MY MANIFESTO:- The Stupendous Sermon on the Mount

Richard, this is very helpful and illuminating.  Thanks so much.

However, you and I are on the left and I'm a Christian eco-socialist.  The people, the public, the electorate are on the right.  This is seen by the popularity of newspapers like the Mail, Telegraph and Express that are right-wing and most unrighteous over what they want.  It is seen by Conservative governments ruling the UK for very many more years than less right-wing governments of the Labour Party.

Democracy is no friend of you and I because we can never get our way through the ballot box.

In 1914, after decades of peace between the European nations themselves, the First World War broke out with great enthusiasm from the British public.  In other words, democracy won.  The people spoke, they agreed with that war enthusiast, dear Winston and we had the most stupid and unnecessary war in the history of humanity.  It led to the 1939 war, followed by the Cold War, followed by the West's takeover of almost every former USSR satellite state - much to the ire of Russian nationalists like Pariah Putrid.  And now, from 2014, the ecocidal, almost a civil war between Ukraine and Russia but, fueled by the taxpayers of almost every country in the West and, Russia.

Democracy is no friend of you and I because we can never get our way through the ballot box.

The public want flash, impressive, prestigious projects that are gloriously expensive and wealth flaunting like Metro trams and the 150 miles of tramlines, both overground and underground.  In 2020 the 150 miles was estimated to cost £15 BILLION.  This, only one year after they had piously declared a climate emergency and, four years on, still fail to act to cancel the W Mids Comedy Authority's most climate-damaging project after High Scam 2 - now four years of blatant hypocrisy, and rising!

The people want and love Metro but, like High Scandal 2, they make all our ecocidal behaviours and problems worse.  Hence, democracy will never work for you and me.  Only through lobbying have I seen off the KBH and WOM (motorways), the upgrading of towpaths and cycle-walkways, the DfT 'Restoring Your Railways' project and the abandonment of one mainline railway being converted to tramline.  I failed over two mainline railways that are lost to trams because that was democracy - what the public wanted.  Still, not a bad record!

All you and I have is the power of the pen and voice and, reducing our hypocrisy quotient by being model eco-citizens, leading from the front, by example.  Hence my pretty low-carbon, low-impact lifestyle.  "Be the change you want to see in the world"  Gandhi

Being left and socialist is being left out but, on the side of the poor, the disadvantaged and marginalised in society (re-read the Sermon on the Mount).

Tim Weller

That Trump chump champions the Bible but not non-violence!

That Trump chump champions the Bible but not non-violence.  As he sends in the troops and the tear gas to clear peaceful protesters he feels safe enough to finally show his face.  He holds up the Bible as justification for what he has just done!  Certainly, that is in accordance with parts of the Old Testament but certainly not the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospels of the New Testament.

Important but missing essentials

Missing words/ideas

Replenish

Sustain

Non-violence/non-aggression

     even, Non-intervention - unless with the clear mandate of the General Assembly of the United Nations to intervene in a peacekeeping mission

Distinguishing marks of which world faith?

no homosexuals in position of leadership

no abortion

no physician assisted suicide

no stem cell research

no killing of cells, foetuses

no physician assisted suicide for the elderly terminally ill, even with their informed consent and when they have full capacity and the

pro-life only for the unborn

pro the armed forces whenever the state says it is right to attack, invade and occupy other nations

Does Christian belief ever fall out with science?  It has done in the past over the age of the earth and its shape as a sphere and not as a flat surface.

God given truths are true for eternity.  Scientific truths are only true until the next theory is proved and verified and the work peer reviewed in a recognised journal.  Scientific truths are only true for as long as the evidence allows or the truth remains substantiated.

Values are:

too right wing when the life and teaching of Jesus is very left wing

not Sermon on the Mount compliant

personal salvation predominates instead of Jesus Christ as role model dominant

humanity is expected to exploit, consume and control nature, the earth and life support systems

The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof actually means that the Lord’s people own the world and can do with it as they want.  Only the Lord's people have the divine right to rule, on behalf of the Creator, over the rest of His Creation. In other words, the earth belongs to them, rather than they belonging to the earth - a fatal misconception in the Bible, a flawed book.

