Against conscience

Great post. I’m a Christian and one of the many reasons why I can no longer find a church is the attitude that “their” rights are being trampled by the state, yet they support the state, yet they don’t want the “others” to have the same rights. The sad thing is that many who claim to follow Christ are clueless. Christianity has turned into a club and politic party, and it WILL come back and bite them where the sun don’t shine someday. The book, HITLER’S CROSS was an eye-opener. When the state is okay with institutional religious exemptions, but not okay with individual conscientious exemptions, the true believers should be very wary of those institutions. And btw, that Kentucky law is insane, as are most laws.

And regarding that link about the law in Kentucky, – that’s just insane.

Wow Claire, this one really touches a nerve.

My conscience tells me to try to save my father’s property, and the gov is preventing me from doing so.

In everything I’ve ever learned, both about gov and about freedom, an individual’s right of access to and use of their own private property is paramount. Many people put their very heart and soul into their property, and are willing to defend it with their lives.

Like thousands of other Sandy vics, I’m in a condition where access to my father’s property is now, and for the forseeable future, controlled by armed police checkpoints and armed patrols. Armed forces on boats prevent access by water. Because of the location of some arbitrary township line and a dispute between the powers of the 2 twps, a military blockade seperates neighbors and prevents me from visiting people who live 5 houses away.

Ask when martial law is going to be lifted, and the denials fly, “We’re not under martial law” “Well”, I asked “when you can only access your property every 4th day, when you have to show special papers at armed checkpoints to get passed, when there is a 3pm to 8 am curfew for all citizens, when citizens are not allowed to pass military blockades to visit their neighbors, if that’s not martial law, could you please tell me what is?” chirp chirp chirp

My conscience tells me to bring my neighbor a cup of coffee, but no one in power took C seriously or would give her an answer when she asked if we would get arrested or shot if we tried to cross the blockade.

And paying taxes for something you may not believe in? How about paying over $15k a year in property taxes (welcome to NJ), and still be expected to pay, even though your property molds and rots while you are denied access to get in and save it? Damage that you could have prevented with reasonable access is compounding daily by the delay.

Contempt for gov? Naw, not me!

I don’t see how any person with a shred of decency or ethics could have anything but contempt for government. Not anymore.

Excellent, Claire.

KYcolonel – could be. The Wikipedia article on Riner references articles that reference each other, and nothing I could frind from ’06 or ’08 (both referenced as the year the law was supposedly passed) had any info. I did find these Kentucky Revised Statutes, though:
http://www.lrc.ky.gov/krs/039g00/010.pdf
http://www.lrc.ky.gov/krs/039a00/285.pdf

There’s quite a bit more if you search for “almighty” at either http://www.lrc.ky.gov/ or http://www.lrc.ky.gov/search.htm (the latter of which provides for selection of more search restriction options).

I agree with Ky Colonel-I haven’t heard anything about such a law. It could be sort of like the old “blue laws”-technically, you could be thrown in jail, but it never happens.
A great many things in history are the result of finding loopholes-squeeze hard, and it comes out somewhere-unpredictably.
I live within walking distance of the t-shirt company Ky Colonel mentions. There was a huge stink made over thier refusal to print something they felt was against their beliefs. I’m not sure how that turned out. Too many groups fighting for “freedom” simply want things done their way.. Don’t like a business’ methods or beliefs? Go somewhere else! It’s a rare thing to find just one company providing a particualr service.

The religious exemption to Social Security may have originated after the IRS got such horrible news coverage – such as photos & videos of federal agents dragging Amish people out of their homes or carts to arrest them for not paying taxes. (I might be mistaken on this one.)

M – GREAT link. Still, I can’t find exactly how this can result in a year in jail. Haven’t been able to dig up FULL, full text.

Kentucky’s Almighty sounds like a race horse. Although I am sure many horses ass are in homeland security, I don’t think running it a fit calling for a race horse.

Right on, Claire…but especially the part about worshiping “their Almighty [sic]”.

That is the whole point of a Caesar-chartered State-created Licensed Official Church (of any denomination – it doesn’t really matter since they ALL have the same creator: just read their incorporation documents!).

The State CAN (in its benevolence and grace) give an “exemption” to its taxes, fees, burdens, and regulations. After all, it gives those “blessings” to its own creation. (As a ‘theist’ myself — but not the licensed kind — I observe that Yahushua even made the same point in a discussion [the end of Matthew chapter 17; I suggest most licensed ‘churches’ don’t have a CLUE what the real point is there], when He asked “Of whom do the kings of the earth require tribute?” and then observed that they treated their OWN as “free”. So long as the ‘sons’ OBEY, of course.)

