Tuesday, August 28, 2018

In Jesus Name


For my entire life (and before), Christians have claimed to have a monopoly on morality. Other religions are wrong, and those without religion have no morality at all. This is, of course, despite thousands of years of contrary evidence.

The reality is that anyone can be a moral person, and religion conveys no morality whatsoever.

Even so, in America, none have been more vocal about Christian morality than the Evangelical Right. From the party of "family values" has come condemnation and censure of even the slightest perceived (or invented) moral failings by Democrats. While Republican failings are either ignored completely, swept under the rug, or embraced fully (see Mark Sanford, David Vitter and Roy Moore).

On Monday evening, 100 evangelical leaders met with Trump in the White House. Not to call him to task for his flagrant, ongoing, hugely immoral behavior, but to receive their marching orders.
Donald Trump met with evangelical leaders on Monday evening, urging them to push their flocks to the polls to vote Republican in November. In fact, Trump went further, saying he’d gotten “rid of” the law that calls for churches endorsing candidates to lose their tax-exempt status—even though the law remains in place, and Trump simply told the IRS not to enforce it. Translation: you owe me, so get out the vote, and let’s both just ignore the law here, okay? Link
And here's what he said:
“I just ask you to go out and make sure all of your people vote,” Mr. Trump told the group of about 100 evangelical ministers. “Because if they don’t — it’s Nov. 6 — if they don’t vote we’re going to have a miserable two years and we’re going to have, frankly, a very hard period of time because then it just gets to be one election — you’re one election away from losing everything you’ve got.”
Again, please note that this is ILLEGAL under U.S. law and thus, presumably, immoral. (Frankly, if they want to give up their tax exempt status, I encourage them to do this.)

When I was growing up as a United Methodist, I was pretty fascinated by the idea of the Antichrist and the Apocalypse. I always imagined Christians fighting against an ever encroaching evil led by a charismatic, brilliant politician on the non-religious side. Even now, that's how most evangelicals see the Antichrist.

Meanwhile, their leaders embrace and follow a non-charismatic idiot who:

  • is a serial adulterer
  • paid off a porn star and a playboy model to keep quiet
  • lies ALL THE TIME
  • cheats business partners and employees out of money
  • regularly attacks those weaker than him
  • venerates himself above all others
  • is not religious, but fakes it in as obvious a manner as possible
  • afflicts the afflicted
  • harms the poor
  • works to take healthcare away from millions
  • shifts money from the poor to the rich
  • advocates for war
  • and basically just sucks as a human being

Yeah, a real sterling role model you've got there, evangelicals.

I've said it before. While you Christians never really had it, you have lost ALL rights to claim moral authority from now until the end of time. I am happy that people are leaving your church in droves and look forward to the extinction of your hypocritical, self-serving, manipulative, evil religion.


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