Advisory: Sometimes I write about subjects which I know bupkis about. If you are a regular reader you probably figured this out. When it comes to religious subjects I admit I know less than bupkis about it, if this is mathematically possible since bupkis is nothing. I was raised a secular Jew who was agnostic about whether God might be real until when I was in my early teens I had a really painful stomach ache. As I sat on the toilet I tried to give prayer a chance and said out loud “God, if you stop the pain I proise to believe in you.” Suffice to say the pain persisted for a long time and since then, while I dont usually give much thought to it, I don’t believe there is any such entitiy or force one could call God.

I read this artilce on RawStory+ (subscription required):

MAGA Mike and the GOP must be stopped from inflicting their ‘Christian’ crusade on America

The article by Thom Hartmann begins:

Mike Johnson wants a religious litmus test for office holders, and thinks environmentalists are possessed by the Devil himself. This shows that his shtick is about power, not Christian religion. If it were about religion, he would be singing an entirely different tune.

Religious charlatans like Speaker Mike Johnson, exploiting a basic human urge to know the unknowable, to touch the mystery of life, are the most despicable of all the various types of con men on Earth. And the most dangerous.

For them, it’s rarely about religion: instead, it’s all about controlling others and acquiring wealth and power for themselves. Which is why more people have been murdered in the name of religion than any other single cause.

My thoughts went to the NAZI regime and just thought I’d use a photo of Mein Kampf for this blog story. I wanted to use a picture of multiple copies of the book and found the one in my illustration and noticed the block on the side that said royalties would go to the British Red Cross Society. Let’s not forget that Hitler wanted the world to believe he was a Christian. (Below, leaving an evangelical Lutheran church and meeting with Vatican ambassador Cesare Orsenigo.)

I wondered why the publishers of the brochure would give royalities to the British Red Cross Society and found an interesting article which fit right in with my thoughts about how Mike Johnson is perverting the teachings of Jesus.

How the Vatican-Red Cross Collusion Helped Hitler’s Henchmen Escape Justice.

I won’t summarize the article here mostly out of laziness. Suffice to say that it shows how people who claim to be doing God’s work can do horrible things.

This should ring a bell when it comes to how American evangelicals, including one who is two heartbeats away from being president, claim to follow the teaching of Jesus when that they say and do are anything but Christ-like.

In his subscription required RawStory+ column, MAGA Mike and the GOP must be stopped from inflicting their ‘Christian’ crusade on America, Thom Hartmann explains that there is only one “place in the Bible where Jesus explicitly tells his disciples what acts they must perform, in their entirety, to get into heaven.”

Feed the hungry, care for refugees, house and clothe the homeless, heal the sick, have compassion on those in prison

Hartmann adds:

Nothing in there about taking over governments, banning books, cursing queer people, or trying to overthrow elections you lost. Nothing about passing laws to enforce your religious beliefs, cripple the IRS, or religious litmus tests. Nothing about controlling women, embracing AR15s, or trickle-down economics.

Similarly, look at how false Christians like Johnson and his Republican buddies behave: it’s definitely not the way Jesus tried to teach them. His greatest teaching, outside of Matthew 25, is found in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7).

Think about how last week a dozen or so “Christians” gathered around MAGA Mike on the floor of the House and loudly prayed for him when you read what Jesus had to say about that: “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 
“But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

Johnson and other evangelicals like him may think that what what they want to do or want to see done would meet with Christ’s approval, or at least this is what they want everyone to believe this is what they believe.

According to the Bible Jesus was not one to be moved to tears with his weeping decribed only three times in the Bible (reference).

Whether Jesus is in Heaven today and is weeping over what is happening in his name today can only be speculated on by believers. But if there is a Heaven where God and Jesus keep watch over the Earth where it was deemed necessary to have a massive flood and start over hoping humans would get it right the second time, there might be something to the notion that Covid and climate change is their way of giving humans a third chance.

If they fail this time maybe this will be a case of three-strikes-and-you’re-out for the human race and if this happens I expect that the dolphins will do a better job once people are gone.

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