Conversations with God vs. Divine Right

Michelle Bachmann freely admits that she has conversations with God.  God tells her things.  Rick Perry seems to allude to the same thing.  George W. Bush also said he would speak to God and get messages in return.  Now, I do understand the desire for many people to hold a personal belief in something intangible.  Provided that their faith makes them better people (and that seems to be the case for the silent majority of the faithful) I have no issues with that.* 
However, I do draw the line at candidates professing this level of devotion.  This is mainly because history has shown us so many times how devotion to something that can’t be proven, can be used to manipulate people into perpetrating evil.  But in the case of presidential candidates there is a much more fundamental reason for my outrage.  And that goes back to a doctrine that was in place in Europe during the colonization of America- the doctrine of Divine Right. 
For those that didn’t pay attention in high school, Divine Right is the notion that monarchs of countries were chosen by God, by sheer nature of their birth, to rule.  They were told from a young age that they and they alone could talk directly to God since they were chosen by Him and therefore, the messages they would receive were divine.  They had the same authority over life and death as God. 
Most of the people who fled to the colonies did so to escape religious persecution.  And the antithesis of this idea truly is the foundation of the Constitution.
When people like Michelle Bachmann or Rick Perry tout their “conversations” with God, they are employing a manipulative marketing technique to get people to vote for them.  They’re not saying, “I talk to God the same way you do.”  They’re saying, “I talk to God and He responds back to me.”  In other words, God had chosen him/her to be His messenger and spokesperson. 
That’s fine if they are a minister or a reverend.  But as a political leader, it’s setting the stage for the next step of “you voted for me because God told you to, which means that God must have sent me. Therefore, I’m not stepping down just because I was voted out or my term is up.”  Or worse, “God gave me the authority to execute anyone who disagrees with me.” 
Now I’m not saying that Bachmann or Perry would take it this far, but if we as a people vote for them, then the marketing technique they are employing will have proven to work.  The next thing we know, everyone will start using it.  Sooner or later a despotic type of person will be able to fool the public with his/her religious rhetoric and get elected.  That’s what we need to be on guard for, and as the old adage says, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  Personally, I like democracy and don't want to have to cure what we would have instead. Vote responsibly.

*When it comes to “conversations” with God, I am assuming that the person doing the “hearing” is actually feeling or thinking things and not really hearing a voice from outside their body. I think it's safe to say that anyone hearing voices is most likely mentally ill and probably wouldn't make the best presidential candidate. 

Separation of Church and Hate

The Tea Party seems to have demonstrated time and time again that they lack both critical thinking skills as well as the ability to read.  Apparently they really don’t understand what their Christian faith is about and they have no clue about what our forefathers were really trying to accomplish when they founded this country.

Last night I was watching “The Tillman Story” (and if you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend watching it).  They had radio interview from the lead investigator of the Tillman case, Colonel Ralph Kauzlarich, who felt that the family couldn’t “let it go” referring to their wanting answers regarding the death of their son, brother and husband Pat Tillman.  This is what he said:

“…I don’t know... these people have a hard time letting it go.  That may be because of their religious beliefs.  I don’t know.  I don’t know how an atheist thinks. But I can only imagine that that’d be pretty tough… If you’re an atheist and you don’t believe in anything, if you die what… what is there to go to?  Nothing, you’re warm dirt.  It’s pretty hard to get your head around that.” 

The Radio Host then asks, “So you suspect that’s probably the reason this thing is dragging on?”

Colonel Kauzlarich replies, “There’s not a whole lot of trust… in the system… or faith in the system.”

And therein lays the gist.  If you don’t believe in God then you can’t possibly trust the system.  Yet the Tillman’s had good reason to NOT trust the system.  The system had killed their son, lied about how he died, used that lie to propagandize an unjust and immoral war and then refused to punish those who had been responsible for all of it.  I don’t see how a belief in anything would change those facts.  I don’t see how faith in a god would somehow make all of that okay.

There seems to be this myth in this country that Jesus was a warlord of sorts.  That Jesus wanted a strong army and if you are a good Christian you must support any and all war efforts of our troops because they are doing God’s work.  What’s interesting about this attitude is that by substituting the words Allah and Mohammed for God and Jesus respectively, you end up with what Muslim extremist with bombs strapped to their chests believe. 

Now I want to make one thing perfectly clear.  I think the vast majority of our enlisted soldiers are heroes, even though I don’t think the wars they are fighting in are just.  They are doing what they truly believe is their duty to country.  One of the problems with the wars we are in is private military contractors, and not our enlisted personnel, are doing most of the fighting (and getting paid much, much more than our enlisted men and women are). 

In addition, this invocation of religion and war is just wrong, regardless of the religion.  It is the reason why I have rejected nearly all religions.  But nowhere is it more offensive that with Christianity.  Jesus was a man of peace, who preached a message of love and turn the other cheek.  He preached distribution of funds from the rich to the poor.  He preached about feeding the hungry and he healed the sick.  And even when he was humiliated, beaten, nailed up on a cross and left to die, he forgave those unenlightened people who did this to him.  I am an atheist, and yet, if you asked me if I accepted the message of that man, I would totally do it in a minute.  But that’s never what Christians ask me to accept.

Yet when our government tries to actually implement those programs that Jesus himself would have been advocating for, it is those who call themselves Christians who protest the loudest.  Our government doesn’t do it because Jesus told them to do it.  Our government does it because it’s the moral and just thing to do irrespective of religion.  In addition it makes economic sense.  The same goes for putting in a national healthcare program. 
Either these right wing “Christians” don’t know how to read or are too stupid to think for themselves.  Regardless, they certainly are some of the most unChristlike people I’ve ever heard of.

I think it’s important to remember that when our country was founded, it was done by people who had come to the colonies trying to escape religious persecution.  Freedom of religion was a core fundamental tenant of their writings and belief system.  Regardless of what their personal faith was, they wanted a place that people of all faiths, including those of no faith, could come and seek refuge.  That was made particularly clear in the Treaty of Tripoli where John Adams, then president, signed in 1796 saying:

“Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of Americais not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself nocharacter of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen,—and as the said States never entered into any war or act ofhostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that nopretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption ofthe harmony existing between the two countries.”

And as a result of this secularization of our government, religion proliferates.  There are more churches, mosques, synagogues, temples and other houses of worship, per capita here in the United States than almost anywhere else on earth.  Because we have respected to totally personal nature of faith, faith prospers. 

Now there are those who would throw away all of that just so that they can keep their religion in the majority.  And as Colonel Kauzlarich’s statement above would indicate, the government can use that majority to manipulate families into going along with what the government wants, no matter how immoral.  That is PRECISELY the thing our forefathers wanted to avoid. 

When candidates like Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry seem to be completely unable to separate their faith from their politics, it is precisely the people of faith who should run in the other direction from them.  It is the people who love their country who should be afraid of them.  They seek to destroy everything good with their misunderstanding of the relationship between God and Country.