Note: Relevant updates will posted to the bottom. By all means, read all the way to the end, where it gets interestinger and interestinger.
______________
Dr. George Tiller was murdered at his church this morning. According to the New York Times:
Dr. Tiller, who had performed abortions since the 1970s, had long been a lightning rod for controversy over the issue of abortion, particularly in Kansas, where abortion opponents regularly protested outside his clinic and sometimes his home and church. In 1993, he was shot in both arms by an abortion opponent but recovered.
He had also been the subject of many efforts at prosecution, including a citizen-initiated grand jury investigation. In the latest such effort, in March, Dr. Tiller was acquitted of charges that he had performed late-term abortions that violated state law.
The shooting occurred at around 10 a.m. (Central time) at Reformation Lutheran Church on the city’s East Side, Dr. Tiller’s regular church.
MSNBC’s Web site is reporting that authorities have a suspect in custody, although no details are yet available.
Of course, we’re not a breaking news site and that’s not what this story is about. Instead, let’s speculate a bit.
Here’s the wager: the murderer will turn out to be a right-wing Christian terrorist. I’ll also offer a side bet: his media consumption includes the like of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Bill O’Reilly and/or Glenn Beck.
If I’m wrong, check this space. I’ll gladly post an update noting my mistake. But as of this moment, would you bet against me?
Let’s hypothesize that I’m right for a second. What does it mean? Well, in the short term it probably means nothing for the doctor, his family, colleagues and friends. Whatever the reason, he’s dead, and tragically so, and at times like this the what probably means a whole lot more than the why.
From a big-picture perspective, though, from the perspective of the culture war that has claimed another victim, the slobberingly ignorant wide-right nutjobs have given the cause of Progress another martyr, and in doing so have made the case against their reactionary jihad a little clearer than it was before. Even in a nation as unrelentingly bassackwards as the US, the tide of enlightenment is slowly but surely washing them and their violent, Stone Age ideology away. The repudiation of their 8,000 year-old code of ethics in the last election may well make them more dangerous for a time, but with each passing day more and more mainline Americans are standing and looking them dead in the eye, at last seeing them for what they are.
Your gutless thugs may assassinate a librul or two in church every now and again, especially if you’re sneaky enough to catch them unawares. You may win a school board battle or two. But the war? The war is lost. It’s not about if, merely when.
I won’t bother with the arguments over why the Jesus’s Jihadis are doing what they’re doing. We know those details, and our friend Sara Robinson predicted this very sort of terrorism less than a week ago. Besides, I’ve already had my say on why we’re not having an honest conversation on abortion itself, and so far there’s been no evidence whatsoever suggesting that I’m wrong.
All I’ll do is say, with 100% certainty, that if I’m right about what happened this morning in Wichita, our wild-eyed war god-worshiping right wing has done little more than pound another nail into its own coffin.
UPDATE 1: Operation Rescue is apparently making the same assumptions that I am, offering a faux-condemnation of the assassination:
The anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, which has led numerous demonstrations at Tiller’s clinic, condemned the shooting as a “cowardly act.”
“Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice,” the group said in a statement. It offered its prayers for Tiller’s family, “that they will find comfort and healing that can only be found in Jesus Christ.”
Why would I question the sincerity of the statement, you ask?
On its Web site, Operation Rescue refers to Tiller as a “monster” who has “been able to get away with murder.” And Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry, who is no longer affiliated with the group, called Tiller “a mass murderer.”
Find the dumbest mob possible, whip them into a lather, point them at Satan’s personal emissary on Earth, and then play innocent when the predicatble happens.
Sure, why not.
UPDATE 2: Hmmm. This isn’t officially confirmed, but if it proves to be true … well, everything I said above, times 10.
KMBC-TV in Kansas City reported that the suspect had a post-it note with the phone number of anti-abortion group Operation Rescue in his car, however that group issued a statement this morning denouncing the shooting.
