Text 5876, 84 rader
Skriven 2009-05-03 00:06:21 av Ross Sauer (1:123/789.0)
Ärende: Money-changers
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Phony "Christians" in FloriDUH.


Christ is easier to display than obey
By Howard Troxler, Times Columnist

Published Monday, April 27, 2009
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There once were many places where you weren't allowed to see an image of
Jesus anywhere. Any depiction of Christ was banned. In the wrong place
you could even get killed for having one.

Who were those awful, Jesus-banning people?

Were they the Nazis? The Communists? The ACLU?

Actually, they were ... the Christians.

One of the many bitter fights of early Christianity (and there were a
lot) concerned "icons," the depiction of holy figures. Many church
leaders believed they violated the Second Commandment, the one against
worshiping graven images.

But human nature eventually prevailed. Most Christians demanded to see
their Christ, their holy virgin, their saints. Eventually the dispute
was settled in their favor.

More than a thousand years have passed since then, and we are still
going at it -- this time, with a proposal to depict the Son of God, the
Lamb, the Savior ...

On an official state of Florida automobile tag.

An auto tag.

Jesus is to be mass-produced, imprinted on metal, given a reflective
coat and sold for money. His crown of thorns will lie just beneath the
"FLORIDA" across the top of the plate; his outstretched arms will be
truncated to the left and right by the tag numbers, so that one does not
actually see the cross, the nails, the wounds -- no, we would not have
that! The words "SUNSHINE STATE" will be stamped across his unscathed,
unlashed torso.

And yet, if even this censored Passion is still too strong for one's
taste, the Legislature is producing an alternative "faith" plate as
well, that one with a stained-glass window, a prettied-up cross and the
slogan, "I Believe."

My first thought upon hearing this news, as an erstwhile Methodist and
reader of the Gospels, was not about the legal separation of church and
state in our secular democracy -- though this surely violates it -- nor
whether Muslims, Jews, Buddhists or atheists should now get their own
plate -- though surely they are entitled, since they pay exactly the same
taxes to the state -- nor even whether the Legislature should stick to
the pressing worldly matters of the day, such as opening up Florida to
oil drilling, handing out new tax breaks and protecting old ones in a
budget crisis, and otherwise running the state entirely into the ground,
a secular task at which it appears to be doing a bang-up job.

Instead, my first thoughts were more about the stories of Christ in the
Bible, angrily throwing the money changers out of the temple, and
instructing his followers to pray privately in their closets rather than
displaying prideful piety on the public streets like the "hypocrites"
(which is exactly what he said. Look it up.).

Most of all, I thought about the story in Matthew when his enemies tried
to trick Jesus, tried to get him to come out against paying taxes so
that he could be arrested. Jesus threw it back in their faces by saying,
show me a coin -- whose face is on it? And they had to reply, it is
Caesar's face.

"Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's," he said,
"and unto God the things that are God's."

Since everybody these days claims to know What Jesus Would Do, let me
ask a question. Do you think he would want to be mass-produced by
Caesar's state, sold for money and displayed on the public streets to
gratify an act of pandering political piety?

(c) 2009 o All Rights Reserved o St. Petersburg Times

--- Xnews/5.04.25
 * Origin: Fidonet Via Newsreader - http://www.easternstar.info (1:123/789.0)