21st
Kill ‘em All and Let The Holy Spirit Sort ‘em Out.
I’ve been thinking a lot about religion lately.
I understand why religion exists. People need a lot of emotional support, and support from regular people just won’t cut it at times. People need comfort, they need to feel loved, they need to feel that there is some sort of meaning to it all, and they absolutely need to believe that there is something waiting for them after they die. Nobody likes to think of their loved ones (and most certainly themselves) just being gone. The idea of people dying random, pointless or stupid deaths takes on a new level of cruelty if there isn’t some big hereafter, right?
That’s all fine and dandy with me. I don’t care if it’s heaven or paradise or the hunting grounds of your ancestors or the Big Rock Candy Mountain with the Razzleberry Waterfall. Whatever keeps you happy. I personally have no idea what’s going to happen, since nobody has been able to get God or Vishnu or Allah or whoever is running this great big weaselfuck that is human existence to come down to the lab and prove a damn thing. I’m certainly not going to go by what the various religious beliefs are saying. Jesus walking on water and Eurydice following Orpehus out of Hades cave cut the same amount of ice with me as far as credible stories go. So I cheerfully discard them and embrace the fact that I am blissfully ignorant about such things. What happens when we die? Don’t know. Guess I’ll find out at some point.
So the why of religion is easy to understand. What I’ve been mostly thinking about are the sorts of schisms and divisions that religions bring with them. Not the obvious schisms, like Jewish vs Muslim, but rather the ones that exist among people of the same religion.
Here’s an example: Back in the day (although you couldn’t really call it “the day,” seeing as how the ages were dark as fuck in the time that I am referring to,) there was a big division in the Catholic Church, which at the time was pretty much the only Christian religion going. The Franciscans were an order of monks who believed that as messengers of the word of Jesus, it would be only right and proper for priests of the church to follow his example and forsake all worldly goods. In other words, they thought that the entire church should take a vow of poverty. On the other side of the debate you had the Benedictine Order, who believed the best way to show glory to God was to bling the fuck out of themselves and everything around them. In other words:
Franciscan:Didn’t Jesus say something about helping the poor?
Benedictine: Dude, check out this new altarpiece! See how the golden angels are actually PISSING diamonds! Praise the SHIT out of the lord, yo!
All you have to do is take a look at the Vatican if you want to see which side won that particular debate.
Another division that can be described as “big assed” was the Protestant Reformation, which happened for about a million reasons, but a few of the main ones involved things like not allowing anyone who wasn’t a priest to read the Bible (which seems like an enormous flashing neon sign reading “Con Job” to me,) or allowing certain rich sinners to essentially buy their way out of damnation, or preaching the First Commandment while having everybody pray to more B-List saints, virgins and craven idols than you could shake a stick at.
The Protestant Reformation wasn’t a pretty split. Remember, at the time the Catholics were the only game in town, religionwise. They weren’t about to give up their spiritual monopoly without a serious fight. And pretty much everybody was either willing to or forced to fight and die for their version of the Cosmic Space Daddy. And this sort of shit went on for YEARS. It’s still going on if you take a look at Northern Ireland.
If you happen to go to a church that isn’t Catholic, you’ve probably noticed that your church isnt called a “protestant church.” You go to a Presbyterian church, or a Lutheran church, or a Methodist church, or a Baptist church. That’s because the only thing most of the Protestants could really agree on was that they all thought the Catholic Church sucked. And the various disagreements that the Protestant factions had with each other weren’t exactly what you would call “gentlemanly.” I cant think of a better example of this than our cousins across the pond.
If you have ever taken a look at England, you might notice that they don’t really have the same politically active contingent of born again Christians that we do. No member of the Labor or Conservative party has to stand up and declare a camping buddy close relationship with Jesus in order to get elected the way that politicians have to here in the States. In fact, it’s considered downright rude for a politician to proselytize at all. I’m pretty sure that the reason that’s the case is because the whole damn country was run by rabid born-agains for about five years, and they know from experience that that sort of government sucks.
They found that out after the English Civil War, which happened for a lot of non-religious reasons, but the most rabid and effective contingent of the anti-royalist faction were the Puritans. We know those guys, right? Or we think we do, anyway. We like to think of them as the dudes who ate with the Indians on that first November back in New England. Hell, we still force our kids to dress up like them at Thanksgiving. But they weren’t particularly nice folks. They were the Christian Taliban. I think there is a museum or two in Salem, Massachusetts that can tell you more about their exploits if you are interested.
One of the big events that caused them to go against King Charles was that the Charles, who was by all accounts a devoutly religious man, decided to add a new prayer book into the Church of England. The day that the priests tried reading from it, the Puritans started throwing chairs and rioting. These folks were hard core Protestants. To say they didn’t like Catholics would be an understatement. They burned down quite a few churches on suspicion of Papacy simply because they had stained glass in the windows. And the fact that King Charles had a Catholic wife just made them burn with the fire of the Lord. The BAD kind of fire of the Lord, by the way.
The leader of the Puritan faction in Parliament was a guy named Oliver Cromwell, who led what was called the New Model Army. They beat the piss out of the King’s army pretty good, but that was probably because Cromwell’s soldiers were more scared of Cromwell than they were of the King’s guys. Soldiers in the New Model Army routinely had their tongues cut out if they were caught swearing or taking the lords name in vain. Disemboweling a Cavalier with your pike was perfectly acceptable, but yelling “fuck” while doing so was simply not on.
