By Richard C. Cook for VT
It is time we stopped believing in words. We are delusional if we think labels such as “moderate,” “liberal,” “conservative,” “centrist,” or even “socialist,” or “capitalist” mean anything.
In the global society, the same goes for religious labels, including “Christian,” “Muslim,” “Jewish,” “Hindu,” or “Buddhist,” or even “atheist,” or “agnostic.” Within so-called Christianity, there are hundreds of denominational labels going by different fairly meaningless designations.
Even national labels are merely a matter of law and convention. An “American” is someone who has a U.S. passport. The same with German, Russian, Chinese, etc. All modern countries count as citizens speakers of countless languages with increasingly mixed racial heritage.
What really matters in life is a person’s inner quality as manifested in their treatment of others.
It was Jesus Christ who taught us to love others regardless of any outward appearances. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” In one form or another, all of the world’s religions teach the same. And in the global village, among the Family of Man, everyone is our neighbor.
Therefore anyone who authentically teaches, advocates, or practices love of neighbor is, in fact, a follower of Jesus Christ; i.e., a “Christian.”
Among the people running for the presidency of the U.S. this year, the one who is most authentically a Christian by this definition is without a doubt, Bernie Sanders. He is the one whose life work and the present-day program is most thoroughly devoted to helping the people who need help the most, including millions who are left out of the dog-eat-dog capitalist economy that enriches a handful of billionaires and condemns everyone else to struggle, poverty, or even death.
The billionaires and their minions and apologists are pulling out all the stops to defeat Sanders and his army of supporters. This includes most of his Democratic Party rivals who have nothing to say, no new proposals, and programs of empty platitudes and promises.
What Sanders is doing above all is drawing a line between a society where human beings with values based on honest work and mutual compassion are the primary forces, and a Satanic soul-devouring matrix overseen and policed by a Money Power that has gradually gained control of every square inch of the planet since it first emerged from the elevation of usury as society’s god 500 years ago. We can now see that the statement by St. Paul that “the love of money is the root of all evil” is absolutely true.
The complete takeover of the U.S. economy by the Money Power was accomplished by the “Reagan Revolution” of the 1980s.
The Democratic Party was allowed to enjoy some of the political largesse when the Clinton machine was allotted the presidency in the 1990s with the task of stuffing a sock in the mouth of any leftover New Deal dissidents. Centrist Democrats continue in this role today, including Biden, Buttigieg (actually a Deep State cutout), and now the great oligarch, Bloomberg. One of these is supposed to displace crime chief Trump—great!
Bernie Sanders writes movingly in his book “Our Revolution” that the most formative influence in his early years was the life and teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The most stirring example of a modern leader of truth and compassion for ordinary people he cites as Pope Francis.
Please note that these two men were/are both ordained Christian ministers. They were/are quite unlike the leaders of the “evangelicals” who bend the knee to the Money Power. These are in fact anti-Christ.
These and other demonic liars whose shrieks fill the airwaves call Sanders a “communist.” This is only one of their myriad of falsehoods. Sanders is not advocating a state takeover of all economic life, which is what communism consists of. Nor is he advocating a leveling of wealth or incomes.
He is simply advocating that the obscene paradigm of infinite wealth side-by-side with utter and growing destitution be corrected. This, of course, requires a political revolution, since the takeover of democracy by the super-rich is almost irreversible. Anyone with eyes to see knows this will mean the end of the U.S.
Another measure along the same lines as Sanders’ other reforms is the Universal Basic Income, an idea that has been around for a very long time but has received a tremendous impetus from the publicity given to it by Andrew Yang.
Yang has dropped out of the Democratic primary, and we can hope he will soon throw his support to Sanders.
Sanders has endorsed the UBI, even though he says we must first deal with the immediate emergency before us where the basic culture of fairness and equitable treatment of all members of society has been shredded.
About Author: Richard C. Cook is a retired federal government analyst. His most important books are “Challenger Revealed: An Insider’s Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age,” and “We Hold These Truths” The Hope of Monetary Reform.”
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I agree regarding labels being pretty much useless. However, Jesus being portrayed as only promoting peace and loving your neighbor is inaccurate. (There’s a very good chance that Jesus never existed https://www.deism.com/jesusexist.htm ) IF Jesus really did exist as a mere mortal, he was a Jew who believed the cruel and ungodly Hebrew Bible/Torah was the Word of God. For example, the anonymous author of the Gospel of Matthew, at 5:17-18 has Jesus saying the brutal and ungodly commands of the Hebrew Bible will remain until heaven and Earth pass, which means they’re still in place. And Matthew 10:34 has Jesus saying, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.”
