Universalism or just plain ol’ Brainwashing?

In replying to another blog, in the vein of how religions and cults use isolation as a tool in proselytizing, I got this response and it’s been festering.   Take a look…

Imbrocata , you misunderstand the verse —”i have come to set a father against son , mother against daughter ..etc”. Jesus sees the abuse of power that happens in a nuclear family , so he was working to extend the family of humanity . WELCOME TO UNIVERSALISM.
notice where the break is –the very axis of power between the generations . this is connected to his ”who are my brother and sisters and mothers ? those who do the will of God ”. actually , Christ is tearing apart the mythos of the family values crowd . it was so in the Med culture as it is today in so called happy christian amerika. all of this family values crap is just that. the family is a cult . Christ sought to break that into a new form of universalism which is all inclusive anti –cultic . he did the same thing with placing the poor over the rich , the famale over the male , et.c this is called ”Inversion theology ”.

i would like to recommend a very insiteful work on this called –”Jesus -a revolutionary bio” –by Jon Dominic Crossan .

However , i do happen to agree with you . i as a christian practioner of 38 years would never break off a relationship with someone becuase they dont believe. that is just silly and very inmature. why ? becuase we are not our ideas . we are all human . LOL

Is anyone else’s head spinning?   My basic complaint is that Christianity along with most (all?) other cults will encourage blood relations to sever those family ties in favor of ‘spiritual’ ties.   This response says that my misunderstanding is what?   That Christ has set up a spiritual family that is greater than the physical families in which we grow up?  Isn’t that making my very point?

This is claimed to be ‘inclusive’ when it most definitely not.   To be fully inclusive, there can be no conditions which must be met and in this case, ‘those who do the will of God’ is a condition which excludes, necessarily, those who do not do the will of God, nuclear family or no.   In this case, those who see spiritual rubbish for the nonsense it is and so, do not do the will of gods or any other non-existent beings, are ex-communicated and shunned from those who count themselves in the pro-mythos set.

My argument stands; It is a mechanism of brain-washing to inculcate the belief that the strain or complete destruction of family relations are none other, and only the result and sign of a strong walk with ‘God’ or other worshipped entity or dogma.   Indeed, it actually can and often does become not just the supposed symptom of a pious and religious life, but the very goal which adherents consciously or subconsciously actively seek out.   Withdrawal from the individual or family, blaming the individual or family for the withdrawal and justification by pseudo-sanctification.

And notice here the mental gymnastics of one who wishes to disagree with me by supporting my very argument.   The confusion is not my own (this time).

Standing in the Shower

Standing in the Shower.

What can I add to this?   There are so many little messages here, nuggets of truth and hues of thoughts that have colored my thinking as of late.

My mind wanders to “IF” by Rudyard Kipling, a companion poem for sure in setting straight those things which truly have value.

Also, I’m reminded of a post on FB by a Christian friend that basically suggested those ‘without Christ’ have no hope – But NO!  Here, Standing in the Shower, one finds hope for one’s life; and that hope is pure and good.

Last, a friend of mine has described himself as a “Richist” which is much the same, after a fashion, as a “Racist” but race is not here involved at all; the Rich most certainly are.   Freely admitting there are ‘good’ rich people and that we ourselves are by some standards ‘Rich’, he refers only to those who were born on “third base and think they hit a triple” (a la Ann Richards) or those who seem steeped in the entitled thinking that they are somehow favored of God, and conversely, the dejected are the rejected of God.   It is somehow the fault of the poor that they are poor, according to these Spartans of Industry, these Heroes of Determinism.   They are rich and who is to blame for that but themselves.. or God!

Donned the stoic mask, they leave the club hiding the stinging defeat at the hands of rejects.

The all-powerful Powerless god

You know it’s one thing to believe in an almighty god that can do anything and has everything under control.  You can praise and worship this great being who has done everything for you and won’t let anything happen to you that’s outside of his eternal personal plan for your life.. BUT.. you don’t really do that do you?  You don’t really believe that, do you?

