I’ve been through a lot of changes. I moved to WNY a couple years ago, got divorced, moved back home to Oklahoma and started over. I’ve done some good ground helping a couple Native American causes, but my muse hasn’t felt much like talking – until I was visiting my grandparents for the first time in over 2 years with my new girlfriend and saw this.
Dr. Robert Jeffress: “Romans Chapter 13 gives government the power of the sword…”
Bill Mahr: “Why is his word (Paul) equal to the man himself (Jesus)?”
Dr. Robert Jeffress: “Because it’s in the same book”.
(7:30 and after)
Dr. Robert Jeffress a Featured Guest on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” (10/14/11)
(video won’t embed)
Same thing different century.
The next weekend, I drove my girlfriend to Minnesota. I drove us all night and remembered “the Largest Mass Execution in U.S. History” as we neared Mankato, Minnesota.
In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln ordered the execution, by hanging, of 38 Dakota Sioux prisoners in Mankato, Minnesota. Most of those executed were holy men or political leaders of their camps. None of them were responsible for committing the crimes they were accused of. Coined as the Largest Mass Execution in U.S. History. (Brown, Dee. BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE. New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1970. pp. 59-61)
I also remembered what a good Christian man President Abraham Lincoln was.
“…I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord’s side.” The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln: Six Months at the White House by Francis B. Carpenter (Lincoln, Nebraska, University of Nebraska Press, 1995), p. 282. Also, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln by Ward Hill Lamon (Lincoln, Nebraska, University of Nebraska Press, 1994), p. 91.
The last thing I saw before my muse woke up again was a sign on the side of the road that said this.
John 14:6
New International Version (NIV)
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
I caught myself thinking “They say, that Jesus says, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life.’ But what they mean is, ‘I am the only way, the only truth and the only life.’ Furthermore, it doesn’t matter if you accept it, because we will steal from you or kill you as the converted or the damned.”
Indeed.
Red Jacket Defends Native American Religion, 1805
Brother, continue to listen. You say you are sent to instruct us how to worship the Great Spirit agreeably to his mind, and if we do not take hold of the religion which you white people teach, we shall be unhappy hereafter. You say that you are right, and we are lost; how do we know this to be true? We understand that your religion is written in a book; if it was intended for us as well as you, why has not the Great Spirit given it to us, and not only to us, but why did he not give to our forefathers the knowledge of that book, with the means of understanding it rightly? We only know what you tell us about it. How shall we know when to believe, being so often deceived by the white people?
To conclude, I’ve thought and thought for years about how to halt the Religious Right. I can only say to tell others who will listen and the ones in power. I think it’s difficult to get people to listen for the same reason it’s hard to get people to listen about land theft and genocide against the First Nations – it may involve coming to grips with uncomfortable family beliefs and history. Nonetheless, the Christian fundamentalists are in a spiritual war with the devil, and like “Romans Chapter 13 gives government the power of the sword” despite the words of “The man” himself, this is also “In the same book.”
Exodus 15:3-7
The LORD is a warrior; the LORD is his name. Pharaoh’s chariots and his army he has hurled into the sea. The best of Pharaoh’s officers are drowned in the Red Sea. The deep waters have covered them; they sank to the depths like a stone. Your right hand, O LORD, was majestic in power. Your right hand, O LORD, shattered the enemy. In the greatness of your majesty you threw down those who opposed you. You unleashed your burning anger; it consumed them like stubble.
Mine came to me on a beautiful Sunday morning about six months ago when I was listening to the local Navajo radio station. There was a preacher, preaching in Navajo. It is such a beautiful language. What I began to focus on, what my focus was drawn to, was the words I understood (as I don’t know the language well): SIN, SHAME, BLOOD ATONEMENT, JESUS, TRINITY, REPENT, BORN AGAIN for example, repeated over and over. And I realized that these words don’t exist in the Navajo language and never have. And it occurred to me that the Navajo don’t need these words in order to have a relationship with the Spirit (I don’t).
I began to see that these words have been injected into the language to the detriment of the native ways of spirituality. They have gone and put white men and dead men and words on paper in between us and our Creator and told us our beliefs were “pagan.” I myself have come late in life to embrace my heritage, but it has been a true awakening as the dark side of so-called Christianity (the religion of my wife and her parents) has been shown in plain site, while the power and joy of a direct connection with the Spirit of the universe has been made equally clear. Winter Rabbit, when I read your post it made my hair stand on end. I hope you keep searching in the direction you are going. I will.
Also, this is my first post to the site, and I know I jumped on a hot-button topic. Please take it easy on me :-).
Emphasis mine.
And the rest of your comment is great also.
It’s so nice to have a Navajo speaker reading here. I grew up in urban areas and did not learn the language so I particularly appreciate your perspective.
Thanks for commenting here, I hope you’ll comment again or write a diary.