The smiling face of intolerance.

I saw a movie not too long ago called Jesus Camp. I know a lot of people have strong opinions about this movie and I’m hoping to not touch too much on my personal opinion regarding the movie. I just want to make an observation about one scene in the movie and why it scares the hell out of me. It was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen. I’m talking about the scene where the kids are at the camp and the counselor has them breaking cups with a hammer.

Now the scene starts with the counselor telling the kids that in order to rid the world of evil, they need to focus all of their prayers on putting all the bad stuff in the world into the cup. Then they smash the cup with a hammer in order to destroy all the evil contained in it. Now this is creepy just because of the way the scene plays out. But this is not what really perplexes me.

What strikes me as so strange about this scene is that this ritual they are taking part in is a basic pagan magick ritual. They may not realize it, but they are working magick. By manifesting one’s will into an object, and then destroying that object in order to dismiss bad energies from the world, they are working magick. The only difference is when the children are doing it, they are being directed to use this ritual to control the free will of others. In pagan forms of magick such as Wicca, it is forbidden to use ones will in order to control or harm others. The wiccan rede is “An it harm none, do what ye will.” Which means do what you want to, just never harm anyone else (this includes controlling the free will of another).

It is so strange that these fundamentalist Christians would be so blind to what they are doing. They are practicing pagan rituals in a church where pagan rituals and majick are raged against on a regular basis. Magick is a one-way street to hell in the opinions of fundamentalist Christians. We’re talking, one of those“Do not pass go…….” situations. Yet they still bring in kids by the bus-load and teach them to do magick. This is so horribly hypocritical, I can’t even to begin to understand how these people do not understand what they are doing.

The bad thing is, if these extremists are willing to contradict themselves like this regularly, then how are we to believe anything else they preach as truth? If they break their own rules and never bat an eye,then how can anyone believe their opinions on ANYTHING? This is something I can’t stand to see. The sad thing is they don’t even know they are doing it. They’re totally clueless. It’s almost as if they’ve gotten so drawn into their own fanaticism they don’t even know what is real anymore.

These are the same people who protested Harry Potter books because they portrayed witchcraft as good when it was a sin punishable by hell. These are also the same people who boycotted Pokemon because “It has circles in it and circles are tools of witches in pagan ceremonies, therefore Pokemon is satanic.” I hate to tell them, but manifesting your“holy” will into a cup and then ceremonially destroying the cup in order to control people and events, utilizes pagan magick techniques and therefore is satanic according to their own rules. Not only is it pagan, but it’s also breaks the moral laws of witchcraft. That’s pretty bad for a group of people who think they are more spiritually pure than everyone else.

I’m not trying to pass judgment on all Christians. Some of the most wonderful people I know are devout Christians and understandably so. What I’m trying to do is illustrate exactly how far off track the extremists have gone. It seems that over the last decade, many of these groups have lost touch with overall reality. Instead of encouraging love and brotherhood, they seem to be more obsessed with “spiritual warfare”. The question is how long will it take before these groups start lashing out at “sinners” with violence?

If you know anything about Joel’s Army, you will know there is a group of Christians that are eagerly awaiting a chance to kill non-believers in the name of God. How crazy is that? You know there’s another group of extremist in the world that believes in killing non-believers in the name of religious faith. Except they use the term “infidels” instead of sinners and they usually use explosives or hijacked airliners to pull off their “acts of faith”. So why is it acceptable to spend obscene amounts of money and lives in order to fight one form of terrorist when we have groups with a similar mindset gaining strength in our own country? I guess if you donate enough money and vote loyally, it doesn’t matter how batshit crazy you are or violent you may become.

After the recent presidential campaigns, I think it’s easy to see that the more radical members of these groups are just waiting for an excuse to lash out with hate and violence. All it would take is a leader, with enough media exposure, and a well-calculated message to ignite these people into a holy war. Hell, Sarah Palin almost did it and she wasn’t even trying. So what’s to keep someone (with an intellect) from doing it on purpose? A little tolerance would go a long way towards preventing this type of scenario, but unfortunately tolerance has become “a blasphemous word that invites Satan into your heart.” They say this nation was founded under God. It was also founded on a principle of tolerance and diversity. I think it’s time we all remembered that.

God said, “Thou shall not kill.” Let’s just hope the extremists don’t decide this commandment can be twisted and ignored in order to justify their need to control the rest of the world through hatred and intolerance. Otherwise we’d end up fighting amongst ourselves as a nation and spending billions of dollars in order to kill people all around the world. Oh wait, that’s already happened hasn’t it? Uh oh….