\n\tThere\u2019s a reason they say people in glass houses shouldn\u2019t throw stones; and the recent bombardment over the seven-foot statue of Baphomet that the
\n\tsatanists want to put up in the Oklahoma state capitol is one of them. The statue is largely a retaliatory move, a response by satanists to the Ten
\n\tCommandment statue placed at the capitol in 2012. And the satanists aren\u2019t the only ones who want to keep up with the Joneses. The American Atheists, Inc.,
\n\treportedly want their own monument: so does a Hindu leader in Nevada, an animal rights group, and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. They all want
\n\tin on the monument action and space to pay tribute to their \u201cdeity\u201d or, in the absence of one, their belief system. The clamor for fair play was so loud
\n\tthat a moratorium was placed on any other monuments on Capitol grounds until a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union on the constitutionality of
\n\tthe Ten Commandments statue has been resolved.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tRyan Kiesel, ACLU of Oklahoma\u2019s executive director, says of the case, \u201cWe aim to ensure the freedom of future generations of Oklahomans to make their own
\n\tdecisions about faith remains intact and free from political interference. Whether you choose to believe in a god, a creed, a code, or simply to believe in
\n\tyourself, your choice should be your own, not coerced or influenced by what the government wants you to believe.\u201d1\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tAimee Breeze, a member of American Atheists, Inc., is part of another lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Ten Commandments monument. In the
\n\tcomplaint she claims that she views the monument as hurtful and says she tries to avoid the area where it\u2019s located while she\u2019s at the capitol. I thought
\n\tshe was being melodramatic until I pictured myself walking past the hulking monstrosity the satanists are proposing. I remember my first visit to
\n\tWashington, D.C., and my tour of the monuments there as dusk fell. I was awed and felt a swell of patriotism. If I had come across the menacing Baphomet
\n\tlooming near the sidewalk, I would have felt an emotion much stronger than hurt, and I began to see where Breeze was coming from. If I had to see Baphomet
\n\ton a regular basis, I\u2019d avoid the spot myself.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Ten Commandments have deep personal and spiritual meaning to me. I endorse them wholeheartedly. But Satan? I have no desire to see a statue honoring
\n\thim erected anywhere in my town, my state, or my country. And it\u2019s pretty clear that this statue proposal is only the tip of the iceberg. In a game of
\n\tgovernmental one-upmanship, no one is going to win, because fair is fair and even a child of six can tell you that favoritism is not fair.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tSome Christians who cry \u201cFoul!\u201d when the government allows a creepy statue of Satan, a Fesitvus pole made of beer cans, or the Pastafarian\u2019s image of the
\n\tFlying Spaghetti Monster in a government space will defend to the death their right to have a Nativity scene. I agree with them wholeheartedly, really I
\n\tdo. But I also know that government-mandated religion is precisely why several hundred years ago a bunch of persecuted Christians sailed off into the
\n\tsunset looking for a new world. They believed in a place where everyone could worship God in their own way, as they were convicted in their own heart. This
\n\tmeans that, like it or not, government shouldn\u2019t get involved where religion is concerned. It can\u2019t play favorites with one while shutting out another. If
\n\tit gives square footage for a statue to please one, it must also give square footage for a statue to please another. It can\u2019t incorporate tenets of one
\n\treligion or another in its laws, or it risks the appearance of persecution to other faiths, or in the absence of faith, points of view.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tOften Christians have a knee-jerk reaction whenever an issue like this arises. America, they argue, is a country built on Christian values and principles:
\n\tIn God we trust! We should proudly display the Ten Commandments, a Nativity scene, or any other religious symbol we choose. While there is intense debate
\n\tover whether or not our Founders meant our country to be a \u201cChristian\u201d nation, there can be no doubt that they provided a firewall to keep the government\u2019s
\n\tnose out of religion. And with good reason.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThomas Jefferson, one of those Founders, in a letter to the Danbury Baptists, wrote, \u201cBelieving with you that religion is a matter which lies solely
\n\tbetween man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and
\n\tnot opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should \u2018make no law
\n\trespecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,\u2019 thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.\u201d2
\n\tChristians believe that God endowed all with free will. Why would He then approve of state-mandated religion that forced people to blindly worship and obey
\n\ta religion even if it was against their conscience? And if God wouldn\u2019t, why would we? If we attempt to force the government to promote religion, in any
\n\tform, how is that consistent with the practice of free will?\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tWhile some would contend that \u201cit reflects incredible arrogance to reconfigure the Bill of Rights into prohibiting religious displays on public grounds.
