During the Vietnam war, there were buttons saying "Kill a Commie for Christ".

Today we have "Torture a terrorist for Christ".

Do those in the war room really understand what Christ actually meant? Rhetorical question.

I just made up a word. My Logogenistic first.

And I declare Diopomorphism to mean this-Imbuing and projecting personal/human qualities upon God.

Which I see throughout this thread. Men have ruined this Earth with whatever they could get their hands on. Including Christ's teachings. Including guns.

I love how one is ridiculed, one revered.

Diopomorphism.
"I have no faith in atheists."
God is Good, God is Great.

,

AMEN,......AMEN,.........AMEN.

Ah, this country has come so far in 110 years:

"I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight; and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night it came to me this way--I don't know how it was, but it came: (1) That we could not give them [the Phillipine Islans] back to Spain--that would be cowardly and dishonorable; (2) that we could not turn them over to France or Germany--our commercial rivals in the Orient--that would be bad business and discreditable; (3) that we could not leave them to themselves--they were unfit for self-government--and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was; and (4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died."

--William McKinley, 1899

(taken from Killing Hope by William Blum)

In this world now at this time there are perhaps a few remote Tribes left that still live as close to the Original Way or Old was as possible in places like the Amazon Jungles living simply with each other & off the bounty of the earth provided by Creator through nature.

Perhaps living as close to the pure way with one another & the earth as human beings can get as they haven't been completely swallowed up by the moola hoop cash register world, but of course they know it is creeping up on them, too.

As Tribal communalists they perhaps live in most Righteous way with one another & the earth as possible. Doesn't mean they are perfect, don't have problems, or even problems between one another from time to time like any people but they have the spiritual gift of forgiveness between one another & know they either function as a Tribe or they don't meaning they know each person is important.

If I were much much much younger I'd at least try to disappear into the rain forest & find a Tribe to live with to get back to just living without 6 million or 6 billion laws, however many political parties, or forms of worldly govts they offer, without computers, tv's, cars, & all the rest of that comes with it.

And yet I am happy to be a part of Creator's creation, but I am just a part. Love being out in nature with Creator's critters, & other life forms. Old enough & at least wise enough to know I am not going to solve this world's problems, nor have I seen any solutions that are going to solve this world problems as the NWO/One World Govt have their plans laid out down the time line anywhere from 5 to 50 years, but Creator may just have other plans as while I hate to use cliches, the plans of mice of men often go astray.

They just want to control everyone through all their laws, politics, money, and their Banks & Corporations that all their Institutions form a Pyramid like the one on the back of their dollar bill. All they have essentianly done is create a slave world where they are the Masters, and everyone else down through all their Pyramids are the slaves at all the various levels.

All an individual can do is Spiritually Reject their world, and not worship them or their world. Even Russell Means at his website was talking about how in many Tribes there are those that just want to be President or whatever of the Tribe because that is where the money & power are at so in those situations they no longer care about the Tribe as a whole but just want the money & power too.

So all things do translate into a selfish world of I got to pay my "bills" first for myself, & mine. Yet all of us still have that Tribal aspect to our lives if he we help one another even in a spiritual manner through this world, help our friends, & help strangers as we are able, love our enemies who's ego's are merely wrapped up in themselves & this world.

In the realm of their political world Ron Paul told them the truth that if there are other Nations out there that hate them it's because they keep screwing over all those other Nations in more ways than one.

It's just always strange to me how people think that they have some right to go into other people's Nations, kill them, steal their lands, set up puppet govts, steal all their natural resources, & then try to dress it up and sell it as being Good or themselves as being Good.

It's just a strange world.

Life is good. What an experience! It's always best to forgive.

Here is the comment by GoldenMean from the article "Torture Is Not a New US Foreign Policy Tool" by Cesar Chelala. It was in response to perry logans post which asks the questions: Might there be a direct connection between Christianity and the use of torture?

