Christianity vs. SGS

Did you ever have a buddy who was dating a total skank? A pure, ballsout street-rat crazy gutter slut? At one time or another, most of us have known someone like that and the saddest part was how hard he tried to convince everyone that no, she was really cool, you just had to get to know her better. Those things that other people said about her, well, they're just not true, and on and on.

It's sad and more than a little pathetic. I've dubbed this condition Skank Girlfriend Syndrome, or SGS for short. It can be applied to nearly any situation that requires some cognitive dissonance (i.e. Star Wars prequels, Windows Vista, Smart cars, etc.). Of all the situations in which we notice people indulging in this sad and silly phenomena, the most visible is religion, specifically Christianity.

Plastic Jesus fish on cars, faith-based advertising, door-to-door prostelyzing, t-shirts and Christian 'rock' are all designed for a singular purpose: it is a way for the suckers who buy the lie to attract other suckers because hey, the more people who believe in something silly, the less silly it appears to be. To them, at least.

Yep, I find Christianity to be silly, stupid and dangerous and at some level, I think most 'believers' have occasional moments of clarity in which they see it as something ridiculous as well. Of course, they immediately dismiss it as the work of Satan; the notion of which is even sillier than all the goofy-ass dogma attached to believing in God and Jesus. The brutal, meathook reality is that there are few things more stupid, cowardly and dangerous than a True Believer who feels it is their mission in life to recruit others.

Look at all the cultures and civilizations that have been destroyed by the Church, the Crusades, the Inquisition and, the most loathsome of all zealots, missionaries. How many people have been brutally tortured and murdered in the name of religious conversion? I'm not even talking about people who have suffered under the oppressive hand of Islam; that's a rant for another time.

If a person needs faith of one sort or another to help them make sense of life, well, that's their trip and I couldn't care less. All I ask is that they keep their nonsense to themselves and out of my life, my schools and my government. In other words, if your skank girlfriend is blowing the entire varsity football team, don't try to convince me that she's a virgin.

Today's Sermon

Gather 'round my brethren, for I am here today to tell you of the greatest threat facing our beliefs today. Yes, I'm talkin' 'bout REASON! Now, before y'all get all worked up, lemme just spell out a thing or two.

Now, those us us who are cozy in the sweet embrace of our lord Jesus Christ™ know that four thousand years after God's creation of the Earth and the heavens, God went and knocked up a virgin girl with his own personal seed. She birthed a boy and after thirty or so years of doing stuff (we don't know what), that son went and got himself nailed to a tree by the people who control Hollywood. After he was dead, he done rose up from the grave and flew up to Heaven to be with his other daddy (just 'cause Jesus had two daddies, that don't mean anyone else can). Now, we know this is fact, 'cause the Bible done told us so.

Now, if we wanna go to Heaven and sit with Jesus™, we gots to get borned again and eat his body and drink his blood, but that don't make us cannibals or even just barnyard crazy. This makes us Saved™ and that means we're better than everyone else and we're obliged to tell them so. It also means that it is our holy duty to go out in our communities and even other countries and share the Good News, even if we gotta do it by brute force and torture, so that everyone will know about God's Holy Love. If they still don't wanna believe, we gotta steal their children, rape the women and burn the villages until they all believe in the glory of God's Holy Love. It's the Christian thing to do.

Let's get hippo-thetical here for a minute: Let's say you go to a place and the folks there tell you that their god(s) is older than Jesus™. They tell you that their system of belief is older than yours and they gots "scientific data" to prove it. Well, we all know that science is the work of the Devil, and we don't truck with no Devil work. They try to tell you that their holidays was stolen by the Christians and that Christmas ain't even the birthday of our beloved baby Jesus™, it's actually the Winter Solstice or some such nonsense. And then they commit further blasphemy by tellin' y'all that Easter used to be a fertility festival, which explains all the bunnies and eggs and whatnot. Brethren, it is a Christian FACT that Easter is the day Jesus™ went all zombie and he was so hungry he done et up all the bunnies and eggs that was brought to him 'cause it's only in Devil movies that zombies wanna eat brains.

The worst of all heathens will ask how it's possible that all of humanity sprung from the loins of one man, one woman and their son. Look around you, and you can see that keepin' it in the family works, although we don't really want most of the offspring driving the school bus.

