Nightmarish "Christianity"

I know, you don't have to tell me: "Consider the source". I'm still debating whether Max Blumenthal is aspiring toward that higher vision of what journalism should be, or if he's got some kind of agenda. But I'll say two things in this instance: his research and writing is quite good. That, and I'm compelled to agree enough that he's on to something here that I felt led to post about it.

The Nation's website has publishedan excerpt from Blumenthal's new book Republican Gommorah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party. The selection, titled "The Nightmare of Christianity", is about Matthew Murray, who shot and killed four people during attacks at a missionary training facility and then a church in Colorado two years ago. Murray may or may not have had severe problems already that should have been addressed. But to hear Blumenthal describe it, Matthew Murray's struggles were hopelessly complicated by his family's hyper-religious demands and expectations... until finally he snapped and took five lives, including his own.

Here's some of what Blumenthal writes...

But as soon as Murray enrolled at YWAM's training center in nearby Arvada in 2002, he found himself trapped in an authoritarian culture even more restrictive than home. He realized that, as another student of YWAM bluntly put it, the school's training methods resembled "cult mind-controlling techniques." Murray became paranoid, speaking aloud to voices only he could hear, according to a former roommate. He complained that six of his male peers had made a gay sex video and that others routinely abused drugs. Hypocrisy seemed to be all around him, or at least dark mirages of it. A week before Murray was scheduled to embark on his first mission, YWAM dismissed him from the program for unspecified "health reasons." "They admitted that I hadn't done anything wrong, just that they had prayed and felt I wasn't popular/'connected' and talkative enough," he recalled.

Two years later, Murray raged at two YWAM administrators during a Pentecostal conference his mother had dragged him to attend. The shocked staffers promptly warned Loretta Murray that her son "wasn't walking with the Lord and could be planning violence." Within days, an ornery local pastor was allowed to burst into the young Murray's room, rifle through his belongings, and leave with a satchel full of secular DVDs and CDs--apparent evidence of his depravity. Murray's mother searched his room for satanic material every day afterward for three months, stripping him of his privacy and whatever was left of his love for her. After the trauma-inducing raids, in which Murray estimated his mother and her friends destroyed $900 worth of his property, he concluded, "Christianity is one big lie."

There's a lot more in Blumenthal's extensive article about Murray and the kind of "Christianity" that he was forced to experience, including this song that students at a south Florida "Christian"-based charter school are made to learn:

Obedience is listening attentively,
Obedience will take instructions joyfully,
Obedience heeds wishes of authorities,
Obedience will follow orders instantly.
For when I am busy at my work or play,
And someone calls my name, I'll answer right away!
I'll be ready with a smile to go the extra mile
As soon as I can say "Yes, sir!" "Yes ma am!"
Hup, two, three

Sounds like something out of the Hitler Youth movement, don't it?

I wouldn't be bringing this article to anyone's attention if I didn't think it merited some thought. Because I know it does. Matthew Murray obviously had issues that should have been given sincere treatment. But if Blumenthal's reporting is anywhere even remotely accurate, I have no doubt at all that the kind of "Christianity" inflicted upon Murray destroyed his spirit, his mind, and ultimately his life.

I have written about it before many times on this blog: that Christianity is not supposed to be about having power in this world at all. To follow Christ means a putting to death of the old nature with each new day... but because we desire to, not because we are made to. But that is precisely how too many alleged "Christian leaders" have gained and maintained power and control over others.

Don't believe me? Look at this pic that I snapped from the website of Bill Gothard, cited in Blumenthal's article as the one most responsible for the insane regimen that Matthew Murray's parents subjected him too...

They "formed an army" and started a "movement of power"?

How is that anything near to demonstrating the love and grace of Christ to others?!

To follow Christ is to be in this world, but not of this world. It means saving the lost from a dying world, not saving a dying world from the lost.

(And if you can suffer an hour or so of your own blood boiling, I would also recommend watching the documentary Jesus Camp: one of the most disturbing looks at American "Christianity" ever produced.)

