>Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1999 20:17:10 -0500
>From: "joe dees" <joedees@bellsouth.net>
>Subject: Re:virus: Showers
>
>Apparently you're familiar with the Church of Jesus
>Christ Christian, the Christian Identity movement...
>...They certainly respect themselves more than they
>do anyone else (or anyone else's rights), and that's
>precisely the point.
Sure, sure. But...like...the Episcopalians? Could we stick to the established and generally accepted sects of Christianity...as opposed to the fringe groups and wackos? Wackos don't need religion to licence their insanity...like cancers, they acquire whatever symbols work most effectively in propogating their destructive mechanism. Surely you aren't painting all religion as "Jim Jones" are you? That's ludicrous.
>It was an institutionalized practice which persisted
>for many years and was carried out by many acolytes,
>and they considered themselves to be Christians.
Cancers persist for many years, and they metastisize... A constant battle between the Body of Christ and the errant cells which would destroy it from within. This is why an immune system, Reason and Faith, are so critical to the continued survival of the collective.
Lets try to be the macrophages of culture, and not an autoimmune leukemia, how 'bout?
>Quite a Christian apologist you are; Sir Thomas More
>and C.S. Lewis would be proud.
Really? I'd like to think so, becuase from what I've read, they kick ass, intellectually. I haven't seen the inside of church, save weddings, for at least five years. I think the last time you could have called me Christian was probably in 3rd grade.
>However, what about all the native Pagans they drowned,
>hung and burned in Medieval Europe (not to mention the
>Crusades, the anti Catharite campaign, the Pelagian
>massacres, and on and on and on...when part and parcel
>of someone's memeset is that they have the right, nay,
>the duty to either convert you to it or kill you, that that
>rabidly intolerant submemeset is one of the few things
>that tolerant people cannot tolerate if they and their
>freedom of thought are both to survive.
Yadda, yadda, yadda.
American's once owned slaves. Is the principle of America bad? Are Americans bad for being patriotic? Science has developed the wepons of war which threaten us all with annihiliation. Are the principles of science bad?
>Why should lies work simply because they're happy ones?
What lies? I don't understand.
>When I volunteered as a clinic escort, I had fundies gather
>in prayer circles and beg Jesus to take me, by name, Right
>Then. I had my car sabotaged and my home vandalized,
>received death threats by mail and telephone, and had my
>college records broken into in an attempt to learn something
>that could be used against me. I live in Pensacola. We've
>had three people gunned down in the street in the name
>of Sweet Jesus, so don't you DARE try to tell me these
>bastards are benign!
I know. That is terrible. We live in a time of such vast technological change...from the perspective of religion, the ability to abort, combined with overpopulation and the shifting demands of a technological society...it all happened so fast. Fear, dislocation, bellicosity. It's a terrible, terrible thing...and you are courageous to stand for the principles of freedom. You put your property, your reputation, even your life on the line to defend those principles. That is what America is all about. You give me faith in Democracy.
And in the heat of that confrontation, you cannot let your faith in those principles waver. You commit to action, and see it through. In is here, at a more refective place, that we can put off that armor for a moment and inspect our wounds.
>They can. They can insist that you be the convertee
>rather than the converter, and be not only willing but
>also eager to murder in Jesus' Holy Name for the
>Greater Glory of God, or taste their sword across
>your throat.
Get them on tape. Send it to the pope and ask for an opinion. Write that opinion on a big placard and put in in front of the clinic.
Who says those insane bastards know anything about
Christ? Did Christ ever lift a hind to strike in anger?
The only lesson I can remember which even comes
close is his intervention into the stoning of Mary Magdelen.
You have to fight fire with fire.
>It has always been an us/them system, and only the us's
Too true. But, remember, even a violent conflict is just
an exchange of information. Be careful that you don't
find yourself infected with that same "us/them" meme.
I'd hate to see you spit on an innocent.
>get the brotherly love; the rest get the rack.
>Just this mode of thinking, and the lack of resistance
>born of it, doomed six million Jews.
Um...are we talking about Religion, or about Facism? As I recall, Hitler wasn't really interested in turning the other cheek.
>A local Catholic priest Rev. Trosch, has also publicly
>advocated the murder of abortion doctors, actually
>going so far as to draw a cartoon of the assassination
>of abortion doctors by Good Christians and submit it
>for publication in a local newspaper.
Do his superiors know about this? Have you contacted them to ask what a raving lunatic like that is doing wearing a frock?
>The bad people already have their ideas, one of which
>is the right to ram them down the throats of the rest
>of us, and it's just going to get crazier until Y2K is
>way behind us and the Rapture hasn't come.
I wouldn't count on it. Life is all about focus...you concentrate on what you are doing becuase, if you waver for a minute, everything gets out of hand. It's like that continiously until you die. After that, it's up to the people who are left to carry on. Don't you go looking for the millenium to be any easier, or harder either. Tommorow is more or less like today. If we each know our purpose it can be more than today, not less.
Reed
Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------