Categories: Politics/Law/Government, Religion & Philosophy
Progressive Culture | Scholars & Rogues 
It’s terrorism and it will continue I guess until someone shoots Bill O’Reilly, Randall Terry, and James Dobson in both arms,(1993 attack on Tiller) bombs their offices (1986), blockades their offices (1991), cuts the wires to their security systems, chops holes in their office roofs and plugs up the drainage system, (last month), mounts protests at their churches, homes, and offices (repeatedly) and finally walks into the vestibules of their respective churches while they’re serving as ushers handing out church bulletins, with their wives upstairs singing in the choir, and shoots them to death, in the face so that witnesses will have to tell the police who the victims are, just like Tiller.
Then maybe, just maybe, the kind of disgusting violent rhetoric by the likes of these goons against doctors who perform legal abortions by will cease.
Dear Dr. Slammy: You sound like a moron. Tiller destroyed thousands of fetuses. If fetusus ARE human, then these are murders. If fetuses are NOT human, than Tiller is just making a good living off of pathetic women who resort to late term abortions to solve a problem which they probably caused.
Dear Bid Now: You sound like a moron. Late term abortions are used almost exclusively by women who have children suffering from anencephaly (ie a fetus with no brain) and other horrible birth defects, or life-threatening gestational diabetes or similar “mother will die if the fetus is not removed” conditions. And the only reason I say “almost exclusively” is because I haven’t met every woman who was pregnant and still had a late-term abortion. I have, however, met several and every single one desperately wanted that child.
Learn some facts next time you want to attack someone.
Oh, and no woman “creates” a pregnancy problem. Last I heard, it still took a partner to get pregnant….
Bid: I have to concur with Brian. You sound like someone with strong opinions but no acquaintance whatsoever with the facts.
Hint: all those radio talk show assbats that you listen to? They may not be fully credible.
Bid Now:
Fetuses are fetuses – not babies. There is a difference for a reason. The reason is that they are not the same. BTW: Are you personally familiar with human sexuality? Your mom and dad did explain that it takes a man and a woman to get the woman pregnant, didn’t they? You do understand that your mom could not have ever gotten pregnant without your dad, don’t you — or are you solely your mom’s fault?
Virgin births are more and more common near the End Times i hear, and we wouldn’t want to terminate the second coming, now would we?
Well either way in my opinion a woman who has an abortion is as worse as any whore. A child is God’s gift to the world and no one has the right to take that away. I think that Dr. Tillers murder was an act of God showing that he is not happy with the way people are murdering his children. Not saying it was morally right but I think with a theological point of view the murder was an act of God and that is my opinion. Agree or disagree I can think what I chose to and there is no changing that fact.
Kat: You’re absolutely right. The Constitution gives you the right to be an ignorant, hatemongering fuckwit, and that is, as you say, a fact. It’s a shame that so many people choose to abuse the right, though.
Wow, Kat. So much for your so-called benevolent God, then. I guess God wants women to bear brainless kids, then, right? Or kids that are so malformed that they’ll be lucky to live more than two minutes without a placenta to provide their oxygen?
You know, when a placenta separates from the uterus, both the mother and fetus can die in minutes due to massive blood loss. An abortion in this case can save at least the mother, who just might be able to receive another gift from God one day. Unless “intelligent females” like you succeed in taking away abortion as a viable medical procedure to save the life of the mother, that is.
Just some of those pesky gray areas that you are very conveniently ignoring.
What happened to “thou shalt not kill,” Kat? Or are you so brainwashed that you don’t realize that your “murder is an act of God” claim actually goes against everything that Christianity and Jesus stands for? Last I heard in Sunday School, God was supposed to be benevolent, not merciless. And God’s mellowed a bit since the Old Testament plagues.
Hope you are not calling me an idiot. That would be a false statement beyond words. I am a rather intellegent female who speaks her mind and quite honestly I think that others should lear from it.