You bring up a good point of the correlation between modern Christianity and the use of torture...
It has been the case since the cooptation of "Christianity" by Constantine at the Council of Nicea in the 5th cent ad...
the Roman Empire was losing control of it's various pagan ethnic groups, and the emperor wanted to consolidate his power while culling the growing number of Christian zealots who were vocal about the brutal atrocities of empire, like crucifixions, as state sanctioned public displays of torture and murder...
The original "Christians" were a "literalist" spin-off of the Gnostic Mystery Schools, like the Theraputae and the Essenes (who had written the dead sea scrolls)... The Gnostics writings were symbolic narrative "road maps" for initiates to understand the path that the soul/ego must travel in order to identify with the "higher mind" aka Universal Spirit, of which each of our souls is but a fractal of the totality...
The gnostics drew from the traditions of Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Persia, Judaism (which also borrowed heavily from those traditions) and even from the Buddhist monks in the near east at the time... The Gnostics recognized the common wisdom inherent in all religions, and using the trade languages of the time (especially written Greek) they sought to write a universal story that kept all the important common themes (son of god, enlightenment, reincarnation, karma, etc) and strip it of the disparate regional cultural idiosynchraties, and story that was set in a contemporary storyline to make it more appealing to a multi-cultural audience...
They also wrote the Jesus Myth to call bullshit on the brutal roman empire, and the corrupt Sadduccees who had turned the Temple into a "pay to play" prayer service, holding court until the return of the Messiah... The gnostics wrote that the Announted One had already come and gone, and the "money changers" hadn't even noticed, thus exposing their greed and aloofness...
Unfortunately, the true intention of using the Jesus story as a guide for spiritual growth on the path of enlightenment was lost on many ignorant folks who took a "literalist" interpretation of a symbolic language encoded to protect the higher wisdom from being bastardized by the uninitiated... The literalist fools soon found themselves building huge congregations and justifying their acts of terrorism against the State, which in turn threw them to the lions... Eventually, the empire embraced the hollow shell of Christianity to justify the conquests of foreign lands and conformity of the vassals of empire... They perverted the "crucifixion" story to say "don't fuck with empire, we will even torture and kill the son of god!"... And they selected only a few books for the biblical canon, and stripped them of any meaning that did not suit the needs for empire...

Christians are all too likely to argue that non violence as practised by Jesus is only for fools and the naive. They argue strenuously for might to assert right - what is the point of living by your principles if you are dead, they will query, and then procede to attack as anti Christian those who object to this. More trickily they will worry at translations, trying to transform a straightforward injunction against taking life into a partial endorsement of divinely sanctioned massacre, torture, execution, assassination and slaughter. This isn't just about the military, this is about the public which finances the military and idolises it. The rot runs to the core of our society and only honesty can even start to cure it.

Jesus did put a Spiritual Curse on this world by saying he did not come to bring peace to this world but to take peace from this world. Jesus was talking about a Spiritual Sword to divide out his followers from the world of man as Jesus taught his Father's/Creator's Spiritual Kingdom that is not of the world of man, this world.

Jesus was instructing his original disciples that they were still going to have to live in this world under the world of man's Govts, & religions no matter what worldly govt of men they were born under or conquered by as time continued on as prophecy continued to be fulfilled or which one is God/Creator stating they will be killing thinking they are doing him a favor.

Just as the Religious Leaders of the Temple, not all, thought they were doing God a favor by killing Jesus. This is not necessarily limited to any one religion, nation's or people's of the world of man.

Without judgment in the historical context on the large scale in what is called, Christianity it began with the Catholic Church who just began murdering, stealing, theiving, and torturning in Jesus's name instead of Caesars.

There wouldn't be any shortage of other so called Christian Denominations that split off & did the same thing & would do the same things when they got to this land, but there were Sects out of Europe who did their best to try & not do such things so at least they were trying.

The Puritans killed off anyone who got in thier way as they merely leveled all their own self-righteous judgments on Native peoples & their own people, too, as they thought they were doing God some big favor by killing people.

Love your friends. Love your enemies. When you love your enemies you don't seek out your own personal self-venengence upon them, you forgive them. Forgive & you will be forgiven. In returning good for evil done to you one can state to their enemies, well you can think about things this way, too, as their are always alternative ways of thinking about things upon planet earth.

God saying they will be killing thinking they are doing him a favor may tie into God saying he will send strong delusion upon this world so they will believe a lie & they will all be damned as they think by killing they are doing him some favor.

This may tie into that they will be worshipping the Beast & the Image of the Beast. They may be think by doing all this killing they are doing God a favor & this Beast of Revelation composed of many Beast Kingdom's & Mystery Babylon is doing God's work when it is doing the work of the devil/evil.

God has already cast his Judgment upon any who worship the Beast & the Image of the Beast. Mystery Babylon may be the key that builds this globalist system of the Beast often refered to as the New World Order/Same Old Crap/One World Govt. Many prophetic researchers consider the U.S. may be Mystery Babylon as she fornicates with all the Kings of the earth possibly through the U.N., Trade Agreements, Secret Societies, Banks & Corporations.