It was on Cromwell’s orders that King Charles was beheaded. And it was Cromwell himself who became “Lord Protector of England,” and instituted a religious martial law for the five years that he was running the show. Men called “The Major Generals” rode around the whole country, locking up fornicators and blasphemers. On the plus side, he finally allowed Jews back in to the country after a forced English absence of about two centuries, but that was only because he believed that the mass conversion of the Jews to Christianity would herald the second coming. Once Cromwell died, the Brits started to think that maybe they would like to do things other than pray, and that on the whole a little fornication isnt really so bad. So they brought back King Charles’ son to be the new King. And the Puritans became somewhat unwelcome. That’s another bit that we overlook. The “Pilgrims” weren’t really “pilgrims.” I think the better term would be “evictees.”
Anyway, maybe you can see the pattern. One big group loves the Cosmic Space Daddy, and then one half of that group loves the Cosmic Space Daddy in a different way, and then part or parts of that one half love the Cosmic Space Daddy in yet another way, and then they all beat the shit out of each other over it.
And what this idiocy always brings with it is the totally oxymoronic “Christian Warrior.” Richard the Lionhearted cutting heads off in the Holy Land. Inquisitors burning people at the stake. Cromwell having Irish Catholic prisoners of war summarily executed. Union troops burning down Atlanta while singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.” The Ulster Volunteer Force spraying a Catholic neighborhood with bullets and the Irish Republican Army returning the favor. Members of the Branch Davidians getting into a running gun battle with each other over who gets to be the next leader of the church. Radical Mormons shooting at the feds who come to arrest them for bigamy charges. Etc. Etc. Etc. The fucking beat goes on. If I started a religion with myself as the only member, I have no doubt that I would develop a split personality and would be kicking my own ass within ten years.
And I haven’t even touched on the other religions. Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, almost every damn religion on earth has some branch or another that thinks gunfire is the most expedient way to do the work of the lord. And while we don’t have guys willing to fly planes into buildings or blow themselves up in the name of Jesus, we still have plenty of people in the military establishment who are, to put it mildly, buggy ding dong psychotics who believe that serving Jesus comes about a million miles ahead of serving America.
Which brings me to THESE fucking assholes:
“The Marine Corps plans to meet with the manufacturer of rifle optics used by thousands of U.S. troops in combat after the company said it stamps its products with biblical references, prompting criticism that the military and religion were mixing too closely.”
Yeah, no shit.
As messed up as that is, it isn’t exactly news to me. There is a whole branch of my family who are all West Point graduates who also believe in the literal interpretation of the bible. And it wasn’t just my branch of the family at West Point who believed in such things. A significant portion of the Corps of Cadets believes that Eve came from Adam’s rib, Noah gathered up a male and female fruit fly, Jonah lived in the belly of a whale, and the laser guided precision bomb that they just launched obliterated a village that is sitting on a planet that was made in seven days and is only 6,000 years old.
There was also a scandal at the Air Force Academy a few years ago. The football team had a banner that said “Team Jesus” in their locker room. Cadets who chose not to go to chapel were ostracized, ridiculed, abused and placed in what were called “Heathen Flights.” Cadets were encouraged to be “Warriors for Christ” and “Spiritual Soldiers.” My dad was in the Air Force before it was the fucking Air Force, and when he heard about this it was about the angriest I had ever seen him.
And let’s not forget the daily intelligence briefings that the Pentagon sent to the White House during the Iraq War that had bible verses on the front of them.
Oh, and also, have you met Erik Prince, CEO of Blackwater? You know, the military contractor that makes more taxpayer money in twenty minutes than ACORN makes in a decade? This is from an affidavit of one of his former employees:
“Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.”
Look, I don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ any more than I believe that Zeus throws thunderbolts when he’s pissed off, but I have in fact read the New Testament, and I didn’t see a damn thing in there about killing people who didn’t agree with Jesus. Nor did I see anything about how his beliefs should be mandatory and extended through the force of arms. There is no “I sayeth unto thee, the Kingdom of Heaven shall be gained through overwhelming firepower.” I’m not much of a believer, but if I were I would have a hard time seeing the message of Christ in a Claymore mine, or Napalm, or a belt fed M60 machine gun, or a flamethrower. But maybe there is a different bible that these guys read, where Jesus is sort of like an action hero. “Die Hard” starring Jesus Christ. Maybe the verses are like “And then did the Lord leap off the top of Nakatomi Plaza just as it was blowing up, where did a firehose break his fall. And then did the Lord slay the last two terrorists with the gun that he had thus taped to his back. Here endeth the lesson. Yippie-kai-yay motherfuckers.”
It bothers me enough when these born again nutjobs get involved in government, but it scares the piss out of me when they get involved in the military. These guys aren’t working for me. They are working for a different boss. And they have, quite literally, all the guns in the fucking world. I would have to agree with a guy named Mikey Weinberg, who graduated from the Air Force Academy and was properly horrified to find out that it had become a hive of evangelical extremism:
“Every single time radicalized Christianity has engaged the machinery of the state and the armed forces, we have ended up not with puddles and little streams, but with oceans and oceans of blood,” he says. “I’m not just talking about the Holocaust or the Inquisition or the four Crusades…it’s the transition from Plan A to Plan B. In Plan A, evangelical Christians with a smile on their face will ask you to please, please, please accept their biblical worldview of Jesus. The problem with that is, inevitably, Plan A morphs into Plan B. They stop asking so nicely, and then you have the pogroms, the Inquisition…. People say this is a Christian country founded on Christian principles. The real essential aspect of this country, woven into the tapestry of the embroidery of how beautiful this country is, is one concept above all others, which is tolerance of diversity. The biggest crime I accuse the religious right of — and it’s a blood libel, a crime against humanity — is torturing that concept, by bludgeoning it and assaulting it, so that what it comes out as ‘tolerance for diversity’ equals ‘intolerance for us in the majority.’ My response is: Fuck you. Fuck you. How dare you?”
Forever and ever, amen.
