When  Nietzsche declared that ‘God is Dead’ I didn’t realize that many hard core Christians decided that this meant they were to take over!

I’m going to literally “piss” (excuse my modern colloquialism) a lot of you off with what I’m about to say and if so, that’s a good thing! Maybe it will cause you to take a long hard look at your narrow mind and look into the infinite mind of GOD!

In reading the article about the man who lived like Jesus for a year, I scrolled down to read the comments. I wanted to throw up – some of them made me physically ill.

One person used the comments to support his anti-gay agenda and anti-abortion agenda. Dude! Did you forget that when the Disciples asked Jesus about Old Testament Law with “Master, Which is the great commandment in the law?”  (KJV MAT 22:36) How did Jesus respond?

Did he say, “The entire book of Leviticus is the most important?”  No.

Did he say, “The entire 10 laws of Moses is the most important?” No.

He replied:

Mat 22:37  Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with  all thy  heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

Mat 22:38  This  is the first and great commandment.

Mat 22:39  And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour  as  thyself.

Mat 22:40  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

(KJV)

(And for those who would take me to task about my understanding and research of the Bible, let me refer you to e-sword software. I use it in place of my Hebrew-Greek Study Bible because it looks up the meaning of the original words faster. But I have studied the Bible in it’s original languages and I suggest others do the same. E-sword software is free here: http://e-sword.net/ but I warn you, comparing what was written to how it was translated will make you question a lot!)

Okay, that being said, Jesus said to love your neighbor as you love yourself. He doesn’t include any exemptions there. Jesus DOES NOT say:

Love your neighbor as yourself unless… he’s a homosexual, or she’s a lesbian.

Love your neighbor as yourself unless… she’s had an abortion, he/she is a doctor that performs abortion, or he/she works at an abortion clinic.

Love your neighbor as yourself unless…he/she is an alcoholic and drinks anything but wine, he/she is an addict and abuses drugs, he/she smokes cigarettes, smokes pot, or does anything else that doesn’t fit into your narrow minded brain.

Love your neighbor as yourself unless…he/she is NOT a Christian.

If you are going to quote the Biblical law and expect that it should be followed, why are you taking only ONE of those laws out of the entire book? If you want to be held according to the Biblical law, then you have to take every last one of them mentioned in Leviticus not just Leviticus 18:22.

You cannot pick and choose which one of the laws are acceptable and which are not! If you are going to QUOTE any of them and declare them an edict from GOD, then you need to QUOTE them all and LIVE them all!

You alleged Christian’s that walk around quoting scripture without a clue about what you’re saying are no different then the hypocrites that Jesus spoke about!

Additionally, the Bible IS NOT the definitive work on Jesus’ life! One person wrote in the comments that Jesus didn’t drink beer, he drank wine. How the HECK do you know that? Yes, wine is mentioned in the Bible in reference to the wedding miracle and it was a standard drink for the time, but how the heck can you claim to know what Jesus did? Were you there?

Even Josephus, the great historian of the time, mentions Jesus of Nazareth in passing. There are no other known documents other than the writings that are included in the Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the texts from Nag Hammâdi that even reference he existed. And they focus on his teachings not his daily habits!

Now this comment makes me wish that Jesus would come back and set the record straight right here, right now:

From what I read in Bible I know Jesus wouldn’t approve of homosexuality and abortion like Obama does! How can that crazy man compare Jesus to a man who approves all of this things? It made me sick to see him talk like that about Jesus!!!

Despite belief to the contrary, Obama is our President elect. He IS NOT the new Messiah!

How in the name of anything that is Divine can you even begin to compare the two? If Jesus wanted you to mix Politics with the Kingdom of God, don’t you think he would have led the revolution and established the New World Order himself?

You religious zealots make me sick to see you talk about Jesus that way!

The Bible, the same one I read that you allegedly have read states in Hosea:

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge…
(KJV Hos 4:6)

If I were introduced to the Christian faith by believers such as this, I would’ve ran to the other side of the Universe to get away from them!

Jesus taught that we were not to judge, yet all I see is judgement and condemnation out of people professing they are Christians or Christ followers.

Jesus taught love – unconditional love – which is the love of GOD. Yet all I see is hatred and contempt for anyone who doesn’t believe as you do.

