Here are three letters to the editor from the past week, written by folks who have no idea what’s coming their way.

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Saturday, May 6, 2017

Defining what sin is

Christian churches are often the extended shadows of their Palestinian founders, or of their current pastor, or both.

It is decidedly the province of the pastor to define what “sin” is for his/her congregation. The rest of us get no look-in at all, primarily because “we” have no unified definition of “sin” ourselves.

Pastor Doug Wilson cloaks some of the blood-thirstiest passages of the First Testament in their proper epistemological cloaks — metaphors. The question to ask this pastor is why the politically incorrect passages he cites are dressed in metaphoric fig leaves, but the “story” of Sodom and Gomorrah is not extended a similar interpretation? The passages he cites are past events, the behaviors he decries refer to present living brothers and sisters in Christ. We who have ministered to the brutalized, expelled gay brethren of local Christian schools have all too concrete a picture of the suffering local Christian institutions have inflicted. Many victims of gay-bashings are often beaten by a baseball bat. Taking a bat to a political flag in public could also be interpreted by the IRS as a forfeiture of a religious federal tax exemption.

We on the liberal side of the angels need to pull our own coats about the totally un-American way many of us refuse to patronize local businesses rumored to be “owned” by Wilson’s church. They are not so owned. Their owners are our neighbors trying to make a living just like us. Hitler caught up an entire nation of religious anti-Semites and made them into the biological, racial supporters of The Final Solution. His organizing phrase — “Buy not from the Jews!” Shame on us. I might ask why this local posse of the righteous are any better than those seeking to build a wall on our southern borders?

Ronald Hufham
Moscow

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Tuesday, May 9, 2017

We don’t want evangelical Christian rule

Seth Bloomsburg (Letters, May 5) is oblivious to why many people do not want evangelical Christians in charge of our lives. No, we emphatically do not live in a theocracy and we see no reason we should be ruled by Christian believers.

There is no reason to believe that the Bible is even morally correct, inasmuch as it allows slavery and other abominable ancient customs. It contains no useful scientific information and a lot of misinformation. It does contradict itself in many places, such as the fact that the Book of Matthew’s list of the ancestors of Joseph bears no name in common with the list in Luke. (Read it!) Biblical literalists claim that the list in Matthew is the genealogy of Joseph and that in Luke is the genealogy of Mary. So if “J-O-S-E-P-H” can spell “Mary,” the Bible can be inerrant.

Don Matteson
Pullman

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Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Codifying religious beliefs

Seth Bloomberg’s letter of May 5 said that we live in a theocracy, which was referring to an editorial about a certain church discussing “taking over” Moscow.

In America, you may believe in Jesus Christ or join a church or live under a theocratic system by your choosing, and that is fine. But no one can force anyone else to do so. No government can force any religious beliefs on anyone. If you want to pray, in school or in a government building or on a street corner, go right ahead. If you want to set up churches or schools based on those beliefs, go right ahead. But you cannot force anyone else to.

America was founded by a mix of people of many different beliefs and their references to God or the Creator in their writings and clearly in our two major founding documents did not establish any one God or Creator or religion as “American.”

It is sad, truly sad, in so many ways that so much effort and spirit and money and time have been spent on religious arguments under the guise of “making America (your word here) again,” instead of on the solvable problems of our cities, states and country.

Enjoy and live in the peace of Christ, if you so choose, but in no way try to codify a religious belief system into secular law. Just because many civil laws agree with the Ten Commandments, does not mean we are a Christian (or more exactly, a Hebrew) nation. People exercising beliefs different than yours are not a threat to your beliefs. But when any organization, especially a church, states publicly that they want to codify their religious belief into civil law, it must be resisted.

John P. McNamara
Pullman

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