Benevolent? God can be merciless if the time is right for it. And as far as the way the maldeformed child or any other goes. The mother should not put herself out there in the first place. She had to do something to get noticed by a family member or a rapist. Best way is to stay hidden. I learned from this because I myself have been through it. That is why I dislike abortions and those who support it including the doctors. I was forced to have an abortion because I got pregnant at fifteen it was my choice to get pregnant and all else got taken from me. So yeah I say what I need to because I know what it feels like! Bet you do not you grouchy old bitch
Sorry you are a guy so you are just an asshole who will never have to go through an abortion
Kat
WHAT?!?! So a woman who gets raped is asking for it? Is that seriously what you are saying? What century are you from?
I’m sorry about the abortion you regret from your youth, Kat, but don’t project your guilt on all other women out there. And don’t demand that other women become baby factories just because you want to be one. Some women actually want to live their lives, not be slaves to their unborn children.
Let me be brutally clear here, Kat. You’re advocating that women – you, any hypothetical daughter you might have, MY daughter, my wife – become slaves to their fetuses while pregnant.
Most birth defects aren’t related to incest, Kat, because incest is so damn rare compared to non-incestuous procreation. You’re so smart – learn a little about your body and pregnancy and the biological processes of gestation, just how much can go horribly wrong in the process, and how often your beloved God kills his own gifts.
“She had to do something to get noticed by a family member or a rapist.”
You do realize that even women who wear full burkas get raped right? I mean seriously what the hell is wrong with you that you have to blame the woman and not the man who is violating the law and the woman..
Oh, and I guess that means the victims of pedophiles and incest were asking for it too….
One of the last things I did before leaving the USA forever was to protest in favour of the right to choose in front of an abortion clinic where anti abortionists were blocking the entrance. I’ve done some scary things in my life but that was one of the most frightening days of my life. I had never met people like that before. I totally accept that these sort of folks could kill in the name of saving fetuses. It, of course, has no moral grounds but they are unable to recognise that becasue of the steel blinders they wear.
Sometimes I think there is no use to enter into debate with someone like Kat. She has taken a position so far from reality, where do you start? To teach that 80 year old women sleeping in their beds get raped? That birth defects are DNA mix-ups that no one has control over? That her abortion experience may be re-written now that she’s swallowed the rhetoric? That may be it saved her life not destroyed it? She’s put her mind in a box, the key held by the head of her anti-abotion group (likely a man) .
My heart goes out to Dr Tiller’s family. If a hero is someone who saves lives- Dr Tiller was one.
Sam,
While I agree that at least one of the above posters is a hate mongering fuckwit and that she has her head so far up her ass she can see her tonsils I need to point out that some of the postings here have surpassed previous posts in other threads that have prompted warnings about no personal attacks. For sake of consistency you should probably apologize to the asshat for calling her names.
Rho: If this makes us inconsistent, so be it, but our community rules are designed to promote intelligent conversation between people acting in good faith. The rules are not intended to provide protection for fascists who advocate political assassination against those who act in ways they find inconsistent with their millennia old codes of ignorance and superstition.
Smart people don’t need thou shalt nots. Basic principles suffice, and there’s nothing I’ve said here that comes close to violating the standard I’ve been setting at S&R for the last couple of years. We don’t suffer fools gladly, if at all.
The argument you might be better off making is “don’t feed the trolls.”
Kat:
Ahm, if you’re going to assert claims about your intelligence in a community of highly intelligent and highly educated people, you might want to stay away from sentence structures such as, “is as worse as.”
Just a suggestion.
Is this a bad time to promote my band’s song “Rusty Coathanger”?
JS: thanks…i didn’t have the heart to do it.
Darrell: nope, i think it’s a perfect time.
Not to get overly philosophical, but is there a good argument (i.e. not Biblical) that says human life has inherent value? Being partially Russian, i’m incapable of believing that it does.
