It's not surprising to me that Cornerstone Church has been denied the conditional-use permit for the Tierra Rejada property it owns.

Yes, it's true that a presidential library, a Jewish university, a Catholic college, a bunch of mansions for the rich and a jail got permission to build as they wished in those brown hills called a "greenbelt," but a simple Christian church?

How ridiculous. How about another huge housing tract or a shopping mall instead, or even another group of townhomes?

Yes, that would all be much more acceptable. I don't want a bunch of happy charitable people running around saying we can go to heaven. Darn Christians.

It's enough that we have two established religious institutions in the greenbelt already. I'd rather have greed, jailbirds and a bunch of hookers.

I'm glad those five people voted against the church. I'm glad the board of supervisors appointed them. I'm glad those five people have voted for numerous other projects in the city instead.

I'm glad those five people made this decision, ignoring the thousands of people who are a part of the Cornerstone Church and the millions of dollars the Cornerstone Church gives to hungry children and people in need. After all, those five people are much more important.

Those five people haven't gotten to such elevated status without businesses and investors supporting them and their sponsors. Who pours money into politicians and their appointees?

Why would those other projects be allowed in the dry brown greenbelt and not a church? I asked my 8-year-old what she thought about all this. She looked puzzled, as if the answer were obvious; she said, "Does the county believe in God? If they did, they'd have a church there."

The Cornerstone project is for the spiritual wellbeing of the community and charitable causes worldwide. It is not a project based on obtaining financial wealth.

Therefore these five people and their sponsors need to be voted out of their positions and prayed for.

Look up II Chronicles 7:14 and ask yourself if this biblical illustration and our county's local example are so far from America's current dilemma.

We have a problem. You need to know who the members of the Ventura County Planning Commission are and who appointed them. It's time to vote and time to pray. Guy D. Nohrenberg Simi Valley