Real Religious Beliefs vs. Self-Centeredness

Change is not always easy to accept, unless we see some obvious benefit (or I suppose, some perceived benefit) in that change for ourselves. Regular readers know that I most often write about politics, more precisely, about economic politics, as that is a passion I have. I want to see an economically fairer country. Unfortunately, in the last three decades we have seen America become less and less fair economically, and that isn't just by Randy's standards, but even by many more conservative public figures like Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, and George W. Bush. Where Bernanke will fit in is still to be seen, but the others, while publicly stating how income inequality had grown, left the situation at that, a statement about the facts, but with no proposals, and seemingly no desire to do anything about it.

What puzzles me is, with the rise of the Religious Right, beginning in the 1970s, you would think that America would have made tremendous strides toward an even fairer society, including some form of health care for ALL Americans. Why? Because most religions seem to advocate some form of shared responsibility towards their fellow human beings. Instead, we've seen the growth of selfishness and a "get the money, get the money" mentality, the likes of which I've never seen in my "fair number of decades" on this Earth. (Hey, you didn't think I was going to tell you HOW MANY decades, did you?) Many of those who were already wealthy benefited the most. This "mo' money" philosophy has culminated in an economic downturn that continues to this very minute, with virtually all prominent economists saying that it will likely take years to get out of this mess. It will be interesting to see how we assess the "benefits" of this era we've come through.

My question to you is this, if YOU have strong religious beliefs, would YOU turn away someone in need of help? Would the particular deity/deities of YOUR religion want YOU to turn inward, and deny proper medical treatment to YOUR fellow human beings? To me, attending religious services or quoting religious verses does NOT a religious person make. I'm so often stunned by some who claim religion, but whose true beliefs seem to be more about themselves, rather than others. I'm not saying that upholding religious beliefs is an easy thing, as our natural inclination is to be for ourselves. There aren't many Mother Theresa-types in the world, although I'm sure there are more than we actually hear about. The thing is, do YOU tout religious beliefs, but then really not make an effort to live by those beliefs?

Word History:
Shoe-This word is only in the Germanic languages, as no other Indo European languages have it. Old Germanic had "skokaz," which some/many linguists feel goes back to the Indo European root "skeu," which meant "cover." The Old Germanic form passed into the developing Germanic dialects as: "scoh" in Old English (Anglo-Saxon), which seems to have been pronounced similar to modern "show"), "skor" in Old Norse, "skoch," in Old Frisian, "skoh" in Old Saxon (this is the Saxon that remained on the Continent), "scuoh" in Old High German. In more modern times, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish have "sko," Dutch has "schoen," and German has "Schuh," which is pronounced pretty much like the English word. Interestingly, one of the plural forms, besides "shoes," in English, was "shoon" (German has "Schuhe" for the plural) and this form lasted well into the 1500s! The verb form in Old English was "scogan/scogean," and was used like in "to shoe a horse."