While I have expressed my own frustrations at the cross of Evangelicalism, patriotism, and capitalism, Bill Maher goes a little far at a couple of points. First, there is a command to love your enemy, and pray for those who persecute you – the logic he presents assumes that you can’t love someone even while recognizing the need for them to die. Can Jesus love Satan in the moment he condemns him to the lake of fire (as recorded in Revelation)? Can Jesus love the son of perdition while proclaiming that he has been handed over for torment? Justice and love are not incompatible.

When he brings up the assassination of Bin Laden – he did deserve death, but so do we all. We are all sinners, and the wages of sin is death. Justice may even have required that he be killed by Americans (he claimed the mass murder of American citizens as one of his greatest accomplishments). It may have been appropriate for him to be assassinated; whether or not I like it, that’s the whole story of Scripture. What does not sit with scripture is the celebration of his death. The glory in his destruction should be abhorrent as should be the political use of it.

He’s an entertainer, he does go a bit far on some thing and doesn’t necessarily present a totally accurate and complete view of Christian theology. Then again, I don’t hold him accountable to doing that — he’s not a Christian! The fact is, this makes me wince for two very different reasons. Number one, it disparages the Church, and I love the Church… as does Jesus, btw. You can’t do that without it hurting. However, I also wince because WE who are a part of the Church have allowed this to become a real facet of how we’re known in the world. It’s not the only one, many are good, but there are many, MANY times when visible representatives of the Church have spoken things that don’t accurately represent the character of Christ in us and we let it stand without public outcry. We are known as judgmental of the world, which we should not be. However, if the world saw us as judgmental of OURSELVES, truly correcting in love and for the sake of Christ’s reputation, I believe we’d see VERY different perceptions of the Church. It’s time we started being serious about holding each other to account, for the sake of each other AND for the sake of the reputation of Christ and His church whom He loves.

Mainstream Christianity took a wrong turn 30 years ago when the “Prosperity Doctrine” began making its way into the churches. Then the resurgeance of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” somehow became part of the mantra and not only did selfishness become acceptable, but somehow for many “The Christian Way.”

Also it seems to me that it is those who want “small government” that also want to impose the most rules on society. We say we support our troops, yet we do so little for our returning veterans. We are supposed to heal the sick and help the poor if we are trying to emulate Christ, yet the right wants to cut cut cut programs that do this. We say we are against abortion, yet we resent things like free school lunches which may be the only decent meal some poor children get that day. We defend the corporations that took jobs out of the country to get out of paying a living wage to their fellow Americans and we say it was the greed of the worker, not the greedy corporation that caused this. We revere the rich and don’t want them to pay their fair share of taxes, crying that the rich pay enough already. Yes, they pay a lot, but not the same percentage the working class pays.

I still consider myself a Christian, yet I think most people who call themselves have their values all twisted and that what they believe is nearly the opposite of what Christ taught us. We ARE

Sorry–I got cut off before I was through with my comment. We ARE judgmental and try to impose our values on everyone, and that is not Christian nor is it the American way. Now I’m through.

Dismissing a few millennia of abysmal behvaior, it is hard to rush to the defense of the Church just with today’s headline. Or yesterday’s. And probably tomorrow’s.

How is it persecution? Maher cannot harm truth. Persecution is the action of Riight Wing evangelicals tarnishing and distorting, with their enmeshment in partisan politics, the message of Christ.

Justice for Americans to kill bin Laden without a tiral? Jesus gave us restorative justice; an eye for eye is dead. Yes, as sinners we deserve death but Christ gave us a new order of Justice: endless mercy and forgiveness.

The whole story of Scripture is not murder and assassinations by agents of government.