Letters to the editor: Believers find true happiness
Happiness is attainable if you believe in God and trust your Bible. Many New Testament scholars claim that the Bible is a human book full of lies, forgeries, and errors. Some even claim that Jesus Christ did not exist. A New Testament scholar wrote a book recently claiming that the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John are not even written by Mark, Matthew, Luke and John.
Surveys reveal that people with spiritual beliefs are happier than those without them. In America, of those who are religious, 48 percent have said they are happy, compared to 27 percent of those who are not religious.
Religion is a true route to true happiness. People turn to religion in times of joy and times of pain. Belief in God gives people a sense of meaning, a sense of wellbeing, and a sense of belonging. Happy people are more helpful, more productive, and more loyal. They are in better physical shape, healthier, heal faster, and live longer.
Belief in God gives us high self-esteem and makes us able to take a bad event and turn it into a good event. People who believe in God are happier because they have a community, a church, and a Bible study group. It is the social support network that is fulfilling. It is the sense that we are looking after one another. Religion is about helping other people and having others looking after you.
To be happy and fulfilled, you need to believe that there is a God who is in control of our lives and of the whole universe.
Salman Elawad
Phenix City
Grimly ironic
The irony of the century: Obama's Gitmo prisoner release announced as a previous detainee is arrested for terrorist activity.
We all surely must have become numb to crazy, bizarre events out of Washington, D.C. But I feel this issue is the ultimate in irony.
Just as President Obama is making a big splash announcing that all Gitmo terrorists detainees held at Gitmo will be released and the place closed, Spanish and Moroccan police were arresting four Arabs for ISIS recruiting. One of the four was a previously Obama-released Gitmo detainee! Of the 91 or so bad guys still held there, some are the most notorious ever seized on the battlefield -- the brains behind terror attacks!
While admitting that the majority of the prisoners will be sent to undisclosed facilities in the U.S. the remainder will be released again -- to fight us again! So much for the U.S. military lives and money expended to apprehend these thugs only to see our president turn them loose for political reasons.
James W. Anderson
Talladega, Ala.
Moment of truth
The major Republican leaders have finally spoken on the Trump Fiasco.
The nation has begun to wake up and recognize that Trump is truly a fascist whose major appeal to the masses, like that of Hitler, is his demonizing of other ethnic groups, finding in them the scapegoats to blame for all problems
Let us compare Trump to Obama: Trump and the Republicans have demonized Obama in a despicable fashion -- calling him a dictator, a communist, a traitor to the Constitution. Yet he is a man who will be recognized by scholars as one of our great presidents, one who in a calm, decent and dignified manner supported a new Rooseveltian style New Deal and who solved many problems in very difficult times. He was handed an economic crisis, and crises in foreign affairs, yet he has brought us renewed prosperity and would have created much more equality and justice if not stymied by a rigidly dogmatic opposition.
Against rabid opponents he has built bridges to Iran and to Cuba, and tried the same with the Russians, the North Koreans, and the Chinese, despite Putin and real communists. He has avoided easy militaristic solutions to foreign threats and terrorism. He has been progressive without being pugnacious, polite to a fault with the opposition, he has been pragmatic but never pandering to the elite among his supporters. Now Trump's time has passed -- perhaps he will withdraw again at the last second, realizing that he does not have the qualifications nor the temperament nor the stamina to be president. Perhaps he wants to lose in order to avoid the ignominy of having to really answer questions that would reveal the depth of his ignorance--ignorance on policy, on foreign affairs, on domestic issues, on most everything except possibly Donald himself.
John Studstill
Columbus
Social backsliding
Columbus State Senator Josh McKoon's revised and "improved" Religious Freedom Restoration Act has passed its Senate vote for the 2016 legislative session.
Many critics of the bill again say its actual intent is to allow discrimination of gay, lesbian and transgendered Georgians and to allow lawyers new litigation work.
Historically, my hometown of Columbus, along with most deep South towns during Jim Crow, were pitiful and hateful laggards in the embracing of social justice for all Georgians. Miraculously, much of this laggard and hateful heritage is now mostly history.
Just today I witnessed, from a Ledger-Enquirer video, a local courtroom drama play out where a young accused murderer, the presiding judge, and the prosecuting assistant district attorney were all people of color. In fact, Columbus State University is now with about 36% African American student enrollment, and African Americans are represented throughout most Southern institutions. The New South is really not the Old South!
I hope and pray Senator McKoon can soon embrace the philosophy of many great Southerners before his time such as Atlanta's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Julian Bond, the Hon. John Lewis, "outside agitators" such as Bayard Rustin, Columbus's Dr. Thomas Brewer, Primus King, Birmingham's Fred Shuttelsworth, Montgomery's E.D. Nixon, Rosa Parks and the many hundreds of thousands of others who have believed in social justice.
Many Civil rights leaders lost and risked their lives for all of us. Let's not go back in time.
Walter Thorne
New York, N.Y.
This story was originally published March 4, 2016 at 1:13 PM with the headline "Letters to the editor: Believers find true happiness ."