Dreaming

 I  HAVE A DREAM. Actually, I have many, every night, all weird, ever since I quit smoking pot. In one of the weirdest but most pleasant dreams, a fundamentalist evangelical Christian is talking, maybe to me, maybe to an audience. "I love my christian faith. My relationship with Christ gives me comfort and inspiration. It sustains me through all life's difficulties. I am saved! And I know that billions of other people, people who embrace many different religions, feel the same way. Muslims, Jews, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, all part of the great human family whose members all approach the Almighty, the divine, the inscrutable in their own separate ways, everyone receiving comfort and inspiration from his or her own special truth, special relationship with the universe. That goes for everybody, for all our gay, lesbian, and transgender brothers and sisters, all beloved in the eyes of God, just as they are, all perfect and beautiful in the eyes of God, or nature, however you choose to express it.We fundamentalist evangelical Christians love everybody and judge no one, regardless of religious beliefs or sexual orientation, and wish to change no one. All religious faiths are of equal, infinite value. We look forward to spending an eternity in heaven with our maker and with all people of all faiths and beliefs." The problem with this dream is that, like all good dreams, not only must one awaken from it, it is destined to never come true. We tragically live in a corrupt and vile world in which the exact opposite is true, in which our evangelical Christian "friends" say and belief approximately the exact opposite of my beautiful dream. They say ad believe horrible things about Muslims, Hindus, gays, transgenders, and even liberal Democrats and pro choice politicians such as;"they are unsaved, and they are destined for an eternity of suffering in the flaming pits of hell, because they have not been cleanses of sine by being bathed in the holy blood of the lamb, our Lord Jesus Christ". The evangelicals are never shy about making it all sound very, very dramatic, and gruesome and bloody, and they make references to "the blood of the lamb", and grizzly metaphors which server to reveal the barbarity of their primitive barbaric religion, as well as their intolerance of all religions other than their own. In the real world, these people think and speak more like gangsters and fascists than enlightened children of God, any god. they are clever about the way they express their hateful viciousness. "All we can do is to pray and try our best to help save these lost souls, and to bring them to Christ. We must pray they they abandon their cults and their sodomy and begin living clean lives devoted to the true God and Christ, and abandon their filthy debauchery and stop following Satan" so smug, so condescending, so certain of their twisted, judgmental selves. They, not the atheists and gay folks, are the real problem, the real threat to civilization.