Because IF you did.  When the shit hits the fan, you might shrug and just pray about it.   There would literally be nothing in the world that could knock you out of your supreme confidence in such a supreme being.  Oh by all means!   Go ahead and play the “We’re sinners too!” card all you want; have it both ways!   We’re used to it by now.   You poor pathetic fallen little creatures! [your description - NOT mine].   You can go on and preach about taking responsibility later on when the dust has settled and everyone forgot how you special pleaded your way out of.. umm.. taking personal responsibility.

Seriously.  You worship this being of your whimsy and have the gall to pretend like he actually DOES’NT have it all under control.   You come crashing through, all pissed off spouting invective and name-calling ; ‘You’re going to Hell!’ and ‘You..you.. ANTI-CHRIST!’, a veritable Bull in a china shop, elbowing any all-powerful god out of the way like a hapless slack-jawed by-stander because ‘Those GOD-DAMNED Atheists are at it again!’.   I’m fairly certain any sincere belief in an all powerful god would result in a calm, cool and collected follower (I know you’re out there).   How could you get your feathers ruffled when the biggest deal in the universe is backing you up?   Well shit!  You might just be free to go about the business of turning the other cheek – HEY why not?  Only gonna hurt for a second anyway and ‘we so totally got this!’.   Why IF you had the best of the best of the best on your side, you might even be able to afford sending a little love into the world.

Love?

Yes, Love.   And not that bull-shit Love that talks a lot but does nothing, either.   Leave that shit at home because, like prayer, it’s just a form of mental masturbation; a smiley-face to cap off a nasty stinging rebuke.   I mean the kind of love where you can really put yourself out there.  The kind of trust that would let you throw yourself away in helping others because, WHY NOT?   Your god is totally in control of the situation.   You don’t have to seek out abuse, believe me, in all walks of life and for a multitude of reasons you can and will always find people to criticize you for something.   You don’t have to defend yourself, preserve yourself, involve yourself politically – you don’t have to do a damn thing – just..  LOVE!

Someone says something you don’t like?  Something insulting, flippant, arrogant or even blasphemous to your god?   Well, he’s your god so maybe you should defend his weak sorry ass; marshal all the nastiness you possibly can so you can teach those nasty atheists once and for all – Your god is awesome and you won’t allow ANYONE to mock him, ever!

 

We want our Holocaust too!

Publicity and outrage.   This is the soup du jour for fundamentalists of all stripes these days.   This is ‘what’s for dinner’.

First, however, let’s just speak a moment about the bullshit mockery of a pathetic pseudo-god named Allah.   What a load of shit.    And, if there actually were a spirit world of any sort, then Allah is not a god at all but a vicious and disgusting murderous demon preying on the minds of the incredibly stupid and truly insane.   Either way, it doesn’t matter – it is the belief in such a being that says more about the one holding the belief than about the object of that belief – after all, belief need not be based on any kind of verifiable reality at all lest it lose it’s status as a true belief.   That is, belief with evidence is not  belief; it is a conclusion.  Only without evidence can a belief appeal to stupidity and ignorance.   And this is the framework of all religions.   And this belief requires no true object and no true mean – it is the belief that holds primacy over the object.   Sad.. disgusting and upside-down.

Unfortunately, fundamentalists of  all stripes, including Westborough Baptist Church and the Taliban rely on the former definition of belief despite all the chicanery and false obeisance to the contrary.   But do they represent the whole?   Do they at least benefit from the silence of the whole from which they spring?   The answer to the first question is no, they do not represent the whole of Christianity or Islam.  However, they do benefit from the silence from the majority out of which they spring.   The condemnation for both groups and for all fundamentalism that argues for violence and destruction against the perceived enemies of god, should be loud, direct, unmistakeable and swift.   It is none of these things.

In a time when there is no room for measured words and actions, in a place where soft appeals and timid criticisms lead only to plausible deniability and allow one to make claims they have a tenuous hold on at best, these groups and their subsequent actions will continue to flourish.

