In regards to religion, Christ does it for some. For others its Allah. Still others find Joseph Smiths second Bible more to their liking. Still others find Swami Whatever their cup of tea. Many of them toe the line with a "profession matched by practice," becoming markedly new people, with said religion having "renewed their character." To be perfectly fair, sometimes its much for the better, with soup kitchens and AIDS hospices being the result.

That renewed character though is just as often likely to go the other way too. Osama, Oliver Cromwell, Jim Jones and even Uncle Adolph were all touched by the relampago and shared their gifts and insights with us whether we wanted them too or not. Like that damn Christmas fruitcake that you didn't want, can't stomach and just can't friggin get rid of...

Where's the danger in it, you ask?

You simply can't say that our religion has to breed violence...But we have renounced all that! That is the miracle of grace - that we are allowed to change, that God does not abandon His Church, no matter what atrocities they commit in His Name. Why do you continue to judge us solely by our past?

I'm glad you've renounced all the bad things you've done. Yipee, yipee. Am I encouraged? No. No more so than I have been when every alcoholic, drug abuser or child beater has renounced their particular bad habit once and for all. Renouncing is easy. I've renounced a second piece of chocolate cake enough times to build a small apartment complex (yeah, okay, that's a funky image, but damn, it's late.) In psychology, we have a little guide that goes "past performance predicts future behavior." Religion constantly renounces all the evil its done, swearing it'll never do it again. Yet, surprise, there it goes again. Those regenerated people, swell folks all, do some pretty nasty things, quite unintentionally mind you, for all the best of reasons.

Much like the alcoholic, or the drug abuser, or the child beater I mentioned, they do it because they don't change the environment they're in nor the behaviors that grow from that environment. Divine revelation, with its refusal to deal in facts, data, observation and understanding, is a carwreck just waiting to happen (again...) If I say that we are, by nature, by observation, by genetic matching, sociological comparison and through analysis of comparable the same behaviors in our simian relatives, aggressive, warlike and cruel, easily excusing the the worst behaviors to the best of motives, so we need to be on constant guard against the darkest parts of ourselves and vigilant against our easy efforts to rationalize it all away with convenient whitewashing, and you say

"I believe the passages in Psalms have an appropriate reference to Israel's struggles against idolatry, but since the NT nation of Israel is the Church in Christ, we are bound by Christ's message of nonviolence in the Sermon on the Mount - until He comes to judge the world in the Last Day. In that war, there will be no mercy and no neutrality, but until then, there is mercy available for all..."

Violence, like sex, anger, rage and like love, kindness, and compassion, are actually part of our condition. It's part of everything that we do, see, feel and achieve. The anomie that you charge our society with has been there with all the Godly societies created too... be they those of Israel, England or Saudi Arabia. (Anomie, unrest, is also part of who we are.) And if you are going to point out that none of those were really Godly societies, that the real godly society wouldn't have any of problems, then I'll play that silly game too and say that real Marxism/Nazism/Islam/Democracy is just as perfect. Hell, I'd say that Zordism, which no one has, as yet, created perfectly on this planet, is even better -- but I'd still be talking outta my ass....

My point to Evan, to anyone who's upset that reality sucks, that nothing's perfect, that our wonderful stories about ourselves don't bear up under honesty scrutiny, is that this is the case for all of us. All the time. Has always been and most likely will always be. We are better off though, seeing the man behind the curtain than the Great and Powerful Oz with his lighting, booming voice and vaporic promises.

When you realize that life does suck, that its unfair, that it can be miserable, you're free at the same time to see that it doesn't always suck, that it isn't always unfair and that it doesn't just have to be miserable.
The knowledge of who we are -- really --, the information about what works and what doesn't, what we have guard against and embrace, is a pretty friggin wonderful happenstance. It allows us to see. No revelation required, no Invisible necessary, no delusion brokered.

It's a Real foundation on which to build Real things for a Real world.