Skip to main content

Oh, ok then! If you insist.

I know I said the picture in the previous post did not require any comment, but I am afraid I just can't shut up! Sorry.

Ok the picture is a good summary of what seems to be going on at the White House at the moment: i.e. that W is letting his religious beliefs take over when it comes to governing the US. This is why most people who have voted for him did so, it seems. However I sort of object to the choice of Jesus to make that point. I think the pope or an American televangelist (which no one would have recognised outside the US. I take your point!) would probably have been more accurate a representation of W's religious beliefs, since this is what Jesus stands for here.

I guess I should say first that I am not religious. Although I have been brought up as a catholic and have all my certificates, I have given up on religion and religions a while ago now. I find religions scary (simply look at all the bad things which have come out of them) and I certainly do not like religious people shoving their faith in my face. I let them do what they want, let them let me do what I want. Why people feel the need to govern other people's lives is beyond me. Have they got nothing better to do with their boring little lives? Like concentrate a bit more on doing some good around them?

Being brought up as a catholic however is not an armless business; like any other religious upbringing, I suppose, it does not leave you unscathed. In my case what was left behind when the blinding tide of religiosity ebbed away from my hazy little mind was a set of what I would called humanist values, of which I must admit I would be rather proud if pride was not one of the deadly sins (!). I am convinced that Christianity limited to being a philosophy of life could be a good thing (a "force for good"). It is therefore a shame that religious hard liners should want to tinge it with fanaticism and dogma. I think a big problem with Christianity and the reason for some Christian’s schizophrenic outlook on life is the Bible and the presence in it of both the Old and New Testament who are obviously irreconcilable. In one you find a god of wrath and vengeance and in the other a god of love. The latter finds himself overshadowed by the former far too often.

And this is why I am a little uneasy at the choice of Jesus for this picture; even if I understand the need of a recognisable Christian figure; an icon so to speak. I don't really find anything wrong with Jesus and what he has to say. My problem is with all the Bible-wielders all over the world who seem to know their god's will better than himself and forget far too often the basic (and most important) Christian (as in "Jesus Christ", i.e. New Testament) message of loving one's neighbour. Or perhaps they actually know it all too well: after all the second part of this "command" is to love as one loves oneself... and that's "very little", it would seem!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Please leave your comment here. Note that comments are moderated and only those in French or in English will be published. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog and to leave a thought.

Popular posts from this blog

A Short History of the Elephant and Castle and Its Name

Last night I attended a lecture by local historian Stephen Humphrey who discussed the general history of the Elephant & Castle, focussing more particularly on what he called its heyday (between 1850 and 1940). This is part of a week-long art project ( The Elephant Project ) hosted in an empty unit on the first floor of the infamous shopping centre, aiming to chart some of the changes currently happening to the area. When an historian starts talking about the Elephant and Castle, there is one subject he can not possibly avoid, even if he wanted to. Indeed my unsuspecting announcement on Facebook that I was attending such talk prompted a few people to ask the dreaded question: Where does the name of the area come from, for realz? Panoramic view of the Elephant and Castle around 1960/61. Those of us less badly informed than the rest have long discarded the theory that the name comes from the linguistic deformation of "Infanta de Castille", a name which would have become at
19 comments
Read more

Rev. Peter Mullen's Blog

Rev. Peter Mullen is the chaplain to the London Stock Exchange and the rector of St Michael's Cornhill and St Sepulchre without Newgate in the City. Rev. Peter Mullen was also until recently a blogger. Sadly the result of his cyber labour seem to have been deleted but Google has thankfully cached some of it and I have saved a copy for posterity, just in case. The deletion of Rev. Mullen's writings might just have something to do with the fact that last week, the Evening Standard and then the Daily Mail published an article (the same article actually) about some of those very writings (even though the elements of said writings being quoted had been published in June this year, at the time of the blessing ceremony which took place between two members of the Church of England in St Bartholomew the Great - picture ). In the article, we learned what the Rev. thinks about gay people and what should be done to them: We ["Religious believers"] disapprove of homosexuality
8 comments
Read more

Liam Messam and Tamati Ellison Swap Jerseys

I am having a bit of a vacuous evening looking at images of pretty rugby players. Addidas, with its latest viral campaign, Jersey Swap , seems to be squarely aiming at the gay market with a selection of five antipodean rugby players, visitor to the website can select and see take their tops off and... well... swap jersey (those interested can create posters too). My favorites of the bunch are Liam Messam and Tamati Ellison . The pictures of their pretty faces and bulging naked torsos (excuse me while I sit down for a second!) included to this post should tell you why. A job well done for Addidas. This will go round the Internet for a while, I think.
2 comments
Read more