Churchianity

"Men never do evil so thoroughly and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. " - Blaise Pascal
The only consistently harsh words Jesus had were for the religious conservatives of his day. It was they, the strict, pious and brutal - who believed in the inspiration and authority of the scriptures - who had him crucified.

I am persuaded that it is not political liberals who are the enemies of the spirit of christ. It is those on the right, social conservatives who claim his name while misrepresenting his character; who believe they do him a service when they exert political power in order to control their neighbor's small vices; who are certain they can and should create a society that enforces their selective understanding of the morality of the bible.

They assert that we are a "christian nation". But is that not precisely the U(dys)topian spirit that motivated the architects of Babel?

Genesis 11:4 "...Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches (attains) to the heavens..."

George MacDonald

"...Yet I saw the raven, felt the ground under my feet, and heard a sound as of wind in the lowly plants around me! "How did I get here?" I said--apparently aloud, for the question was immediately answered. "You came through the door," replied an odd, rather harsh voice. I looked behind, then all about me, but saw no human shape... The same instant I knew it was the raven that had spoken, for he stood looking up at me with an air of waiting. The sun was not shining, yet the bird seemed to cast a shadow, and the shadow seemed part of himself. "

George MacDonald, from Lilith

the only thing left

"Have you ever thought, not only about the airplane but whatever man builds, that all of man's industrial efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent working over draughts and blueprints, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity?

It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship's keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of the human breast or shoulder, there must be experimentation of several generations of craftsmen. In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness."

-Antoine de Sainte Exupery