A little over a year ago I wrote a piece by the above title. It was a plea regarding religion and people's adherence to their various branches on the theology tree.
A plea that regardless of how much a person loves their choice, their god, their book, their faith - that they keep it to themselves, that they don't force it onto others, declare their "rightness." That if they believe, then LET IT BE ENOUGH.
Today while on my walk, I was stopped by the bicycle brigade that frequents my neighborhood. Two young men in their black pants, white shirts, skinny black ties, and backpacks who thought nothing of intruding upon my day, my obvious activity, not to mention my ALONENESS (sorry, boys, but when a lady is out alone, keep your distance or I reserve the right to raise my knee thus bringing you to yours, not in prayer - unless you count your pleas to God to make the pain stop).
They wanted to proselytize and pontificate. All they did was piss me off. I smiled, gritted my teeth, and asked one question, "Why do you believe what you believe?" They began their scripted ramble, and I again asked the question. This went on for several rounds, until I finally laughed and explained their answer was not good enough. That they were taught to believe it by someone who was taught to believe it by someone who was taught to believe it, and on and on.
"But, but, but..." sputtered forth. I smiled again, said, "And that's OK, guys. Just let it be enough." I then put my headphones back in my ears, walked around their bicycles, back home, and searched through the archives for the original post.
I stand by it today. And the editorial at the bottom is not an attempt to Bush bash, but a clear warning of what happens when a person cannot let it be enough.
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This morning, while the girls and I were cleaning, the doorbell rang.
It's Sunday. None of us have any visitors planned. So go away, I don't want any.
We did not answer the door.
Looking out the top window, I watched two people walking away. They appeared to be father and son - Dad in his 30s, son hardly middle school. Dressed in khakis, dress shirts and ties, they were methodically going door to door.
When I opened my front door to check - sure enough - there it was. Some doom and gloom proclamation about the end of the world, but how, by aligning myself with Jehovah's Witnesses, it would all be good. I could prepare.
I hate this.
Don't bring your religion to my door deigning to tell me how YOU have it all figured out and how I am living in ignorance, damnation, or sin. How dare you?
Seriously.
It is Reason #1 why I have such disdain for religion. Because those who are involved have a very difficult time keeping their faith to themselves. By that I mean, if you believe in something, if it gives you pleasure, hope, comfort, a sense of peace - LET IT BE ENOUGH.
Let it be enough FOR YOU. Wallow in it. Roll around in your belief with others who have found their way to the same place. But LET IT BE ENOUGH.
I do not need directions to your church. I do not need a lecture, sermon, or Bible verse. I don't want your pamphlets shoved in the crack of my door. If I'm shopping, I don't need a bookmark for your cathedral put under my windshield wiper. I do not need saving.
My faith is just fine. Which is why I don't bang YOU over the head with it. I don't ring your doorbell deigning to tell you how wrong you are. And you know why?
Because none of us truly knows. We have notions. We have stories. We have hopes. What we don't have is God, Allah, Vishnu, Buddah, et al on speed dial, email, or interoffice memo.
You believe the Bible. Literally. Fine. I don't have a problem with that as long as you don't thump it my direction. You believe every word your minister utters is divine. Good, go with that. Just know that I regard your minister to be a human being - just as full of shit as the rest of us. So forgive me for not hanging on his/her every word.
Religion is largely geographical. What you believe is based on where you were raised. What your parents taught you to believe. What their parents taught them. Or perhaps some branch on the theology tree caught your attention as an adult and you were drawn to it. That's great. But great does not mean RIGHT. Like ice cream, religions are many. And my saying vanilla is the right one doesn't make it so for everyone.
I believe religion needs to be kept far, far away from governance. In God We Trust has not always been on our money. And Under God has not always been in our pledge. It's stunning to me the number of people who don't know that.
I have been making my way through The Family - it's an involved read. Drenched in thoroughly, exhaustively researched (and footnoted throughout) history - painstakingly annotated details of how the C Streeters and their ilk have evolved. It's stunning. And it's dangerous. And it's what happens when people can't let it be enough.
