The swing to Conservatism

This is really a response to Greg's comments (see Virgin Voyage)...

I am really troubled with the swing to conservatism, and was actually having a conversation along these lines about the time you were typing your thoughts... I struggle when I know intelligent, good people that truly and deeply care about the people in their communities, and/or care about having green trees & blue skies & healthy green spaces, and firmly believe in "all men were created equal" - yet they choose to vote for very powerful and charismatic people that absolutely do not share these beliefs, or at least prove that they do by passing laws congruent with those beliefs! It makes no rational sense to me - and I can only assume that people are lulled into complacency and CHOOSE to believe that they are not being lied to.

Re: Christianity - my own faith is deeply personal, but I also have a pretty hard time with the whole concept of "faith" (i.e., it's hard to walk off the edge of the proverbial cliff and trust that God's going to take care of me, and that He'll "work all things for good..."). So, looking for a smiling me isn't always going to reassure someone that I trust I'm going to Heaven when I die! I do believe that God allows us to have knowledge when we, as a race, can mostly handle it. This kind of ties into your (Greg's) philosophy of revelationary, I think? But I also firmly believe that the Bible is the true, inspired Word of God, and that it must be understood within the cultural and historical time in which is was written - and that is the step that most Christians miss.

I can guess that this is where a lot of the current trend toward conservatism is coming from, along with the fact that people are truly fearful of things they don't understand (the human condition). It's simply much easier to hide behind a grey area of the Bible than to do the very hard work of figuring out how God's word really fits into our modern society.

Bush flat out scares me - PERIOD. As a mental health practitioner, he strikes me as diagnosably narcissistic, and this type of person can be extremely dangerous. And, he's the leader of the free world, who is convinced he is ordained by God to be leader, and therefore all his decisions must therefore be blessed by God, right?! SCARY doesn't even begin to cover it...

As for our new Pope, Benedict XVI - apparently he's going to pick up right where John Paul II left off, and I didn't expect anything more than that from the conclave... His philosophy is literally all these men know! Think about it - JPII is the only Pope that I can remember in my lifetime, and he served one of the longest papacies ever. He was well-liked and well-spoken, and yet he ruled with an iron fist. I can hope and pray for a Pope more "in tune" with our modern world when we go through this again in the next 5-10 years (because, face it, Benedict XVI won't live forever)...