Rep. (or is it The Rev.?) Steve King of Iowa says the House shouldn’t vote on health care reform on a Sunday “Out of respect for God.”
Since Mr. King presumably calls himself a Christian, let’s take a look at the views on this question of the man Christians believe to have been God:
And he entered again into the synagogue; and there was a man there which had a withered hand. And they watched him, whether he would heal him on the sabbath day; that they might accuse him.
And he saith unto the man which had the withered hand, Stand forth. And he saith unto them, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill?
But they held their peace.
I might commend the same course of action to Mr. King, and to Glenn Beck.
Funny, I always thought they believed Ronald Reagan to be God.
I didn’t know mammon had a particular incarnation.
Came here to say pretty much what ‘dan’ just said.
The only gods the wingnuts worship are Reagan and the god of mammon.
I am an ex-Christian, but even before I managed to wash away the blood of the Lamb, I was always amused at fellow Christians who imagined that the Decalogue permitted them, much less required them, to “keep holy the sabbath day” (not that many of them know which day is the sabbath).
Look, these are very tactical and short-term thinkers (if I can use that term). They’re reactive. Asking this guy to reason about the long-term effects on his spiritual life of utilizing his religious beliefs instrumentally as a political tool because they happen to be handy is just asking too much of him. Bush / Cheney failed for the same reason. No understanding whatsoever of the need for sustainability in politics (or anything else).
Who would Jesus cherry pick?
You have to understand that Rep. King is from Northwest Iowa, an area characterized by long hard winters, dominated by a more Calvinist sept of the Dutch Reform Church (an outfit that would feel perfectly at home in 16th Century Geneva) and controlled by a Republican majority that votes that way because Lincoln won the war. It is hard to know if Rep. King believes the blather he spouts on an every-other day basis but it is clear that he is playing to the peanut gallery whether he believes it or not.
Iowa should lose one Representative after the 2010 census. Right now the GOP is the minority party in the state legislature. If there is a just political God King’s district will be broken up and absorbed into the more moderate districts in central Iowa that include Des Moines and Ames and Fort Dodge. If so Rep. King will just be an ugly memory.
In the meantime the man is best ignored.