Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. ~Exodus 20:3-5
Did you ever read the comic "B.C." by Johnny Hart?
Back in 1998 or so, there was an excellent full color Sunday morning strip in the Detroit Free Press that I remember to this day.
It featured the bird (who usually rode on the top of the turtle's shell) and the turtle.
The bird asks the turtle "Do turtles believe in God?"
In the next panel, the turtle replies "Of course, Turtles gotta believe in God."
'Really?" the bird replies as he rides along on the turtle's back.
"Yep, the evidence is all around. The earth, the sky, the ocean, the stars. Even birds and turtles all were made by somebody."
The bird responds "That's an interesting answer" as they proceed.
The turtle comes back with "Yep. Believing in God is easy..."
In the second-to-last frame, they round a corner to find a caveman bowing down before an idol made of stacked stones and tree branches and stuff.
"...But that? That's hard." the turtle expounds confidently.
Now, granted at the time I was a conservative Christian, and my traumatic divorce and exit from that whole religious mess was several years in the future, but in a general sense, despite now being an Agnostic Theist, I still accept the core statement as valid.
The truth is often simple, and while empirical, literal, testable truth is not always evident in a logical or physical manner and must be searched out or tested for...spiritual truth is often the opposite, though at times more subjective. All too often people know what right and wrong in a given situation are, they just don't care, because we as Americans all too often think of ourselves as being smarter than everybody else...up to and including God.
Man makes things complicated because he does not want to obey what that often-simple Truth tells him.
Yes, you heard that correctly.
What do you think things like misogyny, racism, or any "Supremacist" ideology and some of these crazy political beliefs or various flavors of religious-sounding woo woo bullshit really are?
It's fallen, unregenerate sinful Man putting his opinion above that of God, and that's...if not provably wrong in an empirical sense...wrong on enough obvious levels that if you have the sense God gave a potato or the knowledge, you should be able to determine the rightness or wrongness of history of a Fifth-grader or the equivalent doctrinal and religious knowledge of that Fifth-grader in a Sunday School class...you should be able to figure it out for yourself.
You know, basic things like "Do I sound like a damned Nazi" or at least "Do I sound like a gibbering idiot?"
For example, consider Greg Piatek, proud member of the gibbering idiot category. Dude walks into a bar wearing a MAGA hat, and this being New York City, [he claims] nobody wants to serve him or talk to him. He claimed he felt discriminated against and now suffers from "Anxiety and severe emotional distress." Naturally, no one in the bar seems to remember the incident.
Just sayin' dude, you might want to talk to a lot of African Americans, Gay people, Latinos or Muslims in this country right now before you continue to say dumb shit.
As all too often happens in this country, what this guy functionally believes is "liberal democracy and rights for me, and jackboots for everybody else."
He claimed his "Make America Great Again" hat was a symbol of "Sincerely held religious belief."
Now I've been saying for awhile that These Fucking People are treating Trump like he's some sort of god since 2015. Whether it's Congressional Republicans, or Diamond & Silk, or Franklin Graham or some ignorant drug addict in Ohio...these people are literally taking the word of a known liar, long-time con-artist and serial adulterer with a very long history of over-promising and under-performing and an equally long record of stiffing contractors and supporters and leaving any who deal with him diminished for having done so as gospel including concerning a great many things about which the Orange One knows absolutely nothing.
These people have cheered and laughed as both he and they have set fire to every belief or value that American conservatism or Republicanism has ever claimed, and then they wonder why it's slowly slipping into discredit and disrepute, even as nearly everybody who's paying attention notes the pitchforks and the torches and the pissed off voters and a spate of Democratic victories in special elections that Republicans usually win due to low turnout and predicts big Republican losses in the 2018 midterm elections.
I find almost no commonality between the George H.W. Bush-era conservatism that I took as my original political philosophy...and this crap.
Now, somebody has entered their belief in Trump's godhood into court record, legal precedent, etc. etc. whether they actually believe it or not.
But see, here's the thing. Here in America our legal system isn't equipped or inclined to determine the truth of somebody's beliefs, but simply the facts of the case, as in what happened in the bar and whether it rises to the level of discrimination based on certain categories. His claims of being a religious Trumpist probably fall outside of that, as his is fundamentally a political rather than religious belief.
While the case will likely not be decided in his favor, his belief in Trump's "godhood" will be entered into the record without animosity or judgment, lest that prejudice the case or otherwise cause the government to be seen as discriminating...because that is legally actionable, and for damned good reasons even though his actual case is most likely going to get laughed out of court, for equally damned good reasons.
I believe the Afterlife probably isn't going to be so accommodating.
If somebody is dumb enough to believe that Donald Trump is their god, they deserve what they're going to get, and they deserve to get it good and hard.
That's the thing about truth, somebody's going to be right, and somebody's going to be wrong. That said, I think, to a great degree that God cares more about one's conduct than one's exact doctrinal or religious belief...but we are in part defined by who our friends are, by who and what we will follow or put our name to and whether our word is good or not.
But Trump? Come on now...
The road to hell...or the path to where the boat picks you up and you pay the ferryman...if you accept the belief in an Underworld that Jesus Himself would have at the time, is most certainly paved with "Sincerely held religious beliefs" that just happened to be wrong.
Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. ~Matthew 7:13-14
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