Justin Trudeau,Spirituality and Politics

After my Baptist Aunt Sally died I asked everyone who knew her,  “Did you ever hear Sarah say anything bad about anyone?”  Everyone reflected for a moment, looked puzzled and then replied, “No, come to think of it. I never did.”  As a Christian she truly believed that “if you have nothing good to say about a person, you should say nothing.”  I owe Justin Trudeau an amends. I’ve been bad mouthing him ever since he admitted to smoking dope when he was a teacher and when he was a member of parliament.  Even now I believe he is smoking dope by his behaviour.  Further his wasteful wanton spending of Canada’s money overseas scares me. Neither reason is sufficient cause for me to denigrate him. It would be sufficient to say I disagree with his policies.
 Yet, it is as if I can’t resist ‘ad hominem’.  I denigrate him, the man, believing he may be possessed by Satan or a drug addicted sociopath.  Neither is true.  They may be but I don’t know.  I just find everytime he speaks his voice literally is like nails on a chalkboard. It’s effete and whining and entitled to me.  But Christianity that makes him my angel.  In Christianity I am to love my enemy.  Spirituality I am at most to think of him as a sick person, not hating him for his error and disgusting behaviour but rather understanding it and forgiving it as one would a sick person.  At most he suffers a spiritual disease and it is my job not to return like for like but to love him.  I call him my angel because he teaches me the limits of my own spiritual growth and shows me how I might think I’m growing spiritually but put to the test of Justin Trudeau I’m a babe in arms.  Love your enemy.  Obviously he is my enemy and I believe he is the enemy of the Canadian people but that is the nature of politics.  Politics divides and looks at the world in paranoid terms, us and them.
It’s easy to be spiritual on a mountain, or meditating on an island. It’s the most difficult to be spiritual faced with politics.
When one is offensive oneself then it’s important to note this.  As a Christian I ask forgiveness of God for my fear and anger towards Justin Trudeau. His dope smoking has made my life as an addiction medicine doctor a nightmare.  When I try to get young people off marijuana because they are now doing oxycontin and heroins and cocaine and stopping everything results in the greatest success, they say, the Prime Minister smokes marijuana and so do all the Hollywood actors actress and the rock stars.  And I say, it’s not okay for you. You nearly died of an overdose last night. You’re only 20 years old. I don’t want to see you die.  I don’t want to see you die. There are tears in my eyes these days.  There are so many deaths.  The examples we set have lead to this. I once did drugs and I tell people it was wrong. I was breaking the law and I shouldn’t have broken the law for something so childish and ultimately dangerous.  I have made amends for my error and continue to pay immensely for my wrong.  I heard of two more deaths of people I knew yesterday.  They were so young.
When I hear of Canada’s inflation and see how little I can buy with the money I have, I am afraid.  Yet, anxiety is a measure of my distance from God. If I truly have faith I will put my trust in God not in money or banks or pensions.  Yet, I see Justin Trudeau squandering the hard earned Canadian money overseas, giving it to corrupt tyrannies where all the knowledge I have tells me so very little of the money will help people. It will only make deceitful treacherous corrupt people richer and give them more power to betray and enslave their people.  Canadians frustrate me because they are reasonably upset that the Charboneau enquiry finds that Quebec’s government is run by biker gangs and mafia with millions of dollars going to corrupt French Canadian politicians. Yet they don’t seem to grasp that there are not even Charboneau enquiries in the countries where Justin Trudeau is giving away billions of Canadian dollars.
But my fear for my own aging future causes me to hate this little shit. I call the poor man that. A little turd and then ask.  Did Jesus call even Herod a little turd.  No even though Jesus threw the money lenders out of the temple asked about money he said, “give unto Cesar, cesar’s due’. He said that a bird doesn’t worry about whether God will love it so doesn’t God care for his children at least as much as he does for a bird.  So the problem isn’t Justin Trudeau but rather it’s with me.  Again Justin Trudeau is my angel because he teaches me how little faith I have and how much more prayer and meditation I must do to become spiritually “fit’.
Some of my Christian friends have their own politicians that they struggle with , Donald Trump, Merkel, Obama, Clinton.  That is for them to face.
