What if there does happen to be a God, and what if He did give us a Book containing His words guided by His ever-present spirit to be used as a life guide? Then what could be more vile in His sight than for His very words to be changed in order to justify evil acts?
Celebrity Christians accept, and loudly proclaim that the Bible contains the spirit led words of God, but they freely alter the words to make it conform to their own interests. So flagrant are these abuses that I wonder if they believe the words, or if they even believe in the God they proclaim so loudly… maybe they think they are also gods and His book is a tool for their self-promotion.
Perhaps these mega church “Christians” think rewriting scripture is not an important sin; else God would have warned them not to do it. These celebrity bible scrabble players are wrong; He did warn us that bending his word is probably as bad as murder in his eyes; many who call themselves by His name did not listen.
Christian Right politicians (one is running for Governor of my state) are often the Mr. Nice Guys you have been waiting to vote for. My candidate is raising a big, beautiful family, opposes unhealthy living practices, is pro-life for unborn children, goes to church three times a week, and publicly is polite, respectful and Christ like. In addition, he works for James Dobson, mentions God a lot, and lets us know he is following Him in his every move. What more could we ask as our Governor?
There is one problem, and it keeps coming up with Christian celebrities; their mindless support of the serial wars in the Middle East is a piece of the bible puzzle that does not fit, no matter how hard you cram and stomp it in place. Our loving and caring candidates and Christian Right congressmen are all for the war in Iraq, and they think the Israeli occupation of the land of Palestine is justified because of what the Philistines did to Sampson, if for no other reason.
It’s here that I find a troubling note of inconsistency that needs explaining. How can a loving family man and father, who is 100% pro-life for every unborn child, be pro-war? How can he favor wars against little people like the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Lebanese women and their children, and against the tiny sliver of land called Gaza? Killing all these people is an unthinkable paradox for a pro-life “Christian.”
When you allow yourself to really think about the life and death issue, the inconsistency becomes too great to ignore. How can this warm, logical sounding person find war so acceptable? In every other way my wannabe Governor seems to want what I want; he does not hate Mexicans but wants to protect our property by protecting our citizens against out of control immigration. He thinks boys should marry girls and visa versa; he does not want homosexuals teaching kids in public schools how to live; he wants to give the unborn a chance to live; and he wants “frugal government, for a change.”
He asserts that each of these positions is “God’s way”… and I agree with him and with his patriotism. But… Does Pro-war equal Pro-Life? No way!
What kind of “Christianity” where “literal Bible believers” see nothing wrong with slaughtering and starving whole populations, including women and other people’s children? How do they justify it scripturally? Can they even be called “Christians” and be so callously indifferent to the lives of other people? The answer is, whatever they call themselves they are not following Christ.
No Christian Zionist, by whatever name he calls himself, can justify killing a single child in faraway places with bombs. Since they cannot justify it by man’s logic, they bend God’s words to justify it for them, while still declaring the Bible is the literal word of God. If you ask our candidate for Governor, and million trained like him, he will tell you three or four biblical reasons why God’s “future kingdom on earth” (after a “rapture” event to come) requires, even demands, these mass executions that are passed off on us as necessary wars.
Revelations 19 is one source of Commonly quoted war apostasy dredged up from the terrible dreams of Disciple John; the prophesy in Ezekiel 37 is another; Jesus’ own words are distortion in Matthew 24-25; and the scene in Genesis 12:3 where, according to Christian Zionists, God went into the real estate business giving most of the Mideast to Israel. *1
The Dry Bones Story in Ezekiel was what God told Ezekiel to tell His people to help them survive, instead we are expected to accept Jerry Falwell’s words that the Prophet was lecturing to the captives in Baghdad about something scheduled to happen three thousand years later. What a bore for the Israelite slaves in Babylon in 583 BC. Why would God send a prophet with stories not relevant to them? God is logical. Your mega-church pastor simply alters words to make it come out the way he wants it.
Ezekiel is the story of a prophet warning his own kinsmen of what God demanded of them, or else! They were dragged off into slavery because of their abuse of their God’s words, and Ezekiel was the messenger sent to revive them. How do we know this? The story explains it, and it makes sense. However, we are told otherwise by our celebrity self-appointed interpreters who say Ezekiel’s terrible judgment on Lebanon were prophesies that unfolded in August 2006, when Israel leveled the Lebanese towns of Sidon and Tyre. Balderdash!
Christ’s Disciple John recorded a bizarre nightmare in Revelations 19, which is likewise distorted. We are supposed to believe that John’s awful vision of wars and slaughter foretells events in our future and had nothing to do with those who were listening to John in the first century.
