Jerry Falwell reveals worldly lust in Alito remarks

Rev. Jerry Falwell shows his true colors at long last. The power that he's been salivating for all these years is almost "his" and he can barely restrain himself from it. Reuters is reporting that Falwell made some pretty revelatory comments today regarding the Judge Samuel Alito hearings...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Christian conservative leader Rev. Jerry Falwell said on Sunday that confirming Federal Appeals Court judge Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court would be the biggest victory for his constituency in three decades.

"What we've worked on for 30 years, to mobilize people of faith and value in this country, what we've done through these years is coming to culmination right now," Falwell said at a rally on the eve of Alito's confirmation hearing.

"Now we're looking at what we really started on 30 years ago, reconstruction of a court system gone awry," Falwell said at a rally at a Baptist church in Philadelphia and broadcast on Christian radio and television.

"There could be a reconstruction of the U.S. Supreme Court in our immediate lifetime," said Falwell.

Falwell and others, including Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, urged supporters to press senators to confirm Alito, who is set to begin hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday.

"Go to the telephone, write your letter, get to your U.S. senators. Let's confirm this man, Judge Alito, to the U.S. Supreme Court," Falwell said. "And let's make one more step toward bringing America back to one nation under God."

Maybe Falwell is using a different Bible than mine, but nowhere in my version can I find it that Christ commanded us to wield our might for the sole sake of changing earthly government.

Let me explain to you how Christians like Jerry Falwell see things. In their minds, the individual Christian does not matter. One Christian cannot make a difference in this world. The solitary brother or sister in Christ has merit if and only if that Christian submits fully to "the cause", of which people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and James Dobson happen to dominate the agenda as its "leaders". Listen to how they word things: "What we've worked for...", "what we've done...", "Now we're looking at what we really started...", "...in our immediate lifetime", "(Let us) confirm this man..." Falwell and his kind have only gotten as far as they have because they've appealed to their fellow Christians to join together in collective might, in a fashion that runs fully counter to what Christ wanted of His church. The church is supposed to be a witness to this world for God. It's focus is meant to be on serving others, not serving itself. It is not supposed to gain control over this world for God. It's been said that "one plus God is a majority", but Falwell and his ilk dare tell us that "one plus God is not enough".

I prefer how Stanley Hauerwas put it: "Let me be as clear as I can be, the God of 'God and country' is not the God of Jesus Christ." And he's right. And people like Jerry Falwell believe that God created government which rules over men, instead of the Founding Fathers's view that God frees men, who then establish government. And herein rests the true motive of people like Jerry Falwell: they want temporal power over other people for themselves. They want to control government and be as high priests of it, because they have yielded to the oldest temptation: that they may become like God themselves. The Falwells and Robertsons and Dobsons of this world are no different than the Nazis who once plundered Europe for religious artifacts: they want to lay hands on a power created by God for their own selfish purpose.

Now this may surprise you, but I wouldn't mind seeing Alito confirmed. He's one of the very few people nominated by President Bush that I think warrants serious consideration. I'm very appreciative of the fact that he seems to be strongly pro-life, and that's a stance that I can show you that I've been vehemently supportive of for more than ten years now...

...but, the kind of support that Falwell and Dobson and others are bringing to the table is not borne out of pure Christ-like for others. It is instead driven by a desire to have dominion over others, and in the end this desire can only corrupt whatever apparent good they claim in achieving "victory", until it inevitably self-destructs.