Apathy Online

Brad Jardis, Epping PD offi­cer and Anti-prohibition activist was kicked out from Law Enforce­ment Against Pro­hi­bi­tion for refus­ing to obey an immoral law and arrest peo­ple who use mar­i­juana for med­ical rea­sons. Ear­lier this month, Jardis cited his oath to uphold the con­sti­tu­tion of New Hamp­shire as super­sed­ing any laws that con­tra­dict it in a post on FreeKeene.com. In a let­ter writ­ten to Jardis, Jack Cole, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of LEAP states that Jardis, “cho­sen to vio­late the oath you took on join­ing the police depart­ment; to enforce all the laws of the fed­eral and state gov­ern­ments in which your police depart­ment has juris­dic­tion.“
Full Let­ter below & Dis­cus­sion on the Free­Keene forum:

Dear Bradley Jardis,

I have tried but am unable to reach you by telephone.

It has come to LEAP’s atten­tion from the below blog entry, that you have
cho­sen to vio­late the oath you took on join­ing the police depart­ment; to
enforce all the laws of the fed­eral and state gov­ern­ments in which your
police depart­ment has juris­dic­tion. And worse, you are call­ing on other law
enforce­ment offi­cials to vio­late their oaths of office.

This is the oppo­site of what LEAP requires of our rep­re­sen­ta­tives. We have
always said that we will in no way ask that any law enforcer decline to do
his or her duty by refus­ing to enforce the laws as they are cur­rently
recorded. That would be uneth­i­cal and wrong. What we do call on them for is
take action on their off-duty time to help us change those laws.

Because you have so bla­tantly stepped over that line, your actions have
caused peo­ple to lose respect for our orga­ni­za­tion, which leads to a loss of
our cred­i­bil­ity within the pub­lic, the media and the pol­i­cy­mak­ers; the very
peo­ple whom we are try­ing to con­vince to change these laws.

The Exec­u­tive Board of Law Enforce­ment Against Pro­hi­bi­tion was made aware of
your actions in their Jan­u­ary 22, 2010 Board meet­ing. They were unan­i­mous in
their deci­sion that you must no longer rep­re­sent Law Enforce­ment Against
Pro­hi­bi­tion while espous­ing this belief.

As Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of LEAP, I there­fore am noti­fy­ing you that,
effec­tively imme­di­ately, you are to stop refer­ring to your­self as a speaker
for or mem­ber of LEAP in your pub­li­ca­tions, inter­views, and pub­lic or
pri­vate addresses.

Sin­cerely,

Jack A. Cole
Exec­u­tive Direc­tor
Law Enforce­ment Against Pro­hi­bi­tion
121 Mys­tic Avenue, Med­ford, MA 02155
(781) 393‑6985 LEAP Office (781) 393 2964 FAX
(781) 396‑0183 Home Office (617) 792‑3877 Cell
jack­a­cole [at] leap [dot] cc www.leap.cc

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Today, I was talk­ing with a Chris­t­ian coworker, and men­tioned that some Chris­tians refuse to stand for a judge because they view all humans as equals. My coworker seemed per­plexed by the idea, thought it was silly, and barely avoided stat­ing that peo­ple who try to bring such beliefs into a court set­ting should be arrested. His rea­son­ing was that it was merely show­ing respect for the judge and has noth­ing to do with wor­ship. I do not nec­es­sar­ily believe that my coworker is wrong in stand­ing for a judge, should he be in a posi­tion to stand before one. How­ever, he does not believe in giv­ing oth­ers the abil­ity to live by their con­vic­tions, includ­ing other Chris­tians. While I believe it is a mat­ter between the a per­son and God, I view such Quakers/Christians/etc. that live their con­vic­tions as heroes. These are peo­ple who are will­ing to risk impris­on­ment for abid­ing by their con­science. As a for­mer pas­tor of mine pointed out, Cae­sar does not own your con­science, God does.

