Every day that I drive up McGregor Boulevard I pass this house that has a neon sign in its yard saying that “God is Love”. I always think that if I owned that house the first thing I would do is take down that sign. The only reason I would is because even though that God may be Love but a lot of the people that worship him are anything but love. I swear that more people have died in the name of God than anything else. More hate is spread in the name of god I think than any other thing. In my youth I believed that God was Love but now after everything that I have seen in my almost 70 years I no longer know what to think of god. I do know what to think of religion and I want no part of it.

When Religion does not want you to search for the truth I think then it becomes more harmful than it does good. When it hides the truth that makes it even worse. The role of the church and the role in nationalism is not a new thing. During the 1920s there was a movement within the German Evangelical Church called the Deutsche Christians or German Christians. They embraced many of the nationalistic and racial aspects of Nazi ideology. When the Nazis rose to power they sought to create a national “Reich Church” supported by a “Nazify” version of Christianity. Now look at what is happening here at home. You have Republican members in Congress calling for a “Christian Nationalist Party”. You have Michael Flynn calling for One Religion in America. You have an Evangelical Minister calling for the State execution of all gays. Have we removed ourselves so far from the Holocaust that we have forgotten how wrong that thinking is? It is scary how what is happening here parallels what happened in Germany. Are we getting closer and closer to concentration camps?

In Florida we have a Senator that pretends to be a follower of Jesus. Yes, I will state that Marco Rubio pretends to follow Jesus. He is not what I would call an honest person. I know that people’s view and various subjects evolve over time, mine does, but I don’t deny that I keep on learning and keep on defining what is right and wrong. If you do any researching on Rubio and Gay Marriage you will see a person that in my opinion flip flops back and forth depending on his audience or who he is doing the interview for. Learning is one thing but flip flopping back and forth for votes is wrong and it is cowardly. He at times seems against immigration even though he is a son of an immigrant himself. He was born a US citizen but his parents didn’t become citizens till 1975 after being in this country for almost 20 years. I believe that he has stated that his parents had to escape Castro but that is debatable because his family was here 2 years before Castro came to power. His grandparents, I believe did have to seek asylum after Castro came to power. You would think that people seeking asylum here in America would be a huge advocate for asylum but I see that he really hasn’t been a real leader. Politician’s like Rubio scare me because they seem to stand there holding a Bible and quoting scripture while using it just for votes. He doesn’t seem real big on helping his fellow man as much as he seems to be helping himself. He doesn’t seem to follow Jesus as much as he follows Trump.

I do not want you to think that I want to do away with all religion because I know that throughout the history of the world many people have needed a deity to believe in. Yes even me. I just find it hard to believe that our existence is all an accident. I even think about the lessons that I learned in Sunday School every day. I just think it hard to believe that there is one true religion. There have been hundreds of different religions and many forms of what the Supreme Being is. We have three different religions all worshipping the same God, the God of Abraham and all three doing it differently. They have also caused a whole lot of death in the name of that God of Abraham. I wonder how many billions of people have died in the name of some god throughout history.  I think that the most important thing that the Founding Fathers did was come up with the concept of Separation of Church and State. One state religion will never enhance anyone’s personal freedom. It will only suppress that freedom as it did in England.  

I once had a conversation with a person at work who told me that this Country was founded on religious freedom. I think that is a mistake that too many voters make. Some people settled in the New World to escape religious persecution. Our country was founded on the principles of representative government. Those are two different things. In England the Monarch was the head of the Church. Our Founding Fathers created a form of government where the President was not the head of any church he was elected by the people to head our government. Our government was elected and not appointed by god. In fact the concept of any person being appointed by god to rule over us in the United States would have been a very hard sell. That is what some people are trying to sell you now. If we do buy that as a nation I feel that it will lead to atrocities that will rival the Nazis.

 

The German Churches and the Nazi State | Holocaust Encyclopedia (ushmm.org)