The Ever-Changing Morality of Political Conservative Christians

This political revolution has an inadvertent outcome. It tested the ostensible virtues of religious conservatives — and they failed. It raises the question of whether religiosity and morality really go hand in hand, as so many religious people like to claim.

Politically religious conservatives fail the morally test because they ended up doing everything they once condemned as unrighteous, unjust and cruel. They criticized secular politics for nepotism and corruption, for weaponizing the judiciary, for sexual misconduct, and for using news media to demonize/intimidate opponents. Yet, even in their initial years of power, they repeat the same behavior they condemned, often more blatantly than their predecessors, because God is with them.

Religious conservatives are as corrupted by power as much as anyone else, but with an indignant, moral, self-righteousness that borders on contempt for values, not uprightness. Power corrupts more easily when you have neither principles nor integrity, but are empowered by a selective belief system that makes one immune to innate Truths other than one's own reality or high-sounding precepts.

Trying to nurture moral virtues is one thing; assuming that you are already moral and virtuous simply because you identify with a particular religion is another. Or, to be more precise, sitting in church makes one a moral christian as much as sitting in the garage makes you a car. 

Religious adherents assume themselves to be moral by default; they never question themselves. It makes them arrogant, not humble. Their toxic urges turn religion into a hollow vessel of arrogance, bigotry, hatred and greed, while the world they craft from their flux of human convictions and ideologies (that are nothing like religious principles promoting social good) goes to hell in a handbasket. Amen.

 

Advice for a Fulfilled Life

An ancient philosopher’s advice for living a fulfilled life, even in the darkest times: “Everything in your life is your responsibility, and every negative occurrence is bad because of how you dealt with it, not what happened.”

Few who knew Epictetus would have considered him lucky. He was born a slave 2,000 years ago. He lived and died in poverty. He was permanently crippled from a broken leg given to him by his master. The reason his name has lived on for so long, however, is not for the misfortunes he suffered. He is remembered as a philosopher.

Along with Seneca (philosopher and advisor to emperor Nero) and Marcus Aurelius (Roman Emperor), his work spread the wisdom of Stoic philosophy perhaps more than anyone else. Even today, the principles he embraced are used by people of all cultures and nationalities.

Without getting into the details, the core idea of Stoicism is to be aware of what you can and can’t control. With that awareness, one can avoid misery (misfortune) by changing what you can control and letting go of what you cannot. It is an incredibly simple and powerful concept—and often referred to as the most practical of the ancient and modern philosophies.

What is admirable about Epictetus is that he showed the extent of its effectiveness through example. In spite of his circumstances, it appears he lived a happy, fulfilled life. His epitaph for himself was: “Here lies Epictetus, a slave maimed in body, the ultimate in poverty, and favored by the gods.”

Inner Locus of Control

Change what you can control. Let go of what you can’t control. Psychologists call this an inner locus of control. It inspires people to see that internal, not external, factors shape how life plays out. For better or worse, the responsibility is ours.

It’s so elegant that it almost sounds too good to be true. In a way, it is because it’s easy to say, and even understand, but in practice it gets messy. We may know we can’t control random interruptions when deeply focused on work or when a person cuts us off in traffic, but that doesn’t mean our response doesn’t show annoyance.

It’s not an unfamiliar situation. How would Epictetus respond?

Simply: Everything in our life is our responsibility. Every negative occurrence is ‘bad’ because of how we deal with it, not what happened. The world is not fair, life is hard, there is stress and pain. With renewed mindset, we begin to associate the annoyances of life (even if valid) with our own ability to deal with them. Such associations establish proactive links to the events of life.

Things will always go wrong. Over a long enough timeline, ‘bad’ things happen to EVERYONE. Misery does not arise from external events. It grows from within. This means that although adversity can be influenced and inspired by circumstances, it is largely unrelated to being lucky or unlucky, rich or poor, loved or unloved. Misery treats everyone the same.

Beyond basic needs like food and shelter, most of us have everything we need to avoid distress. What matters is our ability to see challenges and difficulties as something other than challenges and difficulties. Epictetus said, “Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.”

Finding Collective Consciousness

This is all logical enough to grasp. If it was simple to apply, the world would already be doing it for 2000 years. That said, it requires consistent effort and application. It demands not only understanding, but a daily commitment to embrace all that life is, and to remember we are part of something much bigger that we cannot yet see or comprehend.

The fact is, our outer senses limit our focus and narrowly group our perceptions and understanding of the world around us. They limit the real range of our consciousness. The feeling of a fully human, fully alive, fulfilled life cannot arise using the limited scope of our outer senses as we usually permit ourselves.

It is important for humankind to use, and experiment with, our inner senses for human potential to be fully realized. New concepts arise that are unbounded, and connect in a most intimate way to all other things in the universe.

In the grand scheme of things, we are all here for a brief moment in a space-time continuum. That moment may be imposed on us without our say, but it does not shape how we experience it. The universe is not concerned with what we want. It does, however, provide all the physical and metaphysical elements needed to enjoy it.

Beliefs create reality. It is possible for ideas to cause chemical reactions that impede or promote the health of our bodies. BELIEFS THEMSELVES ARE TOOLS. The most favorable view of a problem is as least as probable as the most unfortunate view. All actions have consequences that may or may not be intended. But negative thoughts and beliefs lead to destruction and positive ones promote/support life. We only have to find the meaning inside us and change our reality to be the positive experience it is because of what we learn from it. Then we discover the resilience of the human spirit, begin to see the world in a whole, new way and feel the joy of fulfillment.

Many Shades of Truth...Or Are There?

The notion of Truth has been purposely eroded and manipulated so that people can believe anything they want to believe without consequence or responsibility for their choice. But Truth doesn't work that way.

