JESUS WAS A LIBERAL

 

Now that our national holiday of Thanksgiving has passed immediately followed by the new tradition of battling our fellow Americans in big box stores for even more stuff to be thankful for, we are coming up fast on the mother of all holidays: Christmas! That magical time of year where we wish each other “peace on earth and goodwill towards men”, and women, please… Where the lights that have been stored all year come out and the trees get trimmed with tinsel and ornaments, Christmas cards are mailed, shopping lists are checked off and Christmas music is playing everywhere.

Another new tradition has been introduced to the holiday season.  Every year around this time conservative talking heads, right wing political celebs and practically anyone that needs a fix of gratuitous press coverage trots out the baseless non-issue issue of the un-American and godless “WAR ON CHRISTMAS!” Magazine articles and books have been written on it, FOX News sells a lot of cars and drugs yakking about it and it’s given mediocre pols a platform to increase their stature amongst the illiterati.

As much as it pains me to give any coverage to the half-term-governor-attention- junkie, Sarah Palin, she is a frequent flier on this topic and has garnered much said desired attention with her nasally bleating about the end of life as we know it in these United States with the imagined death of Christmas. Her book on the subject is full of conjecture, faulty hypotheses and straight up B.S. with the usual fearful alarmist twaddle delivered in her down-homespun style, that is so popular with the faithful.

She and those of like mind have the annoying habit of ignoring the reality that the US is rapidly changing in cultural and spiritual diversity. This is a fact that some refuse to recognize and instead of peaceful acceptance, they have chosen anger and manufactured an absurd artificial confrontation. These are the same clueless people that were shocked that a black president was elected for a second term over an aging, but handsome and extremely well funded, white Abercrombie & Fitch model.

The use of fear of “different” is an effective method of manipulation and the weaker the mind, the  better, but Ms. Palin bit off much more than she could chew when she attacked the new Pope. She accused Pope Francis of being “kinda liberal” and she expressed her discomfort with his  views on spiritual salvation, his pronouncements of the harmful runaway greed of capitalism and his recognition of gays in the church, to mention a few. As Bill Maher so aptly stated, “If Palin thinks the Pope is too liberal, wait until she sees what Jesus has been saying!”

She has since apologized for her thoughtless remarks, but for an avowed follower of Jesus Christ, Palin is stunningly ignorant as to His teachings.  Pope Francis is simply acting Christ-like when he shows compassion for the poor instead of Ayn Randian contempt and apparently this confuses Sarah. I know its risky business to quote the Bible, but here is a good example of true Christian ideology in Mark 10:21, Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me.” Another is: Luke 14:13, “…but when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind…”

Pope Francis is a breath of fresh air living in a guest house at the Vatican eschewing the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace. He is the first person with serious global clout to speak to the dangerous realities of “unfettered capitalism.” “Around the world today, the powerful feed upon the powerless and too many people are treated as consumer goods to be used and then discarded.” He goes on to say in his eighty four page treatise on the Catholic Church’s role in society, “The worldwide crisis affecting finance and the economy lays bare the imbalances and, above all, their lack of real concern for human beings.” The Pontiff specifically criticized the failures of “trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world”. I think it’s safe to say that “theory” hasn’t panned out. Pope Francis is hard at work trying to establish the Holy Mother Church as a legitimate and relevant institution in the contemporary world and to function in a more Christ-like and compassionate fashion and less like a very private and very exclusive wealthy gentleman’s club.

I feel that I should qualify and confess I am a lapsed-Catholic-cum-Pagan and have no love for The Church and its many hypocrisies and protection of pedophiles, but one must give credit where credit is due. Frankly, I fear for the Pope’s safety as he goes up against 2000 years of entrenched corruption that has neither interest nor desire to start practicing what it preaches. Already the global cabal of the one percent is preparing to counter attack the Pope’s damaging truths with “economic experts” denigrating and poo pooing what he has fearlessly dared to address.

As for Sarah Palin, I wonder if she would be willing to follow the tenets of her savior and donate all, or even some of, her phony “War on Christmas” book royalties to the poor. I must ask Sarah, what do you think Jesus would do?

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Alex lives with his wife, Anna in Key West, Florida. He enjoys writing poetry and prose and making the complacent uncomfortable.