So the Reverend Haggard is cured! One sin he does not want to be guilty of is Homosexuality. But it always amazes me how the fundies ignore the sins they own, like greed. Remember that old saying "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven?" I’ve been thinking about greed in America. Not just greed, but GREED.
That Exxon guy taking the 400 million parachute. The way Wal-Mart is raping the country, putting all the mom-and-pop businesses out of business. I think the Wal-Marts, the Home Depots and all the big mega marts are responsible for the biggest transfer of wealth in this countries history. And I think it’s a sin.
It’s interesting the way we like mega everything. Even the southern churches have to be mega churches. No wonder Haggard wants back, wants to be cured. He sat at the head of a big mega corporation. His compensation, in ego-dollars alone, must have been stupendous. But I also wonder how much money he made?
If it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, how can these pastors condone the actions of people like the President, the VP, and all the people riding the Gravy Train? When people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (who live in mansions and don’t have a care in the world monetarily) think about sin do the ever think about greed? Jesus spoke a lot about helping the poor, more than any other subject. He said absolutely nothing about homosexuality or abortion. You would think there would be more emphasis on helping the poor, but hey, they just caught on to global warming.
Have you ever been to the Vatican? The biggest palace in the world, adorned by the richest art collection in the world. The heads of the church live in splendor that no monarch anywhere could rival. They live a life of luxury few of us could even dream of attaining. The irony seems to be lost on them. But they don’t see it as sin.
There’s lots of sins the religionists ignore. For such a pious man, Pres Bush seems to take "Thou shalt not kill" in stride. The churches, especially the fundie churches, support the war entirely. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez. He seems to embrace murder as a tool of diplomacy.
But I started this diary about greed. Yesterday the President gave a budget that gutted social programs once again. If we look at the state of Healthcare, the state of the poor, of funding for programs that affect the general welfare of our people, you can only realize that we live in what is becoming a horrible society. We are spending more money to justify our President’s bad judgment in Iraq than we are on our own poor, by an exponential amount. We could fund healthcare for every citizen in the country with what we are spending, but he chooses to spend the money on killing. On supporting Big Oil. On GREED. Make no mistake about it, this war is a lot about greed.
The greatest sins of our society are largely ignored, yet our Leaders rant and rave about the "sanctity of marriage." It’s bullshit hypocrisy, pure and simple. But if we can cure Reverend Haggard, hell, there’s hope for the rest of us. Right?