Curt Andersen: Be wary of loud affirmations of faith

(Green Bay News-Chronicle) "Some folks are so enamored with President George W. Bush that they nearly swoon when he says he is a Christian. Bush is wearing his “Christian” uniform to fool the faithful into believing he is a man of God, when he’s nothing of the kind.
I’m surprised that anyone believes Bush’s claims of religiosity. Imagine if you will, that Satan comes to visit us. Do you think he would appear in the famous red jammies with horns and pointy tail, or as the multi-headed beast described in Dante’s Inferno? Or would he arrive camouflaged in the attire of a failed businessman, a pretender to the faith, saying everything the faithful wanted to hear?
Jesus said to love thy neighbor as thyself (Matthew 19:19), but Bush loves himself and his buddies instead. He has emptied our treasury generations into the future to further gild friends’ holdings, in spite of Jesus saying that we should follow the commandments, as in “Thou shalt not steal.” (Matthew 19:18).
Bush used the Iraq war to steal their oil and at the same time cover up the lousy economy on his watch, mostly due to the theft of our treasury with the transfer of its contents to the wealthiest of us all, and added to by the gross military spending for the war. Jesus said, “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” (Matthew 19:18), but Bush has gone over the top with his distortions of truth regarding the war, the economy, and even about Senator John McCain.
During the 2000 primary campaign, some anonymous Bush supporters used "push-polling" to suggest that McCain's Bangladeshi-born daughter was McCain’s illegitimate black child. (In push-polling, if the pollster determined that the person was a McCain supporter, the pollster asked them, “Would you be more or less likely to vote for McCain if you knew he fathered an illegitimate child who was black?”) Could this get any more smarmy?
Fundamentalist Christians think this is above board?
To say that Bush, himself, never said anything bad about McCain is to overlook that he did not admit that his campaign supporters wrongly suggested that McCain had fathered an illegitimate child. To say this was fair or morally acceptable because pollsters only asked a hypothetical question is to live a lie.
The hypocrisy is abounding these days. When I hear “Christians” screaming that homosexuals are “sinners,” but that they “hate the sin, not the sinner,” it’s obvious they really hate the sinner. So-called Christians have attempted to eliminate numerous jobs based on sexual preference. There are few better ways to persecute someone than to eliminate his or her ability to earn a living.
When I hear Conservatives on shock radio shows rail about minorities, whether other races or just the poor in general, using the worst slurs, they are using Christianity as a cover for their bigotry…their hatred of others; using Christianity as a cudgel instead of a beacon. Christ warned us about this, but those who use his name so often are the worst offenders.
President Harry S Truman’s grandfather told him, “When you see a man praying more fervently than usual, the first thing you should do is put an extra lock on your smokehouse.” That man is having a crisis of conscience and is losing the battle. The loud affirmations of faith by “Christian” fundamentalists are in contrast to Christ’s teachings, i.e., "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men.... when thou prayest, enter into thy closet and when thou has shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret...." (Matthew 6:5-6).
I would guess that nearly everyone has some bigotry in his or her soul, but Christ came here to make us hold back that hatred…to love our neighbors as ourselves. In no way has Bush been able to show true faith. “God is not mocked.” (Galatians 6:7-10.)
For those who believe George W. Bush is the man to lead us out of the mess he has made, I have to wonder where they got the idea that the guy who got us into it would have any clue about getting us out of it.

~Curt Andersen is a Green Bay native. He is a 4-year Navy veteran (Communications Technician, CTO2), (who, unlike President Bush, served his entire hitch), owns a small business, is vice president of Clean Water Action Council, and is an adjunct instructor at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College. You may contact Mr. Andersen at cdandersen@netnet.net"