You'd think by now America's Christianistas would have learned to stop playing the role of Mary Magdalene to Congress's Jesus, even though many Biblical scholars no longer believe that poor, maligned Mary was ever the harlot she's been painted out to be. If American Christians have proven to be slow learners where the all-powerful neo-con Republicans are concerned, then the Foley scandal should become their "teachable moment."
I don't know where the phrase "hat in hand" came from. It's not listed in my copy of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, which is my source for the origins of such trivialities. I will surmise that it stems from the days of door-to-door salesmen who often had doors slammed in their faces without having made a sale and, thus, were left standing with their "hat in their hands." I'll leave it to the political Christians to figure it out because they are the ones in just such a position now.
It is unfortunate that a segment, a large segment, of today's Christians in America ever took it upon themselves to enter the political arena in such a strong-arm fashion so as to foist their views of Christianity on policy, policymakers, and ultimately on the world. By doing this, they have hitched their wagons not to the teachings of Jesus but to the corporeal failings of the efforts of men, and greedy men at that.
I am no Bible scholar, but I was raised in a Christian church and I would have had to miss a BIG bunch of Sundays to have missed the lessons on Blessed be the corporations, Blessed be the torturers of their enemies, or Blessed be those who give tax cuts to the rich and forget about the dark-skinned people standing chest-deep in floodwaters. Or the one on Blessed be the leaders who take your campaign money and then engage in all manner of scandolous and unethical behavior on your behalf. Or, if something can be worse than all that, Blessed be the "Christians" who invade a country, make a huge human mess, and create a global crisis in the process.
Jesus, and his teachings, would have been much better served in America had Christians not chosen to join the political fray or whore themselves to it but rather to serve as watchdogs of the fray. Verily I say unto you, watch. And there's lots to see if only Christians would remove the scales from their eyes and get back to the business of being Christian. You will know them by their fruit. The streets of America are littered with rotten fruit. Someone needs to get back to basics.
If Christians in America have energy to burn, then they should use it to turn over the tables of the money changers in the temple as Jesus did. There is currently no shortage of ethical breaches in Washington upon which to lavish one's attention. Jesus was about truth. It would be nice to see some for a change. It would be really nice if we could count on Christians to engage in a continuous campaign to require it, elevate it to status quo. Now that's a worthy place to invest one's PAC money.
It's a shame that American Christians need to be reminded that Jesus never ran for office or formed a PAC. He was about revolution by kind thoughts and good deeds, not guns. And He reached out to the poor, the downtrodden, the disinfranchised. By the time He arrived on the scene, humans had made such a mess trying to follow all the Thees and Thous in the Old Testament that He left us with only one rule that God must have thought we could manage to remember: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This is not to be confused with . . . as they do unto you.
Who knows for sure where Jesus would have invested his money if He'd had any. But based on His teachings it's doubtful it would have been in Washington D.C. and also highly unlikely it would have been in the campaigns of hawks, corpos, or oil men. American Christians have so obviously forgotten that Jesus was about helping the weak to come up higher. He probably would have invested in Harvest for Hunger or Habitat for Humanity.
He probaby would have been a Democrat.