ISRAEL IS THE BEAM IN AMERICA'S EYE | 2004-04-10
Bear with me. I'll get to your point in a minute.
Conservative preachers endlessly quote Jesus as saying that he was here on earth to fulfill the Jewish Law, not to destroy it: "Not a jot or tittle." From there, preachers go on to prove Jesus was here to save the State of Israel. Actually Jesus went ahead and knocked down the whole basis of the Jewish Law, the Ten Commandments themselves, by reducing them to "Love God" and The Golden Rule. He worked on the Sabbath, and made it clear that was an example.
Jesus's point was that He was the fulfillment of ALL moral laws. This included the huge monotheistic religion of the Persians, of which the Magi were priests.
Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this earth."
But on this earth people use Jesus for power and to push any issue they happen to like. This is straight, good old fashioned blasphemy. Jerry Falwell uses Christ to back Israel, and Arabs use their religion for the other side.
You are right, this is hideously dangerous. A third of Germany's entire population was wiped out in the Thirty Years' War between Protestants and Catholics. But the problem does not start with Arabs. It starts here. We gave Arab land to a group of people who are largely the descendants of CONVERTS to the religion of Judaism.
There are more genes of the actual old Jewish population of Palestine in the Palestinian Arabs than in the Jews to whom we gave the Palestinian homeland.
Now we are screaming about THEIR religious bigotry.
Jesus said that before we point out the mote in someone else's eye we should take care of the beam in our own.
Once again, you are right. Western history teaches us that there is nothing more dangerous than using religion for political purposes. That is what we did. That is what we are doing.