When I read stories like that of Matthew Murray as Max Blumenthal is conveying it, I can't help but envision Jesus turning down Satan's offer to give Him all the power and authority over this world. Jesus rejected it... but a countless multitude of men and women instead began screaming "PICK ME! PICK ME!"

Neither can I but believe that Satan smiles and says "Of course I'll pick you. And you will be fine. After all, you are only doing what He should have done. I'll even let you do it for Him."

People like this are not trying to win America for Christ. They are trying to win America for their own "Christianity". For their own religion. But to sincerely follow Christ has never been about something so mere as "religion".

And in the end, Christianity of this sort can only hurt and destroy lives, not build them up. Matthew Murray was but an extreme example.

Am I making too much of this? Folks, I don't know if I could make nearly enough of it. So much grief could have been avoided, and still be avoided, had some among us professing Christ only taken the admonition of Proverbs 3:5 to heart...

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding."

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A conservative case against Sarah Palin

In case anyone's wondering: currently I'm registered as a Republican. I helped a friend run for statewide office this election season as his treasurer, running on a platform of parental choice in education. Prior to that I ran for office myself, partly regarding issues of fiscal conservatism. In my opinion Ronald Reagan was the last real President that America has had and I'm very thankful that I got to drive to Washington D.C. a few years ago to pay my respects as his casket lay in state at the Capitol.

I never vote for the party though. I've voted for Republicans and Democrats and Libertarians and independents and a lot of people in between since I first registered to vote several years ago (the day after my eighteenth birthday).

I would never vote for Barack Obama. The man's social spending ideas are a catastrophe waiting to happen. Neither can I ever vote for John McCain: this is a man bankrupt of any principle and I absolutely cannot believe that so many professed "conservatives" are now lining up to support him. This was the Senator who pushed through McCain-Feingold, fercryingoutloud. And as I've said before: any man who dumps his wife just so he can have a younger woman, does not have the moral fiber to be given the responsibility of the most powerful office on Earth.

Now y'all know where I'm coming from. Which brings us to the matter of Sarah Palin. A woman who I have had great admiration for.

Until now.

And trust me: this has nothing to do with what is going on with her family at this moment.

When McCain announced that Palin would be his running mate, I didn't know what to make of it. That Palin, who had previously expressed support for Ron Paul (a candidate as unlike McCain as there's apt to be) would now hitch her wagon to McCain didn't make any sense to me. And after considering it at length, my first assumption was that Palin is a very good governor, who has no idea what she is being drawn into and is perhaps not ready for this at all.

Let me put it another way: I thought that Palin was being used as a tool by the McCain campaign. As one friend put it, Palin as a running mate was analogous to putting lipstick on a pig. She's got a tremendous reputation and is by widespread acclaim "easy on the eyes", but she does nothing to change the fact that John McCain himself has a horrible record on so-called "conservative" issues. Palin, many have told me over the past few days, is only meant to be a distraction from the real John McCain.

Then I started, for the first time, to take a seriously hard look at Sarah Palin's record as mayor of Wasilla, and then governor of Alaska.

And you know what?

There's no way that I could support Sarah Palin now, even if she were to run for President herself (which I earlier had suggested I wouldn't mind happening).

In fact, the notion about Sarah Palin being a heartbeat away from the most powerful position in the world, is now downright scary.

It was her record as mayor of Wasilla that sent the first red flag popping up in my mind. When she was sworn in after being elected in 1996, the town of Wasilla, Alaska had no debt. When she left, the town was twenty-two million dollars in the hole. We're talking a town with a population of about five thousand souls. My own hometown has about three times that amount, and I don't think it's ever been that much in the red.

Where did all that money go on Palin's watch? Much of it went to a new sports and entertainment complex. A bit went to a new park. None of it apparently went to actually improving the infrastructure of Wasilla or toward urban planning. I'm now hearing plenty of horror stories about how the town is a cacaphonic sprawl of bad streets, run-down buildings and big-box retailers like Wal-Mart.

But think about it: Wasilla went from owing no money, to owing $22 million during Palin's tenure. Does that sound like sound economic conservatism to anyone?