Now let’s go back to the good old days when the Holy Founders built this good, Christian nation. To the best of my knowledge, abortion was legal before “quickening” (as i understand it, detectable fetal movement like kicks). In other words, early term abortions were aok. Who knows how the laws would have been applied to late term abortions, but my guess is that medical technology was such that the mother’s life would have been in grave danger from the abortion at that point too.
Am i wrong about the Colonial/Founding Generation era abortion laws? I’m too lazy to look it up, but at least i’m not making Swift jokes, eh?
One of the things I find amusing, is her (Kat’s) basic claim to be a “rather intellegent [sic] female”. I guess I can agree with that.
Artikulit too
1. One man killed George Tiller, and the prime suspect has already been apprehended. Charging the entire prolife movement for this killing is like charging the entire antislavery movement for the killings done by radical abolitionist John Brown in the years preceding the Civil War. Please THINK a little before you wildly start accusing everyone who simply wants to protect every single human life’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We are “all created equal.” That means we have equal value and dignity from the very moment we are “created”: fertilization. The death of each and every baby killed by abortion is a tragedy and a crime against justice, and is contrary to the very principles upon which this nation was founded.
The killing of George Tiller is a crime as well, and the man who killed George Tiller will be brought to justice. He did the act. He is responsible.
2. Your argument that “jihad” is what the prolife movement is all about is ridiculous. There are millions of people who are prolife. If we really wanted to kill abortionists, do you actually think there would only be 8 abortionists killed (and 17 other attempts) in 35+ years since Roe v. Wade?
3. If you try to blame everyone who has every said something against Tiller or against abortion for this act by one man and advocate “stopping the right-wing extremists at all costs,” you become the very thing you hate.
4. And for those who want to shut down the free speech of prolife people, I think you ought to read the First Amendment again. That protection of free speech is there for a reason. And even the opinions we hate the most–no matter how wrong we think they are–are protected. Let’s not lose that for anyone.
El: This is all well and good, but predictably it misses the point. First, the shooter was one man, but he was one man with a network, one man with a context, one man who was part of an extended community that not only advocating killing doctors beforehand, it has been pretty vocal in applauding the action since.
Second, my post was pretty straightforward. I heard there had been a shooting. I offered a wager as to who the killer would turn out to be. Nobody – NOBODY – took me up on it, and that includes the “pro-lifers” out there. And since I know that my piece was linked fairly widely, including by one “pro-life” site (that was yarping, ironically, about how predictable people like me are) I can’t help but conclude that the freak-righters knew I was right and knew it instantly.
Twist all you like, but this one isn’t real complicated. I called it. Nobody wanted a piece of it. I was right. Game, set, match.
By the way, the 1st Amendment has never afforded free speech protection to those using speech to whip up violence. You ought to have stayed in school until at least the sixth grade.
El:
Interestingly, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard John Brown and the abolitionist movement invoked by your side. The problem is, the two situations are not at all analogous.
The abolitionist movement in the US in the 19th century was driven largely by evangelicals who, unlike our current religionists, were extremely liberal for their day. They tended to be pacifists, or near pacifists, founded colleges, often helped smuggle slaves to Canada (illegal, but non-violent), and worked diligently for a legal solution. Many, if not most, of the abolitionists were women, or men driven by their women, who had other causes, such as temperance and womens’ suffrage, and may have represented roughly 10% of the free state population. Most of them absolutely abhorred the slavery-related violence occurring in bloody Kansas, the place that spawned John “Pottawatomie” Brown. The rhetoric published and used by abolitionists on the lecture circuit decried the peculiar institution of slavery, but sought to use moral suasion to effect its end, not violent and ill-conceived actions such as Brown’s or Nat Turner’s.
Such is not the case with our modern anti-abortionists. Many of them are evangelicals, but that is where the similarity ends. Their rhetoric is a virtual call to arms and, ultimately, to murder. They demonize those who disagree with them, which has long been the human equivalent of saying “those people deserve to die, and we must kill them.”
