People who are looking for the confessions of an outright defector from the religious right in this book will be disappointed. I would deem it less valuable in exposing the Bush administration if Mr. Kuo had renounced his beliefs entirely and went into a Kitty Kelly type of smear from a newly adopted "liberal" viewpoint. But this guy worked for Bill Bennett and John Ashcroft and thought Chuck Colson was the cat's meow at one time. All three of those folks have an emetic effect on this observer, but that is beside the point -- which is, I have inferred thus far, that you cannot serve God and Caesar any more than you can serve God and Mammon. He quotes from C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, in which "Screwtape" tells his subordinate tempter (whose goal is, of course, to lure the Christian into hell) the following (the quotation comes directly from Kuo's book):
"Let him begin by treating patriotism ... as part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. [My italics] Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely a part of the 'cause,' in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce ... [O]nce he's made the world an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing."
Seems that Jesus put this point more succinctly with the words: "What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?"
More to come. I haven't read all of the book. It's quite thought-provoking. And enlightening.
8 comments:
Great stuff, JT. I understand why, until the last 30 years, Christians regarded politics as something to be avoided. I wonder how many are beginning to consider returning to that belief.
Prescient post, old man. In case you hadn't seen David Kuo's Op-Ed in today's New York Times, here's a link.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/16/opinion/16kuo.html?pagewanted=all
He, too, closes with a reference to C.S. Lewis.
Now the democraps will take more of your "Mammon", even though you did not make much of it in your lifetime because you chose to get a useless Liberal Arts degree (want fries with that?).
Yeah, you should have gotten a degree in theology from one of those southern seminaries, JT. Then you could have made a fortune telling fundies what's moral and what isn't. ;)
Dang! You know, JT seriously considered going to a southern seminary (one in Louisville) but it was the "wrong" one. Then he would have been one of them liberal preachers and we know they're all a-goin' to hell. Saved his soul, maybe, if he'd just spend his days verbally sniping at people from behind a wall of anonymity. Now that's what I call a holy endeavor. Beats being an honest, courageous minister of the gospel all to hell. ;-)
JT/Saved and Sanctified: Blaspemy does not become you. You really don't get it do you? It makes no difference what I think of you. God is your real judge as He is mine. All of us will stand before Him and give an account of our lives. Of course, you probably don't believe that since you believe that your intellect is higher than mine. I did not make the rules. He did.
In Saved!, "Cassandra," played by Eva Amurri, has a bumper sticker on her car with the words, JESUS LOVES YOU; EVERYBODY ELSE THINKS YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE. Although JT's detractor would say that the words are "blaspemy" (I think he means "blasphemy"), I thought about it and, by golly, I think it's pretty good theology. Jesus loves the unloved and unlovable, or so they say. Because he loves you, he believes that you can become far less of an asshole than you are. Hope for all of us.
Respectfully, Another Asshole in Need of Love
Post a Comment