Head-fakes Deceive Mindless Minions
by
Frank A. Jones
The Bush Campaign Camp sent out a memo to campaign
workers on how the church should be used to reelect the president, and
were they used! Many a mindless, non-thinking church members marched to
the polls at the behest of church leaders to elect, as it were, a new
Emperor Constantine of Rome. The use of the church is not new; historically,
mindless believers have gone anywhere in the name of religion, when pronounced
by church leaders.
Yet, according to the Bible, the thinking and
questioning Christian is considered nobler, than the mindless minions. The
Apostle Paul, the most learned of all the apostles, and the most prolific
writer of them all, wrote to the church at Thessalonica, saying, prove
all things and hold tightly to the things that are good. (1Thes.
5:20-21) This was after he saw the people of Berea in their devotion to
truth; they did not simply accept what he said without thought--they
searched the scripture to ensure whether what he taught was correct.
Furthermore, Dr. Luke, a medical doctor and writer of the Acts
of The Apostles, recorded Paul’s thoughts, when he wrote, “The
Bereans were more noble than the Thessalonians, for they received the word
of God readily and searched the scriptures to see if those things were
so.” (Acts 14) These Christians were not mindless minions.
Indeed, they represent the type of people God wants and desires
Christians to be. As far back as the book of Hosea, God said, “My
people are destroyed because of a lack of knowledge.” (Hos. 4:6)
Ignorance or ignorant behavior is never applauded by God as obedience to
his word or as faith. Satan has greatly confused many Christians about
this fact!
Contrary to popular belief, God is not interested in
mindless minions who will not honestly question and credibly reason the
efficacy of their actions. But the current crop of so-called moral majority Christians are a lazy breed; they
prefer others to do their thinking for them. And Karl Rove and other
campaign strategists will do their thinking for them and send marching
orders from the White House. But this type of Christian is not a Christian
at all, though they tout themselves as Christians. God said, “…Because
thou has rejected knowledge, I will also reject you.” (Hos. 4:6)
The great Apostle Paul teaches that Christians are
not to be children, tossed to and fro by deceptive men and teachings of
men, but that they should be mature and prove all things. (Eph. 4; 1Thes.
5:20) God is nurturing mature, mindful Christians, not mindless creatures
who march to any mind-bending madness that comes along in ill-fitting
sheep’s clothing.
Elsewhere, I have written about the Culture of
Ignorance that is being spoon-fed to many Black Christians by ignorant
religious leaders who know neither biblical teaching nor solid reasoning.
That same scenario of ignorance and deception is true among mindless white
Christians as well. The great 40% functionally illiterate population
across this nation is broad and widespread throughout America. A vast
number of these are white, mindless Christians who, in all honesty,
thought they were doing God’s will by rushing to the polls and voting
for Bush because he says things that comport with scriptural beliefs. But
a sense of history would be very important for Christians so that they not
fall into the same deceptive traps that have been used before on them.
As far back as 313 AD, Constantine supposedly had a
religious experience that brought about his conversion: while traveling
along, he saw a flaming cross in the sky that had writing that read, “By
this sign shall thou conquer.” And that was his Pauline conversion
to Christianity. But far was it from a true conversion. It was a charade
that was used to help him overcome Maxentius, in becoming Emperor of Rome.
He promised Christians, that were multiplying greatly, that if they stood
beside him for emperor, he would cause all religious persecution of them
to cease. The Christians thought that they had found a true yokefellow
and stood with him politically, and he became Emperor of Rome. Thereafter,
he took over the church, brought his pagan friends into the church by
decreeing that no one could hold an office in his government unless
he was a member of the church.
After becoming Emperor, he and his friends changed
Christian customs, teachings, and generally corrupted the church. But the
Christians initially thought that they had found a true Christian
yokefellow, yet he died with his pagan name carved on his tomb. Because a
sheep-cry is made, it does not mean a sheep is making it. This is the
great fall of many who call themselves Christians. They have been
intoxicated by the Bush Administration and did not use their own Christian
reality, teaching, or their own history as a guide.
A poor brother-friend called me from Las Vegas,
Nevada and said he was going to vote for Bush because his pastor said that
it would be a sin to vote for someone like Kerry who believes in gay
rights and the use of Stem-cells for research. This poor soul would follow
a politically naïve pastor who thinks, even as the 19-Black Oakland
ministers who held a special news conference to announce their decision to
vote for Bush because he is for a constitutional amendment against gay
marriage, that Bush is godly sincere. In sports terms, Bush’s meager
effort to get a constitutional amendment against gay marriage was nothing
more than a political head-fake. Such
an amendment effort has no legs, cannot stand up, and will not get off the
ground; Bush’s camp knew that, and the Christians that supported him
should have known that too. But they didn’t, and that is tragic; it
shows that the culture of ignorance is alive and in force in churches
across this nation. All they would have had to do was to look at the Bush
Administration: The real person making the decisions in the White House on
crucial matters, like whether to start a needless, adventuresome war, is
Dick Cheney. If Bush is against gays, he would have gotten rid of Cheney
in his administration. That is common sense. Cheney’s daughter is gay,
and Cheney has said that he believes in equal rights for gays as well as
straights. How could the Christians have thought that Bush was moral with
the company he keeps? The Prophet Amos asked rhetorically, “Can two
walk together, save they agree?” (Amos 3:3) Is this not in their
Bibles? Does this not give them insight? Bush and Cheney walk together!
God’s people are destroyed because of their
knowledge gap. Is this not a willful lack of knowledge or deliberate
ignorance of truth? These Christians who marched off to vote for Bush in
great numbers and those 19-Black ministers who stoutly stated that they
would vote for Bush defy biblical teachings concerning carefully
discerning truth, and they went for a head-fake. But is it just a
head-fake or something else as well?
It seems as if the Republicans have taken the correct symbols and names from Democrats. They call themselves the Political Right, and those religious politicians [Ministers] they have hired out call themselves the Moral Majority. But these conservatives are far from morally conservative—many of them are using this religious term to cover evil acts, just as they did during antebellum days; many are actually amoral and some even immoral and evil, yet they masquerade under the cloak of the Moral Majority. Their religion is winning at all costs. The Moral Majority is neither moral nor majority; look at the religious right, they are embroiled in scandals of homosexual and heterosexual corruption, financial corruption, infidelities of every type, fraud and duplicitous conduct, etc.
This is not to say that Democrats are not similarly
situated; it is to say, however, that the issue of morality is properly a
matter left to the family, the church, temple, synagogues, etc., not
politics. But the Republicans, with their Log-Cabin Republican wing, the
open and unabashed lesbianism of the Vice President’s daughter,
vulgarity uttered on the Senate’s floor by the Vice President and his
statement that he felt good after saying it,
have still captured the church vote with head-fakes and deceptions.