A more appropriate analogy to modern anti-abortionists would be the Ku Klux Klan, a vigilante group that felt the law was morally wrong, and went about enforcing that belief with torture and murder.
You anti-abortionists enjoy whipping vigilantes into a murderous rage, then you spread your hands to show us they’re white as snow. And then you are stunned when we don’t buy it.
“God can be merciless if the time is right for it..”
Of course – how true! The Old Testament God of the Hebrews got his rocks off on rape, pillage, slaughtering of non-jews, bringing about plagues, afflicting ‘sinners’ and those who shopped elsewhere for their spiritual needs. What a great guy! God the Master of Destruction as defined by the world’s most popular book of learning…
If only the Dictionary could offer a single unifying definition of what ‘God’ is…
Although his work was distasteful to me in the extreme I am glad Dr Tiller offered his services to those in need. Rightly he was regulated and investigated – as should anyone carrying out such tragic operations on viable human lives in the making.
Ah yes, the demiurge of the Old Testament. Strange that those of the New Covenant spend their time looking for God in the Old Covenant.
The best Christian creation myth is that of Sophia. Wherein “God” is a product of Sophia’s loneliness and sorrow, an imperfect being who then creates an imperfect world. He wants to believe that he is all powerful, but knows that it is not…hence his jealousy. it is Sophia who animates life with her breath.
And it is a messenger of Sophia who tells Eve to eat the fruit. Eve liberates Adam when she offers wisdom to him; that is why “God” is angry. God is so angry that he rapes Eve twice: producing Cain and Abel. Our imperfection is the seed of He that we worship.
Christ, Sophia’s Aeonic pair, saves her from her entrapment here. His earthly manifestation came to awaken the spark of Sophia, latent in all men, so that they might be liberated. That he loved Mary best is because she represented his Aeonic counterpart and the true nature of man: wisdom. Their partnership represents the transcendence of duality…or at-one-ment.
It really is too bad that so many of us have fallen for the gobbledy-gook that passes for Christian thought foisted on us by Mother Church and her reformationists. The heresies make more sense more beautifully…and they actually teach something worth knowing.
See, Lex, this is complicated. The ultimate truth of something as complex as creation has to be butt-simple. Don’t you GET it?
Dangerous procedures in more ways then previously expected… thank you for the original post and the lively discussion, however inflamed.
There is no justification for sacrificing one life for the sake of another…” the life of a dove is worth the same as that of a man… not just his calf muscle, however equal to the dove in weight” – it is the plot of an old story, the name of which evades me at the moment… This would entail that sacrificing the life of a fetus for the life of the mother is unjustifiable; unless the fetus is already dead, in which case it’s not really abortion, its just removal of dead tissue (with undeniable remorse and sadness along with a range of emotions unknown to me attached to it). The same goes for the opposite. Sacrificing the life of the mother for the life of the fetus is unjustifiable…
The brain can only process binary decisions. Something is either good or bad… all grey areas are classified at some point or another into good bad or sometimes even both… which is absolutely incredible from a purely IT point of view… Anyway… All complex decisions are broken down into simpler ones… however quick and unnoticeable this process may be… that’s how it happens. If you have to choose between apple sauce and raspberry jam… how do you analyze the incredible amounts of data that come with this decision. It can be based on literally thousands of various inputs from hundreds of sources and utilize all six (five for the non believers) senses… The range of possible ways to get to a solution is ‘mind boggling’ … consider the following though. Each input is broken down into consequences which are classified as a one or a zero or an unsure. The ‘unsures’ are the data inputs which will only be broken down if further inputs are needed. When all the data KEY WORD ==> deemed relevant, is processed, a decision can be reached based on which side brings the most good, satisfaction, happiness, value, whatever… If the decision can’t be reached based on the data, then the uncertainties are defined further until one side clearly dominates the other and the Jam is secured into the shopping cart. Clearly Jam has much better texture… even though the sauce seems healthier.