I must remember my aunt.  I must hold my head high in politics and not descend into the scrapping and mudslinging that goes on in that realm.  I can retreat to the mountain. But the Dalai Lama saw his people killed as a child. The Chinese invaded Tibet and slaughtered all the holy men and women, mowing them down with machine guns in an act of genocide that continues today.  I visitted Cappadocia to see how Christians had built underground cities and churches to escape to when the Islamic hoards invaded their land killing all the Christians there.  We hear of the Palestinian and Israel but the  Muslim massacre of the Armenian Christians is never talked about because political correctness is the language of lying and selection.  The whole of the middeeast once a land of churches and Christians in the hundreds of thousands were decimated and slaughter by the Muslim invasion just as the HIndus and Sikhs were slaughtered in Indian.  Just as aboriginals were slaughtered in Australia, America and Canada.  The question is when do we ‘start history’, when do we set the ‘terms of reference’.  In Ireland the Normans conquered the Celts. These displacements have gone on through history but today we don’t really seem to have somewhere to escape too.
There is talk that the elite have built colony world’s in space.  There are all kinds of conspiracy theories many of which have proved true.  But I visitted the Monasteries of Meterora where the Christians fled to escape the pillaging barbarians who raped the women and slaughter the men and took the Christian children into slavery.  There is no high place where we can hide. The Tibetans are still being killed by the Communist chinese and the Christians all over the world are being persecuted.
CS Lewis and Churchill encouraged the Christians to fight back.  Even Jesus limitted the abuse a Christian must take to 70 times 70.  I feel I personally have turned my cheek that much at least by now.  Yet the issue is not defending oneself. Because we are taught, love thy neighbour as thyself.  So if an enemy who is childish and sick and ignorant by definition were to attempt to kill me I must not let him because my own death would not be loving myself and making him a murderer would not be loving him. So I am spiritually and as a Christian beholden to protect myself and my neighbour from violence and homicide. Life is sacred to Christians.  That’s why we disagree with the Aboritonists and the Euthanasia gangs.  That’s why I found Hillary Clinton so wrong.  I find Justin Trudeau’s death policies wrong as well.
As I Christian I believe in life and believe that there is a morality, actions that promote life and actions that promote death. Even Freud described these drivers as Eros, life drive and Thanatos, death drive.  The idea of light and dark, good and evil is embedded in the Torah and ancient history, to the best of my knowledge , in all religions and all people.  The idea of social relativism is an intellectual construct which doesn’t have any history to speak of and much destruction to it’s name.
The issue lies not with my enemy but rather with my action and my fear.  Spirituality I am behaving badly. I admit that watching my brother struggling with cancer and eventually dying shook me to the core because he was such a good man who gave his life for his family and served his country.  I prayed that God would take me in his stead because really I’m not a particularly good man. He was a steady Eddy. I’m kind of a spiritual fool. I’ve been a doubting Thomas. I learn mostly by mistakes and I whine and complain and fear and hate.  My brother by comparison was a rock.  He cared for his family and loved fully.
I have been overwhelmed. I’m still grieving. And when one is hurt they tend to revert to earlier mechanisms of coping. I have coped with Justin Trudeau much like an adolescent. I think I’ve come down to the political level. I watched Justin Trudeau with his attack campaign against Mr. Harper who I knew is a good man, one who doesnt do drugs , who loves and supports his family , is a stead Eddy, a man much like my brother.  A good man, a Christian. Justin Trudeau by contrast is much like me. An evil twin or what I was like when I was smoking dope and arrogant and so easily deceived by exotic psychopaths with such silly ideas about finances and economy and believing that the ‘grand ideas’ were so important.  I know today that the ‘devil is in the details’ and I’ve read with enlightenment Paul Johnson’s enlightening book called the “intellectuals’.  The proof is in the pudding.
Well, my spiritual plan is to make amends and clean up my side of the street. I will henceforth try to emulate my aunt and say less hateful things about Justin Trudeau and consider him a sick child who needs love and nurturing.  I will do my best to avoid being hurt by him. I certainly disagree with his policies.  But I will instead look and support those who are doing good.  I like Kelly Leitch’s appreciation of values and can say good things about her rather than disparaging Trudeau. I don’t need to put down a bad restaurant as much as I need to praise a good restaurant.  Just because I got diarrhea eating at the Trudeau cafe doesn’t mean I have to focus on that but instead should celebrate the marvellous dinner I got at the Conservative restaurant.  I must be more like my aunt.
Thank you Justin Trudeau for teaching me to be a better man.  Please Lord forgive me and help me to be a better man. Help me to focus on those who are doing good and celebrate their contributions.  Help me to keep my eyes on the light and be more steady in my path.  Thank you for all your Grace.  Thank you Lord Jesus for your sacrifice.  Thank you for the Cross. Guide me in being a better person.