A Matter of Theorem: Religious & Political

​I’m not sure what to write about today...

I’ve been thinking about it all week, and I suppose there are things that have been on my mind that I could pen but I’m not sure yet if I want to...



I did read an article that a friend of mine posted on Facebook about Abortion in Ohio:

A Baby with a Heartbeat Cannot be Aborted in Ohio.

*Disclaimer This does not necessarily represent my opinions, unless I intentionally state otherwise, this is a post of speculative inquiry; and yes, I do believe of "God," although my belief may not fit the typical template. 


My first thought was how interesting it is that Republicans support our government getting involved in policy regarding Abortion, I mean they have had issues with Abortion for as long as I can remember, however, it is a notably prominent aspect of the Republican platform to limit the role of government in our day-to-day lives—that happens to be a bullet point that I agree with—and yet it only seems to apply when it actively involves a liberal agenda. The conservative moral agenda apparently merits as much government involvement as is necessary to further the religious purview, which interjects another point of hypocrisy, the Constitution clearly depicts a necessary distinction between the Church and the State...

I have such a difficult time understanding either the Democrat or the Republican agenda when neither follow any logical means of linear thought. It’s like two old white men got together one evening over cigars and brandy and haphazardly coin tossed which issues would fall under which platform. If you drew a line on a chalk board and tried to explain to a child how you logically progressed from one thought to another within a single party platform you would have to completely reinvent what a line represents; essentially linear thought would progress in a way similar to that of the blueprints of a roller coaster, and as that child stared up at your knotted representation of a line they would look at you like you have completely lost your mind because that line is as mathematically linear as 2+2=5, and yet both ideas are still a means only to convey standards created to explain truths limited to our present measure of understanding.



I did comment on the Ohio Abortion post, but I didn’t take a political side. My curiosity was more religious.

​I said: “I’m curious how the government enforcing anti-abortion laws is a testament of God’s will? Would it not be more of a testament if abortion wasn’t imposed by a government and the decision to abort was, instead, a question of personal faith?”

Granted, when it comes to understanding the manifestation of God’s will it’s difficult. And I always, always think of the following parable before attempting to do so:

There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: “Look, it’s not like I don’t have actual reasons for not believing in God. It’s not like I haven’t ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn’t see a thing, and it was 50 below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out ‘Oh, God, if there is a God, I’m lost in this blizzard, and I’m gonna die if you don’t help me.’” And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. “Well then you must believe now,” he says, “After all, here you are, alive.” The atheist just rolls his eyes. “No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp.”

It’s easy to run this story through a kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people’s two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy’s interpretation is true and the other guy’s is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from inside the two guys. As if a person’s most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice.” ~ DFW, This is Water


Still, my question is this:

Does God not care how you feel, or why you come to the resolutions that you do as long as the outcome is in accord to God’s purpose?

If a government imposes moral policy compelling us to accept religious doctrine is that, in fact, the same thing as inherently acting with righteous intent?

Is God a Machiavellian?

How the hell can the end actually justify the means within a moralistic tenet?

And, semi-topically, how can the same group of constituents have such a resolute opinion on gun control? I mean, fundamentally, guns do kill people, they are designed for no other purpose than to kill. What religious or logical sense does it make for them, specifically, to then not support more gun control legislation?

(I’m asking for a friend. No, but logistically I do support the 2nd Amendment, I’m only offering a comparison)

Do you think God likes guns?

Is that how you picture Jesus?

...with an AK-47 strapped to his shoulder and a 9mm on his hip? (“I Want You!” ~ Uncle Sam)



If our opinion of Abortion was based on a moralistically religious creed how then could our opinion on gun control be based solely on a document that very clearly affirms the distinction between Church and State? (Again, I’m asking for a friend.)

It seems to me that there should be a mandatory class on accountability in every institution public or private every year until we finally get it or we die.

We follow standards and templates--penned as manifestos--throughout the course of our lives that were not composed with accountability; without being open to the idea that we can reinvent those standards, and that they don’t necessarily have to conflict, completely, with our present religious and political associations then we are living without conscious conviction, without a consistent moral compass, and in a world where 2+2 does equal 5.

Maintaining literal convictions can be so dangerous to our humanity, and those convictions are the reasons for every single state of disarray within every crevasse of ours or any culture (and no, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have convictions, what I am saying is that you should absolutely learn to be conscious and to be accountable for-, and of those convictions).

It’s funny, I suppose, I mean existentially—politically—I am anti-abortion (get a better idea of my position here), and as such I should have every reason to be, I don’t know, pleased, at the very least, about Ohio not considering Abortion after six weeks, and yet even my doctrine demands critical thought, because, otherwise, neither the means nor the end makes even the slightest bit of difference.