A large part of this may be her Religious System that supports & loves all these things she offers to them thinking Mystery Babylon that is an utter abomination before God made them free as they believe in their illusionary freedom & they say, Oh, yeah, we have to go into these other people's lands & kill them.

Prophecy states that is what is going to happen but it doesn't state one has to make these things happen as prophecy states that is what the Beast will be doing.

Just as the Hopi Prophet foretold man made fire pretty much burning this land off the face of the earth that became a possible reality in the 1940's. Even though the Hopi Prophet foretold this thing the Hopi didn't set out to learn the knowledge to invent such weapons & would have thought anyone who would invent such weapons to be pretty stupid.

And yet the prophecy of Mystery Babylon states that God is going to put it into the minds of men to burn Mystery Babylon in one hour. That sounds quite a bit like man made fire to do this thing in one hour's time.

So if, and I use the word, if, the U.S. turns out to be Mystery Babylon then God doesn't have any love for her at all. Kind of really strange paradoxically when you think about things.

From there in Rev 19 Jesus returns as he & those with him rejoice over the destruction of Mystery Babylon. Jesus will be in his Spiritual Body then, and not in one these human bodies that are usually more trouble than they are worth anyways. Up keep on them sure keeps going up on them all the time, too, in the moola hoop of the Mammon worshippers.

But for me just another day closer to the completion of my journey through this world of whatever this world is?

Life is good. What an experience! It's always best to forgive.

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

Voltaire

Check out this on Alternet:

http://www.alternet.org/politics/140221/bush%27s_shocking_biblical_prophecy_emerges%3A_god_wants_to_%2...

GWB actually thinks god was speaking to him. And he used his conversations with the almighty and his version of Biblical prophecy to urge Jacques Chirac to join the coalition of the willing. It is no wonder that France declined. Pity Chirac did not divulge the content of his negotiations with Bush at the time. I think most of the rest of the world, and perhaps enough Americans, would have recognized the insanity, the lack of real justification. Maybe the US desire for war would have been sufficiently discredited to have aborted it before it was born.

Rumsfeld's use of biblical passages was a cynical manipulation of Bush's mental disability. He knew W would be impressed by the pictures and quotes in large print on the cover and would probably never bother to read the contents.

Interesting string with interesting opinions. The civility was encouraging and welcome. No one here but good people today.

But I believe we can all agree to honor the folks that this day was set aside for. All those kids that didn't come home. No matter whose side they were on.

Perhaps the Lord will grant some sanity to us someday and we can reach that state where soldiers and policemen aren't needed.

God grant us peace soon.

Wars, agression, slaughter - what a wonderfully hate filled "How To Do It" manual is the Bible.
It's perfect reading for a charnel house.
When Cheney and his band of Neo-Cons started Bush's lie based assault of Pipelinistan I bought a Bhagavad-Gita and, like Arjuna, argued with the 'chariot driver' until he was blue in the face. It seems that we are doomed to slaughter our fellow man and be slaughtered in return.
The Whitehouse has become a great grinning bleached skull. With the tick of time all is lost but never fear nothing is happening. Why worry? Life is short and nations, like worlds, come and go without end.

I can't help but think that right wing Christianity is becoming the great defender of capitalism.

Echoes of the past. I was a campus minister from 1968 to 1975--the VietNam years. During the first few years any poor boy who turned 18 and could not stay in college for whatever reason, or who did not know somebody who could keep him out of the draft, was headed, often against his will, to Vietnam. We spent many long hours discussing the morality of having to kill or being shot for mutiny. We also wondered about the morality of many churches supplying chaplains for the military who were officers and, as such, had to walk the company line. There is no clear answer. Killing is killing, and no matter how it is legally justified, no matter what moral defense is provided for the act, the person doing it later has to pay a horrible price in terms of PTSD and even greater horrors. The veterans of WWII, this nation's last clear cut act of self defense, experienced the horrors of the action until their deaths 60 years later.
You can parse, cut and dice the verbage--kill, murder, slay, destroy--but an unseen moral force pushes its way into the intellect of man and makes its appearance in a written code such as that of Hamarabi, or Moses, or Mohammed. Killing is bad. St. Paul referred to this moral force as the law written on fleshy tablets of the human heart. Individually we know it is wrong. But society will find a way to keep the killing going. Be glad if you somehow escaped the role of the executioner.

And how is this any different from Jihad?(which I believe is the fight in everyones own mind>right vs. wrong, good vs. evil) Time for an evolutionary quantum leap in thinking before we are all extinct. oh yeah, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE...(not rationales for hate and destruction).."You'll know we are Christians by our LOVE...!!!!" Hello? Anyone out there?

