Learn From It

Have you noticed all the Christians who have been throwing themselves on their swords, giving up their very lives for what they believe?

Me neither.

Have you noticed all the Christians who have been throwing themselves on their metaphorical swords, giving up at least their livelihoods for what they believe?

Me neither.

But Jesus wants, apparently, a strong economy and a strong national defense—he was just having one on the moneychangers in that story—and for abortion doctors to be killed (thou shalt not kill anyone but a “killer”, it would seem). Jesus knew the jig was up with the whole Creation thing, it would also seem, and so wants his shallow and often pedantic crowd to cover for Their Lord in Heaven: Intelligent Design, as supported by clearly learning-impaired non compos non-intelligentsia. Jesus would also like everyone to be able to own semi-automatic weaponry and cop-killer ammunition.

Isn't It Ironic, Alanis?

I'll answer for her, and say, sure, if it weren't so very very sad. They all seem like they're betting on a horse more than being followers of the Biblical Jesus, going all Rapture and End of Days-y on our profane asses and crying Chicken Little one too many times. The sky is, indeed, falling, but not for lack of trying by the “liberal” folks out there to stop and hopefully reverse ozone depletion (they're waiting for Jesus to do it, I guess).

But, Our Lord God of the Biscuits, you say, doesn't God help those who help themselves?

Of course, but like any rank amateur or outmoded anachronism, he didn't cover all his bases. He allowed room for interpretation! Silly goose.

Now he's got a bunch of his crowd loving sinners, hating sins, tending vineyards bursting with grapes of wrath, and otherwise having dialed their focus so off from the original that now everything is upside-down.

I don't blame them, on a certain level, though (think: lions). Sure, Jesus said that if someone slaps your cheek, present the other one to him for the same treatment. Historical Jesus was a hippie, a lover of men (cue the Church pedants apologists academics swooping in here on their I-ain't-no-Monkey's-Uncle-wings to clarify that one to you all), a disruptive force and, dare I say, socially a communist! (you people! drop the needles, drop the camels: it just ain't gonna happen)

Fealty is defined as: a feudal tenant's or vassal's sworn loyalty to a lord and/or the formal acknowledgment thereof.

The religious West has stepped away from its abstractions, from its expansiveness, from its loving kindness and its spiritual hospitality and traded it for nothing more than a mean little corner of the world of humanity, erecting walls around what they believe and then telling you simultaneously that there's no room for you and that you are invited to their table.

Naturally there is a continuum of individuals in any membership—much as the super-elastic inversely-iconoclastic Christian Right would like to narrow and eliminate the spread—and naturally I do not mean to include those who are still abstract and expansive and kind and spiritually hospitable about Jesus or Vishu or the Flying Spaghetti Monster or whomever their belief system rests its butt on.

I mean those for whom a glint of the verisimilitude of righteousness appears in their eyes when they see the “godless” suffer or the “liberals” falter. There's a sick glee in Pat Robertson when he's blaming the faggots for Hurricane Andrew a few years ago, and in others blaming the “sins” of New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina or telling you outright that god simply hates fags unequivocally or whack-jobs in Eastern Washington desperately arguing with vehement voice that Matthew Shepard was dead from anything—anything in the world! Please God!—other than homophobia gone unchecked.

My friend, Lee, came up with the world for the twisted pleasure these Biblytic monsters derive from the pain of the ungodly: god-enfreude.

It would be funny, if it weren't so very, very true.

Where are those other Christians, by the way? The ones not so Very Right all the time? The ones who should be defending hippie-Jesus from misinterpretation? Someone has to. I think we all are fairly certain by now that God's not coming back.

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