Blessed are the agnostics. Blessed are they who doubt....

[mia]

Blessed are they who have loved enough to know what loss feels like. Blessed are they who don't have the luxury of taking things for granted anymore. Blessed are they who can't fall apart because they have to keep it together for everyone else. Blessed are those who still aren't over it yet. Blessed are those who mourn.

Blessed are those who no one else notices, the kids who sit alone at middle school lunch tables, the laundry guys at the hospital, the sex workers, and the night shift street sweepers. Blessed are the forgotten. Blessed are the closeted. Blessed are the unemployed, the unimpressive, the under-represented.

Blessed of the wrongly accused, the ones who never catch a break, the ones for whom life is hard for Jesus chose to surround himself with people like them. Blessed are those without documentation. Blessed are the ones without lobbyists. Blessed are those who make terrible business decisions for the sake of people. Blessed are the burned out social workers and the overworked teachers and the pro-bono case takers.

Blessed are the kindhearted NFL players and the fundraising trophy wives. And blessed are the kids who step between the bullies and the weak. Blessed is everyone who has ever forgiven me when I didn't deserve it. Blessed are the merciful for they totally get it. You are of heaven and Jesus blesses you.

[rusty quoin]

1. Blessed are those who make terrible business decisions for the sake of people

Boy we could use more people like that.

[Major Nikon]

2. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering

.. and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
-- Karl Marx

[3Hotdogs]

3. Yeah, so instead of doing something about it, light a candle, send prayers and good vibes.

Didn't churches in slave states have services for slaves where it was explained that their lot was God's wishes?



I recall showing "Roots" to my urban, 9th grade class. Middle passage scene. Slaves were calling to Allah.

Student: "Mr. Is that their God they're calling for help?"

Me: "Yes, that is the name they give God."

Student: "Why he don't help the motherfuckers?"

[Voltaire2]

4. the origins of christianity were as a slave religion

in a vast slave economy. A religion that rewarded slaves for being good slaves "in heaven" was entirely compatible with the goals of the rulers of the Roman Empire.

[struggle4progress]

5. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand

for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.