The Gospel of Judas and lessons learnt so far in Summer courses

I bought the National Geographic's publication of The Gospel of Judas Iscariot. Commentaries aside, I find the fundamental facts about the gospel amazing. It does make a normal Christian question about the usual doctrines that has been taught by pastors and church ministers over the centuries.

War won by the Romans to promote 'orthodox' Christianity. Burning of scrolls and documents that's not of the 'Christian' faith. Whatever happened to the freedom of thoughts? Shouldn't people be given the choice to believe what they understand about God? Religion and politics should never be put together, but yet it seems all these years, they have never been separated. How ironic.

Today in my Genereal Psychology class, we had a Iraq/Afghanistan war veteran who shared about his experiences. He is 22 years old. When asked "Where's Bin Laden?" His replied was, "Maybe he's driving a cab somewhere in USA". Then another student asked, "Didn't the government promised to take care of the welfare of the veterans?" His reply was, "It's all a lie. All the billions that was dumped into the war goes to the war, not to the soldiers." By the way, he's a Marine Corp. According to him, the Marines are trained to eliminate. The soldiers are trained to play the diplomacy role. Since the Marines were trained to kill, their mission when going to war is to kill. So when the media published about Marines killing people, whose fault is it really? The Marines, or the person who deployed the Marines? He made a very deep impact to those who were in class today. He said, "Veterans used to be a term for soldiers who survived the Vietnam war. But that's history. A war is going on in our generation, and veterans now age from 19 years-old."

Ironically, my professor is an Iranian lady who survived a massacre back at home a few decades ago. She survived and have been living in the USA for the past 30 years. When asked about the current Iranian president, she replied, "He's just a dumb politian who exchanged blood for money (oil)".

Education is still the key to bring about peace. But then again, many choose to be ignorant about the whole political scene. I used to think that by being ignorant and not vote, I won't be held responsible for whatever the government decides. I was wrong.

Is ignorance really bliss? Not when you finally know that your decision of not doing anything does affect someone else directly - when someone decides to go to war.

By the way, my classmate who's a veteran is still waiting for the approval of the educational financial aid that the government had promised in the Marine Corp recruitment exercise. Go figure yourself.