Letter to the editor
Published in the Mille Lacs Messenger
July 19, 2006

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 the 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

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