FREE WILL AND THE SOUL

YOUR BODY IS NONE OF MY BUSINESS! Unless you're my teenager...

This country is so immature; we're all a bunch of puritans who are upset by sex, obsessed with sex, and in fear of sex. By making it so taboo, we've made it too exciting. Other countries are blase about topless beaches, but in America we've made icons out of the breast and the penis. I am raising sons, tweenage boys, and I am hearing things you cannot believe on a daily basis that are going on in middle school.

Our culture's fascination with porn and nudity and sleaze is creating an entire generation who have only one thing on their mind: graphic sex. That is all they talk about. But not "loving monogamous sex", not the excitement of mystery; it's all about body parts and violent language, and using women as sex objects. It has never been worse in our country. I cannot believe what I'm seeing and hearing. Our children crave and deserve innocence. They deserve to have their childhoods back -- where imagination was more important than knowledge. I am mentoring teen girls in our neighborhood. Please stay tuned for some pretty raw but enlightening posts on this soon.

IS KILLING PRO-LIFE?

DOMESTIC TERRORISTS ARE THE BIGGEST THREAT TO OUR COUNTRY

I've been thinking about the root of hatred lately — and it's obvious that "evil" (I don't believe in evil) is always the same regressive, self-centered fear-based bigotry that Christ fought against and that has been here since the beginning of civilization: the ancient dark force of fundamentalism. There is, of course, no power in "evil," but this is our only enemy — the primitive hateful force that was behind the Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, the Ku Klux Klan, the assassination of Martin Luther King, the slaying of abortion doctors, the killing of Matthew Shepherd, the illegal invasion of Iraq, the campaign of Bush-Cheney, the obsession with automatic weapons, the fear of Muslims, the fear of immigrants, the fear of helping the poor, the fear of free medical care, the fear of peace and the crucifiction of the Great Peacemaker — the force that is most represented right now by the extremist political right wing in our country. And of course their messengers and propagandists: Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Ann Coulter, Mark Levin, Glen Beck.

It has always been the same force of evil, it just keeps changing its name.



HuffPo comments after Dr. Tiller was murdered in cold blood last week by suspect Scott Roeder:

Right wing fundamentalists who are stockpiling guns and murdering people like this are absolute terrorists in our own country. Look at what happened at the Palin rallies: people yelling "Kill him!" and nothing was done...and the recent ad in a newspaper encouraging our president's assasination. These people are more of a threat to our freedom and safety than any Gitmo prisoner who might be imprisoned in our fortress-like prisons. I hope this man is prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

I am stunned and deeply saddened over the called "pro-life" terrorists in this country. They are pro-death, not pro-life. They are anti-life. They are so deeply wrong and tragically flawed in their thinking, it is beyond comprehension. There is a reason the womb is encased in the separate individual body of a human being. It is not community property. This is not a state or government issue. No bureaucrat, government agent, policeman, moral judge, religious tribe, fanatical fundamentalist -- or any other human being has the right to dictate what I do with my private parts. Even for God-loving Christians they cannot deny that the whole point of the Bible is the journey of the soul to God. The journey of each human being making good or bad choices which create his or her character. Every human being has the right of free will. FREE WILL means each person can choose to make a mistake and his or her soul has to suffer the consequences and grow from this. Every story in the Bible concerns deeply flawed humans who made terrible mistakes, but were forgiven and redeemed if they turned to their Father — God. Without free will, they could never have this journey or learned these lessons. The whole point is love, forgiveness and redemption.

In Iowa, Dan Holman, of the anti-abortion group Missionaries to the Preborn, told CNN that Tiller's death was something to "cheer."

I was cheered by it, because I knew he wouldn't be killing any more babies," Holman said.

Holman protested a May 17 speech by President Obama in which the president urged Americans to find common ground on abortion. He told CNN that "all abortionists are deserving of death, and they are not the only ones. There are politicians and judges, and others who support this murder are also deserving of death."

In all of Christ's teachings, he only cared about how we treat each other: The Golden Rule. In every one of his Beatitudes, he taught the laws of love. "The meek shall inherit the earth." Life is not about flesh, it is spirit. The soul is not located in the material body or in fetal tissue. The spiritual values of love and compassion are the only things Christ cared about.

The law of love, the spirit not the flesh, how we treat our each other, how we treat our enemies. "Turn the other cheek. Love your enemies." There is no substance in matter. Christ was offended by the Pharisees with their rules, gold, robes and rituals. So much focus on ritual and "material" rules and complex food laws that bogged down the spirit. Remember he said "It's the spirit of the law and not the letter" meaning "It's how you LOVE ONE ANOTHER that matters to God." It seems these modern day Pharisees, the evangelical extremists such as Pat Robertson, the late Jerry Falwell, John Hagee and people at Operation Rescue — are focused on everything BUT what is important. When will they learn?

Again, it's the dark force of primitive fundamentalism that puts more faith in fear than in God; that condemns sinners instead of bringing the light of love and forgiveness, as Christ taught; that controls others with lengthy rituals and icons of idolatry. This very same force is responsible for the current economic crisis. Style over substance. Fundamentalism >authoritarianism > materialism (greed) > consumerism.

Again, Christ's most important law is the Golden Rule, or how we treat our fellow human beings. But before you say "How we treat a fetus is more important than how we treat living, born human beings!" you are decidedly WRONG. This is not what Christ, the Great Peacemaker taught. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. No where is this subject mentioned in any of his teachings, or anywhere else in the Bible.

It is absurd to think that a piece of prenatal tissue that may or may not be viable, and that is the genetic result of a supremely private act between husband and wife (or tragically, between rapist and victim) -- and is part of a distinctly separate human woman with free will, living in a land of freedom, with privacy rights and civil rights — to think this is worth killing a born, living, breathing, human being over is the ultimate evil. For these hateful, anti-Christian, pro-death extremists who call themselves "pro-life" and would murder a living human being to save an unborn defective fetus -- to think that a "potential life" that is ensconced within the separate, free, individual body of a woman, a private citizen — is more important than the living, the born, the mother's own life, the victims of our illegal bombing campaigns, our soldiers, the Iraqi children, the homeless, the poor, the orphans, the destitute or even one's enemies such as Dr. Tiller — is un-Christian, immoral, and against everything Christ himself taught.

How dare you, Scott Roeder and your ilk -- how dare you take our your sick pathological, twisted vengeance on an entire family and community -- not to mention ruining the life of your own son and going against every law of the God you claim to worship. You have no idea what cases Dr. Tiller was treating. You twist the legal language to suit your malevolent purposes. Women who had no other choice but to have an abortion because the fetus was not going to live, or was threatening the life of the mother - he was saving lives. Until you've walked in the shoes of every woman going through this, you have no right to judge.

But if you take the bible as the literal word of God, then why don't you take God's words literally? "Judgment and vengeance is mine!" said God.


COMING SOON...
How to Talk to your Teens about Sex in American Culture (which isn't normal sex)

Thanks to the recent announcement of Jamie Lynn Spear's pregnancy, many parents have had to have conversations with their tweens and teens about pregnancy and sex. Talking to children about these topics can prove to be scary and a difficult task, but it doesn't have to be...