Why not hit them where they live?   Challenge their belief that their actions are altogether right and will be rewarded with a truer version that states their actions are deliberately anti-deity and worthy of eternal condemnation?   Does this narrative NOT exist in your pantheon?   Are you really the unwilling executioners timidly trying to toe both lines because you durst not speak a railing accusation against them?   Spineless fools and cowards.   Speak out with the ferocity of your beliefs against your parasitic brethern.   Or have you no beliefs so worthy?

Or is it really this;

You wish for your own holocaust.   You Islam!   You will provoke your own holocaust at all measure.   Like Sam Harris has said, ‘You can see a silver lining in a mushroom cloud‘.   Murder innocents, destroy like a cancer from within until, the offensive material is removed along with the healthy.   Then you can all cry with one voice and never will it occur to you, you brought it all on yourselves.

It could be a drinking game.

What is ‘America’?   Who are we, as ‘Americans’?

Freedom!  Right?   Liberty?   Sure.. and those two are no small things.  But what a lot of people leave out is “Equality” without which, there is NO freedom or Liberty.   This isn’t equality in the sense of Socialism (so keep your pants on!) but equality of opportunity and even access where the public sphere is concerned.   If you disagree, then how much so?   Does equality have NO place in our democracy?  In what way is it acceptable to use that word (and no other)?

We are a great country but we are an experiment.  We are on-going and open-ended.   We can create new laws and discard laws that are no longer applicable.   We can fashion ourselves as a particular people of a particular hue if we so desire or we can abolish all such favoritism in any and all forms.  We can use legislation to define what “America” is, from a democratically chosen welfare state to a democratically chosen Theocracy.. it at least seems there is really no limit, without regard to the Bill of Rights or the Constitution, to what we may make of ourselves with the proper justification and the ‘right’ interpretation.

We can make laws that stand like fussy mothers over us, peering at all we do with gentle (and sometimes not so gentle) ‘tut-tut’s’ whenever we begin to err outside the lines.   “You cannot drive faster than this limit.. because you are children!”, “You cannot drink until you reach a certain age.. because you cannot be trusted to be responsible”, “You cannot marry whoever you wish to marry because WE KNOW BETTER than you in these affairs, silly little snotty brat!”, “There’s no way we, as your parents and guardians, will allow you to make up your own mind about smoking pot!” and “We are right and you are wrong, wrong, wrong.. you cannot have birth control and abortions are just your immature, childish ways of trying to avoid your responsibility – after all, you can’t have your cake and eat it too!”.

Our people span the spectrum from the quiet and oft-unheard public to loud-mouths and fire-brands.   Religious zealots and moderates, peacemakers.. to War-hawks and War-profiteers all reading from the same staid book.   We have citizens who don’t speak English, who weren’t born here but who work hard and pay taxes and we have welfare queens and theifs, criminals.   We have the poor and the extremely poor, living day to day in an existence on the street that would be jarring to most of us.   And we have the extremely rich who are immune to the problems and stress that most of us face on a daily basis.   And honestly, there is room for all of us.   In America, we are all brothers and sisters.   America is something that ties and binds us together, spanning politics and racial divides and everything from gender to education, world-view or philosophy must take a back-seat to the fact that we are all Americans, and there is room under this tent.. this great experiment for all of us.

I don’t have to like what you say, or how you think.. but I stand by your right to express your thoughts and practice your beliefs.

We often hear someone say something along the lines of, “Well that isn’t the America I grew up in” or “That’s not just unpatriotic, that’s un-american!”, “We need to get back to who we were.   We need to get back to America!”?   “That person doesn’t understand America” or “That person is distinctly, un-american!”These phrases and questions, rhetorical and dead serious, come mostly from politicians.   These tools are meant to rouse up one group against another, or one idea against another.  To exclude one group or set of ideas and principles from another in order to alienate them.   Sometimes to shame them or ridicule them.   To show them the door and tell them, politely or not so much, “Get.. out!”.

