You’ve seen me write about this before. It can be so upsetting to understand Christianity, to get what Jesus was talking about, and then to see the Social Conservative Nazis in the United States claim to be basing their words and actions on Christianity.

I received an email yesterday that got my entire day side tracked. I was visibly upset for several hours. A close friend of mine sent me an email explaining how President Obama was leading a communist takeover of America. Beyond simply being ludicrous, the email attempts to put this in a Christian perspective, as it was addressed to “people of faith”.

My friend tried to explain to me how Obama thinks he’s God, but instead he’s going to be subject to God’s judgment (apparently negative) because he’s destroying capitalism by pushing a progressive human rights agenda that includes government-run health insurance as an option for Americans to help control costs and create competition so more people can have health insurance.

I know it’s a mouth-full, and can almost make your head spin. I’m sure that someone reading this agrees completely with what I just wrote (in that they think Obama is a communist). My friend even went so far as to compare Obama to Hitler, claiming that Obama was going to start locking up Christians because they disagree with him.

SERIOUSLY? I, for one, am so tired of the extreme political right wing (and, quite honestly the extreme left wing as well). Social Conservatives don’t own Christianity. In fact, if they even stopped to read the gospels for a few minutes, they would realize that Jesus promoted a version of socialism as an economic way-of-life. This isn’t to say that Jesus thought we should all sell everything we own, turn our back on the pursuit of money, and instead turn our thoughts to spiritual renewal. Oh wait, he did say that.

Jesus goes further: he was the first person to promote the idea of a clear separation of church and state: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s.” Jesus wasn’t concerned with bending the government to do His Will. Instead, he was concerned with changing individual people’s hearts so that all people would live in God’s grace, compassion, mercy, and love.

In other words, churches: stay out of politics and focus on living in God’s grace. If you want to call yourself a Christian, be aware that Jesus tells us that however we judge others, we will be judged the same. So, perhaps, if you have a few moments to spare, you could get off your cross and start living a life of compassion, mercy, and love.