The Opinion "To be a Christian necessarily means that the individual seeks philosophical, moral and spiritual harmony with the ineffable source of the manifested Universe" has died after a brief, two thousand year illness. The Opinion leaves behind millions of judgmental, stone-throwing, mote-in-their-enemy's-eye-seeking, homophobic, self-righteous, hypocritical, fear-based, dualistic followers without benefit of a high-horse to sit upon. Pity, that.
Born and raised in the Middle East (before taking up quarters in Rome) the Opinion eschewed formal schooling and practiced instead the art of wagging its finger, tilting back its head, furrowing its brow, arching its eyebrows and shifting its legs while telling anyone who listened that God was love and if you didn't believe it you would burn in an everlasting lake of fire. After looking down its nose at anyone who believed differently it brought its message of hope and terrifying anguish to the New World, cloaking the natives in shame and disease while spraying its urine on the local belief systems.
The Opinion eventually went on to give strength and comfort to its adherents in the New Land, people who didn't have the slightest idea why men had penises and women had Georgia O'Keefe paintings as their respective reproductive organs. An added bonus was that the contents of the Christian Bible were just contradictory enough to make the believers forget about fucking for upwards of forty-five minutes at a time, depending on the season. Another bonus to the theological fixations of New World Christians was their learning how bronze age Jews weren't nearly as funny as their descendants, but the Old Testament Yahweh wasn't exactly a shopping cart of laughs either, so there you go.
The Opinion spent its remaining years casting about for enemies in all shapes and sizes: gay marriage, women's right to sovereignty over their own bodies in a secular society, global warming, the scientific theory of evolution (as opposed to the non-scientific assertions of Genesis) to name but a few. As time passed, and as more and more self-described Christians behaved like the horny, avaricious little demons they claimed to despise, the Opinion could no longer sit in judgment on others without breaking into a deep and abiding guffaw. The Opinion passed away on December 8th of this year during a final fit of accidental self-reflection. It leaves millions of survivors in a collective state of abject reality.
In lieu of flowers the family of the Opinion ask that you judge others, cast stones, treat people poorly, do not tend to the poor or the sick, never turn your cheek, and don't treat anyone the way you would treat the titular head of your own belief system. That which you do for the least of them is your own dirty little problem.
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The Opinuary Column appears just about every gosh-darn Friday at Jesus' General.
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By God, mjs, you left out so much of the good bad stuff that Christians have done. And I'm not just talking about the Crusades and the Inquisition. I'm talking about things like the massacre of the Huguenots. That was back when the French really knew how to kill people. Even though the ones being kilt were other French people...
ReplyDeleteGreat post, mjs, with possibly one typo, you can't really do anything "for" the poor because they will always be with you, that's scripture. You can just do "to" them. They should, of course, be eternaloly gratefull for whatever it is.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with this particular death is that it had served as the balancing vindication to a young nation's eager and impetuous decree.
ReplyDeleteWhile lately it served more as lip service insofar as its primary subject had taught, nonetheless the self-serving advocates couldn't press the older biblical texts hard enough, preferring 'an eye for an eye' over Christ's love for His fellow man.
Abject reality is a bitch.
One of my favorite quotes from David Foster Wallace:
ReplyDelete“… I have administrative bones to pick with God …. I’ll say God seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I’m not crazy about. I’m pretty much anti-death. God looks by all accounts to be pro-death. I’m not seeing how we can get together on this issue ….”
(From Infinite Jest.)
Or, if you prefer Monty Python’s take on the whole Jehovah business, there’s this.
mjs
ReplyDeleteI hope you don't mind that I'm considering plagiaizing big honkin' chunks of this for my first annual Holiday(tm) newsletter. I have quite a few fundi-xian relatives and this would be a great way to share the spirit of the season.
Mr. mjs, Sir:
ReplyDeleteNo word on the opinion's siamese twin brother, KKKristianity (separated sometime after the reformation)? He seems to be thriving, the little bugger.
I hear the Opinion's headstone reads: " Holier than thou, but will put in a good word for you, you pagan dirtbag of a soul".
ReplyDelete....the scientific theory of evolution (as opposed to the non-scientific assertions of Genesis) to name but a few.
ReplyDeleteRichard Dawkins has changed this to the "Evolution Theorum" recently.
Great post, mjs.
I used to think that being a Christian had a neutral moral value--true, I thought, there might be positive or negative Christians, but maybe it all ended in a zero sum game--it wasn't all that important to pay too close attention to true believers. That approach has changed for me: I can no longer abide nonsense, especially when the nonsense perpetuates bigotry and intellectual and moral vacuity. The commingling of church and state, of guns and god and oil, is an obscenity.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the Opinion didn't die of natural causes. Maybe it was gunned down by a hunter riding shotgun in a helicopter--perhaps it was scoped and plugged by a Christian assassin sent by TBN. Maybe only 30% of the US is batshit stupid and crazy. Still, that's a whole lot of turds in the punch bowl. And I'm thirsty, damnit!
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It's Barbara Tuchman's "The March of Folly" theory. Like governments that eventually work against their own interests, so, too, do dying religions.
ReplyDeleteJudaism has been basically a social club like the Rotarians for some time (although no one told Hitler and Israel); and Christianity has been riding a greased rail for centuries. It was inevitable that the 'True Believers' would start acting like that which Jesus condemned -- hypocrites, moneychangers, warmongers, priests to the powerful, et al. Islam, 600 years younger than Christianity, has started its suicidal path as well, no humor intended.
We'll probably have to endure another few centuries of some kind of organized pious hogwash before the human race emerges from the other end of the religious alimentary canal to bask in the enlightened state of each person believing whatever the hell they want without benefit of a church, synagogue or mosque, and without paying dues to contemplate an invisible entity that may only exist in myth.
That's if we survive that long, an issue which is still in doubt.
I believe the name of this opinion was mis-quoted. The opinion's full name is "To be a a monotheist necessarily means...", though in some situations the word "monotheist" can be interchanged with the phrase "child of Abraham."
ReplyDeleteThis is a great piece of footage. Pity you spelled his name wrong though
ReplyDelete