To George W. Bush, Esq.:
I am a child of God, a prince of the eternal realm, inheritor of a divine title that no earthly power can touch or destroy. I am a son of light, alert and not asleep.
So let me ask you, if you are indeed a fellow member of the Body of Christ, why you mar God's creation; why you destroy His image in mankind; why you attempt to serve both and God and Money when Scripture declares it is impossible; why you create blasphemous idols to yourself; and why you shun the gift of repentance that would allow you to admit your mistakes.
Why, worse than Esau, who merely sold his own inheritance, do you sell the birthright of U.S. citizens who never gave you any offense; why, when our Savior counsels us not to worry about tomorrow, and his servant Paul tells us not to be anxious about anything, do you insist on striking fear into the hearts of Americans; and why, when the Lord was sent to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, do you imprison human beings indefinitely without charge or trial, subjecting them to torture and solitary confinement, showing as much disdain for the Geneva Conventions as you do for our own Bill of Rights and for the second of our Lord's Two Commandments: to love your neighbor as yourself?
You are doubtless a very zealous man, but so was Saul when he persecuted the early christians, prior to his conversion on the road to Damascus. If you had undergone such a conversion of heart yourself, you would reflect God's character --"gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in love" -- and you would cease destroying the fruits of the Holy Spirit, which are Love and Peace and Joy. You would produce good fruit in keeping with repentance, knowing that every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
If your heart were flesh instead of stone, you would cease oppressing the poor and showing contempt for their Maker, you would keep honest scales, no longer rigging tax cuts to serve the rich, trials to favor the wicked, or elections to install the tyrant. You would acknowledge, like the tax collector beating his breast before God, that your White House was not built on the bedrock of fairness and legitimacy, but on the sand of unmerited privilege and fraud, that it is become a white-washed tomb, full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. And finally, because the Lord is "loving toward all He has made", you would protect, rather than ransack, our natural habitats and wildlife.
For what kind of pharisee denudes the landscape, chokes our lungs, and smuts our rivers in the name of "Healthy Forests" and "Clear Skies"? Such actions outweigh the words you profess, and though the false images of this age can masquerade as true, and though lies can hoodwink multitudes, we who hear the Shepherd's voice know you were not sent by Him. We know too, that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light and that his servants pose as instruments of righteousness.
As Christ Himself declares, "on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness." You strain out gnats, such as gay marriage, but you swallow camels by forsaking the tenets of Mercy. You clean the outside of the cup, Mr. Bush, by presenting a righteous veneer to the undiscerning, but your inside remains foul with extortion and greed. In short, you are a wolf in sheep's clothing.
We know a tree by its fruit, and by the dealings of your grandfather Prescott Bush, are not your family tree and your family fortune rooted in the blood of Auschwitz slaves? And does not that family tree heap the fruit of misery and destruction on America and the world?
As for the newly spilled blood of Iraqis and Americans, did not Jesus warn us that those who live by the sword shall die by the sword? Peter heard these words after merely cutting off a man's ear, but you, butcher, have hacked away limbs from bodies and kin from kin, though you be devoid of the gift of Christ that could sew them back on again.
Who is he who declares these things? One in whom the Lord is greater than he who is in the White House, one who is surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, one who casts down pretensions and arguments that set themselves up against the knowledge of God, and one who, with the entire assembly of the saints, with the tears of the tortured, the cancers of the irradiated, and the blood of innocents murdered by your hands, will cry out against you at the Judgment.
Are you a man of destiny, as you suppose? Perhaps. Perhaps you are he who sets up abominations that cause desolation, making of God's temple a den of thieves. Perhaps you are he who acts deceitfully, who with only a few people rises to power, and who distributes plunder, loot and wealth among his followers, who plots the overthrow of fortresses, but only for a time. Perhaps you are all of these things, but a child of God you most certainly ain't!
As Aesop the great writer of fables states: "He who stirs others to go to war and cause bloodshed is worse than those who take part in it." And though you be a pillager by proxy, let History remember you for the murderer, rapist, and vicious tyrant that you are.
In God-given authority and in most deadly earnest,
Ian Reed
