From: ap290@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ruth M. Hanschka)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.xcult-l
Subject: Re: Militantly tolerant
Date: 20 Dec 1992 07:03:11 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: xcult-l@psuvm.psu.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, AKARP@GONZAGA.BITNET () says:

>
>I thank Garry for speaking up in regard to Douglass's comment about the
>Judeo God, for although the Torah may document a copious amount of seeming
>intolerance and cruelty by God, the proof of what the Torah's followers
>have shown in the capacities of love, tolerance, and benevolence cannot
>be forgotten; the message of "tikkun olam," making repair of the world,
>is an imperative of the Judeo God; I suppose ruth's god is some vengeful
>SOB weighing the malevolent forces of the world in her corner so as to
>raze the homes and businesses of those who defy It, to destroy others
>who won't buckle under to the one word of an estranged God.

Heh - right.  Yeah - this is the same God that puts up with ME.  Must be
*real* vengeful all right.  Give it up Adam; the God I worship is a lot more
complex than the one you're trying to debunk.  You're not even in the
right ballpark, or, to carry the metphor further, the right sport.  

>Ruth preaches that I am the bigot, likening me to a liberal Himmler, which
>I take great offense to.  When I refer to the reactionary Christian Right

Good, you were supposed to.  I had hoped it would make you think about
what you were saying.  It obviously didn't.  I've heard similar things
dished out before - in translations of Nazi propaganda.  It was applied
to Jews, and to anyone else who didn't go along with what Hitler and Co.
wanted.  About a third of my mother's family was wiped out by concentration
camps.  I've had reason to study this stuff.:-(


>realm, I believe there is a time to speak up.  Consistent with your Holocaust
>allusion, I wish that the rest of the world had acted sooner to remove
>Hitler from power and save the millions of Jews and homosexuals, Jehovah's,
>political prisoners, and intellectuals.  You mention that I am doing as

So do I - eleven million people is a hard number to even imagine.  

>HItler's SS did, by labeling a Christian sect as the Jews were so labelled.
>What an ignominious accusation!  Certain contingencies of the Christian right
>have begun to undermine and dupe other mainstream Christians by placing the
>blame for the world's problems on feminists, Unitarians, homosexuals, and
>other Christians who don't see the BIBLE their way.  The time to fight the
>Right is now (defending those who are being raped by the dogmatism of a
>lost, disturbed minority is a must!) for if we wait too long, their Final
>Solution may become a reality.

Now you're catching on, finally.  There may well be some idiots out there
preaching this kind of crap.  But, I have news for you, if they ever did
go in for "final solutions", they'd hang me higher than you.  I after all
claim to be a Christian, but that has to be a lie, right?   After all, I 
converse with tax gatherers and sinners of all stripes.  I'm probably a
whore, too. *That* is the way extremist mentalities work - and that's what
you seem to want to throw me in with.  The shoe doesn't fit.

>You feel free to criticize the Torah, commiserating with the God who youu
No, I feel free to criticize the behavior of the Isrealites.  Big difference.

>say is infinitely tolerant, and for good reason: "A bigger bunch of whiners
>and mutterers and complainers I've never seen. Any God who put up with that
>crew, and even blessed them, has to be pretty tolerant indeed."
>Nice anti-semitism if you ask me.

Man, are *you* ever paranoid.  It's anti-stupidism, and crosses all racial,
religious, sexual, and political boundaries.  Read Exodus sometime - all
the Children of Isreal are recorded as doing is a)traveling and b)getting
into trouble.  Their own God seems to have concurred with this assessment;
he sent them wandering around in the Wilderness for forty years.:-)

>Your comments and forays into the nature of true religious experience reak
>of hatred.  If you claim that I am being equally as bigoted by calling a
>spade a spade, then perhaps we are both playing with a different stack of

Actually, it reads more like you're calling a Full House a busted flush.
Or, more accurately, a Jane Russel to use a Bridge term.  You seem to reject
anything I have to say out of hand, without even stopping to think.  I just
call them like I see them.  From my viewpoint, you're calling a spade a club.
[and then proceeding to attempt to beat me over the head with it]

>cards.  Whoever's God or belief-system claims superiority over others and
>calls for their afterlife destruction (wishing them agony and total
>desolation) is certainly no friend of global peace and goodwill.  Such
>commentary is pretext for armageddon.  The only overarching context of

Unhhh - no.  Armageddon's coming, IMRO, whether we like it or not; Christians
are just ordered to make sure that as few people as possible wind up going
through that experience.  No one, theoretically, *has* to go through Hell.
It's a choice, and one major part of Christianity is making sure as many people
as possible know the choice they're making.  Superiority has nothing to do
with it - if there's only one door, there's only one door, and saying a brick
wall is a door doesn't make it any less a brick wall.

>Responding in point: A) The Gospels are contradictory; various passages
>do conflict on key points regarding what Jesus said.

Do they?  Really?  Have you ever studied it?  I have, with people who've read
the Greek version.  Of the contradictions I've run across,most have logical
solutions, easily understood.  The rest I haven't looked into yet.

>B) Your concentration camp survivor-friends are surely thankful to be alive
>after going through such a horror on Earth.  I just can't understand how
>they could feel comfortable around a person who mutters under her breath
>how the Holocaust was the Christian God's retribution against the
>incorrigible Jews; do you consider these friends doomed to a post-deathm
>Hell as well?  If so, then they must be able to see behind the veneer of
>a stone-walled, maddened heart.

What a load of horse hockey.  You haven't understood a *single* word I've said,
have you?  The Holocaust was a living horror - it was more likely Satan's
retribution against *God's* Chosen People, and other followers.  Five million
of the people killed in the death camps weren't Jewish, a fact many people 
seem to forget.  If it was just against Jews, as you seem to think I think,
why did God murder His own followers while He was at it?  

>C) There is hatred suppurating within you.  I can see it.  Tell me how
>Christ, who represented unconditional love, could condone such blasphemy
>in his memory?

No, you see irritation, and a mirror that shows your own hatreds.  I can sense
anger from here, and to a certain extent it feeds my own.   Look to the board
in your own eye before attempting to pull the loose lash out of mine.
Please.  No one ever did teach me how to hate, and I do think it's a learned
emotion.  Someone obviously taught you.  Just out of curiosity, who or what
taught you?

>I am militantly tolerant (granted, this is an oxymoron, to a degree) and
>cannot stand to watch as the power brokers of religious supremacy slowly
>impugn the truly benevolent, unifying convictions of those who seek
>peace, the absolutists who cast a shroud over others's existences.  At
>what point must we defend and consolidate our efforts in order to derail
>the damnable train of intolerance?  There is a time. SILENCE=COMPLICITY.
>Why can't absolutism be PERSONAL not GLOBAL (i.e., this is absolutely all
>I can believe in; what works for you, on the other hand, is fine)??
>
At this point, I give up.  It's after 2 a.m., and I'm tired, not to
mention sick to death of fighting this same old battle all over again.
Unless someone manages to try and discuss this with some ability to keep
his/her cool, I'm not going to respond to any more messages like this one.
It's obviously not going anywhere at all.

-- 
		###	Ruth Hanschka, the Nethead    ###
			- ap290@cleveland.freenet.edu
	      Where anything can happen, and it usually does