Flag worship is idolatory.

[patrice]

If this nationa can't stand in spite of some burnt cloth, even a whole mountain of burnt flags, if this nation can't survive that, then it is a weak thing that has no real right to be a nation.

When will Fascists understand how oppression profoundly weakens the People? Rules do not make people stronger. Strength is created within. It does not NEED materialistic signs. If it does NEED them, then it isn't strength. It is NEEDY, and by definition WEAK!

[Wapsie B]

1. So is bible worship.

You have a good point about using rules as a crutch. It's like those who would rid the world of naked pictures or sex toys.

[prodigal_green]

3. I heard a sermon from a Catholic priest in the south

refer to "biblidolatry" as a sin. Basically making the same argument: the book is not God.

[Wapsie B]

9. That's right it isn't.

That priest put it so well. I'd love to listen to a sermon like that.

[CatholicEdHead]

17. Sames goes for "Cathichismolutry"

In that many Catholics (usually ultra-traditionalist) think the Cathichism book is an overly-sacred group of "infallible" church rules and those who disagree are "heretics" and should leave the church.

[DemBones DemBones]

18. But someone who claims to be Christian yet

rejects the Bible is on very shaky theological ground, as is someone who claims to be Catholic but rejects the Catechism.

[patrice]

5. Yes, you can't develop your immunity in an asceptic environment.

Many of us, me included, need to put the Bible away for awhile, put (what we call) "Jesus" away for a while, put away our rosaries, and stop going to youth, and other, religio-fascist groups, and go out to the streets and find Jesus and do something real about suffering, not the nice little "missionary" trip, where you get to come home and resume your guilty capitalism. No, make it permanent. Live on nothing more than what you actually need, in service to others.

I'm not there yet myself, but I am working on it, and I have made some progress. I know that isn't enough. I am figuring out how to do more. I know that sounds like an excuse, but I really am doing what I can.

Pardon my rant, but that's what people should be doing instead of worshipping the Bible and the American Flag and Capitalism (i.e. Free Market Theology).

[Wapsie B]

6. Yes people should be putting their faith into action.

I've always felt that if you want to show yourself as a person of faith to live a godly life as an example to others, rather than buttonholing people on the street and witnessing to the.

[patrice]

8. Personally, I'm not that interested in being godly.

I just want to be a real person.

[Wapsie B]

10. Me too.

And live my life as it's right for me.

[demosincebirth]

2. The Flag is the symbol of my country, just like

the Cross is the symbol of my faith. Burn both of them and that doesn't make me less patriotic or less of a christian.

[patrice]

11. Truth is Inevitable by definition. Inevitable means Truth doesn't need

our symbols. If it doesn NEED us and our symbols, it is Relative, not Absolute Truth, i.e. not true in all times and places and with all people.

You know, this illustrates one of my greatest frustrations. I know there are those on the "opposite" side who understand the preceeding sentences, and yet (just as with their new ACTIVIST judges) they do the opposite of what they say they mean. It is supremely confusing and frustrating.

[Love Bug]

4. Which is why Jehovah's Witnesses won't salute the flag or say

the pledge of allegiance. Makes sense to me.

[patrice]

12. I respect honest religions that don't make so much SHOW like the JWs.

[DemBones DemBones]

13. Jehovah's Witnesses also won't serve in the military but

neither will they call themselves Conscientious Objectors and their pacifism only applies to "man's wars" -- when Jehovah tells them to fight, they will. That's always led me to wonder if the leadership, the guys who write "The Watchtower" and "Awake!", could get the JWs to go out and start a war by telling them Jehovah ordered it. They've believed all the predictions the leadership has made of the end of the world -- I remember the JWs in my family, who joined up in 1969-70, being absolutely sure the world would end in 1975. After 1975, they were curiously quiet about the next predicted EOW. Earlier JWs were told the world would end in the thirties (an exact year was given but I've forgotten it), and still earlier they were told 1917 or '18.

[patrice]

16. Hey, maybe they were right; the World ended and it hasn't

caught up with us yet, so we haven't noticed it until it does . . . ?

Just kidding, all of the "End Times" stuff is getting to me. It does appear to me that we are dealing with "the Ultimate Man" - in the Nietzschian sense of the word "ultimate" = the last, the dreggs from the bottom of the barrel. Frist certainly seems to be something like that, a hollow-man, stuffed with other people's ideas and "values", no creative spark of his own, only political/economic opportunism. Not the kind of guy who inspires by nature of who/what he is himself.

[DemBones DemBones]

19. That's what they claim! Something about Jesus actually

took over in 1975, I think -- I tended to tune them out, frankly, because you cannot reason with someone who has been programmed by the JWs. You make a rational argument or ask an incisive question and you get back a rote response, as if you'd hit a button on a tape player. Like conservatives of any stripe, they never hear what you say. They may pick up a word or two to key their response to but they never process the content of what you say.

The state of the world and humanity is indeed discouraging today and I wonder if we are near the end times. People in every age have been able to find signs that they were approaching the end times but you don't have to go looking for signs now, it all looks so bad. The phenomenon of American corporations gleefully outsourcing jobs to preserve their usually obscene profit margins is extremely disheartening. The CEOs of these corporations were all raised in essentially the same society we were, taught basically the same values, but they're hollow greedheads. What has happened to these people? Where did their souls go?

[prole_for_peace]

7. why do you hate america?

[DemBones DemBones]

14. It's funny how so many conservatives are both

gung-ho "patriots" (respect the flag, salute the flag, etc.) *and* hardshell Protestants of the sort who condemn Catholics for "worshipping statues."

No doubt they would tell you that pledging allegiance to the flag is symbolic of their loyalty to the nation and that they don't worship the flag -- they'd be insulted that you said they did.

Yet they never understand when they're told that, for Catholics, praying in front of a statue is symbolic of prayer to the saint represented, asking the saint for his or her prayers to God. Statues, crucifixes, medals, etc., are all reminders of Jesus and the saints, helpful but not essential. The flag should be the same.

[patrice]

15. Good comparison!

It IS the same thing.

[DemBones DemBones]

20. Thanks! The comparison just

hit me when I read your post -- thanks for the inspiration.

[patrice]

21. It captures one of the most frustrating things about working towards

some kind of solutions to various bad problems in the US with people who CONSTANTLY CONTRADICT what they say with WHAT THEY DO. I mean, we're all adults; we know we can't have things 100% the way we think they should be, so you want to go ahead and share power, as long as progress toward improvement happens. BUT that's impossible when you can't trust people to have unity in what they say and do. It's just too confusing.

[patrice]

22. P.S. Especially Fristarians and the 1st of the Ten Commandments.

We ARE an Idolatorous nation.

[DemBones DemBones]

23. Worse, they don't see how they contradict themselves.

It seems as if they don't ever consider how Belief A relates to Belief B and Belief C. In fact, I'd bet they don't.

Those frustrating Fristarians.