Untitled Religious Rant

Evidently I need a serious faith checkup. I'm so embarassed by some of my fellow Christians I'm almost afraid to discuss my faith with non-Christians. That's not right; not right at all. If our mission is to bring new people to Christ, I fail to see--and I imagine will never see--how such things as are described in this article accomplish that. Doubly true of the protests at soldier's funerals by those wretched shitbags from Wichita.

I don't read the Bible literally. If you read the Bible literally, it seems to be apparent from Revelation that only 144,000 people will be saved at the end times. I have not lived a life worthy of being one of that small number and so should perhaps stop trying. Nah.

Of course, very very few people (apart from the Jehovah's Witnesses) read the Revelation literally, and it is generally understood that 144, as the square of 12, is a meaningful number, and generally when numbers in the thousands are presented they are merely a way of describing an uncounted multitude. That it should be 144 uncounted multitudes might mean that all sorts of people may yet earn forgiveness by truly repenting of their sins and seeking salvation through Christ. Yeah, it's just so hard to square that whole forgiveness-and-salvation thing with the self-esteem you can gain by calling everyone around you a sinner.

But that only goes as far as the Revelation. Apparently many people--the damn-everyone-not-like-me-to-hell crowd--pick and choose the parts of the Bible they want to read symbolically and the parts they want to use for bashing people over the head. I guess it's more fun that way, and easier, too.

Finally, in reference to the article that prompted this whole post, I am disturbed and alienated by the attempts to conflate patriotism with Christianity. They are not the same thing. The Founders were not all explicitly Christian, and in any event did not explicitly cite Christianity in their founding documents:
in the Declaration, a single mention each of God, the Creator, the Supreme Judge of the World, and Providence--and another mention that government derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed."
In the Constitution, a single mention of religion, in the first amendment.
In the Federalist #1, Alexander Hamilton writes that "in politics, as in RELIGION, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution." Hardly a ringing endorsement of the modern burn-the-witches brand of Christianity.

In Federalist #69 Hamilton notes that the President "has no particle of spiritual jurisdiction."

Throughout the rest of the Federalist the references to religion generally discuss it in historical terms or as something that should be separated from government decisions. The exceptions are in Federalist #2 and #5, in which John Jay notes that the Americans all profess the same religion, and that a decent government will secure your religion. Only Jay makes note of this, and does so without claiming that the government is based upon religious doctrine, or that it should be.

All I'm saying is, faith and patriotism are both fine things. But they are not the same thing. Hurricane Katrina was not the wrath of God on a sinful burg (ever notice how these lunatics never say that Hugo was God's revenge on Charleston, or Ivan was God's revenge on Grenada?), and God is not killing off our soldiers because we don't stone homosexuals. Yet this is the public face of Christianity. These people will destroy our faith before they ever save this country.