America The real Religion is delusion

As Americans, whether we are on the secular left or the religious right, we like to think of ourselves as right.

We know for a fact that we are on the side of truth and those "other" people are on the side of evil. So the Christian Right "knows" that people who don't believe just like them are going to eternal damnation. And those on the liberal side, know for sure that the Religious Right wouldn't recognize Jesus if he walked up to them and tapped them on the shoulder. A good example would be the little known fact that Jesus never said one word in the bible about homosexuals. Yet the Christian Right has made this a very big part of their agenda.

And the fact that Jesus said, Blessed are the peacemakers, doesn't stop our born again President Bush from making up some fake reason for going to war- weapons of mass destruction or something like that. Why couldn't he just say I'm kicking middle east ass for my daddy and Halliburton! And if a women believes in abortion, then just say that, don't call it I'm standing up for my reproductive rights.

No, in our minds we have to create reasons to defend in our minds our behavior. And it's usually not enough to just do it as the Nike ads say, but we have to give good reasons why it is right and better behavior than yours. We are never wrong. And that my friend is delusional.

Billy Graham and Arranged Marriages

I was recently reading the book, Crazy for God by Frank Schaeffer, the son of the famed Francis Schaeffer. In the book he talked about up the arranged marriage of Billy Graham's daughter Virginia.

I used to think that it was only Muslim Sheiks that did the arranged marriage thing, so imagine my surprise to find out so did Billy Graham.

His daughter, Virginia, only 17 at the time, when Billy arranged her to meet and then marry a man 20 years her senior, Stephen Tchividjian. He was the son of a wealthy donor to the Graham Organization.

Well, the marriage didn't last, and they divorced. She then remarried, and Virginia "Gigi" Graham Tchividjian became Gigi Foreman, As a side note, on July 1st, 2005 she was arrested and charged with domestic abuse after witnesses told police she choked her new second husband in a parking lot. She was charged with misdemeanor domestic abuse and released the following day.