Dear Overly Hyper-Religious People,

I just found your site on the Internet by accident.

Sometimes I count myself as a very religious person, sometimes not.

But recently I came across a web site that seemed to be put together by at least one Bible thumper. So most of this letter is directed towards that site, which I will not point to.

Every conspiracy one could think of, and many I had not heard of were there. The author(s) was quite liberal with who s/he called the Devil and children of the Devil and such. In fact, it seemed the whole site was devoted to trashing every known person. Joel Osteen was condemned, every pastor on TV seemed to be named and ranted against. In fact I didn't see one preacher the author actually liked, besides claiming a love for the preacher Jesus.

Their site had nothing but derision for the NIV Bible, and it went on and on with vitriol towards nearly everything under the sun.

It's true I have written about the Holier Than Thou Congregation and the Hyper Conservative Congregation, but the web site I am referring to made them look like a 2 on a scale of 1 to 100, in term of Hyper Religiosity.

Like me, the author(s) claims to be deeply concerned for our country and patriotic. Like me the author(s) claimed to like music, although what they made available on their site was not to my liking.

I will point out my biggest problem with their site. Jesus said not to beat the servants but feed them. [Luke 12:45] The site I am referring to held little good food that I could find. And even though I am not a fan of a number of preachers, the scorn and blatant condemnation of them is too much.

So my advice is to take Jesus' advice, if you are so angry with those preachers, write them a letter. Don't publicly condemn them. [Matthew 18:15-18] I mean on the page there were literally dozens of names, complete with unflattering photographs of them. This is not educational, this is not food.

I don't think I was tricked, I don't think the site I found was fake, set up by a non-Christian in order to make Christians look bad. I feel certain the site was heart-felt and someone took a lot of time to share all that. But it seemed to be a heart of darkness! [Luke 11:35]

Dear Other Readers,
Here's my final analysis of the situation. Their site was rife with commentary and pointers to 2001-09-11, known to most as "911." Even though many people assume Christians are quick to blame the Muslim philosophy for the attack, their site clearly did not hold that view. In fact they explicitly said it was not the Muslims who were behind 911, but they thought it was President Bush and many others in government, and went so far to just blame it all on "the government."

Part of their logic for blaming it on the US government is the notion the government wants to spread panic among the citizens and further institute a police state, taking away God given freedoms and such. I tried to find more reasons, but this seemed to be the gist of it. Oh, and the blamed money and greed, implying that it was love of money that caused them to plan the 911 attacks.

Now here's my analysis. Our official government DID NOT plan and carry out 911. I am not here to give my theories of who or why and point fingers, you can make up your own mind. But I will explain why I think President Bush and other officials DID NOT do such things.

Ask yourself these questions. How does the government collect money? How does the government "earn" money? The answer is simple. Taxes. Now ask yourself this question: does the government collect taxes from businesses that are in operation or from defunct businesses?

Clearly our government collects money from business that are in operation. Our government DOES NOT collect taxes by smashing thousands of businesses to bits and killing thousands of people.

So in closing, please follow Jesus' advice, and DO NOT BEAT THE SERVANTS. I understand your anger against corruption, I have it to. I've written more than a few pieces pointing out my anguish with corruption, but remember that even the "Old Testament God" ended his prophecies of punishment with promises of restoration.

Respectfully, New Old Salt