Pardon me Benjamin but YOUR bias is showing (and reflects badly upon you)

Only you mentioned 'Fundamentalist' Christians - the article has no mention of the word.

Try actually reading what the article says and not what your bias is telling you it says and you might just see that the article is asking ALL of us - you and me, no matter what our religion,schism or belief - to examine our actions in the light of Jesus' actions and quoted sayings.

The article takes a dig at the attitiudes of those in society who like to believe that whatever they do is 'right' and whatever they don't do is 'wrong' and who create a 'moral' society on this myth, the most hypocritical of whom do so while claiming they follow Jesus' teachings by calling themselves Christian and claiming we should live by such "christian" morals.

You could try and remember that, when Jesus lived, those who opposed him and ultimately had him executed were NOT Christians (neither was Christ - he was a True believer in the God of the Jews, Yahweh (Jehovah) therefore much of the article criticises those people (sadly many similar attitudes are present in today's society) not 'Fundamentalist Christians' as you seem to feel.

"Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but don't consider the beam that is in your own eye?

Or how will you tell your brother,'Let me remove the speck from your eye;' and behold, the beam is in your own eye?

You hypocrite! First remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother's eye."
As Jesus put it Matt:7:3-5

Hawaiilawyer,
not in 350 words or less : )

While i could not prove corruption such as bribery and fraud and embezzlement in a court of law (i have no doubts that all exist in the highest echelons of Australian politics and leadership), the corruption i was referring to is epitomised in the following behaviours and the countless daily repetitions of similar practice they engender:

John Howard declaring on national television that Nuclear Energy is 'clean and green' knowing full well that spills/leaks occur regularly, even in our sole reactor at Lucas Heights, and millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases are produced mining and refining Uranium.

Amanda Vanstone and Phillip Ruddock removing Australia's offshore islands from the sanctity of legal protection as a way to prevent people landing on them being able to claim protections under Australian law as refugees.

Our government locking men women and children up behind razorwire for years on end ( most recently in other countries ! ) for the crime of applying for refugee status without satisfactory documentation.

Our government not upholding their obligation under international treaty to prevent payments to Saddam Hussein even though all contracts were provided to them for examination and clearly showed that almost 300 million dollars were being illegally paid to the regime via a known Jordainan 'front' company of Saddams and many people told government representatives that bribes were being paid by a particular Australian company responsible for billions of dollars of wheat export.

Commercial TV networks announcing that Daylight Saving was being introduced for 3 years as a statement of fact when it had not been approved by either of the two levels of state parliament and after three separate referenda had been held in the 30 years before, all of which were against the introduction.
I can go on and on.

Part One

Posted in another section more recently - thought it might interest.

An earlier edition of the Guardian in the Weekly Review section by Mark Lattimer, had the centre of the main page revealing which looks like a copy of a painting of the boy Jesus surrounded by an ethereal glow with an adult male and female each side of him, also in Holy representation.

What made the pictorial even more interesting is that the foreground reveals the heads and shoulders of devote looking Christian Arabs moving into the Church.

The major headline simply expresses the phrase MASS EXODUS - the accompanying italics intimating that .........”as it is believed that a good half of Iraq’s Christians have now fled, why haven’t coalition forces done more to protect them?”

It seesms that Mark Lattimer and crew had gone to the extra trouble of showing the painting to reveal a truth that a trained journalist might understand but not the general public.

As one gets older during retirement having spent years studying the philosophy of Western history, he becomes more and more shocked how much what could have been revealed as genuine Middle-East Christian history has been deliberately left out because it is not the way the Church and Christian governments want the Christian story to be told.

Seeing that so many of our OLO appear so learned, probably much more than myself with an early small school upbringing, would like comments regarding the following suggestions?

Part Two

The boy Jesus revealed in the pictorial is very much like the story of the boy Jesus revealed to us by possibly an over-devout mother.

Therefore it was reasonably easy to believe when studying historical philosophy that the suggestion that the boy Jesus with his so-called intellectual brightness could have been naturally gifted like the young Socrates.

As the Bible does indicate the boy Jesus as a person eager to mix among learned people, as well that Jesus spent time in Egypt with his family. Accordingly, this does fit in with suggestions that the young Jesus could have attended the Great Library of Alexandria in Egypt, as history books do indicate that more than half the pupils of the Great Library were Jews.

It is so interesting that the Sermon on the Mount without the accompanying spiritual content could have easily come from Socratic or even Platonic folklore.

One could also dare to suggest, that journalists like Lattimer are eager to reveal in their reports how certain Christian groups have long not been accepted and left to suffer by our Christian churches and their governments, and the case in Iraq has been easy to shut them out because they have stayed too friendly with the Islamics.

Indeed, there is much evidence to support the historical fact that the Arabic type Christians could be the true Christians rather than the Romanised believers. The Coptic-style Christians, as they are also known, are apparently not accepted because they are not forced to believe in the Holy Trinity, which after all was only finally made officially spiritual by the Roman Emperor Constantine when he presided over the Council of Nicaea in the early 3rd Century AD, when much of the Christian Church by then had become Romanised or Latinised.

Finally, because the news article only deals with the effects that the attack on Iraq has brought on Iraqi Christians, the use of the pictorial with its features suggesting a devotion more towards the Jesus of Nazareth, than the later latinised Jesus Christ, must be seen as a tribute to the article editors

Hawaiilawyer,

If you have the stomach for it please read this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/earth/29climate.html?ei=5088&en=28e236da0977ee7f&ex=1296190800&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1162184626-/MrWUMVxWPg51RHGeIfZRw

Although it is evidence of your own government's corruption (in this case of scientific truth)it is typical of the kind of corruption Australia's leaders borrow from 'the Land of the Free' and other great dictatorships dressed up in democratic clothing.

Brain Drain

What the world is interested in is, as you know, not what Jesus is interested in. But let me say this about covering up scientific fact for political reasons. The reasons, I'm guessing, may include maintaining sole superpower status in the face of an economically rising China, a waiting Russia, a want-to-be unified Caliphate Middle East. Given an American population that loves to drive and otherwise use oil from the Middle East, American leaders would not be inclined to cede any power of any kind to those rising, waiting, or wanting. For that reason, covering up scientific fact in order to deal with countries that don't want to stop polluting, and therefore have an industrial economic advantage (I realize, as the world slides into global warming) -- and therefore keep sole superpower status, is a worldly political goal that may have the merit of not giving power to: China, Russia, the Middle Eastern oil producing countries.

In terms of geopolitics, considering whether one might prefer Western supremacy, rather than Chinese, Russian, or Middle Eastern, would one choose Western?

As for science, science is truth or facts writ small -- according to whatever areas of research are funded, though facts nonetheless.

Also part of the truth is righteousness, Jesus or God style.

Would it be RIGHT to have the Chinese/Russians/Muslims (countries) the sole superpower? Hard choice.

I really can't say. Read Revelation. The countries who take sides, and which sides. We're on God's timetable.

While I admire your desire for truth, I don't consider communists of any kind to be good candidates for world rule, given their track record of blithe genocide, even as I realize records of mass murder (or even one murder) are relative. More murderous compared to less murderous -- all look pretty bad to God.

The world is complex, and motives are hard to read. Even motives for hiding scientific fact.