Some things just stick in my mind and will not go away. These things are like the infamous melody
that gets stuck in there and just goes on and on. Once I had to go to a conference at Disney
Land, and that song, It’s a Small, Small World, got stuck in my head for
days. I still don’t like it.
That’s why, after the Super Bowl yesterday, I decided I’d better
get this thought out of my head before it gets stuck in there. One needs to mention all of the hype and
stuff prior to the game – deflategate –and how the Patriots quarterback, Tom
Brady, would never do anything like that.
He is such an upstanding player, and on, and on. I don’t know Tom Brady, so don’t know if he
is all of the wonderful things people were saying about him, because when I
watch professional sports, except for the SF Giants and ‘49ers, I simply root
for the team closest to the West Coast.
On the other hand, the Seattle Seahawks attitude, so marvelously
exemplified yesterday at the end of the game, made me not want to root for them
yesterday. So, as I watched, Russell
Wilson seemed to me to be a pretty good quarterback as well, but Brady kept
getting all of the hype, which I couldn’t understand since the Patriots were
actually losing. But the kicker at the
end of the game, when the player, Butler, was a fantastic enough football
player to grab that ball in a really split, split second, which won the game
for the Patriots, I was annoyed no end when Brady got all of the credit for
winning the game. He didn’t win it,
Butler did!
Another thing has been stuck in my head for quite some
time. The radical right-wing Christians,
regardless of denomination, for years and years have been and still are bitching
and complaining about abortion and homosexuality. I have known for quite some time that nowhere
in the New Testament does Jesus mention either one. There are some three references to some
passages in the New Testament that have been interpreted to refer to
homosexuality, but considering all of the translations that the Bible has
undergone, one would need to be a First Century Greek academic to fully
understand what the references actually mean.
After reading the supposed references to homosexuality, it occurred to
me that the verses before and after the suspect ones also list many activities
that should not be indulged in: greed,
gluttony, laziness, etc.
So we get to greed. There
are 51 passages in the entire Bible that refer to greed, and some 28 in the New
Testament. I will only quote two: Matt.
6:24, Peterson, The Message Bible. “You
can’t worship two gods at once. Loving
one god, you’ll end up hating the other.
Adoration of one feeds contempt for the other. You can’t worship God and Money both”. I Tim 6:10, same cite, “But if it’s only money
these leaders are after, they’ll self-destruct in no time. Lust for money brings trouble and nothing but
trouble. Going down that path some lose
their footing in the faith completely and live to regret it bitterly ever
after.” There is not too much to quibble
about in those quotes. One may not agree
with them, but their meaning is quite clear.
So we have no references regarding abortion, 3 maybe about
homosexuality, and 28 (if I counted correctly) about the dangers of greed. We are not discussing here whether the Bible
is true or not. What we are discussing
is the attitude of the radical right-wing Christians on Christian teachings,
and one would assume that the Bible would be their foundation of belief and
emphasis.
I thought about the comment of what self-identified Catholic
Christian, Paul Ryan said about President Obama’s new budget, that it is “envy
economics”, with the poorer citizens wanting to take away what the poor
oligarchs have. He also said that now
that the oligarchs have so much it is beginning to “trickle down” anyway. Really?
And considering that it has been supposedly “trickling down” now for
some 30 years, ever since Ronnie Baby introduced the theory of and established “trickle-down
economics”, in what year does Ryan predict that it will reach the bottom
99%? 2075?
Or is Reaganomics and his “trickle-down” the new false god of
the radical religious-right?
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