus for the Supreme Spiritual Court? Or are you going with the next incarnation of the Council of Nicea?
Macklemore really knew what he was talking about when he rapped “but we paraphrase a book written 3500 years ago” in his song “Same Love”. Is God’s “word” really restricted to the Old Testament and a council of humans who convened 300 years after Jesus’s death?
THERE IS HOPE – INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS CAN CHANGE IN AN INSTANT
For anyone who has ever been labeled a radical (fill in the religious blank) terrorist, there is good news. This label doesn’t have to last.
Jesus’ teachings were centered on the “kingdom within” – the Divine nature of every Soul who ever has, or ever will, enter the human body. Our Souls yearn to emerge in every one of the 7 billion humans walking the face of the earth, and truly embrace the expression “we are a spiritual being, living a human experience”.
“Complete eradication” of extreme versions of religious groups will never happen with military might, bombs, and short term human victories. Eradication of the radical terrorist in us ALL would be a good starting point.
I might be in the minority on many of my views. That is OK; I always enjoyed Dr. Seuss’s character, the Lorax. He spoke for the trees, “for the trees have no tongues”.
There is another voice, similar to the trees, not being heard – so, I Speak for the Soul …
