I accept your challenge.

Here is my beef with Christianity, and I mean no disrespect to any of the sincere believers in the teachings of Jesus who post here.

As I previously noted, I abandoned Christianity nearly 20 years ago. I have not looked back since. I have not missed the experience of being a Christian even a little. Now that doesn't mean that I've become an atheist or "anti-God". It just means that my definition of God has expanded and as a result, so has my spiritual experience. My initial reason for leaving Christianity had to do with the utter hypocrisy, lack of compassion and disregard for the truth that was routinely practiced by the rank and file of Christians in diametrically opposite fashion of what Jesus taught. As I began to regain my sense of my former "non-saved" self, I realized a couple of things. One, that there's nothing wrong with me and there never was. Two, the deity spoken of in the scriptures is a harsh, quick tempered, insecure and needy entity that is rather eager to display his power to destroy and seems to need bloodshed, pain, and suffering for his universe to work right. Throughout the Bible, this view is evident and reinforced. That brought me to a rather startling conclusion: the "plan of salvation" laid out in scripture requires blood. It requires pain. It requires suffering and deprivation. There are those who say that Jesus came to take that burden from us. If so, then I submit that the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth are about the only thing worth keeping in the Bible. The rest of the book, which includes the old Mosaic law and the Acts of the Apostles and the writings of Paul should be thrown away. Because taken as a whole, the Bible and the religious practice that flows from it is shot through with intolerance for all kinds of people who aren't "God's Chosen", gay people, women, and those who "disagree." It sanctions the most horrific crimes (like genocide) and turns a blind eye towards things like polygamy, while condemning things like consensual sex between two unmarried people. The book is full of double standards, contradictions and there's even an interesting little story about how a man's life is ruined on a bet. When the man complains, he's told by God to shut hs mouth and not question what God does. Now...does anyone see anything like this being played out in modern political culture? Does no one find any of this oddly familiar? Not to mention the story of Jesus himself who was tortured and executed for no other reason than to serve the political ends of the time. Not because there was actually a shred of evidence against him. One could hardly call the trial before Pontius Pilate "fair". This, in a nutshell is what arose from an honest, bloodless reading of scripture. The solution in almost every case is literally or figuratively, shed blood. Be willing to die. Be willing to sacrifice even the thing most dear to you for Jesus. That's the standard of devotion laid out here. In my considered judgement, that's not love, because love would not ask such a thing. What's called for here, however is precisely that. Total devotion. Total servitude. Total surrender of self. Without question. Or else. Space doesn't allow me to elaborate on the kind of damage this belief system does, but I suspect it's pretty evident to all off us by now. So that's my beef. From someone who was as sincere a believer as you would find. My conclusion is that this is not sustainable and every day that George Bush remains in office, I'm proved right. This is precisely the government that Chirstians would design. How do you all think it's working out?

Someone shared a line recently from Ron Suskind's book about the hubris of the Bush Administration. Summarized, the line said that hubris is, among other things, a loss of perspective, a buiding up of oneself on such shaky claims that even the slightest questioning is an affront to the fragile construct that's been built. It's a fundamentally weak position. Now that's been proven true given the desperate tactics being used by the GOP. In my state of MA, where a Democrat is running possibly the strongest campaign for governor that we've seen in years, the Republican incumbent is trying to bash him as "soft on crime". And it isn't working. He has a double digit lead in the polls, and the experts are saying it's his race to lose. I just read that the incumbent has taken to harrassing prospective voters by phone. If that's not desperate and a sign of the ignominious failure of the GOP's whole worldview and approach to governing, I don't know what is. Then we have the president himself, unbowed, defiant as ever, insisting that Clinton's policy on N. Korea didn't work (as opposed to his that's working like a broken Swiss watch), and looking like Capt. Ahab in the process. In less than a month, if current trends hold, we'll see the denouement of this latest battle for our American soul end with a triumph of reason and sanity. And I will be the first to cheer.

Note to the Shrub: the whale won.