What did John mean? John did not interpret his dream for us, which is why it remains a puzzle. It might be a disguised message that warned those living in his time that the entire city of Jerusalem was about to be sacked. But my Judaized Christian politician is playing biblical scrabble to use those old words to justify wars of his own making in our own time, wars that we are paying for. Hundreds of thousands are dying on account of his words. Like the ancient peoples in Ezekiel’s time, we, the captives of the growing global system, are ignoring our responsibility.
These imaginative reinterpretations of scripture are often found in the footnotes of the Scofield Reference Bible. Cyrus I. Scofield was a willing bender of God’s words. There is no reason to think he was ever gripped with conscience over what he did, he was more or less a petty malefactor and a professional liar. Scofield is easier to forgive than Reverend John Hagee, who can see the result of his every act as he mouths it, but keeps on doing it.
So we are back to where we began. If there is a God, and if He left a Book for us to follow, why did he not protect the Word with a big warning sign? Why did he not leave a frightening “danger do not tamper” banner on his words? The answer is He did warn us.
His Third Commandment states:
“Thou shalt not take the name of the lord in vain; I the lord will not hold him blameless who takes his name in vain.”
Another version puts it this way: “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God…”
Remember, God (if you believe there is One) put this right behind:
“Thou shalt have only One God,” so it seems to have been important to him. Thou shalt not kill or steal come much later in the list.
When I was a youth I was told this “take the name” Commandment involved random cursing, i.e. using the JC or GD words when you hammer your thunb. We all needed to learn “shucks” or other alternative curses. I never really believed this. I could tell my dad’s occasional outbursts were not aimed at God, but at himself. I spent only a small time wondering why this pronouncement was so important to rank ahead of “thou shall not kill, steal, adulter, and lie? It is because the last seven commandments are about abuses of our fellow men. But the first three are about the abuse of God.
One bible dictionary trivializes the Third Commandment: saying “take God in vain” may include “pointless or insincere oaths.” Wrong, there is nothing trivial about corrupting God’s Word for man’s purpose. What clearer example of taking His name in vain than to alter or bend the meaning of His words to prove your own lying and deceptive story? If you think of “vain” as self-serving it is easy to see why it is near the top of the list along with “thou shall have no other God”….
When G.W. Bush suggested God was leading us into Afghanistan and Iraq, he was taking God’s name in vain? Celebrity leaders who want to support George W. alter God’s words in order to justify George W’s actions. No wonder God put altering His words near the top of his “Thou shall not” list.
Every pastor and priest who falsely claims that “this is God’s war” is taking God’s name in vain to sell a lie. There is not a word attributed to Jesus that justifies killing a single human child, or woman, or even a brawny and ornery man. What could be more horrible in the sight of a Holy God, who loves good and hates evil, than to see His words distorted in such a way as to encourage, justify and excuse evil acts of violence and war? No one who accepts these distorted words that so completely change the spirit and intent of Christianity can claim to be a Christian.
I met a perfect example of evil becoming “Christian Law” while conversing with a powerful young former Marine outside the Promise Keepers’ extravaganza. Project Strait Gate was there to picket Promise Keepers, not to be mislead, as this man attempted.
He told me whatever the Israelis do to the “Philistines” is justified by the biblical accounts in the Old Testament where “
God told the Israelis to spare no one but to cleanse the land of all.” This man firmly believes (or rationalizes) that these Bible stories justify his own acts in Iraq in 1991. There, he told me, he was part of the machine called Desert Storm. Unwittingly he fell for the new Marine “kill-kill-kill” line, the “Arab enemy is not really human.” He helped assassinate 95,000 totally helpless Iraqis his own age, an entire entrapped army of Iraq’s youth in a few days. Then they were plowed under the sands of Kuwait with special snow plow equipped tanks.*
Men like this proud former Marine must stop accepting encouragement and justification from the Judeo-Christian organizations like Promise Keepers that bend the Bible to tell him his sin of killing was “God’s will.” He, like all of us, needs God’s forgiveness, not self-deception.
The time has come to pull down the pastors from their mega-church pulpits if they take God’s name in “vain”. You can do this if you stop supporting them. You will find those who stand by God’s firm and real words talking to smaller groups. Find them and support them! It is Jesus’ way.
* AUDIO VISUAL: Who owns the land? https://whtt.org/show
*PROMISE KEEPER VIGIL: https://whtt.org/straitgate/index.php?news=2&id=215
* PHARISEE WATCH: The First Iraq: http://eshop.whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=157
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