Jesus Keeps Entering My Life;

He Needs To Get a Life of His Own

I made a mistake at work. I asked a coworker what her plans for the weekend were. Just to be sociable.

A few items down the list of chores and diversions, she mentioned an anti-abortion rally her church was sponsoring. I didn't comment for a few minutes, but when the pressure reached that familiar stage at which I knew something had to come out of my mouth or the whole top of my head would fly off, I spoke. "How much are they charging?"

"Who? What are you talking about," queried my coworker, liked by everyone in the office for her consistent sweetness.

"This fundraiser your church is doing … abortions," I explained, and that started the ball rolling. I never elaborated on my own opinion in any way but to chuckle at her warnings about the lake of fire in which I'd be spending my eternal afterlife, but that was enough to earn me the accusation that I was interfering with her beliefs.

Think about this. This sanctimonious, ignorant, superstitious, self-righteous, bloodthirsty, tyrannical bitch is going to spend her Sunday afternoon with a bunch of likeminded assholes, trying to make women they don't even know feel guilty about a decision that is absolutely none of their business with the goal of cluttering and crowding the world I have to live in with the fucked up, permanently disturbed and periodically dangerous people who typically start out as unwanted fetuses, and if I don't like it, I'm condemning myself to eternal damnation and unimaginable torment; not the torment we're all imagining for Osama bin Laden, mind you, but unimaginable torment.

Furthermore, she and the rest of the sweet church ladies are undoubtedly cold-blooded enough to bake cookies for their afternoon's work of inflicting suffering on the world around them. They'll probably even sing while they're doing it, and the desperate pregnant women unfortunate enough to encounter them will be driven as close to suicide and madness as they will ever be in their lives.

… And I'm interfering with someone's beliefs. Motherfucker, I never told anyone about Santa, but if you come up to me and say, "Believe in Santa or the elves are going to dig your carcass up after you die, resurrect you, and pour molten glass into your urethra before breakfast every morning and then they're going to really get to work, and you deserve it for not believing in Santa," don't be surprised if I tell you there's no Santa and either poke fun at the more fantastic elements of the whole Santa mystique or poke a sharp object in your eye, because I'll think you deserve that for threatening me with stupid-ass sadistic monster elves.

Let me point something else to all you Christian sons of bitches here - Santa never whimsically zapped a fig tree for obstinately not producing fruit out of season like your pal, Jesus, never got closer to that nasty foot washing thing than the stockings, and sure as hell never said, "Eat me," to his elves the way Jesus did to his. Or disciples. Whatever.

There are good things about religion(from the Latin religare, "to bind"). Without it, cussing would be limited to listing of body parts and functions, and Jesus Christ, that would put all our motherfuckin' balls in a river of shit, goddam it to hell. In addition, if you strip away the bloodthirsty, barbaric, mythic elements from the Four Gospels, you can introduce yourself to a Jesus who is fine and exemplary in every way(that fig tree incident doesn't turn up in all four Gospels). He is wise, compassionate, articulate, generous, heroic, judicious … the list goes on to describe someone altogether worthy of praise, emulation, consideration and protection. We can be very confident that He cared for the poor and infirm and envisioned and advocated a better world. Probably, his public appearances were popular enough to require taking advantage of extraordinarily good acoustic environments, so that His voice could reach all listeners. As it was unlikely that civil authorities would have issued Him a permit to use the town amphitheatre, and as sound carries well over water, we can picture Him standing in a small boat speaking to an attentive audience thronged around the shore. Sadly, childlike minds not only find it easier to picture and accept a god of all nature breaking the laws of nature by walking on water, but also find it necessary.

However, in both fantastic and realistic elements of the Gospels and the rest of the Bible, you will also be introduced to other people, and to people in general, and people in general want to do big, dramatic things, especially to propitiate the Terrible Old Man deity that followed us down from the trees, especially in springtime to magically insure a good harvest with a sacrifice. Just pushing a blind, worn out, old leper off a cliff to honor one's gods is very much like leaving a nickel tip for a server at a white tablecloth restaurant. If you want good food next time you have to look that waitress, or that harvest deity, in the eye, you better leave a better tip, like at least a Lincoln, maybe a Hamilton or, say, what's the best tip of all? Why, it's the most valuable one, so let's find the person with the superlative number of superlatives in superlative quantities and sacrifice him in springtime so that we'll get a superlative harvest. That'll really be something.

I mean, that'll really be something.

I mean, that'll really be something called The New Testament.

People in general suck, and people in general are the ones to whom religion will bind you. Remember that book, or movie, or whatever the hell it was, called, "God Is My Co-Pilot?" Well, who do you think was driving those planes September 11th, 2001?

Maybe He'll help drive those abortion protesters home this coming Sunday evening.