It should be pointed out that using religion to justify killing is exactly what Al-Qaida does. Against the moral outrage of moderate Muslims, Bin Laden has forced his brand of religious extremism to 'represent Islam' to the rest of the world. So, if we want a modern-day example of how dangerous the mix of religion and warfare can be, we need look no further than our enemy.

Yet, many Americans are taught that the problem with the enemy isn't the extremism, its the religion itself, and therefore that problem couldn't attach itself to us. Although Bush tried to say that Islam isn't the problem, that isn't what most American warriors are hearing every Sunday. This further excuses their own growing religious extremism, since 'it can't happen here'.

I don't care what your religion is: People heading for 'eternal damnation' are incredibly easy to objectify. They become 'cardboard people', whose feelings, fears, and loves 'don't matter'. Many religions try to fight that objectification by saying 'love your neighbor as you'd love yourself'. But this is equally dangerous: for it implies that the right to humanhood of the nonbeliever resides in the believer. So, even though you're heading for hell, I'm still going to treat you AS IF YOU WERE HUMAN. Hooray for me! Such conditional humanhood leaves open the danger of relapse in the believer: 'I made you and I can unmake you just as well'. The intrinsic humanity of the non-believer is lost, regardless of the teaching. That humanity can only be regained, I believe, by a sense of doubt in the believer, the humility of 'not being sure'. Once such a sense of doubt is internalized, other human beings can be more easily seen as the tragic figures they often are, worthy of our compassion, if of nothing else. The problem, of course, is that that sense of internal doubt comes at a tremendous cost. People who doubt are personally wounded, incapable of being the force that true-believers are.

Any small group of organized, highly dedicated people can dominate any sector of society. They join and then recruit like-minded people and generally create a clubhouse environment where they all feel good. When any one of them rises, s/he brings his "team" with him.

There's nothing surprising about this, it's the way of the human race.

When things turn, though, and the group abuses its position and turns the power of the larger organization towards furthering the goals of the group, you got problems. For example, who cares what religion the officers practice as long as they serve the military and the military's goals? However, if they seek to use military power to serve their own goals, it's a problem.

How to correct it? Counter-organization.

All you Buddhists, yoginis, progressive Unitarians, Muslims, Jews -- get out there and enlist! Apply to West Point and Annapolis. And when you get inside, get together for meditation sessions, yoga sessions, bowing toward Mecca sessions. Recruit and advance your like-minded friends

If you abandon the clubhouse, don't complain about who moves in and takes over!

Am I the only one who instantly thought of this line from "Dr. Strangelove", uttered by the POTUS when high-ranking military officers begin squabbling in the shadow of imminent nuclear apocalypse?:

President Merkin Muffley: Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room.

· Yr Obd't Servant

...and Obama is a veiled christian zealot.

The "evangenerals" rise to power in the military is a really interesting story. I remember clearly in the 80s that as the generation of Vietnam-forged leadership began to retire and retreat from the highest ranks, the younger officers appeared to be more "corporate"--that is, their personal behavior was thoroughly sanitized along the social lines of the ascending Reagan era.

I don't think that there was necessarily a religious conspiracy to evangelize senior leadership. I do think that the behavioral emphasis on the "squeaky clean" officer that emerged with the undeclared war on bad soldierly habits--a cleaning up of the ranks in order to both cut costs and make the military more organizationally stable--led to this moment, by emphasizing the desirability of the "family man" officer over what was seen as the less disciplined,hard-charging officer corps of the past. Promotions were going increasingly to officers who valued organizational blandness and excelled at fitting into a highly bureaucratic system than those who exhibited uniquely personal quirks and suspect social skills.

We RIF'd out a lot of good command material in the late 80s and early 90s, and kept the corporatized officers in droves at the company grade and lower field grade ranks. Now these are the generals, and they are largely dominated by Day Runners, not Blade Runners. These aren't warriors, but technocrats, and their personal views of character hygiene are perfectly compatible with the sanitization of purpose that evangelism has given many of their kind over the years.

Us NCOs who were there during the transition used to often refer to the "Old Army" versus the "New Army", and it turned out we were probably right. We wouldn't have been caught dead taking prayer groups seriously.

I understand that Rumsfield was offering a big bonus for any recruiter who could sign up Joshua along with his band of trumpeters. Only problem was that "the enemy" was out there in plain sight, not hiding behind the city walls.

THOU SHALL NOT KILL!
-YHVH, to Moses on Mount Sinai (Torah)