The God Question

Ok, so I lied, I didn’t get this posted last night, for some odd reason I felt it more rewarding to fall asleep on the couch while watching a movie. But anyway, as you’ve noticed my last several posts have been about politics, so I thought I would shake it up a bit and hit religion for a moment. What spawned this debate in my head started a couple of days ago with a friend of mine. He is 22, Christian (but not the crazy type), and openly gay. Well with the first week of classes brought the first week of clubs and all that fun stuff. Well my friend decided he wanted to be part of the Christian Student Fellowship, no problem right. WRONG. Before the meeting even began someone stood up and said we don’t welcome fags in our meetings, you’re an abomination against God. Now let me add in some additional information before I continue about the CSF, the girl that is the head of it this year has a 3 year old child outside of marriage, the vice president is on his 2nd DUI, and some of the members I have met are some of the best partiers I know. I’m getting into this because the hypocrisy of religion is truly starting to scare the hell out of me. We have already seen religious fundamentalism and extremist in action, how much longer before that kind of thinking becomes the norm. What I mean is there are moderate Christians (and I am including Catholics in that as well), that while they personally do not condone the act or approve of the lifestyle, follow the words of the bible itself in as much as they hate the sin love the sinner. Not every person of faith is ready to ostracize every gay they come across and most actually don’t care if the person sitting next to them is gay as long as they don’t try to hit on them. My problem is that through mass media and hysteria to an extent extremist and radicals are gaining more ground than the more level headed, when people like Jerry Falwell, Joel Osteen, and others who preach about the dangers of the homosexuals, and people like Fred Phelps who actively say homosexuals deserve to die. These voices are getting louder and louder and like I said it scares the hell out of me. Now I break yet another promise because after the movie I watched last night it seems a little relevant. You ad in some of the policies of the bush administration, especially when he says he is doing God’s work (god we have came a long way from Moses to GW doing Gods work) and the lines of extremism Vs. mainstream continues to grow. The movie I watched last night was V for Vendetta (great movie by the way) but in it a religious fanatic seizes power in great Britain, saying anything against the government or leaderships is called unpatriotic (sound familiar yet), anyone who is deemed disloyal to the government in arrested (getting warmer), and anyone who does not live according to the moral code (which also outlaws homosexuality) is arrested. Now I know things are not that bad, but my point here is that things are not that bad yet. Unless the religious extremist can be stopped or at least slowed down, how long is it until we get to that point, people are scared of a lot of things in this country right now, and the extremist can offer explanations and solutions, but to do it they need a scapegoat, and unfortunately I think that scapegoat is us.