A Minister Speaks About Bush being the devil, the immoral
Satan.
Dr. Robin Meyers
I
join ranks of those who are angry, because I have watched as the faith I love
has been taken over by fundamentalists who
claim to speak for Jesus, but whose actions are anything but Christian.
We’ve
heard a lot lately about so-called “moral values” as having swung the election
to President Bush. Well, I’m a great believer in moral values, but we need to
have a discussion, all over this country, about exactly what constitutes a
moral value—I mean what are we talking about?
Because
we don’t get to make them up as we go along, especially not if we are people of
faith. We have an inherited tradition of what is right and wrong, and moral is
as moral does. Let me give you just a few of the reasons why I take issue with
those in power who claim moral values are on their side:
• When you start a war on false
pretenses, (get P.M. Blair to join you, pretending there are reasons, all of
which surfaced in a memo that just came out,) and then act as if your
deceptions are justified because you are doing God’s will, and that your
critics are either unpatriotic or lacking in faith, there are some of us who
have given our lives to teaching and preaching the faith who believe that this
is not only not moral, but immoral.
I had to do what my superiors told
me to do! I was
just following orders!
• When you live in a country that has
established international rules for waging a just war, then break them. When
you build the United Nations on your own soil to enforce the rules you have
broken and then arrogantly LIE about breaking the very rules you set down for
the rest of the world, you are doing something immoral.
• When you claim that Jesus is the Lord of
your life, and yet fail to acknowledge that your policies ignore his essential
teaching, or turn them on their head (you know, Sermon on the Mount stuff like
that we must never return violence for violence and that those who live by the
sword will die by the sword), you are doing something immoral. In any case, it
wasn't IRAQ or AFGHANISTAN who bombed the WTC. So you just used WTC as an
excuse to get oil pipelines laid, in the case of Afghanistan, so you could get
Georgian oil. Or the other, was to switch the IRAQI oil market back to dollars
as Saddam had switched to Euros.
• When you act as if the lives of Iraqi
civilians and their babies are not as important as the lives of American
soldiers, and refuse to even count them, you are doing something immoral.
• When you and all your henchmen find a
way to avoid combat in Vietnam, and then question the patriotism of someone who
volunteered to fight, and came home a hero, you are doing something immoral.
• When you ignore the fundamental
teachings of the gospel, which says that the way the strong treat the weak is
the ultimate ethical test, by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us so
the strong will get stronger and the weak will get weaker, you are doing
something immoral.
• When you wink at the torture of
prisoners, and deprive so-called ”enemy combatants” of the rules of the Geneva
convention, which your own country helped to establish and insists that other
countries follow, you are doing something immoral.
• When you claim that the world can be
divided up into the good guys and the evil doers, slice up your own nation into
those who are with you, or with the terrorists—and then launch a war which
enriches your own friends and seizes control of the oil to which we are
addicted, instead of helping us to kick the habit, you are doing something
immoral.
• When you fail to veto a single spending
bill, but ask us to pay for a war with no exit strategy and no end in sight,
creating an enormous deficit that hangs like a great millstone around the necks
of our children, you are doing something immoral.
• When you cause most of the rest of the
world to hate a country that was once the most loved country in the world, and
act like it doesn’t matter what others think of us, only what God thinks of
you, you have done something immoral.
• When you use hatred of homosexuals as a
wedge issue to turn out record numbers of evangelical voters, and use the
Constitution as a tool of discrimination, you are doing something immoral.
• When you favor the death penalty, and
yet claim to be a follower of Jesus, who said an eye for an eye was the old
way, not the way of the kingdom, you are doing something immoral.
• When you dismantle countless
environmental laws designed to protect the earth which is God’s gift to us all,
so that the corporations that bought you and paid for your favors will make
higher profits while our children breathe dirty air and live in a toxic world,
you have done something immoral. You hand over the earth which belongs to the
Lord and the people to scumbags like Halliburton, Carlyle and Bechtel who go to
third world countries,take all the water pipes and then charge peasants a
month's income for water service, and you hand those countries over to Enron,
G.E.,Hughes, Lockheed so they can bomb civilian babies to dust, create such
hunger that bands of men roam, rape and plunder daily..
• When you claim that our God is bigger
than their God, and that our killing is righteous, while theirs is evil, we
have begun to resemble the enemy we claim to be fighting, and that is immoral.
We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.
• When you tell people that you intend to
run and govern as a ”compassionate conservative,” using the word which is the
essence of all religious faith-compassion, and then show no compassion for
anyone who disagrees with you, and no patience with those who cry to you for
help, you are doing something immoral.
• When you talk about Jesus constantly,
who was a healer of the sick, but do nothing to make sure that anyone who is
sick can go to see a doctor, even if she doesn’t have a penny in her pocket,
you are doing something immoral.
• When you put judges on the bench who are
racist, and will set women back a hundred years, and when you surround yourself
with preachers who say gays ought to be killed, you are doing something immoral.
I’m
tired of people thinking that because I’m a Christian, I must be a supporter of
President Bush, or that because I favor civil rights and gay rights I must not
be a person of faith.
This
country is bankrupt. The war is morally bankrupt. The claim of this
administration to be Christian is bankrupt. And the only people who can turn
things around are people like you—young people who are just beginning to wake
up to what is happening to them. It’s your country to take back. It’s your
faith to take back. It’s your future to take back.
Don’t
be afraid to speak out. Don’t back down when your friends begin to tell you
that the cause is righteous and that the flag should be wrapped around the cross,
while the rest of us keep our mouths shut.
Real
Christians take chances for peace. So do real Jews, and real Muslims, and real
Hindus, and real Buddhists—so do all the faith traditions of the world at their
heart believe one thing: life is precious. Every human being is precious.
Arrogance is the opposite of faith. Greed is the opposite of charity. And
believing that one has never made a mistake is the mark of a deluded man, not a
man of faith.
And
war—war is the greatest failure of the human race—and thus the greatest failure
of faith.
There’s
an old rock and roll song, whose lyrics say it all: War, what is it good for?
Absolutely nothing.
And
what is the dream of the prophets? That we should study war no more, that we
should beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. Who
would Jesus bomb, indeed? How many wars does it take to know that too many
people have died? ONE would be too many Bush Jr, Cheney, Bush Sr. Rumsfeld. ONE
WOULD BE TOO MANY! What if they gave a war and nobody came?
Maybe
one day we will find out.
çBACK
TO THE SECRETS GOV DOES NOT WANT U TO KNOW WEBSITE