lampreyist trouts? fundamentalist christians?

There are two things that really bug me about fundamentalists:

1. They so often think they are right
2. They so seldom are

It's always the same - no matter whether they are fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, Jews or Buddhists [apparently there are, in fact, fundamentalist buddhists. . . who knew?] Or prolife, prochoice, whatever.  It also bugs me when people, including me, talk about 'fundamentalist christians' - as if such a creature could exist.  Fundamentalism is a kind of parasitic thought pattern.  It attaches to a host organism.  Sucks the life out of it.  And, unless stopped, will eventually kill the organism.  Like a lamprey on a trout.  But there, at least, we recognize that there are two entities.  No one talks about "lampreyist trouts".

One hears how the 'moderate Muslims' should control their extremists, their fundamentalists - how moderates should rise up and say 'that's not what Islam is all about.'  But what about us?  I don't even know what a moderate in Christianity means, and whatever it means I don't think I want to be one.  But maybe it is time for those of us who believe in the radical inclusion of Jesus to stand up and say fundamentalist Christianity is an oxymoron.  It just can't be.  The root meaning of 'religion' is to 'bind again'.  Jesus didn't come to start a new religion but to free those bound by religion, and to include those excluded by / repugnant to religion.  Ask the woman at the well.  The woman caught in adultery.  The leper who felt his touch. Any gay believer who has found unconditional love in his eyes.  Maybe it's time to say that a lamprey is a lamprey - it's not trout, not a conservative trout, not an evangelical trout, not a right wing trout - it's not a trout. It's a bloody lamprey.

Maybe I'm just cranky.  It's minus 47 out there.  Tonight I tried to help someone whose battery needed a boost.  He had cables.  Was just standing there outside the church.  And the hood of my car was frozen. I had to leave. He's probably still out there.  Freezing.  Perhaps God, a little south wind?