I Am a Christian Jew

(From Sept. 25, 2010 Blog post)

No, I don’t mean “Christian” as a noun as to say “a Christian,” or that I practice the religious faith of Christianity, nor that I’m a member of Jews For Jesus, but “Christian” in the adjective sense as to describe someone who believes in moral values and the philosophy of Jesus Christ, mainly of being peaceful and respectful of others. So, while I’m not a Christian, you can use the adjective “Christian” to describe me, someone who happens to be Jewish. In fact, I’m an anguished Jew.

And I also subscribe to traditional values or Judeo-Christian values, in which human life and Liberty have great value. That is why the philosophy of “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” makes sense to me. And “Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want them to do to you.” I wouldn’t want someone to aggress against me or intrude into my home or steal from me or kill me. This is the main basis under which the American Founding Fathers began the United States of America, with the “Christian” recognition that all of humankind are equal under God and have a right to be treated equally under the law — no one may be above the law. And the Founders recognized that each individual has an inherent right to one’s life and Liberty, the right of ownership of one’s life and the right to be free from the aggression of others. And these rights apply to all human beings, not just Americans. Included in these fundamental human rights are the right to be left alone, the right to be presumed innocent, and that is why the right to due process is part of our inherent rights to life and Liberty.

Now, there are a lot of self-proclaimed “Christians” these days who are Christian and practice the Christian faith (that apparently includes a belief in Jesus Christ as the “son of God” and “Lord and Savior,” which Jews such as myself don’t believe), but these Christians aren’t particularly “Christian” in the kinds of activities they support, such as the use of aggression, trespass and military violence as a means of implementing “regime change” and nation building in foreign countries. That is where we find the abandonment of that Christian respect for human beings’ inherent rights to life and Liberty and their right that their territories not be trespassed, and an abandonment of due process in which all people have a right to presumption of innocence and a right to not be randomly rounded up and apprehended, searched, imprisoned, tortured or murdered.

These are the things that have been really bothering me over these past several years, and I hear these so-called “Christian” conservative radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham and Glenn Beck. They and millions of Americans have supported so much aggression and violence by the U.S. government against people in the Middle East, aggression and violence that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, not just since 9/11 but especially since the first U.S. government invasion of Iraq, 1990-91. In 1991, the U.S. government deliberately bombed and wrecked Iraqi civilian electric and water and sewage treatment facilities and refused to make repairs after the war was “over,” and throughout the ’90s the sanctions against Iraq prevented the Iraqi people from being able to make repairs, and led to a huge increase in cancer and infant mortality rates. Such treatment by the U.S. government against an entire nation of people was disgustingly un-Christian, in my opinion, and the younger President Bush’s wars since 9/11 have literally destroyed that country, and Afghanistan.

Also, the “Christian” conservatives have been blindly supportive of Israel, whose blockade of the Gaza Strip especially following the 2008-09 war which damaged water and sewage treatment facilities, was just like what the U.S. government did to Iraq, causing Gazans to use untreated water, and the situation is still ongoing.

For decades, 60 or 70 years now, the U.S. government has been intrusively expanding itself especially militarily overseas with hundreds of military bases and other government apparatus on foreign territories, which is essentially trespassing on these foreign lands, and that is especially not Christian. These U.S. government intrusions and expansions include being on Islamic holy lands such as in Saudi Arabia.

You cannot honestly call anyone who has been supportive of these actions for many decades “Christian” — They certainly don’t believe in the philosophy of “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” It is doubtful that the conservatives would want the Saudi or Iraqi governments to set up Saudi or Iraqi military bases in Texas or Wyoming. It is doubtful that “Christian” conservatives would like a Pakistani-initiated remote-controlled drone bombing of somewhere in the U.S., that’s for sure.

Now, besides going against Christian moral values, starting wars and inflicting other kinds of intrusions on foreign lands and against foreign peoples also has practical consequences. For instance, would there have been a taking of American hostages in Iran in 1979 had the U.S. government not overthrown the Iranians’ democratically elected Prime Minister in 1953 and installed a U.S. government-puppet regime which resulted in 25 years of State dictatorship and murders of innocents? Probably not.

And, regarding the elder President Bush’s administration deliberately giving Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein the message that if Hussein invaded Kuwait the U.S. government would look the other way, only to then have the U.S. government invade, bomb and destroy Iraq after Hussein invaded Kuwait, that was a very un-Christian scheme. I’m sure that my saying these things will make some people very uncomfortable (particularly Bush), but I believe in telling the truth, especially when recognizing certain acts by certain people or governments as bad or immoral. Glenn Beck is constantly saying (ad nauseam), “Always tell the truth,” and I agree with that.

I am sorry that some people are unable to recognize that the intrusive actions of the U.S. government in the Middle East for 6 or 7 decades are what has motivated the inhabitants of those territories to react against the U.S., and that too many people believe what their government officials tell them. When I listen to these talk shows on the radio or hear people on FoxNews Sunday or 60 Minutes, it sounds as though so many people just think that history began with 9/11, and that’s because no one knows history (or remembers, if they are older) because the schools are too concerned with teaching the latest political correctness idiocy or indoctrinating the kids with enviro-wacko theology and the Marxism that has gotten in the schools especially since education starting being so heavily politicized in the 1960s. I just can’t believe that so many intelligent people, including U.S. senators and Congressmen, can be so gullible, ignorant and naive.

What had been especially loathsome was George W. Bush’s Christian and Biblical rhetoric in his crusade against terrorists (or against Muslims and Islam, to be more honest about it). And worse is the current president, the Marxist-Nincompoop-In-Chief, who is continuing and even escalating Bush’s wars and murders of innocents and further destruction of foreign territories, not based on Biblical rhetoric, but based on, well, nothing actually. Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing or why he’s doing it. He is “Lost in space,” one could say (but so was Bush).

LewRockwell.com writer and Bible expert Laurence Vance has commented several times on George W. Bush’s wars, and that Bush’s actions as president have not been particularly “Christian.” Vance has noted,

Like President Bush, King David didn’t actually kill anyone, but he was still guilty. But even worse than David unnecessarily sending one of his soldiers to his death is the fact that Bush unnecessarily sent thousands of his soldiers to their deaths. David was also told that what he did gave “great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme” (2 Samuel 12:14). How many enemies of Christianity were given great occasion to blaspheme because of Bush’s “crusade” and “great mission” in Iraq?

If anyone deserves a Nuremberg trial it is George Bush. Yet, the great majority of Christians have been silent about Bush’s war crime that is the war in Iraq. How many Christians believe that Bush has the blood of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians on his hands? How many Christians believe that Bush has given great occasion to God’s enemies to blaspheme? How many Christians believe that Bush despised the commandment of the Lord? How many Christians believe that Bush did evil in the sight of the Lord? How many Christians even believe that what Bush did in Iraq displeased the Lord? Sadly, not enough.

It is very, very sad that America has turned out to be exactly the opposite what the very Christian, good and decent Founders had wanted their new country to be, in that the federal government has become a huge, Leviathan State that intrudes its slimy self into the private lives of the American people, a nanny-police state that violates individuals’ civil liberties on a daily basis, steals from them, murders and engages in one corrupt act after another, while its foreign bureaus and military expand themselves and trespass on foreign lands and murder innocent foreigners without any thought, and, as a collective Leviathan State, has no conscience as well.

But I, a Christian Jew, will always stand for the truth, for Liberty and for peace.