Brothers and sisters, these are all LIES. So what if biblical scholars agree that Jesus was prob'ly borned in spring or summer? So what if there is quantifiable evidence of the existence of thousands of gods waaaay before ours? Who cares that no one can vouch for three decades of the life of our most holy Lord and Savior? Just because I cain't reckon a boat that could carry two of every species of animal that ever was, including over four hunnerd and fifty thousand species of beetle, that don't mean it didn't happen!

And now, I'm hearin' more and more talk about them nasty Atheists. These creatures, these Hellspawn, they actually make their decisions based on such anti-Christian things as science, logic and reason. REASON! They won't believe nothin' what don't make actual sense! They ain't content to believe to what an untrained, uneducated zealot like myself interprets from an archaic, superstitious book of fairy tales like our Holy Bible! They wanna actually unnerstand things for theyselves without someone tellin' them to believe outta blind faith and that, brothers and sisters, is the scariest thing of all.

Why, if these people had their way, they'd want all of us, all of YOU to think for ourselves and I can tell you, that don't lead to nothin' good. Nothin' good for me, anyway. If y'all went out on your own and thought for yourselves, then you wouldn't need church and you wouldn't need me. You wouldn't be scared and if you ain't scared you ain't fillin' my pews and my tithe bucket. If you ain't filling my tithe bucket, then I gotta get me a real job and I can tell you right now, that ain't gonna happen.

Brothers and sisters, for the love of God and my own personal ego, stay stupid. Stay scared. I sure as Hell am.

The Greatest Story Ever Told

Saint Peter is watching the gates of Heaven, but he really has to go to the bathroom. He asks Jesus to watch the gates for a few minutes, and Jesus agrees.

As Jesus is standing there, he sees an old man leading a donkey up from Earth to Heaven. He notices the old man has carpenter's tools with him. When the old man gets to the gates, Jesus asks him to describe his life and explain why he feels he should be admitted into Heaven.

The man explains, "In English, my name would be Joseph, but I didn't live in America or England. I lived a modest life, making things out of wood. I'm not remembered very well by most people, but almost everyone has heard of my son. I call him my son, but I was more of a Dad to him -- he really didn't come into this world in the usual way.

I sent my son out to be among the people of the World. He was ridiculed by many, and was even known to associate himself with some pretty unsavory characters, although he himself tried to be honest and perfect. My single biggest reason for trying to get into Heaven is to be re-united with my son."

Jesus is awe-struck by the man's story. He looks into the old man's eyes and asks, "Father?"

The old man's face brightens; he looks at Jesus, and asks, "Pinocchio?"

Movie Time!

The other day I watched a documentary called Hell House. It's about this mega-church in Texas that, every Halloween, puts on a haunted house of sorts, with a Christian twist: each tableau portrays people engaging in activities which will lead to their eternal damnation.

We are introduced to various people involved in the project, from the single father who desperately hopes his daughter will win the role of "Rape Girl" to the church's resident techboy who claims to know all sorts of nasty things about raves and seems to have a serious obsession with date-rape drugs. Several other characters will come to light in due time.

There is a creepiness to this project that the participants are probably unaware of. Like most Christians I've met, they are all morbidly obsessed with all manner of sin: abortion, rape, homosexuality, drugs, witchcraft, and on and on. They seem to spend hour after hour talking about, discussing and rehearsing those very things that they condemn, with great enthusiasm. One of the church's so-called youth leaders casts himself as a gang banger; during the performance he threatens a member of another gang (played one of two black people in the entire project) with a real gun, repeatedly calling the kid "boy" and even resorting to the dreaded "N" word. He's really into the performance, so much so that one wonders if he might be experiencing sexual arousal from the activity.

Then we come to witchraft/satanism. We learn early on that the Harry Potter books are actually gateways to satanic practices, a point which is illustrated in the show itself. In one of the film's most telling moments, two church members are discussing the portrayal of witchcraft: they debate whether red or white is the preferred color of devil-worshippers until they recall the advice of a 'warlock' who visited Hell House several years before. In the end, they paint a pentagram in red, with but one small problem: the idiots have painted a Star of David, NOT a pentagram. We can only wonder if this was an honest mistake, a deliberate anti-Jewish statement, or just grotesque ignorance.

Overall, I'd have to say that my favorite of all the characters in this bizarre project is the roofie-obsessed rave officianado. Claiming to have been to at least one rave, his recollections are vivid, to say the least as he tells of the rampant drug use and promiscuous behavior he observed but obviously didn't participate in. To add "realism" to his pet tableau, he spray paints all sorts of 'rave' stuff on the walls, including his IM handle and personal web address. Yep, that'll teach them kids about the evils of rave and the benefit of shameless self-promotion!

