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Thursday, December 9, 2004 |
SeattleWeekly: 'The worst condemnation that Jesus has for anybody, I mean the worst, is for Pharisees,' says Miller. 'If you asked Jerry Falwell who the Pharisees are in our society, they can't point anybody out.' There are no mirrors in Bush's church.
Lang knows why people cling to millennial dreams - like Dubya's, his life was saved by a fundamentalist church. 'It attracted me because I came out of chaos. Alcohol and drugs; 19 years old and I was dyin'. I needed a strong fence around my life and people who cared for me, and I got both. But after about a year of reading what they taught me, I started to raise questions.'
Further study convinced him that Augustine was on the right track, after all, in reading apocalyptic literature as spiritual advice, not a sneak preview of tomorrow's headlines. 'Revelation is written to the churches in its time, not to the churches in the 21st century. It's written to seven churches in Turkey.' As for the Antichrist warnings in John, he reads them not as a literal prediction of Bush but as a warning against the eternal danger of his hypocritical, Mammon-worshiping, proudly elitist, heartless, narrowly legalistic spirit. '1 John seems to be obsessed with language like this: 'How can you say you love God, who you have not seen, if you do not love your brother and sister, who you have seen?' Who are in need of food, clothing, shelter? The implication of the doctrine of the Antichrist is that there is an economic disparity in the community, and people are using their religion, not practicing it.'"
That's what it is, fundamentalists are using their religion for their own earthly purposes.
11:36:34 AM 
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