"Love mercy, show kindness, and walk humbly with your God"
"I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you made me welcome, lacking clothes and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in prison and you came to see me... in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me"
"He has filled the starving poor with good things, and sent the rich away empty"
"The spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim a year of favour [when the poor would be forgiven their debts] from the Lord"
Jesus didn't talk about torturing people, he talked about helping the poor. George Washington forbade the use of torture even in the darkest days of the American Revolution when the British were doing it to our troops. Jesus and Washington seem to be the two people conservatives claim as their greatest heroes. Can you explain this to us, guys? The answer to "What Would Jesus Do" is definitely not torture.
Okay, you probably guessed it: the socialist tract of which I speak is what is otherwise known as the Christian Bible. I've looked all through it for passages about how you should torture people, and perpetuate cruelty, but I couldn't seem to find them.
This is from a Mike Lux column at Huffington Post, read it all here
EDITED; this post seems confusing because I took snippets from a post by Lux, you really need to read the whole thing to grasp what he was talking about with Jesus references. I added another paragraph, it's speaks more to torture then to charity. We got a little sidetracked.....
When I say UnPatriotic, and UnAmerican, that is speaking to torture. It is UnAmerican.....
The pro-torture crowd has taken over modern conservatism. People at the CPAC convention are firing themselves up with cries of "waterboard them" and cheering wildly as speakers advocated locking political prisoners away forever at Gitmo. Republicans are embracing a movement that trafficks in secessionism, birtherism, and making threats about armed revolt.
Those who attended CPAC and claim to be Christians, those who actually READ the Bible, those who applaud hateful, racist speeches, do you not see yourselves as we see you? UnPatriotic, UnAmerican, that's how we see you. Do you even care?
9 minutes ago
29 comments:
Amen, Sistah, amen! Thank you for this post. I will never understand the hypocrisy inherent in the Christian Right (or wrong, depending on your perspective...) Short, sweet, powerful and to the point. A great post.
And y'know what? 12 years of Catholic school and reading/studying the Bible and I can't find the "torture your neighbor as yourself" verse either...huh. Maybe the Bush administration redacted it???
I suppose if Jesus were to be standing in our midst, and we were able to ask Him what He thinks of torture- after once being scourged nearly to death, crowned with thorns, made to carry a 50lb wooden crossbeam about a mile in His weakened state to which He was nailed and left to die....I don't think He'd be rubber stamping torture.
That's what I think "Jesus WOULDN'T do".
Deuteronomy says you can stone your disobedient children.
Gotta love those absolutes.
thanks to Mike Lux, he did a great job and I hope you go read the whole post.
I wonder when the conservatives will drop using the phrase conservative Christians? It really doesn't fit their image anymore. They have lost their way it seems. More violence, more hate, can you get any farther from the teachings of the Bible then they are?
Does anyone know if they have men of God speaking at CPAC?
We're living in a country where tens of millions of so-called conservatives would rather embrace outright and absurdly silly paranoid lies, go bankrupt, fail, lose our place in history and saddle ourselves with virtually infinite debt than work constructively with a moderate, decent, smart, kind and honest black man.
that's a paragraph from Frank Schaeffers latest post, you can get there from my bloglist if you want to read the whole thing, it's good!
C are you reading the Bible again? :-)
It never did fit them.
This is their oldest hypocritical position. That they are Christians. That they follow the preachings of Christ. That they treat people as Jesus taught.
They call the poor "bums." They claim it is a crime against them, to have to pay for the weak in our society.
The statement, "A nation is judged by the way they treat the weakest (children, elderly, sick, starving) in their society, means nothing to them.
They see it as a weakness, to help their fellow humans.
The Bible contains ample material aligning it with the ideologies of bigotry and cruelty.
I'm one of the lefties that doesn't hide from my Christianity. That being said, I will never vote for anyone that uses God as a campaign issue. I don't care what party they belong to.
In May of last year, the Gallup polling organization asked 1,200 American adults about their giving patterns. People who called themselves "conservative" or "very conservative" made up 42% of the population surveyed, but gave 56% of the total charitable donations. In contrast, "liberal" or "very liberal" respondents were 29% of those polled but gave just 7% of donations.
These disparities were not due to differences in income. People who said they were "very conservative" gave 4.5% of their income to charity, on average; "conservatives" gave 3.6%; "moderates" gave 3%; "liberals" gave 1.5%; and "very liberal" folks gave 1.2%.