Jesus taught compassion, and all you know is cruelty and tyranny against those who do not believe as you do.

Jesus, the Christ (a title, not a last name, meaning the anointed) must be a different historical figure for me because I could never see Jesus making the kind of rude and critical judgments on the world as I see supposed followers do.

I am so glad that I learned Christianity from believers who walked the walk as well as talked the talk! Their loving acceptance of me then – as a non-believer – made me want to have what they had. There was a joy and happiness about them that I wanted. There was a peace and glow about them that I wanted. That’s what led me to Christ – THEIR EXAMPLE!

If the examples of Christianity that I’m seeing is what Christianity is becoming, then I am saddened. Deeply saddened for the faith as a whole, and for those who preach a message of condemnation, judgment, hatred, and dogma in the name of one of our greatest teachers – Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ.

Tags: abortion, Christian, Christianity, gays, god, homosexual, jesus, lesbian

I was reading an article on Yahoo news about a recent televised suicide of a Chicago man in Switzerland. The article aims to call attention to the fact that these ‘mercy killings’ or ‘assisted suicide’ might be conducted more for financial gain than for the purpose of ending a life with dignity.

I really didn’t think much about the whole article until I read one line that stated, “A small religious party is campaigning to ban groups from charging for their services…”

Now the article didn’t state which ‘small religious group’ this was, and I of course, am making a leap here when I assume it would be a Christian-based belief system. But whether Christian-based or not, I have a problem with this statement and a few others in regards to killings, assisted suicides, and death penalties.

If I remember my Bible correctly, Exodus 20:13 (KJV) states: “Thou shalt not kill.” Which is one of the Ten Commandments given to Moses, and is supposed to be upheld by any religious belief system that adheres to the teaching of the Old Testament.

The problem I have with the current moral judgments of people under the guises of their religious beliefs is that they seem to be situational ethicists or situational moralists. Meaning, it depends upon the situation as to whether killing is acceptable or not.

I don’t remember the tablets saying, “Thou shalt not kill, except….”

The fact that the Yahoo article points out that a small religious party would find the services acceptable as long as there was not a charge, goes a little against the grain with me! I’m not making a moral judgment on whether assisted suicide or mercy killings are acceptable or not, what is irking me is that a group of allegedly ‘Godly’ belief systems would even think that killing is acceptable as long as there was no financial gain.

Does this imply that poverty equals piety? And does the fact that money is removed from the transaction make it more palatable?

Many years ago on my spiritual path I had to resolve an inner conflict with the fact that as a seeker of the truth, how could I justify the death of another in any given situation. How could I say that murder was wrong but yet justify the murder of the criminal by use of the death penalty? Murder is murder. Killing is killing. There’s no gray area here.

My truth became just that. Murder, killing, or being the cause of death to another living being was unjustifiable. I chose to no longer support the death penalty. I chose to catch and release insects rather than kill them in our home.

Now, I want to point out that I am human and there are some exceptions that I have to make in order to live peacefully within my home. Unfortunately for field mice, there’s no humane way for me to catch and release them. So, I do, when forced to, use a circular trap that causes a humane instant death rather than wait for our cat to give it a slow and agonizing death. And while this may sound totally corny to you, I do feel terrible for having to do so and apologize to mother earth, God, and the mouse for having to kill it.

I don’t know where I stand personally on the subject of taking your own life in order to die with dignity. This is something I will have to meditate on further now that it’s been called to my attention.

Having been raised Catholic originally; I was always taught that only God has the right to take a life. But I know now through my spiritual walk that God doesn’t kill people, although through our lack of understanding death we attribute it to the Divine. And I say this as ‘my truth‘ and not to imply that you should believe the way I do. You need to decide your truth for yourself.

So, I propose the question to you, fellow seeker, when is murder or killing another – or yourself – acceptable to you and why?

To read the article that posed the question to me and prompted this writing see:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081214/ap_on_re_eu/eu_switzerland_dying_with_dignitas

Tags: assisted suicide, be situational ethicists, catholic, Christian, Christianity, death, death penalty, dignity, killing, moral, moralist, morality, murder, suicide, Switzerland