Christian, Not Judeo-Christian

In doing research on racism, which I despise as an anti-human attitude, I came across references to Geert Wilders, an uber-blonde Dutch politician whom people accuse of racism. I always like folks to speak for themselves, so I watched some of his speeches on Youtube.

He’s an odd sort of guy, doggedly persistent with his position, which is basically that he does not like Islam. He says it straight out, “I don’t like Islam.” Interviewer: “You can’t just say, “I don’t like Islam.” Geert, “Yes I can. Free speech still exists.” “What do you have against Islam?” Summary: Oppression of women, it’s a violent political movement, not a religion and Mohammed was a pedophile, having consummated his marriage to a girl when she was 9 years old.

OH! OW! That’s why Geert has 24 hour, rest-of-his-life bodyguards hovering around all the time. The rest of his life would be quite short without them, because certain Muslims have very openly said they plan to kill him.

Interviewer: “Christianity in the Old Testament is also violent.” Geert: “We have a New Testament that corrects that. I would like to see a New Quran. If I said something ‘insulting’ about Christianity, do you think I would need 24-hour security to stay alive?”

Well, dang, Geert. You may have a couple of valid points there. You can mock Christianity all day long in the most offensive ways (Richard Dawkins makes a career out of it) and it is highly unlikely any Christian will stab you in the chest for it. Some of them will even pray for your misguided soul.

And yes, we have a New Testament in which Jesus corrected many misconceptions from the bad old tribal warlord days, like “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.” (Matthew 5:38)

There are lots of warlordy passages in the Old Testament, calls for revenge and Jewish jihad against idol worshippers, but not a whisper of such things in the New Testament. Jewish leaders were definitely hostile to the early Christians, having vowed to fast until the Apostle Paul was assassinated. Furthermore, the Talmud says some really nasty things about Jesus.

I only know two Jews well and I like them both. I only know one Muslim and he’s a great guy. I’m not talking about individual people here, but I don’t like tribal warlordism as an ideology. I reject it as primitive and ugly. This “Judeo-Christian” phrase only popped up in America after WWII and I reject that, too.

I’m a Christian, not a Judeo-Christian. But think of your origins! Islam drew from Judaism, are they Judeo-Islamic? Buddhism drew from Hinduism are they Hinduic-Buddhist? We all were pagans once-shall we multiply hyphens until we get everyone in there?

Just plain Christian will do.