Abusing the Bible, the Right Wing Way

ONE OF MY CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN FRIENDS, of whom I have a few to keep up appearances, posted something interesting on Facebook recently. She cited a bit of scripture from the book of Deuteronomy, I believe it was, a passage which, according to her, said: "a wise man turns to the right, and a fool turns to the left." Then, not content to let scripture be scripture and leave well enough alone, she offered the annotation: "Yep, that's right! That proves it, conservatives are wise, and liberals are fools". I could not, and still cannot, ascertain the degree, if any, to which she was attempting to be humorous. Since I know her to be a devout albeit poorly educated christian conservative, I guessed, with a certain degree of sadness, that she intended no humor. Alas, it would have made her look better if she had. At first I accepted her scriptural quote as accurate, because I recalled that in both the Old and the the New Testaments, on several occasions, being on the right was presented as better than being on the left. Jesus himself, if memory serves, even said something to that effect. Since only about fifteen percent of people are left handed, left handedness, and leftness in general, has always suffered from negative bias. There is power in sheer numbers. A vague feeling of disquiet prompted me to gather together my bible, and check the scripture she cited. What it actually said was: "A wise man does what is right, and a fool does what is wrong." Quite a discrepancy. Leave it to the bible to make much more sense than those who inaccurately misquote it. obviously, her butchered use of teh Bible was intentional, a feeble attempt to use what to her is the Word of God to promote her personal political agenda. alas, what won't conservative Christians do to promoter their contradictory religious and political ideology? for verily, the central message of Jesus, the central message of the Christian faith, i t precisely the opposite of the central agenda of the modern American conservative movement, from attitudes about money, to attitudes about gay rights, and any number of contradictory beliefs. Jesus said "give unto the poor". He did not say "welfare makes people irresponsible". Jesus said "judge not". he did not say "condemn homosexuality as a sin or a sickness". The list of contradictions between Christianity and conservatism is long and loud. One must misquote the Bible to turn it into a politically conservative document, as my friend tried to do. i wondered, and still wonder, did she ever stop and consider the fact that most people have their own copiers of the bible, and that if you deliberately distort what it says, and name the chapter and verse you are allegedly quoting, other people can simply go to their copies, and expose your misdeed? Maybe she thought everyone would take her at her word, and nobody would bother. She was wrong. Not only did I bother, I responded to her Facebook post with the corrected passage, thus exposing her perfidy. predictably, she unfriended me, and hasn't been seen online since. I have recently been wondering whether she felt, or feels, the slightest twinge of guilt for her abuse of her sacred book. I would guess not. her willingness to commit such a sin against the sacred spirit of literary integrity would seem to preclude any possibility of guilt. or, maybe she reconsidered her behavior, like many criminals, only after getting caught. In any event, the world is relieved of one right wind religious reprobate, at least for the time being. I fully expect her to be back in action all too soon, spreading the false, nefarious doctrine of right wing Christian conservatism. For in fact, fools lean to the right. The only problem is, there are millions more where she came from, and they are not likely to be easily vanquished to the murky, swampy wilderness of social isolation. Not with folks like Jerry Falwell polluting American society with claims that god almighty ordained Donald Trump to be president. Like the poor, the righteous right wing religious reprobates will always be among, us. what remains to us is to ignore them correct then when we can, and, by all means, vote them out of elective office.