Then the tales came out Palin's dictatorial style: how she set down a policy that no city employee could talk with the press without her permission, and how she fired the town's respected librarian and lost a police chief (in addition to several others who she tossed out) because she believed they weren't "loyal" enough to her. So forget financial discipline: now we're dealing with matters of personal discipline and humbleness as a public servant. Palin apparently thought that since she was now mayor, she could be "the decider" of Wasilla. She quickly filled the vacant positions with people that she had previous relationships with. It began a pattern of cronyism that continued into her time as Governor of Alaska and is now come back to haunt her in the form of a state trooper firing scandal.

Maybe some of this could be attributed to being "young" and "fresh" on the job. Some eagerness to over-excel. Kinda like how Barney on The Andy Griffith Show is always getting in trouble because he wants Mayberry to be like a big city rife with organized crime. That's a heap of fun if we're watching a Sixties-era television comedy... but in real life, when the pattern persists from small-town mayor to state governor, it stops being funny or excusable.

It was how Palin became mayor of Wasilla in the first place that finally convicted me to no longer be able to give her any credence as someone I would ever want to be within a hair's breadth of so much power. In what is usually a non-partisan, friendly election in small town America, Palin injected her mayoral race with "wedge issues" like abortion. She received heavy backing from the Alaskan state Republican Party. At one point she was apparently making it out that she was going to be Wasilla's "first Christian mayor".

How is abortion possibly an issue for a sleepy burg of five thousand people tucked away in a valley in Alaska? That's like trying to teach A.P. history in what's supposed to be a high school woodshop class.

Palin's campaign for mayor of Wasilla had little to do with actual issues, and too much to do with exploiting people's emotions. That's how she came to elected office to begin with: not by appealing to intellect, but by playing off of base psychology.

Which brings me to the final reason that I will share for now about why I cannot ever support Sarah Palin being in the Executive Branch of the United States Government...

...namely, that the Book of Revelation is not a foreign policy manual.

Understand this about me too: I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. I've been a Christian for going on a dozen years now. And even before then I saw how having a faith in God is not something that is supposed to be used as a weapon against other people or other countries. In my opinion, God has not blessed America because America doesn't care about God anyway. Too many self-proclaimed Christians in this land think nothing of exploiting God for their own temporal motives, however. That's something that I not only cannot stand, it scares the hell out of me.

So now witness Sarah Palin, as Governor of Alaska, speaking before a church service and telling the congregants that the war in Iraq is a "task that is from God"...

Anyone else see that movie Jesus Camp? Anyone else think that Sarah Palin seems way too much of that same mindset?

As Christians, we are supposed to represent the Kingdom of God to those that we come in contact with. We are meant to do so by loving them, in spite of their beliefs or what their opinion is of us. We are called to love even our enemies. That doesn't mean that we don't defend ourselves when we must, because I believe that is a moral right for individuals and families and nations. But we were never given an ordained duty to seek out and destroy our enemies in the name of Christ! That's just more of the world's way, and not God's at all. And it is the absolute height of arrogance to assume that God's plan is our own plan enough that we have a license to believe He will grant a blanket blessing on all of our endeavors.

The more that I read of Sarah Palin, the more that I cannot but believe that the woman is an adherent of Dominion Theology. As a theology professor of mine put it ten years ago, that's something that "will beat a path straight to Auschwitz". And as I've studied it since then, the less that I've been able to deny that he was right.

If for no other reason, this alone is why I cannot trust Sarah Palin. God Only can judge her heart, but in my mind the woman is way too infatuated with the power of God and not nearly enough with the love of God.

That won't deter a lot of the so-called "evangelicals" from adoring her, from supporting her without question however. I've even heard a few of them quite seriously declare that Palin is a modern-day "Deborah for America". They're the ones who still believe that America has a special place in God's divine plan for the world. They're also the ones who tend to hold that God allowed George W. Bush to be elected so that it would "help" to eventually trigger Armageddon.

Don't think that I don't know what I'm talking about here. I used to attend a school that was eventually taken over by such apostles of the Apocalypse. And Sarah Palin, now that I've examined her, is precisely the kind of politician that they have been hoping and praying for. Maybe... maybe... even more than George W. Bush turned out to have really been.

