"All Iraqis should be converted. All of the Middle East , as a matter of fact. It's a spiritual war.
We are fighting the forces of Darkness "
" Conflict is a natural part of the Christian Life."
The problem is the assumption by these Evangelical Christians that all other views of Christianity are false . They believe their's is the only true path to redemption and salvation. And all other religions are not just false or in error but are the tools of Satan and the Anti-Christ. The theological views of these Radical Christian Evangelicals are not just theological but also contian a political agenda.
Since these Evangelicals believe in the End-Times primarily found in The Book Of Revelation of the New Testament . They believe that Israel must be expanded to include within it all of the land which was part of ancient Judea. There must also be the rebuilding of The Temple in Jerusalem so that animal sacrifices ( especially the red heffer ) can be made to the God Jahweh. Once this is done then the clock of the end-times will be started leading to the Rapture, the time of the Tribulation, the rule of the Anti-Christ and the Battle of Armageddon . Meanwhile a remnant of the Jews in Israel will be converted to Christianity. Then Christ will return . But the Jews are merely pawns or bit players though absolutely necessary in this scenario. But before the the return of Christ the Word of God as defined by Evangelical Fundamentalist Christians must be preached to every living soul on earth so that those preached to can accept or reject this spiritual message of Jesus . This proselyticing to the world is called " The Great Commission ".
IT IS THEREFORE IN THEIR BEST INTEREST TO SUPPORT THE sTATE OF iSRAEL AND TO PROMOTE THE EXPANSION OF iSRAEL BYOND ITS PRESENT BORDERS AND TO EXPEL ALL NON JEWS FROM THAT TERRITORY.
These Evangelical Christians also believe that the more chaos there is in the world especially in the Middle East is necessary to fulfill the prophecies of the Book Of Revelation. So if one were to bring about a lasting peace in the Middle East it would mean that the Prophecies were not being fulfilled . But the hope of these Chistians is that the peace is a sham set up by the Anti-Christ who deceives the nations by claiming to bring peace to the world. In that case the peace will only last a short time as the Anti-Christ proceeds with his plans to rule the whole of the world. In any case this explains why Christian Evangelicals are against any attempt at solutions which would bring about a long lasting peace. They also equate all International organizations such as the United Nations or the World court or International agreements such as the Geneva Conventions as tools of the Anti-Christ and his minions who hate the One True God.
As Chis Hedges points out in the following article the Radical Christian Evangelicals have used their influence to contravene the tradition of the Separation of Church and State to promote their world view to the United States military and American institutions to further achieve their agenda of spreading their version of the Gospels and to silence or wipeout all who do not accept their theological views and agenda. In the article he characterizes the three former Muslims who have become Born Again Christians as frauds who make a number of unsupotable claims about numerous " sleeper Cells" in America and the West. They also claim that muslim extremists as terroists are not a minority but are are representative of the majority of Muslims.
Christian Right's Emerging Deadly Worldview: Kill Muslims to Purify the Earth, By Chris Hedges, Truthdig. February 12, 2008.Christian extremists are preaching a war against tolerance to target and persecute all Muslims, including the 6 million who live in the U.S.
Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani are the three stooges of the Christian right. These self-described former Muslim terrorists are regularly trotted out -- a few days ago they were at the Air Force Academy -- to spew racist filth about Islam on behalf of groups such as Focus on the Family. It is a clever tactic. Curly, Larry and Mo, who all say they are born-again Christians, engage in hate speech and assure us it comes from personal experience. They tell their audiences that the only way to deal with one-fifth of the world's population is by converting or eradicating all Muslims. Their cant is broadcast regularly on Fox News, including the Bill O'Reilly and Neil Cavuto shows, as well as on numerous Christian radio and television programs. Shoebat, who has written a book called Why We Want to Kill You, promises in his lectures to explain the numerous similarities between radical Muslims and the Nazis, how "Muslim terrorists" invaded America 30 years ago and how "perseverance, recruitment and hate" have fueled attacks by Muslims.
These men are frauds, but this is not the point. They are part of a dark and frightening war by the Christian right against tolerance that, in the moment of another catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil, would make it acceptable to target and persecute all Muslims, including the some 6 million Muslims who live in the United States. These men stoke these irrational fears. They defend the perpetual war unleashed by the Bush administration and championed by Sen. John McCain. McCain frequently reminds listeners that "the greatest danger facing the world is Islamic terrorism," as does Mike Huckabee, who says that "Islamofascism" is "the greatest threat this country [has] ever faced." George W. Bush has, in the same vein, assured Americans that terrorists hate us for our freedoms, not, of course, for anything we have done. Bush described the "war on terror" as a war against totalitarian Islamofascism while the Israeli air force was dropping tens of thousands of pounds of iron fragmentation bombs up and down Lebanon, an air campaign that killed 1,300 Lebanese civilians.
And:
...This creeping Christian chauvinism has infected our political and social discourse. It was behind the rumor that Barack Obama was a Muslim. Obama reassured followers that he was a Christian. It apparently did not occur to him, or his questioners, that the proper answer is that there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim, that persons of great moral probity and courage arise in all cultures and all religions, including Islam. Christians have no exclusive lock on virtue. But this kind of understanding often provokes indignant rage.
The public denigration of Islam, and by implication all religious belief systems outside Christianity, is part of the triumphalism that has distorted the country since the 9/11 attacks. It makes dialogue with those outside our "Christian" culture impossible. It implicitly condemns all who do not think as we think and believe as we believe as, at best, inferior and usually morally depraved. It blinds us to our own failings. It makes self-reflection and self-criticism a form of treason. It reduces the world to a cartoonish vision of us and them, good and evil. It turns us into children with bombs.
These three con artists are not the problem. There is enough scum out there to take their place. Rather, they offer a window into a worldview that is destroying the United States. It has corrupted the Republican Party. It has colored the news media. It has entered into the everyday clichés we use to explain ourselves to ourselves. It is ignorant and racist, but it is also deadly. It grossly perverts the Christian religion. It asks us to kill to purify the Earth. It leaves us threatened not only by the terrorists who may come from abroad but the ones who are rising from within our midst.
and so it goes,
GORD.
No comments:
Post a Comment