Abortion is too complex to analyze on a binary scale. That’s why there can be no absolutes in this discussion. The consequences of it, however can be processed much easier.
Death of the mother
Death of the fetus
Death of the mother and the fetus
Permanently disabled fetus
Permanently disabled mother
Life of the mother, death of the fetus
Death of the mother, disabled unfulfilled life of the fetus
Life of the mother, disabled life of the fetus
Life of the fetus, disabled unfulfilled life of the mother
…. … .. .. .. ….. ….
Life of the mother, Life of the fetus
Out of all these potential outcomes of choosing abortion or life, none of them are binary decisions. So we have to go deeper/
Death of the mother: probability*weight= k
Death of fetus : Probability*weight=k
Death of both: probability*weight=k
Disabilityof the fetus: Probability*weight ….
Disability of the mother : …
Life of the mother: etc…
…
…
To the end of days…
Each case is so unique and different, that there is literally no end to the breakdown process… there is no algorithm to decide who should live and who should die… it’s inhuman to assign probabilities to a life. How do you calculate the weight ratios of the life of the mother versus the life of a fetus? How the @#$% can someone even pose such a question?
The only thing we can do is look at the data we ‘deem’ relevant. The “right-wing Christian terrorist” groups do it… I do it… I can only assume you do it as well. I deem relevant the viability of the fetus. I would deem relevant the perceived level of disability this child will have, and the ability of the mother so support the healthy development of such a child. I deem relevant the ability of the mother to give birth. Her life is important to all her loved ones while her fetus is important, perhaps, only to her. I deem the consequences for the human body a relevant input… abortion techniques used today are, as little as I understand, bad for the female reproductive system in some cases resulting in further infertility. These, among a few others would enter into the ‘algorithm’ of my decision. Any further inputs, my brain won’t process easily… unless written down, broken down and analyzed as discreet outcomes etc etc…
The right-wing Christian terrorist probably has other inputs. Including, but not restricted to the views of “[Operation Rescue] Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Bill O’Reilly and/or Glenn Beck.”
We can conclude from this, that if a person is only capable of processing a given number of inputs (no particular research, that I know of at least, supports this at the moment) and those inputs are limited and restricted to those mentioned above, then his/er decisions are, in fact, not only influenced, but are driven by those inputs.
Im stretching a bit here… but if this can be shown as an agency relationship between the inputs and the actions, then the aforementioned group of people is guilty of some serious felonies.
Off topic:
The worst thing that has ever happened in media is the fact that Hans Fritzsche, a radio broadcaster of Goebbels’ propaganda inciting unmentionable cruelty that can hardly be compared to what happened here, was brought to the Nuremberg tribunal. He was there, and he was acquitted.
Jesus sowed the seeds himself for further strife and battles if Matthew et al are to be believed:
http://www.rationalchristianity.net/abolish_law.html
…at least tthere is hope:
http://www.greek-gods-and-goddesses.com/pandoras-box.html
elaine…
I’m not entirely sure what you mean, but i assume you are referring to the fact that certain abortion critics are applying the biblical words directly to the subject rather then interpreting the purpose of those words and trying to achieve the purpose.
The second article, though interesting, is harder to apply. I see that it ties in well to the fact that even though child death and abnormality exists, it is hope that keeps the children and parents going? not giving up on each other? mmm… not sure where exactly you are aiming.
One belief system incorporated a vengeful Yahweh keeping his chosen people prisoner to a mindboggling nitpicking stream of do this and do that and to hell with those not in the club (rest of tribal humanity). This original religion has through the ages more often than not been a driving force or a source of inspiration for those calling themselves ‘Christians’ and is as far removed from the Lamb of the New Testament and his pacifist actions as one can possibly get. Yet, in spite of his baiting of Pharisees and their death grip of ‘God’s people’ when crossing verbal swords he did not deny this tooth and claw inward looking system of rules from ‘on high’.
