chocolate covered lying in the name of God

I'm gonna get hate mail on this one. The kind of hate mail I only get when I bring up religion. Funny, I can't see Jesus sending hate mail, or approving of it. But I'm going to get hate mail.

So, a judge has overturned the presentation of "Intelligent Design" or, as so cutely referred to in the media, "ID", by schools in Dover, Pennsylvania.

Let me start with a clear statement of my view, which will be immediately forgotten by many reading beyond this paragraph - anger and hate cloud minds:

I, personally, believe that there probably was a motive intelligence behind the development of life on Earth. But, I can still believe in God, and Jesus, regardless of whether there was or how it worked its powers. My faith does not depend on a good lawyer or a debate on the merits of Darwin, Lamarck or megachurches. My faith is faith.

Victory, to the American psyche, has become like chocolate.

We'll eat anything as long as it is dipped in chocolate, right? Which means that, as long as our side wins, regardless of the cause, we will ignore all other considerations. As long as we can high-five our friends and rub our opponents' noses in the dirt, we don't care if we have to lie or steal or break a few promises to ourselves and to others. That creamy chocolate coating of victory takes away our awareness of the filling, what we are really ingesting and making a part of ourselves and our legacy. (Should a Christian own a radar detector? No. Never.)

I don't find it so troubling that a local school board, under pressure from national groups looking for a test case for their fund raising efforts and a law firm looking to make headlines, would bastardize science curriculums. Wasn't that many years ago that the State of Indiana tried to legislate "pi" as the number 3, for far less motive.

No, what perturbs me, and always will, is that there is ample evidence, cited in the judge's ruling, that school board members with religious agenda lied about their motives under oath. They placed their hand on a Bible, swore to tell the truth "so help me God" and then lied. Perjury. A crime and a sin. And then they thought they'd done the right thing. (I was working on a joke here, a play on words regarding the old Sunday School "sword drills" we used to have with our Bibles, but decided against it.)

As a Christian, that offends me. It perverts the message of Christ, who did not teach on the topic of "evolution versus creationism" or even school prayer, but did teach the keeping of the Commandments, which does include a little clause about "bearing false witness".

Does creationism deserve a place in public school curriculums? Perhaps. Of course, then, by the U.S. Constitution (Last time I checked everyone voting in that school board meeting is an American, also, right?) they have to respect the separation of church and state. If we can make a law requiring what is basically a Christian point (most Jews I know really don't give a hoot about ID) then we have to make equal time for the Muslims, the Buddhists, the Pagans, the Taoists and those people over in England who list "The Force" as their religion (one too many all-night "Star Wars" retrospectives).

We poison the faith when we'll do anything to present it. Jesus didn't have to lie. He didn't teach His followers to lie. We claim to be His followers. Anyone else seeing the logic problem here?

I have agendae. Lots of them. I think war is wrong, I am opposed to the death penalty. I think a business that takes on the label of a church to dodge taxes should not be tax exempt. I think our penal system is an international disgrace. I like "The West Wing". I prefer chicken livers to broccoli. My favourite Bowie album was "Station to Station".

But I am not going to lie to get my way. Once, perhaps, I was that sort of person. Maybe not to the extent some go, but I know of times where I told myself, at a point of conflict, that the winning, the ends, justified the lying, the means. In the 60's we called that "situation ethics" and it was blasted by the fundamentalist core of American churches. Guess that sort of has slipped by, hm?

Jesus said that what a man allows in does not defile him, but what comes out of him. A lie is a lie is a lie. And I don't need a lawyer, a vote, or a television ad campaign to tell me that.

And I can taste it, even through the chocolate.