Fundamentalist Christianity: The New Disease

As a child growing up in the 80’s, I cannot recall hearing any type of discussion concerning religion. Maybe it was the innocence of my youth or just plain luck, but I don’t remember one instance when it was ever brought up. In school, kids did not mention if they were Catholic, Baptist, or anything else for that matter. They were just kids and the world was just here. It was not decided how it got here, except in science where a few different theories were proposed. However, to the world back then, what we learned was never an issue.

I went to Sunday school with my friend and considered going to church camp because those things were fun. It never was about God. It was about entertainment. Unfortunately, as time moves on and the political climate has changed so has the ability to see things through the eyes of an adult without the comfortable ignorance of a child.

Religion has become a business almost as powerful as oil, and it is ruining every facet of our general and social lives. Once upon a time, religion was something thought about on Sundays and when you prayed because something was going wrong in your life. Today, God is a vengeful God you simply cannot escape. He is everywhere you turn.

God is brought up as being the reason for movies, media, and natural disasters. Just look at the fundamentalists, they will tell you all about how God is pissed. For example, Fred Phelps has websites all over the internet concerning how natural disasters occur and how God made them happen because we allow homosexuals (not what he calls them mind you) to run rampant and free without tying their genitals in a bow and shipping them off to a warmongering nation.

I have to believe that the issue here is with Fundamentalists. It’s an issue of brainwashing apparently, because what once was a quiet religious nation is now a raging river of “My God is right and your God needs to get out of my country and take you with him”. Today, there are people that truly believe that the nation should be and IS a Christian one.

Let’s ignore the fact that our President (using this term loosely of course) is a coke peddling, born-again prophet of oil drilling. While we are at it, let’s ignore that this country was founded on the ability to live without religious persecution.

The founding fathers were not particularly Christian by nature, unless you call being members of secret, somewhat occultist societies, and participating in orgies, Christian. This nation, as intolerant and arrogant as we may have become, was founded on freedom. It was never meant to be a place of one God. That, in fact, was what they were escaping from when this country was founded.

It is the fundamentalist way to assume that people should do what you say, not what you do. This apparently includes homework, because a quick Google search and some good research will show you just how religious many of our founding fathers were.

I don’t think anyone could have said it better than Thomas Jefferson when he said, “The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful, and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three-headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes; fools and hypocrites. To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

In short, it is not God’s (if there is a Christian one) fault for this fundamentalist mess. The idea of Jesus was that of a very open-minded and reasonable man. He wanted to help people, not hurt them. Jesus taught love and in many ways, religious freedom. You did not need to believe in him to receive his compassion.

We should all be as wise as our founding fathers and uphold the belief that religion can get you somewhere when you use it to your advantage, but your real beliefs are those that you should hold as truths; to be self-evident.

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