Jesus offered himself as ‘Hope’ to his people. His existence spawned a new Religion around ‘Hope’ for all mankind yet the blood continued to be spilt by Theocratic Nations in his name and that of the all powerful bloody Church of Rome. Hope was thus squandered. Hope did not survive or endure in the Church – the organised power structure of control and punishment that brought fear down upon a poor soul’s head. Hope does not live in modern day Churches – more akin to social club gatherings with a cup of tea and biscuit after the singsong and head bobbing.
True living ‘Hope’ is found in the soul of man where it can blossom regardless of the travails and adversities of what it is to have a physical life in this world. It is a tender bloom that looms large in those young in chronological physical years and also those found to be young of heart. It can underpin the will to survive or push through in spite of seemingly insurmountable odds.
Hope beckons, motivates, inspires and fortifies but it does not command, instruct, regulate, postulate, formulate, debate legalities or decide the course of action. Hope is a gift found in the desert, is the candle flickering at the window, is the poet’s voice, it is the artist’s brush.
Hope blooms whilst humans in accordance with the dictates of their conscience, their sense of repugnance which informs their moral stance, their belief in their own capabilities and intelligence, their sense of order, the depths of their love or compassion and their bonds to others decide how much of this great FuckUp they can improve or make worse on any given day.
Hope once bloomed in Dr Tiller for his patients.
I would think that there are at least two classes of late term abortions that even the most extreme RWA could go along with and are by far the most common.
#1 The Fetus is dead, for what ever reason, and if not removed will kill the mother as well as it rots eventually, there is no life here nothing to see, but still they assault the Woman.
#2 The brain never develops, there is no brain just meat. The fact that if born the “Child” could actually “live” for up to several months, points up the fact that the brain is not necessary for that time and humaness is likely not actually “there” even at birth.
The other all too common cause I did not see above? Incest/Rape where the girl is a child herself (9-10) and has been too abused/scared to say anything until she begins to show. In several interviews this sort of case that Dr. Tiller was most moved by, and as far as I can tell the cases that got him the most trouble with the Empathy-deleted folk who assailed him.
Elaine, of course Jesus did not break completely with the dreaded rules from on high…he was a Jew. But in many respects he very much did break with those rules, particularly the social rules.
I think that you’re leaving out the political and social context of the Jesus era: the revolution, the terrorism, etc. Jesus wasn’t living in a spiritual vacuum.
Without a doubt, the nations (really Rome by itself) adopted the new religion and bent it to suit the states purpose…or more precisely, the church fathers bent the faith to fit Rome’s purpose. But considering that, how can you then proffer a Biblical quote as what Jesus thought?
The key to finding Christian thought is to look at all the branches of the faith that were persecuted and quashed, from those who followed Jesus while remaining Jews to the Cathars of 13th Century Languedoc.
Hope cannot exist without despair. And one will never defeat the other…no matter how many Tillers or Popes tell us otherwise. The binary pairs cannot be separated, only transcended by following the path between them.
Sorry to weigh-in at such late a date – doing a bit of research and came across this discussion. It’s interesting to me that no one pointed out to, “Kat” something important about her abortion: She said she HAD to have the abortion but the OPTION for her to have one legally, nonetheless, was in place.
Much like when Sarah Palin said she was thinking about aborting her child when she found out he would have down syndrome. Again, no one thought to say a CHOICE was available to her….
Do these people not realize that they, too, relied on having the freedoms they are trying to take away?
Back to the assasination of Dr. Tiller…. fundamentalists and dominionists are working hard (and successfully) to make this country run on a totalitarian system. I truly think some of these people have pulled so far away from living a Christian lifestyle that they have turned the “Word of God” into a “War of God.” I’m no so sure any God would approve of such behavior.