Sugar and Fundamentalism

In a world of immediate gratification, war, famine, and refined sugar...Masonry has never been more relevant. We all have our battles, some large and some small, but for the soldier the battlefield is what it is. I was watching a popular news show espousing the danger of refined sugar and the immediately visible and immensely dangerous effects of over indulgence. The finger was pointed squarely at that precious ointment upon the beard after eating a nice round jelly doughnut, refined sugar. The evils of it, the dangers of it, the flocks of obese Americans destined for cancer, cavities, and other terrible ailments. We all have a battles and I guess sugar is a good one. The sweet crystalline substance becoming from every kind of food source, going by more names than an undercover operative during the cold war. She is a sly one, she is.

We all pick are battles and I am announcing mine for today, as one never knows what tomorrow might hold. I pick fundamentalism. The terrible plague of the zealot that permeates Christianity, Islam, and every religion and religious system that closes minds and hardens hearts.

Don't misunderstand me. I can respect the path of any man and I am not here to proselytize my personal path. I am hear to declare fundamentalism incompatible with religion, although it appears that the two have become inseparable.

When one takes the time to pick up the Christian Bible he finds tales of goodness and wisdom through the whole work. It tells of forgiving hearts and cheeks turned and turned again. The central figure of the Gospels, the Nazarene, seeks out, recruits, eats, sits, sleeps, loves, and prays with sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors and other less desirables. Yet in today's churches we find condemnation and division. Everyone seems more concerned with who holds the keys to heaven and just who is going on the fast track to warmer temps on the final days that we speak little of reason, logic, forgiveness, open minds and open hearts.

Fundamentalism is viral. It convinces us that truth, reason, science and logic are the boogyman and that an uninformed or ill informed faith is the strong and biblical faith of our Creator.

Fundamentalism is its own creature. It leads to brutal wars as evidenced by every news channel everyday.

It is not religious, it is not good, it is not welcome in the mind of the thinking man and it is an enemy of free will, free thought, and free conscience.

I have never known the gentle science to curb sugar except to recommend that all things (to include our diets I guess) should be balanced. I do believe that its philosophies have a cure for fundamentalism. They promote freedom and free exercise of thought and reason. It cultivates logic and wisdom.

Fundamentalist groups like Hammas share with many fundamentalist Christian movements, a declaration that Masonry is incompatible with their faith. I say bologna. It is fundamentalism that is incompatible with freedom, the foundation of the free thinker and the Craft.