Conservatives Give More To Charity Than Liberals
silver, do you think if you give more to charity then you are a good Christian? A more faithful, more humble, more kind, God-fearing Christian then a liberal who is a Christian? I know you would say no to that so this poll doesn't hold water. Do you think conservatives like to give huge amounts to charities because they claim them on their taxes? Hmmmmm, maybe
Of course charitable giving is not the only measure of Christianity, but this is a measurable statistic that bears on what you are saying.
Feeding the hungry and clothing the naked can be a dicey project if you don't know what you're doing. Thank God we have charities that do a good job of it.
How could heartless cruel greedy bastard conservatives give more than soft, loving liberals?
It's an interesting question.
LOL, silver you do amuse me!
It is the conservatives at CPAC who are talking hate, they do sound kinda heartless now don't they? :-)
It may be true that conservatives donate more money to charities - partly for tax write-offs and as a way to ease their conscience for not getting in touch with the untouchables.
Liberals, on the otherhand, don't mind getting down and dirty - working the food banks, delivering meals to the poor in rough neighborhoods, volunteering for after school care, etc.
Before anybody starts screaming, both types of giving are valuable and there is a lot of overlap between the groups.
Leslie I believe the tax write-off thing too.
ya know my friend Donna who used to come by alot, well she does so much for the homeless in her county of NJ. She is a hard workin' girl and I am SOOOOO proud of the wonderful things she does. Not to mention she is an Obama Mama!! LOL
Once upon a time, I was heading up a university architecture library. Some wealthy Houston oilman gave this little bitty library $20,000. He made no bones about needing it for a tax write-off. Hell, we didn't care. Architecture books are prohibitively expensive and we were desparate for new books.
So, one way to look at the tax write-off is that it does benefit the charity.
@Tnlib:
"Before anybody starts screaming, both types of giving are valuable and there is a lot of overlap between the groups."
Amen.
Sue: I've never been one who slavers after the red meat (unless it's off my grill), so I haven't been paying attention. I do want to see if CSPAN replays Glenn Beck's speech.
this seems like a silly argument. giving to charity is an american value, it doesn't belong to one side of the isle more than the other.
Now torture is a whole other thing. AND, definitely NOT an american value and it sad that the right wants to own it and treat it like a badge of honor...torture ruins everything american
Susan this post wasn't specifically about charity, silver brought it up so we've been a little sidetracked. You are the first to bring up the torture part and you are so correct. It's sure to leave its mark in Americas history, not good...
I didn't see Becks speech either, but there were some doozies the past couple days.
"this seems like a silly argument. giving to charity is an american value, it doesn't belong to one side of the isle more than the other."
This is true, but charities aren't really particular about the motives of a donor as long as the donor gives.
I added another paragraph from Lux's post, this piece speaks more to torture not charity. Please read the whole post by clicking the link
since we're talking about conservative values, CDM thought I should add this
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16680-porn-in-the-usa-conservatives-are-biggest-consumers.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
sorry Susan, Utah has the largest percentage of porn viewers, just not on Sundays! :-))))
Sue, you do realize that the headline "Porn in the USA: Conservatives are biggest consumers" is titillating but incorrect according to the report itself.
Read the study's methodology and how they control for broadband versus narrowband connections.
Also, since he looked voting districts, one would have to assume that the entire district voted "conservative" to tag this to Christians.
In fact, the correlation is to voting district, controlled for type of connection.
Study after study shows that the happiest Americans are married Church-going Christian Conservatives. They also have the most sex. Don't take my word for it, go google it.
Maybe the porn surfers are the frustrated Al Gore fans in these conservative districts.
It's all just speculation until someone can reliably disaggregate the data.
maybe they are having so much sex because of so much porn watching, that makes sense! :-))
Oh Sue, you crack me up!
I apologize for hijacking the thread.
Back to the torture thing. They're making light of it more than signing on to the Marquis de Sade school of diplomacy.
They're not advocating torturing American "libruls," but rather arch-conservative, 7th century misogynist obscurantists who want us all dead, who enjoy collapsing walls on gays, and who chain women to the kitchen after mutilating their genitals. Let's keep things in perspective.
I try! lol
Silver we are a civilized nation, we do not torture, period. We don't need to torture. Cheney is dead wrong.
Question: If Dick sucks his thumb, would that be considered sucking dick?
no C, that would just be Dickless sucking on his thumb.....
Great Post Sue!!! Keep calling the conservative hypocrites out!
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