Friday, February 20, 2009

Rush Limbaugh and the Religious Right and the Liberal Left

Someone asked me the other day if I listen to Rush, and I said, "When I get the opportunity."

The person then says to me, "So you listen to that Religious-Right blowhard?"

I replied, "Religious-Right? Not necessarily. He's not religious."

The word "religious" kind of set me aback. I don't consider myself "religious." I consider myself a Christian. A believer in Christ. The word "religious," because of the abuse of faith by various religions, and the negative use of it by the Left, as well as a number of people that call themselves religious without even having an understanding of what God is all about, now has a negative connotation to it.

A religious person, in my opinion, is a person trying to act the way they think God wants them to act. A religious person is a person that is trying to act religious. They try to proclaim they are good and righteous, for goodness' sake. But in reality they are just going through the actions, hoping to look good to everyone else, but often their motives and their heart are not in the right place. That is hardly what a relationship with Christ is all about. Religion is man-made. The gift of salvation through Jesus Christ is God-made.

A month ago I went to a rally where anti-Israel protesters had gathered, and I stood with a small pro-Israel contingent there on the streets of Los Angeles with a sign that read, "I Stand With Israel." And while I was there, I got to talking to some of my Jewish companions at that rally, and they were stunned that a believer in Christ would be in their corner. After all, they thought Christians were supposed to be against them too. I was surprised at that. I explained to them that Israel has no greater friend than the American Christian. Christians recognize the lineage that we share with Jews. The Biblical foundations that we both have bind us. The first Christians, also, were Jews.

I was talking with my mom later about this (she has recently made a trip to Israel), and she said to me, "Doug, you need to understand, the Jewish people look down upon the word "Christian" because they associate it with Rome because of the Roman Catholic Church's alliance with Rome. Rome destroyed their temple, and scattered the Jewish people across the globe. Even though the Christians weren't the controlling factor, they associate the two together."

After thinking about that I got to thinking about how Muslims see Christianity. They see the Crusades when the word "Christianity" is brought up. Of course, they glaze right over the fact that the Crusades were a military response to the Muslim takeover of the Holy Land, as well as the Muslim takeover of North Africa, parts of Spain, and the Muslim attempt to spread across Europe.

Secular-Humanists, when they see the word "Christianity" see a people that believe in fairy tales and superstition. They look back at the Holy Roman Empire and automatically think that Christianity wants to create a theocracy where under a Holy Government the various lifestyles of the non-believers would be outlawed.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

My mother told me to use the word "believer" when speaking to Israelis because you are a believer in Christ, and the Jewish people respect believers in Christ much more than "Christians." You are a believer in Jesus Christ as the Messiah, but not necessarily a member of some mega religion with a spotty history populated by people that claimed to be Christian and left a path of destruction.

But you see, that is how secular-humanism and liberalism works. They take something that means one thing, and they use labels to get it to mean something else. To be religious, or a member of the religious-right, or a born-again Christian, is now a negative. The label has been plastered so many times with a negative connotation by the mainstream media and liberal thinkers that to even use the word now creates a negative image.

Well, I am proud to be a Christian Conservative, and I believe being such is as close as I can get to what the Founding Fathers of this nation envisioned Americans to be.

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