Back when we had a “First Amendment,” and when most of the Founders KNEW about the evils of “incorporated churches,” the distinction was “bright line”:

the State had no right to argue with “prohibiting the free exercise thereof” when it came to conscience (or even “religion”) — UNLESS there was a CONTRACT in place. (Think of it as a “deal with the devil”. Those who “take the king’s money, play the king’s tune.”)

Incorporated “faith-based institutions” (read “501c(3) churches”) get a blessing from Big Brother (their special tax-preferred “status”) but there are, as always, major strings attached. Now, they include “Obamacare” (since Big Daddy CARES, doncha know!)

I lead a NON-501c(3) fellowship. We know Who our Creator is, and it is “Him alone”. We ask for nothing from any other false master.

But the problem today is the legal concept called “presumption,” and the claim that “failure to object in a timely fashion” constitutes acceptance.

Big Brother just PRESUMES that you – and I – and EVERYONE “He” surveys – are “His”. And as such his servants must worship him, at his altar, in the absence of “proof beyond any doubt” otherwise. The burden of proof has been shifted. And just ask – his courts will back him up. (Read Chief Just-us Roberts’ “opinion” very carefully. It’s a masterpiece of obfuscation.)

Conscience? He seeks to TELL US what that means. And, of course, it will soon be a “thought crime” to even imply otherwise.

Oh, and a quick follow-up to excellent Claire’s point about “cognitive dissonance” and believing absurdities (I like Alice’s discussion with the aptly-named ‘Red Queen’ on that score; they can “believe six impossible things before breakfast):

While I might initially have called it “self-contradiction” and “hypocrisy” – that was precisely why I left Churchianity so many years ago. SO MUCH of what I saw, and what “they” claimed the Bible said, was so contradictory that I didn’t want anything to do with it — or a “God” that couldn’t keep His story straight, or His promises. But I came to find out it wasn’t what was actually Written that was the problem. Now I enjoy teaching others (to paraphrase the “Sermon on the mount”) why “what we have heard it said He said” is NOT “what is Written”.

It’s funny to me that so many who claim to “follow Jesus” ignore what He said (and that includes, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord’, and NOT DO what I say?” as well as the fact that He didn’t come to change the ‘smallest part’ of His own Word, either).

While I clearly have a “Torah-observant mindset” on my own website and radio teachings, the point here is two-fold:

– We all have a “choice”. It’s just that Big Brother is willing to lie in order to subvert his own written law, and that includes, but is not limited to, the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Most folks just don’t recognize how craftily it is done! (And, yes, we’re at the point now where “the velvet glove” has been removed from the “iron fist” once hidden within. What were once “God-given Rights” have been converted first to ‘privileges’, and then ‘loopholes’ — which are now being CLOSED. The Bill of Rights has been replaced by “private law”, which really just means people have contracted (via ‘commerce’ typically) into a “jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws,” just as Jefferson once observed.

– “Churches” which ultimately just represent different denominations of the same State-worshiping Religion are a BIG part of the problem, and the deception. Those who CLAIM to “follow Him” ought to actually read what He says, for themselves. (And Scripture makes that point over and over again, too.) We CAN “come out of” THAT religion, too.

“Religion” shouldn’t be forced on anybody. Sadly, however, that is the “de facto” situation when people are presumed to be unable to choose for themselves, and deceived by what only APPEARS to be an alternative.

Issue is that the government is using a so-called health care law to violate the freedom of religion. This is in line with Barry’s “freedom of worship” scheme, where there is freedom of religion so long as it is confined exclusively to what goes on within 4 walls once a week. Even under the “exemption” Mother Teressa’s organization would not be exempt. Violate one’s own beliefs or face crushing fines. The government is now lord and master, and does not like competition.

The news media is now nothing but drooling Obama worshiping zombies, they have voluntarily given up the freedom of the press by voluntarily submitting to one-party control. So long first amendment.

In regards to “Hitler’s Pope” be warned that that revisionist history was the product of Soviet agit-prop from the 1960’s. Wm Shrier’s definitive “Rise and Fall of the Third Riech” had no mention of it, quite the opposite. The Soviets were totalitarians and did not want anyone to hold on to absolutes, thus the libels against the primary Church in Eastern and Western Europe at the time. The KGB’s animosity was well placed as it was that Church, teamed up with the Solidarity movement, that started the crack in communism in Poland.

Totalitarians will allow no other absolutes, be it Gods, Churches, the family, individual rights due all humans, individual convictions, etc.

I even wrote a little poem about my relationship:

“The rainbow exists, without the blind man’s sight. The musical score is real, without the deaf man’s hearing. I am a Child of God, without my understanding.” — Me