Born Again!

[Lightning Rod]

Born Again
for release 10-07-05
Washington D.C.


People who classify themselves as 'born again' trouble me. It makes me wonder what it was about their previous incarnations that they are trying to disavow.

No one can be quite as sanctimonious as a reformed whore.

Of course the case of George Bush comes to mind. He went from being a profligate, boozing, coke hooving, National Guard deserting rich kid playboy business failure to being 'born again' as a responsible leader who has decided that he loves god and Constitutional law. How convenient. You could even call it a miracle.

Another example of being 'born again' is Harriet Miers. When I first observed Harriet, she was an influential lawyer, a Dallas City Councilperson and a Democrat. But she saw the error of her ways and is now a born again Republican, an evangelical Christian and has been working for George Bush ever since. Hallelujah, praise the lord! If you are an ambitious lawyer who sees the political winds changing, why wouldn't it be a righteous move to convert to Republicanism?

And how about Judy Miller. After working as a shill for the Bush administration for years, she suddenly has pangs of journalistic integrity and makes the martyr's step into the dungeon, only to re-imerge as a heroine of the fourth estate with a million dollar book deal. Sweet, this born again thing.

I think we should all be born again. If you have $30,000 in credit card debt, you should be able to just say, "I have accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior," and voilà, you are debt free and headed for salvation and prosperity and a new home in a gated community. You've got seven DWI's or have violated your parole or have a statutory rape charge? Fergiddaboutit, just get re-born. It's better than bankruptcy.

I've been in enough jails to know that when people get religion is when they get caught. Chuck Colsen made a career of seeing the light after he was convicted in the Ellsberg case. After years of graft and cronyism, Tom DeLay is indicted and suddenly he is as pure as the driven snow and being persecuted by the evil Democratic Pharisees. Bill Frist can claim blind-trustness and bank his twenty million. It's the perfect political dodge, "great god almighty, I've seen the light."

America loves the idea of redemption. We love to watch the powerful fall and then pick themselves up in a glorious, resurrected PR comeback. We will forgive Jimmy and Tammy Faye Baker, Jimmy Swaggart, Richard Nixon, Pee Wee Herman and even O.J., for their transgressions and let them back into our hearts and back on television. It's better than reality TV. We love to see Bill Clinton go from Oval Office lothario to becoming a humanitarian disaster fund raiser who bunks with the president's dad. It's Extreme Makeover.

The Poet's Eye would love to see the light, to be born again and suddenly become Tom Cruise or win the Nobel Prize for Hypocrisy.

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool's gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn
That he not busy being born (again)
Is busy dying.
---Bob Dylan

[Dave The Dov]

You know I was wondering who would get the Nobel Prize for Hypocrisy Literature!!!! Hey congratulations on winning it!!!!
_________________
bankrupt airlines

[stilltrucking]

Amazing Grace

Still, Newton's story give us all hope — even the greatest of sinners can ultimately and meaningfully repent, and even the most half-hearted of conversions can over time work its magic.

http://www.snopes.com/religion/amazing.htm

Newton began to express regrets about his part in the slave trade only in 1780, thirty-two years after his conversion, and eight years after he wrote 'Amazing Grace.' In 1785 he began to fight against slavery by speaking out against it, and he continued to do so until his death in 1807.

Thus, the bare bones of the story are true: A former slave trader did compose one of the most moving hymns of our times. But the meat of the claim — that a horrific event spurred a sinner to immediately repent his evil ways, penning 'Amazing Grace' as an expression of his repentence — fails on the facts. Newton's storm-driven adoption to Christianity didn't change him all that much; he continued to make his living from the slave trade for many years afterwards and only left the trade when his wife insisted upon their living a settled life in England. (Indeed, less than a year after his storm-driven conversion, Newton was back in Africa, brokering the purchase of newly-captured blacks and taking yet another "African wife" while there. He was hardly the poster boy for the truly penitent, at least at that point in his life.)

I was born again, and LSD was the midwife.

[mnaz]

Good posts, all....

Regarding GWB's Christianity.... not that it's really any of my business, but I wonder where he really is with it, considering what seems to be his callous indifference at times, which to me bespeaks something less than good Christ-like charity. This, plus the Republicans seem to (quite successfully) exploit the zealot voting block to put them over the top when elections come near by trotting out "stem cell or gay this or that" issues, when expedient....

It just makes me wonder, that's all....