Last night, Karen and I went to a friend's house for the evening. She had invited about a dozen various people she knows - a couple of whom we had met before.
The purpose was to have everybody sit around and just talk about what concerns them. Naturally, the talk gravitated to political, social, and environmental stuff. I managed to limit myself to just a few major rants.
There was one older gent who didn't talk much most of the evening, but when he did, it was amazing. He said he had worked for years, for the State of Oregon, doing physical rehab with the Disabled. They offered him an attractive retirement package ten years ago. He took that deal, then continued to find a way to keep doing his work.
It also turns out that he described himself as 'more Left-wing than any of you can imagine', which naturally made me feel great. But, then it was revealed that he is also an Evangelical minister. I quickly mentally ran thru my evening's rants, to see if I had said anything particularly offensive about Faith - nothing too bad.
As the evening was breaking up, I walked over to him to shake his hand. I told him how floored I was to find a left-wing Christian fundamenalist and said "my sense is that you have lived very close to Jesus's message." He just smiled.
As with so many other things, the neocons have co-opted the term 'Evangelical'. The REAL teachings of Jesus and Buddha and Mohammed and so many unnamed saints ...are pretty much 180 degrees from the neocon agenda. The gent you met sounds like a wonderful guy ...someone who knows that Jesus was a radical liberal.
ReplyDeleteYep - time to get back to that Old Tyme religion, and overturn the tables of the money-changers.
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