Why I Don't Belive Right-Wing Religion - Psalm 15

1  Who can live in your tent, Lord?
    Who can dwell on your holy mountain?
 

2  The person who
    lives free of blame,
    does what is right,
        and speaks the truth sincerely;
 

3  who does no damage with their talk,
    does no harm to a friend,
    doesn’t insult a neighbor;
 

4  someone who despises
        those who act wickedly,
        but who honors those
        who honor the Lord;
    someone who keeps their promise even when it hurts;
 

5 someone who doesn’t lend money with interest,
    who won’t accept a bribe against any innocent person.
Whoever does these things will never stumble.

Common English Bible 

Verse 5 pretty much rules out the large majority of white "christians" in the United States, certainly any who practice or are OK with lending out money with interest, the entire basis of capitalism and accepting bribes against innocent  People, the entire basis of right wing and a lot of other media, if you include taking a salary to do that as bribes, which I do.  The careers of all the TV and radio preachers consist of pretty much the opposite of all of it.  And the same is true of virtually all of the corporate media.  Especially if you consider the lines about telling the truth and doing no damage with their talk.  

If you believe that these ideas are at least inspired by God, the Creator of the universe and us or if you go so far as to take them as commandments, you have an absolute standard against which you can not only judge your own conduct but believe you will be held to, you have a durable moral obligation to try to act that way.   If you don't believe in God or don't accept this as true, you only have what you figure you can get away with, to your own profit if you can work it that way.   Secularism has a way of turning everyone into some degree of a conman, some with vestiges of an ever more vaguely recalled virtue, perhaps some with the notions of goodness that Paul said were given to everyone by our Creator.   I know during my long years of cowardly agnosticism I still had the memory of what I was brought up to know was right,  telling the truth, especially not lying about other People or important things, not causing harm with what I said.  But I also knew that those feelings weren't as strong.   Maybe it was lucky for me and People I could have cheated and hurt that I've also always had the feeling that even if someone else could get away with it,  I wouldn't be able to.   Perhaps that's Irish Catholic guilt kicking in,  something that doesn't seem to have ever kicked in with RFK jr. or so many others who were raised Catholic.  Kennedy men seem to have been largely immune to it.   As do Republicans and a majority of white men, as well. 

I could ask scoffers and skeptics, who would you rather have living around you, who would you rather deal with in life, someone who believes and tries to act the way this little, seldom mentioned Psalm advocates or someone who doesn't?   Even the worst of the Trumpers would rather live with People who acted like this but they might ask themselves if People who act like this would like to live near them.  That's where verse 4 comes into play. 

For those of us on the left,  there are plenty of lefties who aren't all that much different from those on the right,  the asshole mentioned above was considered quite the lefty in days past.  Most of the big time lefties you used to see on TV weren't that much different from him.   The number of lefties I've known of who turned on us and went Republican-fascist or libertarian or just sold out are very large and most of those I know of were atheists, agnostics or committed secularists in life and not merely as a necessity for the government.   For Pete's sake, Glenn Greenwald is still considered by a lot of idiots to have been of the left.   Which leads me to the goddamned Green Party peddled by so many an irreligious lefty magazine as recently as 2016.  

I don't really know of any sincere religious believers on the left who have that kind of record of rottenness, even those among Catholics who hold with the official teaching of the Catholic Church on that one issue.   And, from what I've seen in person and at a distance, those who really believe are far more to go the distance as those beliefs apply to politics, society and life.   Which, by the way, I've never known an informed right-winger to show much evidence of really believing in all of their lives.  Amy Coney Barrett, even with her adoption of two orphans from Haiti certainly doesn't live her professional life as if she really cared about orphaned Hatians or others.  And I don't know of any of the other right-wing Catholics who begin to demonstrate anything like that in their professional actions or their lives.  

Well, I could go on but I've heaped enough extension onto this little Psalm, already.  Though I think it can take it.