The Minnesota Independent drew attention to remarks made by Rep. Michele Bachmann when she addressed the Republican Jewish Coalition in Los Angeles this month. Bachmann said:
I am convinced in my heart and in my mind that if the United States fails to stand with Israel, that is the end of the United States . . . [W]e have to show that we are inextricably entwined, that as a nation we have been blessed because of our relationship with Israel, and if we reject Israel, then there is a curse that comes into play. And my husband and I are both Christians, and we believe very strongly the verse from Genesis [Genesis 12:3], we believe very strongly that nations also receive blessings as they bless Israel. It is a strong and beautiful principle.
Right now in my own private Bible time, I am working through Isaiah . . . and there is continually a coming back to what God gave to Israel initially, which was the Torah and the Ten Commandments, and I have a wonderful quote from John Adams that if you will indulge me [while I find it] . . . [from his February 16, 1809 letter to François Adriaan van der Kemp]:
I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. If I were an atheist of the other sect, who believe or pretend to believe that all is ordered by chance, I should believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.
… So that is a very long way to answer your question, but I believe that an explicit statement from us about our support for Israel as tied to American security, we would do well to do that.
My answer to Rep. Michele Bachmann, is that first he should seriously look into the reason for everything.
There are two possible hypotheses. One is that there is a reason for everything. Or, on the other hand, there is none. If there is a reason we may be able to find it. If there is none we can only invent one, if we really need one, so that we feel better but it will not be a real one.
The answer to everything might be totally simple such as the one which is written in the Bible, that everything including us was made by God for the purpose of worshipping him. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” (Genesis 1: 27, NKJV) And God defined the purpose of mankind’s creation “Man was created to worship.” (I Corinthians 10: 31) or as in the Quran: “I have created the jinn and humankind only for My worship.” (Quran 51:56)
This would fit with the facts of the unlikely probabilities that have arisen, in that over many billions of years of time, a part of the energy in space transformed to matter making gasses and clouds of star-stuff, then formed stars, elements and planets, and an infinitesimally small part of that matter came together in a most peculiar circumstance and way to make life, and yet even a more infinitesimally small fraction of that life has the amazing attribute of consciousness of its own existence and to some degree has fathomed the existence of the universe, which brings us to ask this question, “is there a reason for my existence?”
It is also conceivable that there may well be a reason but we may not be able to find it, any more than an amoeba living in the river behind my home can tell me the way to Lisbon, or how to take a flight to Tokyo, or explain why I would want to go there. The amoeba cannot even drive, fly, has no GPS or air-miles. In other words the reason may be far more complex than our capacity to understand it, since our evolved is only separated by about 2 billion years from the amoeba, not much more than a blink of the eye in time.
Or perhaps the reason cannot be understood until the end. We could be in the middle of a long winded joke which has no meaning until you get to the punch line. But like any joke the point is all in the telling and once you know the ending it becomes less funny and thereby the meaning gets lost every time you hear it the next time. Perhaps enlightenment, as the Buddhist monks call it, is hearing the end of the joke always for the fist time, and your spirit living in that laughter for eternity is nirvana? But, if we hear the punch line of the joke without the telling, it also has no meaning. We must experience the whole intricate process of the development of the story to get the meaning.
At worst, maybe there was a god once, who made up this joke and then died in the middle of telling it because it took too long to tell. So he never got to the punch line, and that is the joke……
What if we don’t get the joke? In Malachi 2:2, it is written;
“If you will not hear, and if you will not take it to heart, to give glory to My name,” says the Lord of hosts, “I will send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have cursed them already, because you do not take it to heart. (Malachi 2:2, NKJV)”
So, God made us in his own image and gave us an ego in the process so that we should have free choice, to laugh or not laugh at his joke. We can see ourselves relative to his image but we cannot see him, and if we don’t laugh at his joke he gets nasty and upset. Why should he? It was His joke that was lost on us? Hell, He made us, our ego too, and he made up the whole joke. Here we are still asking, what for? He obviously knew it was a bad joke before he finished and that we would not get it, or he would not have cursed us to suffer. So how can he get his jollies from making a joke to a mirror and then getting angry because the mirror does not laugh?
You just have to see how seriously funny all this really is. God spends 13.73 billion years making a whole universe to get us, his image, to laugh at His own joke and then gets annoyed with us that we don’t get the punch line. Is God really a unique and all powerful psychotic narcissist with multiple personality disorder?
Or perhaps the real question is; do I exist at all? Or am I the delusional projection of the imagination of an all powerful violent psychotic who craves love and adoration?
nice ta know ‘chelle ain’t changed while i was gone. . .jes’ as squirrelly as ever.
so we were ‘blessed’ because of our relationship with Israel, and by extension, the Jews/Israelis. . .or is it only tied to being allied to the land?
after all, while World War II was getting underway–and prior to our entry–ships of Jews fleeing the Nazis tried to find haven in other countries, including the United States. in some cases they were all snubbed–including by us–and finally had to return to Nazi Germany, there to become subject to Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’.
during the war, we had reports filtering to military intelligence and the Allied Command about Jews being exterminated en masse. these accounts weren’t believed. and, in the few cases that they were, the destruction of valid ‘military targets’ took precedence over the Holocaust.
individual acts and some group acts of racism and violence against Jews have happened in this country. and still do. does that count against us?
in the 50’s, at the height of McCarthyism, a significant part of American racism was that blacks and Jews were suspected of being allied with the ‘Godless atheist Communists’, or were at least their stooges.
if you weren’t a whiteboy Christian type, you were suspect.
How does that jibe with Bachmann’s assertions?
Okay if the Jews are the ‘Chosen People’ as she claims, then what were they chosen for? To teach us the ways of peace, of reason, of understanding, or as we witness in Israel, unending cruelty, ruthlesness, violence, theft, opportunism and exploitation of the poor, destruction of homes, families, religious intolerance ? And as a Christian as she claims to be, did not Jesus say that the time of ‘an eye for an eye’ must come to an end and we must ‘turn the other cheek’? Has she abandoned her own Teacher’s advice? It is probably true that Jews have been a civilizing influence over the centuries, but I am afraid that this is all coming to an end in this Palestinian holocaust.
The US is as cursed already as much as it can stand. It’s cursed by ignorance and superstition (like Michelle Bachman’s); it’s cursed by graft and greed (like Blankfein’s); it’s cursed by outrageous hubris and imperial delusions (like George W Bush’s); it’s cursed by the illusion that it’s interactions with the world are selfless and generous; it’s cursed by the fear of the unknown and the huge treasure it throws away on war material; it’s cursed by lobbyists and corrupt politicians; it’s cursed by criminally run banks.
I’d suggest the curse of an imaginary deity could hardly do more damage. I’m not an atheist, but have to assert that the world cannot become a better place as long as Christians, Jews, and Muslims have power over anything beyond their own front doors. The Abrahamic religions are the greatest curse the whole world bears.
Israel gave up it’s claim to a ‘civilizing force” once the Israeli’s became an occupying force, and fell from the “kingdom” of the most holy when they started building the walls…
You have lost your F****n minds.