Monday, September 8, 2008

What Jesus Wouldn't Do

An e-mail I received today from someone I know:
To those who receive this message - please do not watch the commercial below if you do not want to watch a touching commercial of sorts from an American soldier who has spent his time in the Iraqi war for freedom.

And please don't reply about it unless you liked viewing it. Over 600,000 have viewed this commercial, and I send it to you out of respect for you, your values, and your American citizenship.
I'm tired of my patriotism being questioned because I disagree with someone on the war. I'm tired of being denigrated because I believe that helping poor people and children is worth a few extra dollars in taxes every year—as opposed to ignoring them to death. I'm tired of being judged by the very people who claim to worship Christ and yet seem to conveniently cherry pick those teachings they choose to follow. I don't do these things to you and I expect no less at your hands.

If you want to engage in a dialogue, by all means e-mail me. But if all you want to do is lecture to me or insult me, delete me from your address book.

1 comment:

Caroline said...

Barry - I could not agree more. I am so fed up with my partiotism being questioned. I thought the point of the first amendment was to be able to safely voice our opinions against our own government - a fine example of the freedom we always seems to be fighting for. Yet, when we express our reservations about our government we are unpatriotic. Our forefathers fought the tyranny of the British empire so that people like you and I could say whatever we wanted and it would 100% American of us to voice our opinions. Our founding fathers would be disgusted.

And don't even get me started on the Christian Right. Here's a message from the Christian Left:

Jesus was a community organizer, Pontius Pilate was a governor.