First, a light note...
Apparently the Union of Concerned Scientists, that group of very wise folks that happen to be, I guess, scientists, and that are known for their advocacy against industry and global warming and nuclear power and Star Wars type weapons using the argument that such technologies are "not feasible" or "impossible", does not have a chapter in China.
China was recently able to knock out a satellite with its own Red version of Star Wars! We need to send a crack team of Union Scientists to China toute de suite to remind our inscrutable friends that what they are doing is "impossible" according to Concerned Scientists...
I called up Union of Concerned Scientist Local #453 boss Dr. Leonard "Lenny the Mac" MacKenzie this last week to find out how things were going with the UCS/CIO.
"People are still just not smart enough apparently to understand that we scientists, especially those uf us in academia, have ALL the answers for their ethical and spiritual growth," he said to me.
When I asked him about the recent Chinese Star Wars successes, he commented
"How typical of you to put these things into a Western perspective... like the West knows everything. What is physically impossible here in the West could very well be possible in eastern anti-imperialist communo-socialist physics".
In other good news, he outlined his plans to unionize all geologists and geophysicists in the US oil and gas patch. "With any luck, we can make sure that petroleum gesocientists finally understand that no more oil and gas exists in the US so that they quit pushing their silly superstitions to gullible legislators and oil and gas exploration managers. The sooner we figure out that no more is left and it is a fools errand to look for it, the faster we can get to important research, such as proving that mice have as much human rights as, well, humans".
In other news,
I don't really keep up with evangelical Christian news, it being a couple of shades removed from my own (CHOOSE ONE: beliefs, superstitions, spirituality, ethics, moral framework), but I read an article a while back that one Mike Jones, a homosexual prositute by profession, was writing a tell-all book detailing his loving fiduciary relationship with Ted Haggard, an Evangelical Minister and leader of the National Association of Evangelicals which purports to represent 45,000 churches and over 30 million members and the pastor of his own 14,000 member New Life Church in Colorado Springs.
His reason for penning this tome? Mr. Jones "hates hypocrisy" and is on a crusade to expose it, apparently.
Being a rednecked, ballcap-wearing, reptilian brained oilman, something struck me as kinda off-kilter. I have noticing an increasing moral outrage professed towards the act (or is it a state?) of hypocrisy over the years. Why did this guy's stance bother me? It struck me like a bolt of shortening.
I am, for lack of a better word, a sinner, for those of you that believe in that sort of thing. I do or say things that I am not consistently proud, and I either know it in the back of my mind when I do 'em, or I regret doing them later. Sound familiar?
Our choice is to either 1) recognize our sins or 2) rationalize them as "not sins". Seems the road to proverbial Hell is paved with what is behind door number 2.
"Dang it 'Choke, we all know you are a Hellish sinner!", you say... but that really isn't the point.
The point is... If I were to, say, murder someone in a fit of rage, does that mean I can no longer believe or state that murder is wrong? Reprehensible? Am I no longer able to judge if I am guilty of such actions that I do judge? Does the actual awareness of the wrongness of my behavior make me a hypocrite?
Apparently. That is the logic of Mr. Jones' argument.
Personally, I choose the road of the hypocrite, if that is my only option, instead of the road of the rationalizer. In fact, I am gonna wear that label proudly from now on.
In any case, since I have never a) sold illicit pharmaceuticals or b) rented out access to my various orifii to randy churchmen, I am NOT a hypocrite when I say that being a hypocrite seems to beat being a drug dealing male prosititute.
At the Gates of Heaven, with St. Peter or Mr Jordan or Lord Krishna guarding access, would you rather be in the position of Ted Haggard, who gets to say
"I spread God's word, making millions of people believe that there was something better they could strive for, and lived a life of riches and privilege afforded by that message, and was tempted in ways I thought wrong, an succumbed by hiring a fallen man to satisfy my lusts rather than seduce an innocent to my baseness"
or Mr Jones...
"I spent my life providing methamphetimes to the weak and renting out my body to satisfy the lust of the ashamed, but I fought the sin of hypocrisy and exposed it when the ashamed were either powerful or famous for their good works".
I would guess that you are gonna rot in hell Mr. Jones. If you believe in that sort of thing.
Ms. Burns, who posts here from time to time has some interesting views on hypocrisy in her Nov. 18 post. I tend to agree with her.
http://rancholoslosmalulos.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Royal Enfield | November 22, 2011 at 02:35 PM
Funny, what you call a sin might, by someone else, be called just enjoying themselves.
Or visa versa.
Smoking, drinking, gambling, all supposedly sins in someones eyes. So is sex for pleasure, if your a catholic, or sex out of wedlock for almost every Christian.
On the other hand, Ted, and his ilk spread the word for the sake of making money, not for the sake of spreading the word.
Funny how so many of those TV preachers have to have a mansion, five cars and big posse.
Yes sir, lots of hypocrisy going on in the world. How about all them Catholic priests who like to diddle little boys?
Are they going to get in to heaven because they were diddling to save souls?
Posted by: Mike | December 12, 2011 at 05:02 PM