There is no separation of Chuch and State. It's a grand notion, a piece of a map laid out by our founding fathers which got buttf*cked by a bunch of men who have illusions of grandeur and believe God has chosen them to be in charge, to be wealthy. And part of that means the rules which apply to you and me? Well, these guys don't roll that way. They believe themselves to be above reproach.
And their current leader, Doug Coe, is just another in a line of manipulative preachers who is as charismatic as he is cunning. The tentacles of The Family are everywhere.
A good example is this editorial I just found. I'd love to say I'm surprised, but nothing about Bush at this point can do that. Make me furious? Absolutely.
And this example of allowing his religious fervor to infect his decision making, hell - his representation, as the leader of this country? Well, I will preach ONE thing to you. God, Christianity is ONLY ONE avenue of belief in this world. If it's yours, great. But it's not everyone's.
So for GOD'S SAKE, shut up. Stop ringing my doorbell. Seriously, the next time you feel the need to preach to someone who doesn't follow your doctrine? Swallow it, revel in YOUR belief, and then say to yourself: Let it be enough.
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A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush
JAMES A. HAUGHT
Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.
Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.
Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”
This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its “coalition of the willing” to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”
After the 2003 call, the puzzled French leader didn’t comply with Bush’s request. Instead, his staff asked Thomas Romer, a theologian at the University of Lausanne, to analyze the weird appeal. Dr. Romer explained that the Old Testament book of Ezekiel contains two chapters (38 and 39) in which God rages against Gog and Magog, sinister and mysterious forces menacing Israel. Jehovah vows to smite them savagely, to “turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws,” and slaughter them ruthlessly. In the New Testament, the mystical book of Revelation envisions Gog and Magog gathering nations for battle, “and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”
In 2007, Dr. Romer recounted Bush’s strange behavior in Lausanne University’s review, Allez Savoir. A French-language Swiss newspaper, Le Matin Dimanche, printed a sarcastic account titled: “When President George W. Bush Saw the Prophesies of the Bible Coming to Pass.” France’s La Liberte likewise spoofed it under the headline “A Small Scoop on Bush, Chirac, God, Gog and Magog.” But other news media missed the amazing report.
Subsequently, ex-President Chirac confirmed the nutty event in a long interview with French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, who tells the tale in his new book, Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai (If You Repeat it, I Will Deny), released in March by the publisher Plon.
Oddly, mainstream media are ignoring this alarming revelation that Bush may have been half-cracked when he started his Iraq war. My own paper, The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, is the only U.S. newspaper to report it so far. Canada’s Toronto Star recounted the story, calling it a “stranger-than-fiction disclosure … which suggests that apocalyptic fervor may have held sway within the walls of the White House.” Fortunately, online commentary sites are spreading the news, filling the press void.
The French revelation jibes with other known aspects of Bush’s renowned evangelical certitude. For example, a few months after his phone call to Chirac, Bush attended a 2003 summit in Egypt. The Palestinian foreign minister later said the American president told him he was “on a mission from God” to defeat Iraq. At that time, the White House called this claim “absurd.”
Recently, GQ magazine revealed that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld attached warlike Bible verses and Iraq battle photos to war reports he hand-delivered to Bush. One declared: “Put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground.”
It’s awkward to say openly, but now-departed President Bush is a religious crackpot, an ex-drunk of small intellect who “got saved.” He never should have been entrusted with the power to start wars.
For six years, Americans really haven’t known why he launched the unnecessary Iraq attack. Official pretexts turned out to be baseless. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction after all, and wasn’t in league with terrorists, as the White House alleged. Collapse of his asserted reasons led to speculation about hidden motives: Was the invasion loosed to gain control of Iraq’s oil—or to protect Israel—or to complete Bush’s father’s vendetta against the late dictator Saddam Hussein? Nobody ever found an answer.
Now, added to the other suspicions, comes the goofy possibility that abstruse, supernatural, idiotic, laughable Bible prophecies were a factor. This casts an ominous pall over the needless war that has killed more than four thousand young Americans and cost U.S. taxpayers perhaps $1 trillion.
James A. Haught is the editor of the Charleston Gazette (West Virginia)
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