What if we were to make a college drinking game out of this while listening to our favorite ideological heroes.   Which groups would be drunker, faster?

I wonder?

Republicans secretly hate Jesus.

Never mind the arguments that ‘Jesus was a socialist’ or ……, the fact is, Republicans hate Jesus.   This isn’t just a clever ploy to take pot-shots at Conservatives and the so called ‘Religious-Right’, it’s factually accurate and I can even back it up.   And real quick, before moving on to the task at hand, disabuse yourself now of the fatuous arguments that ‘well, we are just all sinners after all.’.   That won’t cut it here.   You don’t get to beat the living shit out of Society with your pious morality and stinking religiosity on the one hand and then put on the martyrdom-mantle when anyone calls you on your bullshit.   You hate Jesus, Republicans – plain and simple – and there is no amount of white-washing your sepulchres that will amount to anything different.

Now on with the show…

Jesus said, “I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Mt 5:44-45).   Check out the blog by Ted Grimsrud (A Christian) where he talks about this.  Frankly, I agree with him – Christians not only struggle with loving their enemies, they see it as a sign of weakness and they make up all manner of excuses and rationalizations to avoid doing so.   One more reason to call Christians ‘Hypocrites’.   If Christians really loved Jesus, no amount of sinful nature would be able to overcome such a simple teaching – Love your enemies.   Easy.   Why is it easy?   Because nothing stands out more than the hateful feelings you have for another person.. THAT.. is your enemy.   Now you know ‘WHO’ they are.. and you have already been commanded as to ‘WHAT’ you must do; it’s all laid out for you so just do it.   But you don’t because basically, you hate Jesus.

If you loved your enemies, you would be setting an international example to countries like Iran, Syria and N. Korea.   Oh how I hear your protesting already that such a stance would be madness; ‘Why, we can’t just open ourselves up like that!’ or ‘What you’re suggesting will get us all killed!!!’.   Oh ye of little faith.. you don’t follow your own Messiah’s commandments because you simply don’t believe he knew what the fuck he was talking about, do you?   If you trusted him, you would do it with a smile on your face and love in your heart.. like a god-damned hippie, stoned off his ass with flowers in his hair.

Speaking of Prayer, what the hell is it with your damned public declarations of prayer?    A good friend pointed this out to me lately in a back-n’-forth posting on facebook; why the hell are you telling everyone about what and whom you are praying for?   Isn’t that supposed to be a private affair?   But NOOOOooo!   Just like Tim Tebow, you gotta take a knee and pray in front of a televised national audience to make sure everyone knows how god-damned humble you are before your god.   Really disgusting and even more  so when you couple it with what Jesus said about it: Matt 6: 5-6, “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”.   So, once again, we have an attitude with believers that they know best and ‘we’ll just use Jesus when it’s convenient for us.. until then.. who the hell are you to judge me!’.   It’s like they don’t even believe their own Messiah.. or maybe, they just hate him for requiring faith when they can just influence others with their loud, droning prayers of pious good-will and holy kindness.   Yech!

If you all went around practicing love and skipped all those opportunities to tell everyone how much you’re praying for them, well damn!   Maybe Atheists would know a Christian by their love, after all.

The Golden Rule.   This is one that alot of Christians like to flip around.. like this: “If person “A” is treating me in this (awful) way and person “A” is also practicing the golden rule.. then they are really treating others the way they ‘Want’ to be treated!”.. PRESTO!  I can be an asshole right back to him!   Now most Christians I know wouldn’t really play these kinds of games (right guys?!?), but that still means you have the straight-forward Golden Rule to contend with.   I mean, who doesn’t know how they ‘want’ to be treated; like the most important fucking person on the planet, listened to, loved, adored, laughed with, sought after, immortalized and rich by the gifts of others (I made that last one up.).   Sure, in varying degrees, but we all want to be at least respected a little, treated with kindness and fairness, loved?  Maybe?  Look at how the Republican audience reacts to the golden rule in an international setting by R. Paul: Christians hate Jesus and his teachings.   They boo him.   Gingrich talks about “Killing them” and they cheer and then R. Paul talks about taking a measured approach that maybe considers how we might feel with whatever policy we were about to launch on someone else.. if it was launched on us; BOOOO!!

