I received an email poem that lamented the notion that God has been taken out of school, government and, via the efforts of political correctness, of Christmas. Here it is …

Hi Lord, its me.

We are getting older and things are getting bad here.
Gas prices are too high, no jobs, food and heating costs too high.
I know some have taken you out of our schools, government and even
Christmas, but Lord I’m asking you to come back
and re-bless Canada.
We really need you! 
There are more of us who want you than those who don’t!
Thank You Lord,
I Love you.

The following is my two cents worth … And I know God is maybe hearing me … LOL!

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Now really … Do you really think god has been taken out of our schools, government and Christmas???

I hear God Damn this and that all the time at school! Or bless you when someone sneezes! All the principles we hold dear in public school come from the Protestant religion!  Work ethic, achievement, good works, community, sharing, individualism, hard work etc etc. good Lutheran and Calvinist stuff, with the odd Catholic thing tossed in here and there, but they are mostly in the “separate” school system. We may be “public” but we are hardly secular! When our education system was created it was done on purpose that the catholic be named the separate Catholic system and the other called the public protestant (read dominant) system (this all thanks to central Canada wanting to exclude French immigration to western Canada). The word protestant was dropped, but never its intent and the pretense to be ‘public’ is silly! We still hold to the commandments as our basic code of conduct. That we don’t stop and pray four times a day, or have craven images everywhere (protestants got rid of those) or have recognized priests preaching to youth (again a very Protestant thing where we don’t need preachers, each can read and interpret the bible, so we educate teachers and make them teach/preach through the curriculum the virtues of godliness through the protestant virtues of working hard and making progress through capitalism) doesn’t mean that we have forsaken the almighty! In fact, in school and out in society in general, Western Christian values have never been stronger than they are today! 

AND there’s a big Christmas tree right outside my door in the student commons area! What Christmas has to do with god is beyond me for this is not the time of the birth of christ but rather a church means of usurping the pagan winter solstice ritual and bending it to gather converts. I know Christ would not approve of this Christmas thing, Easter neither for that matter. But these are left over rituals, traditions, however they were initially concocted that we have come to hold near and dear. This is true especially with their entrenchment to the economic market and the sale of sugar in confections and the notion of gift giving as a great Christian act of charity upon which the health of the general economy depends.

As far as god and government …. Well who would have ever thought as fundamentalist a Christian as Harper would ever rule our land!!?? Yup. More jail time, more prisons, more crime (even though with twice the population as when I went to high school in the early seventies there is today half the crime!!). Dickens would love this scenario. Ebenezer Scrooge, for sure! Are there no prisons, no orphanages!

Today we are less accepting, more intolerant, more hard line, more vengeful, less forgiving and more deterministic than I can remember. Who is to blame for that? To me if we were to truly come to God we’d get rid of those very things that religious people claim to want back! People should be more accepting, less rigid, more forgiving and more open to the possibilities of life.

Church and state must be definitively separated and no one who follows any religion or sect of a religion allowed to run for office, it only skews their thinking to the human constructed God rather than the actual higher power, the people they represent. And we should get rid of this celebration towards hedonistic capitalism called Christmas and the pagan images like the tree with the angle on top. So too with this Easter bunny, spring and the pagan notions of fertility and renewal tied to Christ’s resurrection. Ridiculous! It’s all ridiculous.

Is god responsible for the price of gas? I mean, because we don’t all worship god gas prices go up?? Really? Unemployment and the general standard of living is god’s fault? Really? God must be insulted by these infantile beliefs and disappointed that his creation can’t yet to do better. The very people who call into question materialism and are doing better are called down as unchristian in their acceptance, forgiveness and positive view of life.

I think I’m with the thoughts of Thomas Jefferson on this, “I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know. No man can conform his faiths to the dictates of another. The life and essence of religion consists in the internal persuasion or belief of the mind.” — The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.

Okay. I’m done.