Dear “Christians” who seem obsessed with criticism and feel persecuted about even enjoying the basic (to you) ability to publicly profess your faith:

I write this missive with love and in love and by love. I write it to give you hope.

For the sake of flattery let’s assume there are some out there whom we can presume are genuinely evil people. For the sake of it let’s assume there are some who would like to extinguish God.

But that’s ridiculous! No! There are truly few, if any, such. And they have no such power or ability. They pose no such threat! I was only giving your fears credence to flatter you. And I shouldn’t! Give up that obsession. There is no darkness that can overcome light. Forget your insane obsession with barbs of criticism. (Slings and arrows and barbs, oh my). They have no such power. Yes. I said true. You are under no existential threat. But you are created in God’s image and thus have the power to create and to grant power. Why do you obsessively create and align such conspiratorial powers against you?

Now, there are truly things that reasonable, spiritual or non-spiritual people, folks, and/or citizens can’t and shouldn’t abide. Specifically we all shouldn’t abide the arrogance, the cruelty, the selfishness, the fear that prompts addictive affinity with a dominant religion. That’s right. You heard right. When your ‘religion’ gets political and adversely affects the lives of others by blanket assumptions, supporting and enacting crazy cruel laws that apply to all, and excludes and/or harms others, decent society shouldn’t abide it.

Don’t confuse this responsible application of civic responsibility with a conspiracy to wipe you out.

If the statements above offend you, don’t worry. It is only directed at the selfish and cruel who use religion as a selfish deceptive (and self-deceptive) vehicle to lash out at the threatening world which weak imagination exaggerates to frighten to obsession. Your spirituality is not under threat by criticism. And true spirituality can’t and couldn’t. If the shoe doesn’t fit, you have nothing to get angry or defensive about.

Don’t feel put upon. You’ve not been asked (or assumed) to wear the shoe.

However, if you draw your religion as some sort of imaginary circling of wagons and you use it to give strength to you and yours and to “preserve” “your” “heritage” or “way of life” (a true lifestyle choice), you are misusing it. If you classify in some convenient blanket manner “outsiders” as evil persecutors — (such as heathens, butt-fornicating gays, cultural minorities, practitioners of other monotheistic religions, practitioners of polytheistic beliefs, atheists, democrats, feminists, lesbians, practitioners of yoga, vegans, vegetarians, non-conformist proud blacks, black lives matter kneelers, offensive haberdashers, cultural elitists, Soros, etc.) — in a zero-sum game, you are professing mendacity. Mendacity is a refined form of hate. Like a wheel inside a wheel it turns on you. Don’t abuse religion that way! Be spiritual!

Simply put: if you condone or profess oppressive politically-charged religion to protect your interests you are being hateful (and too much of this world) and then you should rightly be resisted, for this oppression carries consequences, intended and unintended. These consequences affect other’s lives. To presume to better yours in a selfishly created zero-sum environment is the height of arrogance. This is a “lifestyle” of being mean and hateful well above and beyond any pretense otherwise. Don’t do it!

And it’s mendacious and mean seven times seven over if you join up with that most ridiculous and absurd of conspiracy mongering. You can’t turn history on its head and presume to be persecuted. You can’t completely obliterate and ignore 1,900+ years of state-sponsored institutionalized persecution and genuine genocide and imperialist colonialism and ‘law and order’ preservation of slavery and legacy heritage of slavery in favor of a golden black and blue age of the first hundred years of truly persecuted hardscrabble cultist reality and project that willy-nilly into imagined reality of the present. It’s truly absurd! And all too selfishly convenient.

So, please,
and remember I write this missive out of love and in love and by love and for love,
drop the convenient complex. Get simple in spirituality. Shine your light and not your mouth. Grow a better beatitude. Actualize even a mustard seed’s worth of true God realization and be the peace you seek. You will no longer feel compelled to be publicly defensive.

Go in peace.

Be free of all bitterness and anxiety (even to the point of no longer feeling compelled to accuse the likes of me as bitter).

Go in peace to love and serve your neighbors.

P.S. When your “war-on” looms so conspicuously large in your trousers it is a degenerative offense to decency. (And it is very un-Levitical — by prescribed penalty — for a woman both to wear trousers and to sport an ostentatious ‘war-on’)

P.S.S. Happy Holidays!

[And when comes to be the 25th, and the twelve days of Christmas that follow then, by all means, Merry Christmas!} {God bless us, everyone!]