Feeling Like I Let Myself Down

It is not fashionable to have Faith.

People who have faith are stupid and behind the times. They try to follow Rules (and is there any thing more ridiculous than Rules?) and they think more about what will happen after they are alive than what is currently rumbling their jollies in this day-to-day existence. Dumb, stupid, mislead, ignorant, those people of faith.

Of course what might exist beyond the gulps, snores, farts, and shits of everyday life HAS to be daydreams or phobias or fantasies. Surely farts and shits are the be-all and end-all of human life.

Oh, that, and sex. Don't forget sex, it is more important than any rule ... and if you don't believe that, then watch some TV. TV will show you that sex is more important than anything else in the world, including hunger or education -- or faith.

So we got farts, shits, fast food, and sex. That's it. That's the human condition, the most important things, the most acclaimed things, the most cared-for things -- and if you think that there is another life beyond this all, why, then, you must be a primitive idiot who not only believes in God but also in pixies and the Tooth Fairy and a fat old man in red trimmed with white faux fir called Santa Claus.

I had the opportunity to talk with someone the other evening about writing, and this person stated that he/she was writing a new version of the Bible from his/her own viewpoint: that Jesus was a sadist, forcing people to pledge allegiance to His teachings or be condemned to Hell.

Here, all my ignorant, confused life, I thought Jesus the Christ was offering people an alternative to Oblivion, showing them a way to find fulfillment, a path to reunion with God the Creator.

In a world where riots break out when a cartoon of Mohammed is shown with a bomb embedded in his turban, I remained silent when the Lamb of God, the Perfect Recompense to the Ultimate Offense, was reviled. I don't feel good about that. No, not at all.

Why didn't I say what I was thinking, that I was offended by the subject? Gays are supposed to be militant about slurs against gays. Women are supposed to stand up for themselves and proclaim themselves the equals of men. People of color are supposed to leap up and challenge stereotypes that sneer at them. Why is it so politically incorrect for me to step up and say, "Get off Christianity! If you don't like it, then at least have the courtesy to shut up about it????"

Yet it is considered politically incorrect to do so. If you defend your Christian faith, you are a Cro-Magnon bigot of all that is shit, farts, and sex, the triumphs of Humankind.

I'm very, very tired of being expected to roll over and play stupid about theology.

God Is. One can slap one's hands over one's eyes and say, "I don't see God." One can turn his or her back and say, "I refuse to see God." One can even fumble through life, hands outstretched, and say, "I have not encountered God." But none of those things change God. People cannot make God not exist.

And Hell? Yes, Hell exists, too, but not as a garbage can that non-conformists are stuffed into like the cast-off cartons of Big Macs or as a cosmic shredder for lives whose script has read like a tragedy bereft of hope. Hell is a choice. A deliberate choice.

We call it "The Afterlife" as though it was the Next Thing we get to experience, complete with our cell phones and nail polish. But in reality, it is all around us, every minute, no matter where we are. What we see and hear in this life is a muffled echo of what really is.