Friday, January 21, 2005

Irony and Hypocrisy: Dubbyuh's Close, Personal Relationship with God



An interview with a woman just leaving Dubbyuh's coronation...er...inauguration left me chocking on my coffee. She stated that she was "glad to see a good Christian man like George W. Bush as president...". Now, I don't know about anyone else, but "good" and "Christian" are not two words I would use to describe Dubbyuh.

For a man so passionately devoted to Christ, his actions are singularly devoid of anything which reflects that devotion. He carefully avoids any mention of being born again or being an evangelical, and there is little evidence that he attempts to spread the gospel, beyond what makes a good sound-bite in his speechifying. This in contrast to Jimmy Carter whose telling every foreign dignitary he met about the good news of Jesus Christ is legendary. But then, Carter walks it like he talks it.

Dubbyuh is, at best, a salad bar Christian. "Hmmm...I'll take a bit of this...A little bit of that...Oooh, and that looks yummy...", but that describes many who call themselves Christian these days. Dubbyuh's distinction lies in that he picks and chooses those parts of biblical scripture which work to his political advantage.

For example, there are around fourteen (give or take a couple) verses in the Bible which make reference, direct or indirect, to homosexuality. Yet there are over three thousand which deal with providing aid and comfort to those less fortunate than ourselves. But which one was a theme of Dubbyuh's campaign and a plank in the Reichpublican platform? Yep, homosexyality, and not a word about helping those in need. If anything, Dubbyuh's plans for the next four years will only serve to throw more people into poverty that he already has.

Yet many born-again evangelicals accept Dubbyuh as one of their own. For one to be born-again, one must acknowledge their innate sinfullness and then they must turn away from it completely. But Dubbyuh, twice within the last year was, apparently, stymied when asked to name mistakes he had made during his first term. An appaling lack of humility in one so devoted to his religion.

Over the years, Dubbyuh's policies, both as Governor of Texas and POTUS, have failed to show a triumph of religious values over partisan politics, at any point. Nor has he shown that he pays more than lip service to his religious values. The true irony, though, is that so many who call themselves Christian, regard him as a fellow traveler, this despite his apparent hypocrisy.


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