Burn That Book!

My brothers and sisters in Christ…

We all know the insidious power of the media to corrupt the minds of young and old. And so I know that you, like me, despise books that fail to promote the values we hold dear as true followers of God and Jesus.

We won’t stand for the distribution of a book that features incest and adultery. We won’t tolerate a book that condones the conquering of sovereign nations on the basis of religious zealotry. We won’t sit idle while people sell and promote a book that uplifts the weak, poor and sickly over the needs of the strong, wealthy and attractive. We will shout from the rooftops against a book that advocates communist-like sharing of wealth and equal dispersal of money to all in need.

My friends, I know of a book that does all this.

And more.

For hundreds upon hundreds of pages.

The Bible.

For the good of our noble, true and powerful Christian cause, we must destroy all copies of this vile publication immediately.

I realize this will leave a bit of a void in terms of reading material for good Christians. Thankfully, I have a series of 12 books (one for each apostle) to fill that need. Just send me $999.00 for the full set.

What Would Jesus Invest In? — Be Fruitful and Multiply…But Only If You’re White — Jesus: Founder of the Tea Party — The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth, But Don’t Let Them Have It Just Yet — God Loves a Good Capitalist — Sex the Right Way: You Can Rape Your Wife But Don’t Touch Another Man’s Butt — Shoot All the Scientists — The Last Trustworthy Jew Was Paul the Apostle — Thou Shalt Not Kill…Unless It’s a Negro or Queer —  Thou Shalt Not Steal…Except From Your Employees — Jesus Loves a Good Profit Margin — God Wants You To Keep All Your Money So That the Godless Heathens Can’t Use It

Lack of Focus

Or, perhaps, the title of this post should be “The Wrong Focus.”

Some of the most fervent people pursue their missions from entirely the wrong standpoint, and so it is with many conservative, fundamentalist Christians, because they aren’t really as focused on the fundamentals as their descriptor would suggest.

See, my problem with the “fundies” isn’t so much that they want to promote biblical ideals and Bible-based behavior as it is that they put at the top of their agenda subjects on which Jesus didn’t really focus and/or that are only hinted at vaguely in the Bible…while also putting at the bottom of their priority list those things on which Jesus spoke most clearly and directly.

So, on the one hand, they’ll pick out a Bible passage about ancient punishments for hitting a pregnant woman in the belly and killing her unborn child, along with God’s words in the Book of Jeremiah “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” and say, “See! God hates abortion! Let’s go have a huge campaign against women controlling their own bodies and hijack freedom of choice and science while ignoring more pertinent issues that affect more people.”

Never mind that causing the death of a woman’s fetus in an act of violence or irresponsibility was a crime because it assumed the woman wanted to give birth and you took that away from her (i.e. took the life that she had charge of). Also never mind that the quote from Jeremiah is about foreknowledge and foreplanning on God’s part, not about when life begins. Never mind that Jesus never once mentioned anything about fetuses, and his words are the ones Christians should focus on most.

And then, on the other hand, with poverty rising, kids and adults going without food, healthcare becoming increasingly inaccessible and the rich hoarding more and more of the money just because they can (even though they don’t need that much), you’ll see fundies cringe at any notion that even hints at socialism or talks about fairness and sharing, even though Jesus spent huge gobs of his time talking about economic fairness and taking care of the less fortunate.

Not to mention the fact the early Christian church essentially practiced communism, or something very close to it.

But they’ll ignore that and point to his parable of the talents and claim Jesus was a free market capitalist even though the parable is talking about spiritual growth and responsibility, not wealth creation.

Shaking my damn head…

Post-Rapture Wrap-Up

So, as you might have all assumed, May 21 passed and the followers of Harold Camping turned out to be wrong that the Rapture was coming that day.

Well, you’d be wrong!

Hah! I’m in Heaven right now tweeting while Jesus checks out some movies on Netflix, and I’m thumbing my nose at you because the Apocalypse is soon to start. And I bet you haven’t seen much of Kirk Cameron, either! He’s right here next to me, talking to God about how wonderful bananas are (bananas being the “atheist’s nightmare”)!

OK, yeah, you caught me lying.

I wasn’t raptured, and now for that lie and for making fun of Kirk Cameron, I never will be. *SadProgressiveChristianPanda*

I’m still really busy in life, mostly re-engaging with Mrs. Blue in some most amazing ways and also with Little Girl Blue in very different but also amazing ways. So, I don’t have any huge thought-provoking posts in me. And so, while I realize that the whole “ridicule the rapture” thing from last week is probably already at the “jumping the shark” stage, I’m going to be lazy and leave you with a series of some of my Rapture-related tweets over the past few days about the whole Rapture Debacle, in chronological order from oldest to newest:

I’ll probably only be raptured if I cancel my Saturday plans & stay home to repent nonstop

Don’t worry, there’s no cellulite in Heaven (which is good, considering there are apparently no clothes, either)

Dear Rapture Predictors: IF there is going to be an actual Rapture (& it’s not simply symbolism in Bible), you will NOT have advance warning

Rapture called off, everyone!…back to your regularly scheduled human failings, foibles and outright deviancy…

At roughly 1:40 a.m. EST on 5/21/2011, I experienced rapture, but I don’t think it was the kind the twenty-firsters were predicting.

Special today at Starbucks until 6 pm PST: The fraptureccino !

Understand, of course, the fraptureccino isn’t for everyone: coffee, mocha cream base, caramel syrup, blood, wormwood, small bits o brimstone

Unless media has finally tracked him down, I’m assuming Camping, given his silence, has been raptured to Barbados with flock’s $$$

Now that the rapture is old news I wanna move on to next order of business: Our new reptilian overlords, soon to arrive from Alpha Centauri

The only post-Rapture wrap-up I care to pass along (wish I’d written it) http://www.caffeinatedpriest.com/2011/05/whats-not-left-behind.html