On July 19, 2006 the following letter to the editor was published in the Mille Lacs
Messenger, Mille Lacs County's official newspaper.
Hell in a handbasket
During a mass at Yankee Stadium, the late Pope John Paul said: "It is not right
that the standard of living of the rich countries should
seek to maintain itself by draining off a great part of the reserves of energy and raw
materials that are meant for the whole of humanity."
In the summer of 2004, Pope John Paul II lectured American bishops about how their people
were "hypnotized by materialism, teetering before
a soulless vision of the world."
Only one fifth of the world's people live in industrialized countries, yet they
consume more than two thirds of the planet's resources.
With less than 5 percent of global population, the United States uses about a quarter
of the world's fossil fuel resources.
As a result of these greedy consumption patterns, the United States is not only ripping
off a great part of the reserves of energy that are meant
for the whole of humanity, it is also primarily responsible for a global ecological
crisis.
And our nation is spreading these evil materialistic tendencies throughout the world
through military force. Two hundred thousand Iraqis died in
the first Gulf War and 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the current war in Iraq.
Plus 2,500 U.S. military men and women have died in the current
war in Iraq.
When observing people all around the world, in every nation, it is easy to see that
most people will just blindly conform to their nation's
mainstream culture.
Therefore, most Americans blindly go in the way of majority, by joining and participating
in our nation's cultural mainstream religion, mainline
denominational Christianity. When they do so, they do not reject our nation's
materialistic ways.
In spite of all the evidence that indicates that our nation is not good, but evil, most
American Christians hold it up in high esteem, along with
their religious leaders. However, if they were to open their minds to receive the truth
they would quickly come to understand how evil our nation's
cultural-mainstream religious system is and where it is leading them.
When Jesus spoke to His disciples and said: "Broad is the gate and wide is the way
that leads to destruction and many go therein" and "straight is
the gate and narrow is the way that leads to everlasting life and few go therein,"
he was teaching them an essential Christian principle. He was
telling them and all future Christians that they would need to question the
majority's opinion and then be willing to take and promote the
minority's
opinion if they found the minority's opinion to be right.
Are the majority of our nation's cultural-mainstream "Christians"
following this essential Christian principle? No, I think not. Our nation's
cultural mainstream Christians blindly believe that our nation is basically good. And
they believe this because they believe that it is unpatriotic
and therefore a grave sin to question the supposed basic goodness of our nation. Our
nation's cultural mainstream "Christians" are not following the
principle that Jesus said leads to everlasting life. The principle that they are
following is the principle that Jesus said leads to
destruction.
A great multitude of mislead American Christians exercise a lot of political clout
when it comes to shaping and promoting materialistic values
leading, not only our nation, but the whole world to hell in a hand basket.
Thomas Dalheimer, Wahkon
related Mille Lacs Messenger letter to the
editor
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