These people have forgotten that what makes America special is her virtue. And in the name of God, these people - who should have been the most virtuous - gave up their virtue for sake of a little power in the fleeting span of their lifetime.

And now it is a question of whether there is any virtue left for their children, and their children's children.

And it looks like they're ramping-up to sacrifice even more.

Suddenly, the idea of a John McCain presidency, which I've always felt would be a disastrous continuation of the policies of Bush, threatens to become something much worse than most of us have yet imagined.

There is nothing "conservative" about Sarah Palin, I must sadly conclude. If anything, she seems cut from the neoconservative cloth that espouses bigger government and glorious empire. To her credit, Sarah Palin seems very much to be an all-American wife and "action mom". I certainly respect her strong stance for the Second Amendment. But her track record as an elected official indicates that if given far more power, she would continue the precedent that the current White House administration has set for detaching the American government from the American people.

There is nothing about that which is the least bit conservative.

That's still not enough to prompt me to vote for Obama, however. Nothing could possibly entice me to do that. So this election year I'm either casting a write-in vote for Ron Paul, or writing in what is rapidly becoming the most sensible alternative to the mess that this country is hellbent on becoming...

"A glass of whiskey, a gun and two bullets".

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Why Iowa Christian Alliance and other "evangelical conservatives" won't support Ron Paul

There is going to be a forum for presidential candidates in Des Moines on June 30th sponsored by Iowans for Tax Relief, and a group called Iowa Christian Alliance. And most of the Republican candidates will be present. Except for Ron Paul. Why?

Here's the word from the Ron Paul campaign blog:

Ron Paul Excluded in Iowa

Iowans for Tax Relief and Iowa Christian Alliance will host a presidential candidates forum on Saturday, June 30th in Des Moines. Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Sam Brownback, Jim Gilmore, Mike Huckabee, Tommy Thompson, and Tom Tancredo will participate.

Ron Paul, however, will not participate. Why? Because he wasn't invited.

We heard about this forum from numerous supporters in Iowa who asked why Dr. Paul was not going to participate. Those supporters assumed that Dr. Paul was invited.

The campaign office had not received an invitation so we called this morning; thinking we might have misplaced the invitation or simply overlooked it. Lew Moore, our campaign manager, called Mr. Edward Failor, an officer of Iowans for Tax Relief, to ask about it. To our shock, Mr. Failor told us Dr. Paul was not invited; he was not going to be invited; and he would not be allowed to participate. And when asked why, Mr. Failor refused to explain. The call ended.

Lew then called Mr. Steve Scheffler, president of the Iowa Christian Alliance, to talk with him. Mr. Scheffler did not answer so Lew left a message. He has yet to respond.

Why are the Iowans for Tax Relief and the Iowa Christian Alliance excluding the one Republican candidate who scored at the top of every online poll taken after the MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN debates? Why are they denying Iowans the opportunity to hear from the Republican presidential candidate whose popularity is growing by the day?

Just out of curiosity, I went to the website for Iowa Christian Alliance. And it's pretty much what I was expecting. They're an off-shoot from (but now unaffiliated with) the Christian Coalition. Actually I learned a lot about Iowa Christian Alliance's priorities just by the visual cues on the front page of their website.

And now I understand why it is that Iowa Christian Alliance will not invite Ron Paul to their presidential forum...

Because Ron Paul doesn't favor military interventionism that figures so well into a lot of evangelical Christian pre-trib Rapture fantasies that have guided American foreign policy more than you really want to know.

(And I say this as a follower of Christ, and one who has lived most of his life being exposed in one form or another to this mentality.)

You have to understand something about the kind of mindset that is working against Ron Paul so far as "right-wing Republicans" go. There are two "brands" of evangelical Christian conservative thought going on in America. One - the really nasty one, is Christian Reconstructionism, sometimes called Dominion Theology. And its adherents believe that they must gain absolute control over the Earth before Christ returns. They hold that their purpose is to "prepare" the world for the Lord's coming, and make it ready for Him to govern. To that end, they often make it quite clear that they want to institute capital punishment for things like homosexuality and abortion and even "disrespect to parents", if they gain power over systems of government. I doubt this movement will ever gain serious traction.