But again, Christians are probably the worst “Respectors-of-persons” I’ve ever met, known or even been.   Christians compartmentalize this whole thing to include the ‘faithful’ first, then other well-dressed people and individuals, usually of the same skin tone and education level and then MAYBE.. the bum at the local gas station looking for a hand out or, *GASP*, a liberal Democratic President!!   Well maybe you might give a few coins to the gas-station guy but “Buck Ofama!”.   I mean, you do realize that your very own belief system draws the model for the legal standing of every individual ever born or will be born to God and Jesus, right?   So God is the judge, Jesus is the Defense and I guess either Satan or God (and his Righteousness) is the Prosecution – the verdict is guilty and according to you guys, Jesus is there to defend every single person that ever was and ever will be.   And despite all this, when it comes to people you hate, ya know – your enemies? – you chime right in with the prosecution in condemning that person: “That piece of shit Hates God and wants to destroy ‘Murica!”.   “Obama is the Anti-Christ” and whatever else you can think of.   Meanwhile, again.. your theology, not mine.. Jesus is defending them/has defended them and is taking those blows on himself.   Nothing to me could be clearer than this illustration that you are in direct conflict with your own theology, that you attack your own Messiah and that you actually hate Jesus for defending and spending oh-so-much on pieces of shit Atheists/Liberals/Heathens/Devil-worshippers/J.C.Penney Shoppers and outright enemies (oooh there’s that word again) of God.

So there you have it; Republicans Hate Jesus.   The Social arguments are facile arguments to hide their true agenda; money and a corporate republic ruled by and for corporations.   And you ass-hats keep voting for them because you hate fags.   Well bully for you!   Jesus would be so proud!   Too bad you couldn’t just show some love, step back into the shadows of in-activism and learn what it really means to be the salt of earth, what it really means to trust your deity to carry the day while you just go about obeying him, but NAAAAH.. fuck that!   Let’s just kill God’s enemies instead!

The thieving nature of Faith

My parents never call me.

I call them.

Well, I should admit here, they call me when, say.. my father has a heart-attack.   Then, I get a call.   But at no other time do they call to check in.

I’ve tested this.   I’m testing it now.   It’s been two months since I’ve talked to my parents.   I have no idea what’s going on in their lives because prior to those two months, there were two other months.   They are complete strangers to me.

This reinforces my belief that Christianity is a cult no different from Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Church of Scientology – they all seek to isolate the individual from competing support groups to bring pressure to bear in forcing conformity.

But why?   Do my parents not love me?   Do they not care about what is going on in my life – atheist son that I am, I am still their son, aren’t I?  (here, the Christian will smirk with the recollection of a bible verse that praises the followers of Christ who witness the opposition of son against father, and brother against brother.. disgusting really and not a shred of love to be found in it, anywhere.. but I digress..)

They will not pick up the phone because they trust a god who isn’t there to rectify whatever discrepancy is found in their son.   They have essentially left me in ‘his’ care with full faith that I will be with them again in heaven – how could he not?  (indeed!).

So they do not even try and proselytize.   They do not call to at least maintain a relationship for, though we are not ‘coupled’ as it were, what fellowship does light have with darkness, right?   They do not call to express love – that which is the second greatest commandment from their Messiah’s own mouth.   No no, there will be none of that.

They will keep an icy distance – a silence they will surely blame on me who is the only one who does call, and will call – and trust a god to their graves; and to hell with their son.   He doesn’t merit much sacrifice anyway.

This is the greatest proof to me, that god; not a christian god nor any other invisible fantasy creature could ever exist – they are all entirely too petty and human, and the faith that is entrusted to them steals from the precious years one has left with a promise too good to be true, written on the winds and signed with whispers.