If we are to save ourselves we need to give up man-made religions for our innate God-given reason.
God Gave Us Reason, Not Religion! Bob Johnson
http://www.deism.com
I read somewhere that the last command Jesus gave was to love your brother as yourself, as our witness of our love of god the creator…. It seems that comes from the Hebrew old testament verbatim as Jesus was just repeating what his knowledge was of the Hebrew scriptures…
It is well that the Muslims see him as a prophet, not the conjure of the Pauline epistles and the Catholic version of the triune mystical creature elevated to the concept of a god. “Jesus the Jew” , most likely was a renegade when it came to the dictates of the parasitic Babylonian Talmud of oral laws, used to keep the faithful in bondage to the like of Baal and the sequence of papal pharisaic psychosis that trap men’s minds in a vacuum of slave like existence.
Burnie might as well use the magic of the Torah as well as the magic of the Talmud to energize his base of voters… It would not be me! Read the Protocols of the learned elders of Zion… Read Henry Fords look into the Jewish Question… Look around and see if any of it makes sense? Study your ass off and see how tribal myth and truth beget insanity for most fanatical humans under the spell of human spiritualism…
Wars and more wars, The carnage of human spiritualism in the fanatical realm of the traveling psychonauts of the Ayahuasca clan and the psilocybin operatives of clandestine imagination conjured to keep the ignorant in a group of politically correct time travelers!
Well, this article seems to have generated some interesting comments.
I feel the article is well written.
It also sounds like the author may even be a proponent of the Law of One?
“What really matters in life is a person’s inner quality as manifested in their treatment of others.”
That should say it all!
One reason why I tell my US of North A friends and contacts to vote for Sanders is that his home town when he was in New England politics was very important as home to firms that lead on in the design flop called the F-35 bomber fighter.
….human rights?…women’s rights…gay rights…equality…go ahead and turn the electricity off if you really want to see what we are all about…..it will be guns until the bullets run out….name me one civilization or empire that the god concept has saved….and I suppose before jesus nobody cared about each other?….we think we are different from all the other animals and forms of life because we can think….in the end the mind does not rule….biology does….fear and hunger are the teachers…the brute force of others is what has enabled the great minds of this world to create and express their imaginations and as long as what is created pleases the brute force, they are allowed….but as bob dylan said…”this world is ruled by violence, but i guess that is better left unsaid”…..
“Within so-called Christianity, there are hundreds of denominational labels going by different fairly meaningless designations.”… The very first test you should give a church is if they are a 501(C)3 corporation. The reason the first 250 years of Christianity was persecuted by the Romans was they refused to get Caesar’s permission to exist(incorporated). Rome couldn’t of given a rat’s ax what religion you were if you declared Caesar to be the sovereign over it.
This is an absurd argument. The author implores that political labels, nation-states, and religious affiliation are all artificial constructs, while arguing for the sociological benevolence of the most artificial of them all,.. civilization. What is natural, at all, about civilization? Everything about is arbitrary and circumstantial. In the anthropological history of humans, at our very core, we are tribal beings; our security, foraging for food, communication, the upbringing of young. Multi-culture and multi-racial are disingenuous impositions, used as methods of control, nothing more.
Further, the writer’s invocation of “Jesus Christ” for the Sanders candidacy is farcical, in a pick and choose, slice and dice vignette of Christian value.
He admonishes,”Therefore anyone who authentically teaches, advocates, or practices love of neighbor is in fact a follower of Jesus Christ; i.e., a “Christian”, omitting the equally important teachings “loving the Lord, thy God, with all your heart,, let alone the Sanders supported policies of abortion on demand, or marriage of homosexuals, both practices not sanctioned in anyone’s bibles, “fairly meaningless designations” notwithstanding. Render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and leave religion out of it.
Eddie, I think you missed the main point of this article:
“What really matters in life is a person’s inner quality as manifested in their treatment of others.”
Red Ace…I beg to differ. The author introduced “Christian”(as a comparative jab to the evangelical types), not me. A person’s “inner quality” can be secular, or faith based, therefore the writer’s motive was ulterior.
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