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Tuesday, January 04, 2011

What Constitutes an Attack on Christianity?

I had a post previously about such things:

http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2010/12/another-fox-attack-on-christianity.html

wherein the famous fatuous Tucker Carlson of FOX spoke of his religion, saying 

“I’m Christian. I’ve made mistakes. I believe fervently in second chances. Michael Vick killed dogs in a heartless and cruel way. I think, firstly, he should have been executed for that. The idea the president of the United States would be getting behind someone who murdered dogs is beyond the pale.”
Let us first be clear that we are speaking of such a pronouncement when we say "attack" . We are not talking about the status of Middle Eastern Christians which has become perilous indeed. In fact, since Shock and Awe the lives of Christians in that part of the world has taken on a distinct aura of Dr. Seuss and it seems a fitting title to their history might be:  On Beyond Perilous!
I believe the Pope did warn us, but we told him to mind his own scandals and let us see to our own perfidy: On Beyond Perilous... the churches they went to, the roads that they rambled, just to have their body parts scrambled!
Enough! Instant Karma is boiling on the back burner, and what will be, will be. We have bigger fish and Tucker Carlson to fry!

O.K. "I'm Christian. I've made mistakes. I believe in second chances."
I like the way Christianity has become the Second Chance Way in FOX ideology: everyone gets two strikes. However, this seems to set us up for "Three strikes... yer out!". I have to question a religious belief that seems modeled on baseball, or a conservative approach to penology and penal systems.
Actually, I always had the impression that forgiveness was forever. The teachings of Jesus always struck me as containing within them an infinite Get out of Jail...  card with the addition of  ...Free  if you paid your debt to society and to your family and to yourself! God's forgiveness was infinite and co-extensive with His being! Pretty radical for the modern day or antiquity.
Briefly, Jesus' teaching was the Death of Depression and the End of Suicide of the Forlorn, for no matter what the offence, there was forgiveness. We could only be killed when we could not forgive ourselves. This business of the second chance is a dangerous perversion, because there exists a symbolic context "three strikes and out" which seems to already control how the idea is used.

Now the notion of capital punishment for dog-fighting has been addressed, and the notion that Christianity in the 21st century could use a little brushing-up and refurbishment by emulating Saudi Arabia is a notion whose time has possibly come to be discussed.
For a long time I have considered Mr. Carlson a non-entity seeking meaning, and he unfortunately runs true to form, as he cannot help but give the impression that all his religious set-up of the first part of his quote is nothing but a petard upon which to hoist the President.
And as the old saying goes, he ends up hoist on his own petard.
( Hoist by one's own petard means to be blown up by one's own explosive device. Petard is a word from Middle French which seems unusually appropriate for Carlson and FOX. Jospeh Pujol, known  on the stage as Petomane, was an entertainer, just like Carlson and FOX. I am beginning to sound a lot like M. Rabelais all of a sudden...  if you want to know what these words mean, I believe Wiki will have them.)

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