Creating a Christian America

Many country-style patriots say, “America, love it or leave it.”  Is it un-American to try to change it and make it better than it is now?

For example, I find almost nothing Christian about this country except that Christmas and Easter are national holidays.  Our country voted for a Republican Senate and House as well as a majority of Republican governors.

That party has voted to cut Medicaid, food, federal support of education, wants to cut Medicare and Social Security, turning them over to Wall Street.  They want to starve government, ban the homeless from city streets, ban public feeding of the homeless, cut all kinds of services except the military, cut corporate taxes and taxes on the wealthy. 

Even a good portion of Democratic senators vote the same way.

The federal government trusts not the public and is arming police all over the country with military weapons, and spies endless on the public through the NSA and other agencies.

The concepts of “I am my brother’s keeper” is almost totally missing in mainstream America, as is “Do onto others as you would have them do unto you,” and love your neighbor as yourself.

Poverty is regarded as the just reward for slackers, the elderly, and the young born poor, and there is no need for the government to supply minimal standards of living for all Americans.

The government and police are more feared than respected, because they fail to gain respect by respecting those they supposedly serve.

This is not a Christian country.

Nor do I see the average TV preacher really preaching Christianity so much as supporting regulation of the behaviors of others, such as pro-life legislation, supporting conservative politicians and causes.

This is not a Christian country.  It is a country filled with a self-satisfied, I got mine ruling class, and a media, police, and government acting to suppress any real questioning of the powers that be.  Gradually civil rights have been eroded and a culture of political correctness further suppresses free speech.

This is a culture of fear, repression, denial, disinformation, lying, increasing corruption, and a nation of laws used to regulate the masses and enforce the law rather than enhance ones pursuit of happiness.  Fear is everywhere and used by politicians to get laws and their own reelected. Ebola and Syria were thrown in our faces for weeks before the election to frighten people to vote Republican law and order types, and disappeared from the media the day after the elections.

This is not a Christian country.  There is nothing Christ-like anywhere in the mainstream.

That is why it is so important for us, those who see this not accept it.

I know my friend Swami Chetanananda sees little hope for our future and prepares his flock for rough days ahead in every way, and he is likely right.  But I choose to deny the inevitability of the apocalypse of retribution he feels may be coming, although most everyone does feel something nasty is coming this way.

Self-Realization of the Manifest Self, the Life Force and sense of presence within and around us, arising from emptiness or from the ultimate subject, can only be realized by means of love.  Self-inquiry without a loving acceptance of the I-Am and all that arises during introspection leads only to emptiness or to the dispassionate witness, but not to the extraordinary vitality that love gives to sentience.  The spiritual fires that burn within are only revealed through love and are enhanced by devotion and service to others.  The power of love is extraordinary, from erotic and sexual love, to mother love (Kali and Shakti), to the father love of Christ for his father, and God’s love for his son.  There are many kinds of love and many kinds of service, and the Self is only found through loving one’s own Self and all that arises from within and from without.

This is a difficult task for intellectuals who appear dry of emotion, many Buddhist schools, and Advaita, and neo-Advaita.

Perhaps it is time to retake a measure of our Christian heritage and bring it into our spiritual life rather than focusing on no self, no separate self, the Present, Now, the Void and emptiness, the Witness and the Absolute, and reappraise our denial of relationship to God and to others as a reality.

Yes, the Self is real and is embodied in each of us as separate fleshy entities that are related to each other, and who are also related to the God within which descends as grace when we love strongly and completely, heart, mind, and body.