Instead of going to war to get peace and quiet in your towns ...

... O Israel, try being nice and generous to your enemies.  Try talking instead of killing.  Try using the Police to arrest, not kill and, then, bring to court for the judicial process to be used, instead!  Loving enemies and turning them into friends is not our way, naturally, for any of us but then, "My ways are not your ways; neither are my thoughts your thoughts", says the Lord.

Embarrass and astonish your neighbours with your concessions (but not the way you gave away Gaza without a long-term and permanent peace agreement).  Neighbours whom you have always distrusted, hated and killed can be lived with, even if it is only peaceful co-existence although, perhaps, even friendship may be possible eventually, as we have seen in N Ireland.

You,  O Israel have all the trump cards and must take the initiative to try a new approach to get peace and justice for you and your neighbours.  You cannot wait for them, the powerless with so little but hatred in their hearts to change unless you come up with new strategies to get peace and quiet - to get Shalom.  Show them love and you maybe surprised with what you get returned to you - after the unbelief, the cynicism, the scepticism and suspicions!

In other words, O Israel, try being like a fundamentalist Christian and literally obey the life and teaching of the Jesus Christ of the Gospels, particularly his revolutionary advice in the Sermon on the Mount.  Instead of warfare to bring peace that never comes, try the exact opposite approach.  Generosity, concessions and sheer magnanimity but, above all else, listen and meet their wishes and dreams, if at all possible.  You might then find that they are exactly like you (fellow terrorists - v naughty!!).  Heaven forbid!

I have read, Steve Mitzer's 'An Idiot's Guide to the Middle East Conflict'.  For me, the idiots are the people who continue with the conflict.  The idiots are the tough, show no mercy, but hammer-them-all-hard folk who are convinced that peace can only come from warfare and violence, rather than the established rule of law.  Just as we have seen since the foolish, right wing religious man prayed at the Temple Mount in an act of stupid provocation.  The flare ups since, this month, demonstrate for me that Israel behaves like those who flush spiders down the plug hole, rather than helping them out of the vertical sides of the slippery bath.

For the State of Israel, Hamas is exactly the same as Islamic State and both, it seems, must be exterminated by genocide.  Not very ethical, to put it mildly!


These children of Abraham, rather than being a blessing on the rest of us as Yahweh promised, have been a curse, I'm afraid to say.  And they still are.  Yet, all the children of Abraham originate from the same earthly father (two mothers) but with the three different names for their same heavenly Father that the Christians, the Jews and the Muslims have for Him.

Learn, O Israel from the Sermon on the Mount, from the way the Nazis treated your ancestors and, from the tortuous peace process in N Ireland (channels of communication with the IRA were opened in 1972 to eventually bring the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement).

The Wild, White, Western Powers!

The West's world wars, after centuries of the European countries dominating everyone else, was the (not so grand) climax of centuries of warfare by and between these Christian, white, European nations.  The 2nd World War was the zenith, the high point (actually, of course, nadir or low point) of centuries of discrimination, persecution and hatred of the Jews, not by Muslims but by the Christian, white, European nations.

Questions for author and speaker, Kevin who was much taken by our victory in the battle of El Alamein as what prevented the Nazis from invading occupying what was then Palestine:-
From Christ's temptations, how would you conclude was His teaching on dominating other countries? From the Sermon on the Mount, how would you conclude was His teaching on warfare?

For President George Bush Jnr, the prophet Mohammed's teaching was "good and peaceful". What a pity that the President's actions, for all the many years after the 7 October 2001 when he launched his War of Terrorism, was the exact opposite of being "good and peaceful".

The exact opposite of "good and peaceful" was the hallmark of the first half of the 20th century and the second half was not much better - thanks to a string of American Presidents and European Prime Ministers, voted in by us!  A century of bloodshed and of white inspired conflicts.  It saw our wars (directly armed or in direct engagement), continuing on (almost immediately from 1945) in SE Asia and the Middle East.  It also very nearly saw a nuclear exchange between the two white, super powers over missiles both had installed - first, the Americans in Turkey on the Russian's doorstep and then, the Russians followed in Cuba on America's doorstep.