There is such a thing as Absolute Truth in this reality.

Sound bites of relative truth controlled by spin doctors to represent 'the truth of the day' for purposes of control or confusion don't count. The effects of pursuing 'truth' seen through ideology, bias, ignorance, laziness or aims of its adherents include oppression, corruption, and scarcity so men stay weak and poor and many die. 

The sad part is, we all have a 'gut feeling' of what that absolute truth is. There is also a body of wisdom literature transcending time, culture, and geography that helps serve as reference points. It just has become more convenient to make truth something that fits the moment so we can feel justified in our actions or non-actions or gratuitous self-satisfaction.

Societies and Cultures need Truth. Without truth, we don’t have trust. Without trust, we don’t have rule of law. Without the rule of law, we don’t have democracy or other forms of order and equity that makes a society committed to being civil.

It was the fascists who said, "Everyday life doesn’t matter. Every detail doesn’t matter. Facts don’t matter. All that matters is the message, the leader, the myth, the totality." We should be remembering the world destabilization such thinking those messages and that leadership brought to the 1920s-1940s. That's absolute truth.

The Storytellers

Denial, or even the more subtle version of it, i.e., “planting doubt,” whether about wiretapping, terrorist threats from other peoples, Jewish or other genocides, crowd size at an inauguration, etc., is a perpetuation of the kind of fascism and hatred used to foment social divide.

As the South Africans so brilliantly taught us with their Truth and Reconciliation Commission, full closure and moving forward into a new, more humane place requires first acknowledging--sometimes ugly--truths of our culture, history or past.

Thankfully, when governments fail to do so, the Storytellers keep the truth and the lessons of history alive for us to remember or to explore with contemporary perspective. And that is exactly why #45 doesn't like Hollywood, the Arts or the Media.

Postscript: fascism is a nationalistic attitude essentially hostile to the principles of democracy, fundamental rights and freedoms, and the rule of law. At the same time, it irrationally exalts a particular community, such that people outside it are systematically excluded and discriminated against.

This attitude permeates the ideology, the thinking, the activity, and the aims of its adherents.

"IN GOD WE TRUST"

 

This story headline was recently posted on Facebook. The story is about a judge who recently struck down a case regarding the religious wording on US currency. Respondents to the Facebook posting unanimously agreed to the question in the headline, "Do you agree?" (that these words should be on our money). 

This is a dissenting opinion:

The original coinage minted by the United States never carried a religious motto. Interestingly, "MIND YOUR BUSINESS" (from Benjamin Franklin) appeared as the first motto. The first American coinage was totally secular; as clean from a mention of God as the Constitution.

The religious community in America grew.  Several Protestant denominations organized the National Reform Association that formalized their desire to transform America into a Christian state.  Their aim was to amend the Constitution and "declare the nation's allegiance to Jesus Christ" by making "Christian laws" the "legal basis" for laws of the land.

The Association failed in its attempt to amend the Constitution, but continued its efforts:

• The Act of 1865 gave the authority to place "IN GOD WE TRUST" on coins.

• In 1908 Congress ignored the concept of state/church separation and approved a bill to make the use of the motto "IN GOD WE TRUST" a requirement of law.

• In 1956, during the Christian, anti-Communist fervor of McCarthyism, Congress passed a bill establishing "IN GOD WE TRUST" as a national motto.

Today the religious motto is found on all USA paper money and coinage, none of which appeared on our Founding Fathers' currency. The irony cannot be lost here that Christians suggest love of money as the "root of all evil" (1 Tim. 6:10).

More to the point, the Founding Fathers, through the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, created a secular federal government that would treat religion neutrally and impartially. God, religion, and sectarianism, while adopted by the majority of citizens of the United States, would be kept out of government by law. The reason was simple and well understood by every educated and informed individual: religions and sectarianism appealed to a person's passions and emotions, not to one's intellect and logical faculties, and so were inimical to, and corruptible of, a secular government based on reason and the rule of law.

Very simply, the Founding Fathers thought that freedom of conscience and expression should be allowed and protected by law, not that the law include a preferential belief in a specific religion, theology, philosophy, or ideology.

Every constitutional scholar will tell you that "In God We Trust " and "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional, and each will also tell you that it won't be removed. They are America's little hypocrisy...

Religion and God are not the Same Thing

Religion and God are not the same thing. One exists to control humans and make money off them. The real ‘God’ only seeks to make men wise.  Religion makes you think you understand God so you think you can control how life will turn out if you follow the ‘right’ path.  But religion only represent someone’s depiction of THEIR God. 

We are here to LEARN to love our neighbors. To achieve oneness of mind, a sameness in understanding of life experiences for all humankind.

We are here to slowly eliminate all differences between one person and another--it cannot be done in one lifetime.

Seeing is not believing. "To the authentic all things are untainted and have beauty. But to those who are cynical or closed-minded, nothing is genuine. Their mind and conscience are spoiled with distrust" (Titus 1:15).

Children are adorable because we love to see the beauty of their innocence. But on the trip to adulthood the way a person looks at life and the world is altered. With maturity, people become distrustful, sophisticated, competitive, cosmopolitan, cynical, suspicious, sarcastic, prejudiced, self-centered, and uninvolved. It all drives people apart and creates fear, not adulthood. That is not God-like.

Transformations of any kind (to adulthood, from adversity, to success, etc.), are not accomplished by our effort to get ahead in life, but by the Spirit in us.  The world doesn’t understand that when we stop thinking success is our own doing, and begin to sense the interdependence and collective conscience in us right now, we behold the miracles, or “successes” all around. That IS God-like.