\n\tHanging the Ten Command\u00adments on the wall of a county courthouse no more mandates religion than judges displaying the banner of their favorite sports team
\n\tsomehow equates to Congress establishing that team as preeminent,\u201d3 I find it difficult to imagine those same people cheerfully giving equal wall space to
\n\tan image of Baphomet, as Oklahomans are being asked to do. When we want to promote our own agenda, it can be easy to turn a blind eye to any others. The
\n\tChurch of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and animal activists aside, Satan is at least in the Bible. He has been part of our religious story from the
\n\tbeginning. Granted, he is the villain of the piece, but you could rightly argue that a statue of Satan is actually a religious symbol. If one religious
\n\tsymbol is allowed (the Ten Commandments monument), why not another? Yet I can\u2019t imagine Christians supporting it. But if someone in the courthouse was an
\n\tatheist or a satanist, might they not be justified in requesting equal treatment in a land where \u201call men are created equal\u201d?\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Ten Commandments are a religious symbol; we should be proud of that. We should thank God if the values and tenets of the commandments are reflected in
\n\tthe law of the land. But forcing our government to display them will result either in a circus of laughable, objectionable \u201creligious\u201d symbols being
\n\texhibited right along with them, thereby cheapening them, or it will open the door for the government to legislate religion. Neither option offers the end
\n\tresult we want. The last thing Christians should desire is to make a mockery of any religious symbol.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tLucien Greaves (not, surprisingly, his real name), a spokesman for the satanic temple proposing the statue in Oklahoma, cites Representative Mike Ritze,
\n\twho spearheaded the push for the Ten Commandments monument and whose family helped finance the construction, with opening the door for his group\u2019s
\n\tproposal. \u201c\u2018He\u2019s helping a satanic agenda grow more than any of us possibly could,\u2019 Greaves said. \u2018You don\u2019t walk around and see too many satanic temples
\n\taround, but when you open the door to public spaces for us, that\u2019s when you\u2019re going to see us.\u2019 \u201d4\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tNor is Oklahoma the only arena where this war of the religious viewpoints is being waged on government grounds. In Florida and Wisconsin competing displays
\n\tcheapened the holidays as entities with differing opinions waged war on each other\u2019s beliefs. At the rotunda of the Wisconsin capitol, the group Atheists,
\n\tHumanists, and Agnostics (AHA) put up a poster depicting the Flying Spaghetti Monster with the text \u201cBEHOLD THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER. HE BOILED FOR
\n\tYOUR SINS! BE TOUCHED BY HIS NOODLY APPENDAGE BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE! Think this is ridiculous? We agree. Religious ideas should not be promoted in the
\n\thalls of government. Protect the separation of church and state; it protects us all.\u201d5\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Freedom From Religion Foundation put up their own \u201cNativity\u201d scene in retaliation aimed at a traditional one displayed by Wisconsin Family Action.
\n\tTheir \u201cWinter Solstice Nativity\u201d featured Charles Darwin, Mark Twain, and Albert Einstein as the three Wise Men, the Statue of Liberty and an astronaut as
\n\tangels, and an African American girl doll to represent that \u201chumankind was birthed in Africa.\u201d6 In the Florida capitol, Chaz Stevens, who created the
\n\tFestivus pole of beer cans—a symbol of the \u201choliday for the rest of us\u201d based on an episode of the TV show Seinfeld—admitted his display was ridiculous.
\n\t\u201c\u2018What\u2019s the point? There is no point. It\u2019s ridiculous. This is the most ridiculous thing I could come up with,\u2019 said Stevens, an atheist. \u2018This is about
\n\tthe separation of church and state.\u2019\u201d7\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThis is only the beginning of the craziness. AHA president Sam Erickson said, \u201cWe would prefer to keep our capitol secular, but if the state decides to
\n\tturn it into an open forum, they have opened the floodgates. We hope everyone takes advantage of this opportunity to advertise their own viewpoints, no
\n\tmatter how silly.\u201d8 The stone throwing could literally never end.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tMay I propose an alternate plan? Whether or not America was founded as a Christian nation, it has the opportunity to be a \u201cChristlike\u201d nation if the
\n\tChristians who call it home will use their God-given freedom to share the good news in a way that doesn\u2019t provoke those who don\u2019t hold our values and
\n\tbeliefs, but instead draws them to the God of a people whose modus operandi is love. \u201cBy this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one
\n\tanother\u201d (John 13:35, NIV).\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tWe must remember that it\u2019s possible to win the battle and lose the war. If we want to fight fire with love we can win, but we can\u2019t do it on government
\n\tgrounds. We can put up our Nativity sets, our Ten Commandments, or even ads about the Bible . . . at our churches, on our lawns, or on a billboard, for
\n\tpity\u2019s sake. But we can\u2019t strangle the government and demand it cater to our preference or soon we\u2019ll find that in addition to making our faith a
\n\tlaughingstock, the government\u2019s preference will become law, and I think we all know what happens then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There\u2019s a reason they say people in glass houses shouldn\u2019t throw stones; and the recent bombardment over the seven-foot statue of Baphomet that the satanists want to put up in the Oklahoma state capitol is one of them. The statue is largely a retaliatory move, a response by satanists to the Ten Commandment statue placed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[305],"tags":[137],"class_list":["post-6297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-march-april-2015","tag-march-april-2015"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}