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iHATE People Religion |
Ever swilling coffee with a variety of people, conversations occasionally drift into the two subjects I never enjoy: politics and religion. Everyone is always convinced they are right, completely right,
and have gathered facts from television, their college textbooks, and the internet to prove it. No one listens to anyone else, and it usually all comes to a head in name calling and temper tantrums. You do
get to see the occasional chair throwing, WWF-style beating, but these (though more entertaining than the snobby one-upsmanship that passes for "debate") is a rare treat. But when religion comes up, there is always someone around who pipes in to defend their christianity with "Oh no, I don't believe all of that..." and proceeds to feed you their personal diet of christianity. No two versions are the same, and some of them have so very little to do with christianity in the first place it's safe to wonder if they've ever even read the bible. Maybe they're too lazy to find out anything about their religion and just decided to wing it. Maybe they're undercover catholics trying to stir up dissension in the anti-papal ranks. God could be anything. Depending on the Personal Christian Nonsense Generator these people carry, god is anything from the white bearded moses-figure to The Force from Star Wars. "I believe god is a 'she,' a benevolent mother figure." Well, I guess that puts all of that "God the Father" crap right out the window. If memory serves, the worshipers of the "benevolent mother figure" used to get slaughtered by christians on a regular basis. "God isn't a being, it's an all powerful force that..." what? Binds the universe together? Thanks, Obi-Wan, but, historicly, christians were never fond of metaphysics and existentialism either. "God is in everything. He's the spirits of the trees and the earth." And christians sent missionaries to Japan to convert people away from shinto, too. In my experience, modern christians are anything but. They are pagans, closet wiccans, and new age dreamers. I've never had a problem with the metaphysicans and spiritualists, really, but if you call these people something other than "christian," they get very defensive. You're shaking the big Hell Stick at someone who has a mansion reserved for them in heaven, and they have dinner reservations with Christ... who may or may not be a large pool of water, a loving kangaroo, or anything else these people can invent. If god is everywhere, hearing everything, why wasn't everyone worshiping J. Edgar Hoover? And I know that christianity has been going on like this for some time. Catholicism is pretty far from the biblical center of thought, and it's been around longer than the FBI. I have a friend that's convinced that the Pope is the butt of hundreds of years of jokes, based on tricking some poor shmoe into believing "Now, if we give you The Big Hat, you're in charge of everything." And every time the pope has a divine insight about the endochrine system being sinful, the entire vatican is rolling on the floor laughing. How did hat size become a symbol of power? Line up catholics by rank, and you can easily see that the Shriners are pretty well respected by god. Their hats are almost bishop-sized. So I'm theorizing my own christianity. I'm a christian now, but I believe that god is a large, pink, fuzzy elephant who lives on the north pole. He sent Christ down from the north pole to gather eggs, and when he was caught (the Romans hated egg theives), he was crucified. He went to hell, which is located on Mars, for three days, because the Pink Fuzzy Elephant God was angry about not getting his eggs. Eventually he let Christ back into heaven (which is on god's pink fuzzy back, where it is very comfortable) and decided to let all of mankind come with him, because people tended to have access to... you guessed it... eggs. Possibly even hash browns.
The Fear Policy
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