Lessons learned from that year's Hell House include:
Raves = drug use = rape = suicide = Hell.
Gangs = violence = Hell.
Harry Potter = Satanism = Hell.
Morning after pill = spectacular white-pants bleedout = death = Hell.
Depression = suicide = Hell.
Adultery = domestic violence = murder = Hell.
Molestation = homosexuality = AIDS = Hell.

If only the rest of the world was as simple and black-and-white as it's portrayed. Naturally, the last display of Hell House is the big money shot, Hell itself. Maybe I'm a little jaded, but thr version of Hell they show is pretty pussified, compared to all the carnage that preceded it. After experiencing eternal damnation for five minutes or so, guests are ushered into what, for my money, was the scariest part of the entire thing: A clean, well-lit room whose inhabitant is an angry man (the other black guy) who pressures guests to walk into the next room to get saved. I should point out that, as far as I could see, the ONLY door out of this room was the door to the church counselors. There may have been a "thanks but no thanks" exit, but I didn't see one.

I have to give the filmmakers much credit for keeping the film even and unbiased, for which the people in it are all the more horrifying. The true evils of Hell House are the rampant ignorance, fear, obsessions, homophobia and outright stupidity that these people enable within themselves and those around them.

Dammit.

A new couple moved in upstairs a while back. They seemed fun enough, and we hit it off pretty well. We went out to dinner with them one evening and while the girls chatted the guy, who I'll call "Bob," turned to me and we embarked upon the following conversation:

Bob: So hey, what religion are you?
El Ráy: Well Bob, I'm an atheist.
Bob: Are you serious?
El Ráy: Yes.
Bob: I'm a Christian. I've been Born Again.
El Ráy: Um, okay.
Bob: You don't believe in God?
El Ráy: No Bob, I don't.
Bob: Aren't you worried about going to Hell?
El Ráy: Nope.
Bob: What do you mean, 'nope?'
El Ráy: It's like this, Bob: I don't believe in God, which means I don't believe in Heaven. It also means that I don't believe in Satan or Hell, either. It's a package deal.
Bob: Did you ever believe in God?
El Ráy: For a while, yes.
Bob: What happened?
El Ráy: Not enough added up. I couldn't roll with the contradictions.
Bob: But the Bible says that if you don't accept Jesus as your savior, you'll go to hell.
El Ráy: That's assuming that the Bible is true.
Bob: It IS true! It's the word of God.
El Ráy: Actually, it's not. It's a bunch of books written by a bunch of guys, who all had axes to grind.
Bob: It seems like you know a lot about the Bible.
El Ráy: In this day and age, I have to be able to defend my beliefs with knowledge.
Bob: Why?
El Ráy: Because if I tell people I'm an atheist, I'm usually treated to incessant questioning and attempts to "Save" me. Have you ever read the entire Bible, Bob?
Bob: I've read some parts of it. Have you?
El Ráy: Yes, I have.
Bob: Why?
El Ráy: Partly because I think that if I'm going to be called on the carpet for my non-belief, I'd better have my ducks in a row. Besides, the Bible was largely responsible for my realization that God doesn't exist.
Bob: How can you say that?
El Ráy: I'd be a liar if I said anything else.
Bob: You know, I went through a rough time in my life (this is where Bob spent about ten minutes attempting to witness to me and, of course, save me).
El Ráy: That's great, Bob. I'm glad you found something that works for you. You do realize that what you were just doing was attempting to save me, right?
Bob: I was just...
El Ráy: Bob, I respect your right to believe however you see fit and I won't try to convert you. Can you do the same for me?
Bob: Um, sure.
El Ráy: Great.

This peaceable agreement lasted until the following weekend when we went out with them again and Bob, who was driving, wanted me to hear a CD of "this really awesome band" he liked. It was, of course, a Christian band.

More often than not, this is how it goes. I have to be prepared for the full-on assault of the religious types because they are wholly incapable of abiding any belief (and especially non-belief) that they can't understand. I am ready and willing to agree to disagree and respect their rights and yet, they just can't or won't do the same.

So, Bob and I became polite neighbors, but never really friends. It wasn't for lack of trying on my part and while we never spoke of it again, the reason was obvious: when puch came to shove, Bob just couldn't roll with a friend who doesn't believe. So it goes.