There is a rea­son why this both­ered me. I was try­ing to probe my cowork­ers beliefs (pri­mar­ily because he will dis­cuss ‘reli­gion’ or Christ with every other coworker but me, except to invite me to his church, but also because of my curios­ity). I have been try­ing to see what kind of a Chris­t­ian he was, and if he had good rea­sons for his beliefs. Per­haps my con­clu­sion is unfair, but he seems to be a typ­i­cal ‘con­ser­v­a­tive’ type: he con­fuses faith in Christ with an unques­tion­ing accep­tance of every­thing taught to him in a Chris­t­ian set­ting. Unfor­tu­nately, it seems as if the major­ity of Chris­tians I meet are this way.

What kind of Chris­tians are we if we believe this way? Of what value is our faith? We can quote scrip­ture ver­ba­tim, but our only under­stand­ing is what has been taught to us. Peo­ple ask us how to get to Heaven, and we imme­di­ately spit out an answer, with­out know­ing if it is true. It was just taught to us. Frankly, I am not cer­tain if most Chris­tians even know why they believe what they believe. At all. A cab dri­ver pointed this out to me years ago when he asked me some ques­tions about my faith. Since then, I have tried very hard to make sure my beliefs are con­sis­tent and true. (Does any­one remem­ber read­ing Philip­pi­ans 2:12?) Some do not really care to do this, and get their con­sis­tent and true beliefs on Sundays.

Mod­ern Chris­tian­ity seem to be no bet­ter than the other the­o­ries of life or reli­gions it derides. It rests sim­ply on a teach­ing that has been passed down from mul­ti­ple gen­er­a­tions of teach­ers in a game of gen­er­a­tional tele­phone with the cur­rent teach­ing being incred­i­bly far from the truth it once showed, and there is no desire to go to the begin­ning and rework our beliefs as nec­es­sary. We say to our­selves that “This is what we were taught, and any devi­a­tion from it is heresy.” Some­one raises an objec­tion to our beliefs and instead of hav­ing an answer or research­ing the ques­tion, we cite prob­lems with the ques­tioner. Did we not read from the Bible that we pro­claim to be true with­out know­ing why that we should study (2 Tim 2:15)? We are offended by Chris­tians in jail, for­get­ting in the Bible, per­se­cu­tion is nor­mal. For­get­ting God’s com­mand­ments, we try to force oth­ers to live the way we want. We advo­cate theft in Christ’s name. We serve some­one other than the Jesus in the Bible, and oth­ers know this. They mock us, not to per­se­cute us, but because our brand of chris­tian­ity deserves mock­ing. They are offended by us, because we offend them, and not because the core of our belief itself is offen­sive. We even have rules just like the reli­gious lead­ers Jesus crit­i­cized, but we have very intri­cate rea­sons for why our rules are not like theirs. We com­plain of peo­ple pick­ing and choos­ing what parts of the Bible they believe, but it may bet­ter to do that with a con­sis­tent belief than to man­date that every­thing be included for the sole rea­son of a vote long ago while tak­ing what we man­date as included and twist­ing and per­vert­ing it in ways the orig­i­nal authors/Author did not intend. There is a lot wrong with our chris­tian­ity! It’s not Christian!

To be fair, people’s beliefs change over time, and I too was once a zombie-christian: eat­ing the brains of other chris­tians to sus­tain me. Per­haps I am still that way to a degree (I’ve changed, hon­est!). Maybe this is a rant more about myself than a plea for oth­ers to con­sider them­selves. I could fill the rest of this spot with Philip­pi­ans 2:12, but I doubt it would help; I’ve read pas­sages hun­dreds of times before under­stand­ing them, and hun­dreds of times more before real­iz­ing I was abid­ing solely by a teach­ing rather than what the pas­sage plainly said. Per­haps it’s worth scrap­ping our ideas and rebuild­ing them from scratch?
And the ques­tion now is “what do I believe?” I believe that there is a Cre­ator. I believe that He came down in the form of Christ to show us how to live. I believe that he took the pun­ish­ment of the world when He died on the cross because he loved us, and to show us what love truly is: not killing or oppress­ing oth­ers because they don’t believe like you, but sac­ri­fic­ing your­self for oth­ers out of love for them. I believe that when Jesus stated that the great­est com­mand­ments were to love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neigh­bor as your­self, that He meant it. I believe all scrip­ture should be inter­preted in light of these two verses.

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