Friday, July 5, 2013

You Scratch my Back and I'll Cast you into a Lake of Fire for Eternity


"Not my will, but thine be done."

These are the words Jesus used before being tortured and executed on a cross when speaking to his father, the great, the powerful, the really, really smart, ummm, god.

He said this because, well, there was no pain where he came from and to be honest, he wasn't all that into it.

It seems that he had been on earth so long that he forgot how much he liked ruling the universe from a golden throne surrounded by adoring naked angels and preferred the comfort of dirt roads and the smell of stinky people who were in his words, "evil". *

I mean, a crown of thorns would suck, but in the end it's always nice to know your'e going to get some serious payback. Although, he did create them the way they were and the plan was for that to happen so it gets a little dicy as to who is really to blame here, but, he did walk on water, so I guess we'll take his word for it. Or rather, the word of the people who wrote down the story of him walking on water. Well, the word of the countless people who transcribed the story that was passed down verbally for god knows how long until someone finally wrote it down. And so on and stuff.

Christians often employ this expression when it comes to important matters in their lives like, which sub par, gay hating, barely credentialed, anti liberal, anti science, right wing, propgandistic, intolerant christian college they are going to. Or, which assault rifle is most suited to hunting tree frogs.

But, life does offer tough choices and sometimes it takes a good crucifixion to put things into perspective. I know what you're thinking, are there good crucifixions? Of course there are.

Whenever my life gets hard I think, well, at least I'm not some delusional, self righteous misogynist that thinks he's god incarnate and will spend the last days of my life being tortured while all my friends take off and come up with some story that will allow them to cash in on my excruciating death.

That always helps.

So, maybe god does care about which college you go to. But yeah, he doesn't. 

It does seem a little more likely that if there was a god, he would be concerned about the millions of people who don't have any food to eat. Or the people with terminal illnesses. Or the millions of people (just like his own son) who suffer from mental illness.

Maybe god doesn't give a shit about you because you don't care about anything that he cares about.  It's very possible that he doesn't want to hear you talking to him anymore because he is tired of listening to you whine about your petty problems while you condemn others for simply living their lives.

I think it is quite possible that if life is a test, as many religious types think it is, that maybe god is testing them. We all know god has a delightful sense of humor.  Maybe he sent one of his newly made angels to earth as a sort of hazing period, you know, just to mess with him a little (after all, being all powerful can get pretty boring). Let him think he was god's son for a laugh. And while he's at it, he'll have this guy tell people that if they don't start saying the right words, have sex the right way, drive large suvs, cry a lot, use the right hand gestures, and wear really ugly t shirts with dumb slogans on them, and make awful music, they will be cast into a bed of hot lava.

I think that would be the greatest practical joke ever. And who but the all powerful creator of practical jokes would be able to pull off such a grand one? Greedy assholes? Most likely. But, for the sake of this hypothesis, we'll say the whole idea was for god to test the "faithful" to find out if they actually were compassionate and would forgo their "inheritance" and stand up for their fallen brothers and sisters.

He might hope that they were able to see the injustice of condemning his creation for being born with an inherited penchant for disobedience. Maybe, they would tell god to go to hell and in return, he would send them to heaven.

Or maybe he would regret not making them smarter.

After all, god does work in mysterious ways.




*I am not passing judgement on this assessment, I think Jesus was right about some stuff.


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