The other one, Dominionism (not to be confused with Dominion Theology, we'll get into why they are different in a minute), has had an enormous influence on American politics for going on forty years now.

This is the kind of theology taught by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, and now continued largely by people like James Dobson and D. James Kennedy. Where Dominionism differs from Dominion Theology is that Dominion Theology/Christian Reconstructionism tends to greatly believe in a post-millennial "end of the world", hence its emphasis on "preparing" the world for Christ's return. The more popular Dominionism that was spread in the modern era by Falwell and Robertson preaches that the Rapture must take place first, then a period of tribulation and then Christ's millennial kingdom.

There are some things that the two movements have quite in common. Achieving temporal power is the most obvious. This lust for political power is so pronounced that it often seems that preaching the Kingdom of Heaven as Christ taught about is a distantly second priority... if it's even a priority at all.

Oh very well, I'll go ahead and say it: too many Christians in America have made "winning elections" a far more important thing than living the life that Christ has called us to live. And that is partly why America is suffering as she is: because a lot of Christians have prostituted their principles for a fleeting measure of glory. But I digress...

But in addition to this desire for political power, Dominionism also has a terrible obsession with the Apocalypse. Probably because they have a fear of death (which they shouldn't really) and want to avoid it via the Rapture. And more than most people really know, even with the popularity of books like Left Behind and other Rapture media, there are a LOT of folks who want nothing more than for Armageddon to come... and they think that God isn’t moving fast enough so they feel obliged to "help" Him out.

This is something that they have been actively working toward for years, now. All those young people from Regent University that are working in the Bush Administration: ever wonder "why Regent?" Because Regent was founded by Pat Robertson with the express purpose of training young evangelical Christians to someday "change the world" but a more accurate statement might be to "control the world". And the reason why "evangelical conservatives" flock to support George W. Bush, will steadfastly refuse to abandon him even in spite of all evidence that his is the worst presidency in American history?

Because they sincerely believe that George W. Bush has been anointed by God to set events into motion that will work to usher in the End Times.

Incidentally, this is exactly why these same "evangelical" types are so hot to support Israel no matter what: part of pre-tribulation teaching is that Israel will be largely destroyed before the Second Coming. These people are eager to help Israel so that it will be wiped out! But lobbying groups like AIPAC don't mind why these people believe what they do, so long as these lobbyists can keep employing these "useful idiots". But that's a whole 'nother post for a later time.

All of this is why these same people, in the next presidential election, will be quick to support the most military-interventionist-minded Republican candidate that they can find (I'm assuming they will probably love Fred Thompson now, especially in light of his remarks about going after Iran). Because supporting him, in their minds, will be part of the great plan that they have been working on for decades now. Have invested their children's lives in helping it come about, even...

...and Ron Paul would absolutely wreck all of it, if he were to be President.

Ron Paul would bring the most realistic foreign policy to the White House that we’ve seen since... well, since Reagan at least (and even there some will argue that many policies of that administration were influenced too much by the pre-trib thought as well). Paul definitely WON'T be guided by delusions that he is being led by God to do something apocalyptic with the Middle-East. That's also why the Bush camp would rather Paul go down: Ron Paul's success would repudiate the entire illusion that George W. Bush has somehow been "favored of God" all this time.

And if it's not bad enough that Ron Paul would postpone the Apocalypse, his belief in a strict interpretation of the Constitution plays major havoc with the "evangelical conservative" belief that it must seize power over people's lives in order to create a "moral" country. Just as Ron Paul would be and is now shunned by "liberals" who want more government control over our lives, so too does their "conservative Christian" counterparts, who have just as much hunger for power... if not moreso.

That is why Ron Paul will not be supported by the so-called "evangelical Christians" for the most part: because he's not going to be a "team player" so far as helping God along with the end of the world goes, and he doesn't believe that some people should be given more power... even if they do ask for it in the name of Christ.

I'll close this post with one of my favorite quotes by Stanley Hauerwas, which I think encapsulates this situation better than anything I could say:

"Let me be as clear as I can be: the God of 'God and country' is not the God of Jesus Christ."

-- Stanley Hauerwas

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