While I’m still dealing with influenza (I always forget just how horrible it makes you feel (and to see why you do feel horrible see here)) , I thought I’d do a post about the current religious nonsense here in the US.

We have conservative Christians having a tizzy that a US representative criticizes the country of Israel. They lie, of course, and try to claim being anti-Israel is being anti-Semitic. That the government of Israel continues to flirt with acting exactly like their historical persecutors, makes it a target for just criticism. When these same conservatives have no problem with worshipping a orange nitwit who says that wannabee nazis are “fine people” and the vice president is of a strain of Christianity that desperately wants the events in Revelation to come true and needs the state of Israel to be on the stage to be destroyed, this concern about anti-Semitism is nothing but poorly hidden hypocrisy.

Then we have Trump signing bibles for conservative Christians. It’s rather silly to see them acting like teens at a rock concert wanting some bit of trash signed by someone they idolize. Other presidents have signed bibles, at the request of families for a certain purpose, but it does seem to be an unusual practice, noted by a Christian professor from near where I live. This article notes the Washington Post article, which in turn notes that Trump does love to quote bible verses when convenient, and that “two Corinthians” verse is quite an interesting one, especially in context:

“⁷ Now if the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on stone tablets, came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’ face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside, ⁸ how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory? ⁹ For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory! ¹⁰ Indeed, what once had glory has lost its glory because of the greater glory; ¹¹ for if what was set aside came through glory, much more has the permanent come in glory!

¹² Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, ¹³ not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that^[c] was being set aside. ¹⁴ But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. ¹⁵ Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds; ¹⁶ but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. ¹⁷ Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. ¹⁸ And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”

Except for the Book of Hebrews itself, one can’t find much more of an anti-Jewish screed in the bible. Paul is still the persecutor, he just changed his colors and his horse. And that is what these ever so concerned Christians want to have Trump sign and cite. What I discovered that I didn’t know before is that some Muslims find that Paul to be a corruptor of JC’s word too. What a mess of imaginary claims, who hates who for what reason and all of it nonsense.

Of course, it’s these conservative Christians who insist that it was a “miracle” they *personally* weren’t killed (evidently 23 deaths were their god’s will) and how it’s just great that they get special attention from FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) for help but who cheered when that jackass Trump threatened the help received by people they don’t agree with in California.

What a foul tangle human invention makes to validate ignorance and selfish nonsense.