Friday, September 05, 2003

A smiling Paul Hill went to his execution on Florida's death row convinced that he was, indeed, a martyr for Christ. By the time the former Presbyterian minister was strapped to a cross-shaped gurney, he was the only one who could see a resemblance to the Lord he paid lip service to.

Nine years ago on a July morning, Paul Hill murdered an abortion doctor and one of his escorts outside a Pensacola clinic. Wielding a 12-gauge shotgun with the same moral clarity as a robber getting the jump on two clerks at a liquor store, Hill ignored Christ's inconvenient command that his followers sheathe their swords for the sake of the kingdom.

Technically, Christ never said anything about shotguns when he admonished Peter to stop lopping off the ears of those sent to arrest him. Thanks to the Second Amendment and the traditions that come with living in a Christian nation, we now know that most of what Christ said on the night before his Passion doesn't have to be taken seriously.

Maybe the crazy things Christ said about violence being demonic were the result of being coerced. If circumstances hadn't been so militarily lopsided against him and his disciples, that section of the Gospel would resonate more in a heavily armed Christian nation. If men like Paul Hill had been counted among the disciples instead of wimps like Peter, the ruckus in the Garden of Gethsemane would've been a lot bloodier, that's for sure.

Thank God that in a Christian nation, a righteous man can reach for his shotgun if it's the only way to keep the morally rebellious on a straight path. That's the gospel Paul Hill preached to others and believed fervently himself. As an example to his followers, Hill remained a stranger to repentance nearly a decade after pulling the trigger that ended two lives and injured a third.

In a highly evolved Christian society like ours, what's the point of worrying about something as petty as repentance? In a Christian nation, murder is always relative as long as you can kill in the name of love or freedom or whatever reason fits as determined by the president and his omnipotent Cabinet that week.

You know you're living in a righteous land when Christians in Alabama bow before a 5,300-pound Ten Commandments monument without feeling even slightly embarrassed about their complicity in idolatry.

The highest achievement of a Christian nation is to evolve so far beyond the faith it is ostensibly based on as to be unrecognizable to anyone who takes Christianity seriously. Christian nations consider it a duty to be suspicious of disreputable notions like mercy and forgiveness when the eye-for-an-eye ethic has worked so well for thousands of years in the Holy Land.

You know we're living in a Christian nation when the violence Christ shunned at Gethsemane is embraced centuries later as the highest form of common sense. Any war a Christian nation engages in is, by definition, a just and righteous war.

Being a Christian nation means never having to be embarrassed by empire building. Vitiating the social safety net for the poor is a small price to pay for a few heady years of short-term profit. The economics of a Christian nation should be relentlessly laissez-faire and never compromise with Marxist lies.

Long-discredited notions like sharing the world's wealth and resources insult the dignity of the bourgeoisie. Though it isn't spelled out in the Sermon on the Mount, God really does help those who help themselves. If he didn't, wouldn't our currency say "In the Devil We Trust"?

There's no logical reason why the poor in spirit should continue to get top billing. Like Heaven, a Christian nation is a meritocracy and should never apologize for "collateral damage," slavery, water pollution or excesses in the name of national security.

For the sake of appearances, Christian nations will occasionally execute those who slavishly embody Christianity's values. Two days ago, a Christian nation executed anti-abortion apostle Paul Hill for killing two human beings he insists didn't value life as much as he did. In a Christian nation, nobody pays too much attention to logic.

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