Have I ever mentioned that I’m basically a religious person?
No?
Well, I am, to varying degrees throughout my life.
That said, let me tell you that I don’t actively participate in an organized religion any more because I think that most organized religion sucks.
I find that churches are generally filled with haughty, self important morons.
If it weren’t for PEOPLE, I’d be in church every Sunday because I love the buildings.
Unfortunately, it’s many of the church members that I have a hard time stomaching—particularly the ones that caused the phrase “holier than thou” to be coined in reference thereof or thereto.
Further, I think that if you want to get yourself screwed financially or otherwise, just drop your pants and bend over anywhere near a church or the people that routinely inhabit churches and they’ll be happy to anoint your ass with a healthy dose of Vaseline and proceed to have their way with you physically and/or mentally.
Case in point…
My parents helped start a church back in the late 1960’s when the United Methodist Church lost their mind and all of the Preachers in training at Emory University in Atlanta started living with their girlfriends (and boyfriends.) I guess that the last straw was when the church doctrine started assaulting the idea of the virgin birth of Christ
…yada…yada…yada.
One thing that you don’t do is insult someone’s religion, but the worst thing you can do is insult said religion from inside the walls of the Church sanctuary. That’s what the “powers what be” up on the hill in the Methodist Church started doing in the late 60’s, and it caused an exodus of members that ran out and formed what we called “The Independent Methodist Church.”
I think that it’s still around today.
Any way, my family started one (a new church) with a few other families. We hired this wonderful, sweet old man—a retired Army Chaplin—as a minister, and it wasn’t long before there were 80 people showing up at our services held in the County library each Sunday.
Our only rules were that you were sincere about your faith in God and…BYORS
BYORS means “Bring your own Rattlesnake.”
Actually I’m just kidding about the rattlesnake part—a rattlesnake would have cleared out the building with our crowd, and I would have gotten my ass beaten for bringing a reptile into the proceedings. I did think about it, however.
Any way, it wasn’t long before they had established a building fund, bought a few acres of land out on the “Bypass”, and bricks and mortar ensued. My dad helped draw up the plans and I built a scale model of the building out of cardboard.
The members did as much work as they could to save money on the construction. We spent practically every Saturday out clearing the land before construction began or staining doors and Alter Railings in the finish process.
It’s one thing to show up in an old church building on Sunday and go through the motions of a worship service, but I’ve witnessed a special pride that is the reward that can only be gained by participating in actually building the building
The problems started when we adopted a group of professional “Holy Rollers.”
Did you know about “Professional Holy Rollers”?
These people are to churches like fleas and ticks are to a dog.
Sort of an infestation, if you will.
They wander around the community touting their wild eyed zealous beliefs and they actually embarrass and intimidate the weaker members of congregations into coming along with them. One day you’re reciting the Apostles’ Creed and singing the Doxology, and the next Sunday you’ve got people speaking in tongues and TESTIFYING FOR THE LORD…HAWH J-E-S-U-SSSSSS.
If you don’t utter words in some sort of alien gibberish or proclaim your salvation at the top of your lungs at the drop of your hat, then you are considered clearly inferior in your faith and subject to a hearty dose of fire and brimstone along with the rest of the heathens.
The only problem is, the “Professional Holy Rollers” don’t always put their money where their Holy Rolling Mouths are. They rely on other people’s money to finance the carpeted halls of religious sanctuary where they do their Holy Rolling.
The only other problem was, all of us “Non-Holy Rolling” heathens’ parents names were on the mortgage of the church building title. Further, all of us “Non-Holy Rolling” heathens’ parents were making the tithes and tossing the checks in the offering plate that had built the building and paid the monthly payments on said mortgage.
In the end it was Holy Rollers 7, Heathens Parents 0.
We walked away from our church home and never looked back, AFTER having our names removed from the mortgage.
Bastards.
After seeing the agony that my parents and our friends were put through in the name of religion, I’ve never quite been able to commit myself to another congregation since.
Don’t get me wrong here—I believe in a God and all that, but I’m not quite certain if he is some old grey haired bearded guy that spends his time creaking around somewhere out past the planet Pluto, or if the real God is embodied in the collective consciousness of all of us humans that keep the world going forward on a daily basis and take good care of the kids and dogs and cats and everything else that needs doing in spite of Congress and the Democrats.
I can understand people getting upset when the “secular world” pokes fun at religion, but if religion and religious people wouldn’t give the heathens so much material to work with, then they could rest easy at home each evening and in church on Sunday.
Religions and religious people are their own worst enemies.
Why should they be immune from the occasional lampoon when they so obviously deserve it?
Most recently, Tom Cruise’s association with L Ron Hubbard’s Scientology religion has made a few headlines. I don’t care what the women think of his butt, I think Cruise is an overpaid idiot.
If he would just stick to acting—something I think he is pretty good at—and stop proving that he’s an idiot when he opens his mouth, everything would be fine…but he can’t.
More time with his mouth closed would give him extra time to spend running around chasing young tail, something else he has a talent for.
I’m also not a regular viewer of the Comedy Central show South Park, but I’ve seen enough of it to know that Trey Parker and the gang that write it are
The intro to every episode features a irreverent flying image of Jesus, but they balance things out with an ongoing Satin and Sadam Hussein in a Gay S&M Bondage relationship theme that cracks me up every time I see it.
One of my favorite South Park characters is the black school cafeteria cook “Chef”, based around the voice of the soul singer Isaac Hayes. I guess that I’ll have to resort to watching re-runs if I want to see Chef in the future, because Mr. Hayes has quit South Park because they did an episode poking fun at his religion….
What is his faith?
Scientology
This from a man that published a song called “Chocolate Salty Balls” that reached #1 on the chart in the UK a few years back. Here are a few of the words:
and two or three egg whites.
A half a stick of butter?.
Melted?
stick it all in a bowl baby.
Stir it with a wooden spoon.
Mix in a cup of flour,
you'll be in heaven soon.
Say everybody have you seen my balls
they're big and salty and brown.
If you ever need a quick pick me up
just stick my balls in your mouth.
Oooo suck on my chocolate salted balls
stick em in your mouth, and suck em!
Suck on my chocolate salted balls,
they're packed full of vitamins, and good for you.
So suck on my balls.
Sorry, Isaac…but I have to suggest that you remember the old problem with people living in glass houses and owning more than a few stones?
1 comment:
Did you see the Scientology episode? It was one of their better ones, I thought, although it went a little flat for me at about the 2/3 mark . . .
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