LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This latest Yurica Report decodes the Biblical phrases in Bush's Inaugural Address.

An excerpt:

Lest anyone believe that the scriptures cited in this essay mean what the dominionists say they mean, I offer the following:

First of all we need to discuss the more commonly understood concepts of the Bible in reference to the words “liberty and free.” St. Paul, in his epistle at Galatians 5:2 defines the religious use of “liberty” as follows:

“Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty with which Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” (Emphasis author's.) (KJV)

What was the “yoke of bondage,” one might ask especially since a number of the early Christians were slaves. Clearly St. Paul meant something other than the literal meaning of the term. To understand this biblical reference, one has to understand that Christianity was not based upon blind faith. St. Paul used “liberty” as a metaphor. From his perspective, when someone accepted the tenets of Christianity, he or she was stepping out of the bondage of falsity, ignorance, idolatry, and superstition—into the glorious light of Truth. This “truth” was not simply belief in a new god—to the contrary, it was a revolutionary process—a way of not only discovering reality but an insistence that one believe only what is true.

St. Paul elevated reasoning and enlightenment. So profoundly discriminating were the tenets of Christianity, that it required its followers to “prove all things.” (1 Thessalonians 5:21, KJV) The new birth experience then was the epistemological reclamation of man, the very opposite of what happened in the Garden of Eden. Combined with Moses’ rules on how to distinguish between science and pseudoscience,[23] early Christians could in a very real sense step from darkness to light: from superstition to enlightenment. Or to put it another way, they began the intellectual journey that demanded honest self examination, acknowledgement of their wrong beliefs and a change towards knowledge and truth and the relinquishing of falsity and superstition.

Becoming a “Christian” then meant a life-changing acceptance; it meant embracing truth, knowledge, wisdom and understanding—the very attributes of God Himself. The believer put on these attributes over and under his skin and with fresh eyes saw who Jesus really was and still is. I submit that the deliverance of the early Christians from darkness to light was the most powerful vision the world had ever seen. No wonder it was called “the born again” experience by Jesus.

But today in America, becoming a “Christian” is too often marked by no painful self examination with the demand that one turn from one’s wickedness. Instead the invitation to “Christianity” is too often the easy gospel of affirmation of one’s own personal superstitions, falsities, and ignorance. In other words, the evangelical church as a whole is still in the ‘yoke of bondage.’

Evangelical preachers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries found that telling the masses, “God loves you just the way you are!” filled their churches and brought in hundreds of millions of dollars. Instead of demanding that congregants “prove all things,” the emphasis became, “believe all things.” This soon became, “Believe what we tell you from this pulpit because we are God’s anointed!”

America is paying the price today for a church that spreads ignorance and superstition, lies and acceptance of lies. Discernment is listed as one of the great gifts of the Holy Spirit, but it is entirely absent from even the lexicon of the modern weak, diseased and fearfully militant church of America. The pastors have created a monster—an anti-intellectual anti-Christ body that hates spiritual growth and those who are growing spiritually, morally and intellectually. As a consequence we are facing America’s darkest hour. May God give us strength and the wisdom to prevail.

Pretty sad to realize that the early church and early Christians were more rational and scientifically minded than they are today.