She pressed on, wondering if something had happened to me or if I’m against prayer. I told her I’m not against it but that I just believe it to be pointless, that God is going to do whatever the hell he wants regardless of what we say. She said that we should still give thanks anyway, and I was like “but if God’s going to do what he wants regardless, why do it?” Who would we be thanking? She couldn’t really come up with any suitable answers to those questions, but kept on with the whole “I can’t believe you!” charade. Whatever.

Funny how people tend to not know the difference between being against something and non-participation.

I’ve heard it suggested, and I think I sort of agree, that there isn’t much difference between praying and witchcraft. Both involve saying special words in the hopes that a supernatural being or phenomenon will perform some action.

Prayer is also a miniature form of meditation. A few years ago, I heard advice that when angry, one should pray first, and that’ll help the anger. It’s true, it would, but mostly because it’s the same basic tactic as counting back from ten, that you’ve distracted your mind for a minute or so and that calms your rage and, funnily enough, brings you back to rationality.

Of course, prayer before Thanksgiving dinner is still pointless because, as said, I don’t think God gives a shit what we do or say to him, and it’s no time for meditation because I’m fucking hungry!

Basically, a 9-year-old girl in Brazil was raped by her stepfather, and she got pregnant with twins. Doctors determined she wouldn’t be able to survive the pregnancy so they had to terminate it to save her life. Even to prolifers like me, sounds reasonable. Rape and the mother’s life being on the line are generally the exceptions to the “abortion is wrong” idea, and this is clearly both. Unfortunate, yes, but obviously necessary, and honestly, there is just all around nothing whatsoever fortunate about this situation.

Then the Catholic Church decided to chime in. Brazilian Bishop heard about this little life-saving abortion and shat brix. He told the little girl’s mother and the doctors “GTFO my church!” and so they were excommunicated.

So basically, the people who were banned from Catholicism for being such abominable, unforgivable sinners are the doctors involved with this abortion, and the mother of the pregnant girl for consenting to the procedure being done on her daughter. Not the girl, because she’s nine, still a child, not yet confirmed, etc. Well, that’s good. But, wait, isn’t there someone else involved here? I mean, the poor girl got pregnant somehow…

Oh, yeah! The asshole rapist stepfather. Surely he too was excommunicated for having forcefully violated this girl, and in doing so left her in the life-threatening state that resulted in the now-damned doctors even having to extinguish the unborns in the first place. Right? RIGHT???

Um… no.

Well, surely this Brazilian bishop must be some crazy rogue. I mean, I know being anti-abortion is like the staple of being a Catholic, way above shit like feeding the hungry, spreading love, ending violence, and all that unimportant stuff, but certainly even the guys in the Vatican are saying “Bishop, you crazy!” Right? RIGHT???

Um… no.

Seems the guys in the Vatican are totally on board with this bishop’s choice of excommunication, not thinking he left anyone out of it or anything. I mean, why excommunicate a man for a little thing like rape of a child when the doctors who aborted the babies he forcefully impregnated her with committed MURDER? Oh noes! Horrible doctors, they should have done the honorable thing and just let the girl’s forced pregnancy kill her (AND the babies! they were dead either way!) because that’s what Jesus wants.

This has been said for like two thousand years but it bears repeating. These people are fucking nuts. They put their spurious ideas of holy purity, which doesn’t actually mean DICK in the real world, ahead of any real good or positive accomplishment.

For people who go on and on about how precious and wonderful life is, how it’s a wondrous gift from God or whatever, they sure do everything they can to ensure life is as LAME as possible! Pope John Paul II a couple years ago lamented all the abortions and whatnot as being part of some “culture of death”, which is cute considering devout Catholicism seems to require living in a culture of shame and misery! And for what?

I mean, I’ll give them some credit. They do very slowly come around on ridiculous things now and then. They’ve accepted evolution as at least being plausible (just need to get past that “plausible” and realize Genesis is just a STORY, that we have as much proof of Adam and Eve’s existence as we do of that of Bilbo Baggins, that proof of course being “I read it in a book, LOL!”). They’re easing up ever so slightly on their strictness about contraception, and I do mean slightly, considering their recent bullshit with “oh noes, don’t give out condoms in Africa to prevent AIDS, condoms are bad and evil and though we base this on absolutely nothing, they’ve been known to cause AIDS, eek!”

True, many, if not most, Catholics don’t actually give a shit what the “official” stance of the church is on a lot of things. They do use their own judgment more than most religious people are given credit for. Catholicism to them (as Alex pointed out a few years back) is more about identity than belief or adherence to what a guy in a tall funny hat says. They still eat meat on Lenten Fridays and have premarital sex with condoms and the pill and do a lot of other shit that’s technically forbidden. And many, hearing about this shit in Brazil and the “condoms cause AIDS!” thing, are just rolling their eyes like “ugh, STFU papalfag!” A fact which, ironically, can restore one’s faith in God and humanity!

But as for the so-called Catholic authorities, and their sizable following who do actually believe their word is God’s, seriously, STFU papalfags! If you’re going to be excommunicating people, especially so unevenly, they ought to wear that excommunication proudly. Who’d want to be in your crazy club after that anyway?

And an amazing thing happened.

Well, okay, it’s not that amazing. Anyway, near the end of the service, after communion, came time to sing Silent Night. Usually, with the lights low and everyone holding candles and the general mood of it, one can get a little emotional and teary-eyed. Not this time!

Good. Getting emotional like that is a minor loss of self control. Instead of the message being an emotional one, now the same tune and words, they brought happiness and a smile. Why? Emotions are weakness and a vulnerability. What good is being an emotional idiot over some religious passage? None. Instead, the words meant pretty much nothing, and there was merely a triumphant smile.

Yeah, Jesus is born, here to save us, blah blah blah… whatever. I do what I want. So I’m happy! And it’s the only way good can get done regardless of motivation. It’s a nice story, sure, and whether or not it’s true doesn’t really matter that much to me. That’s all fine and good, but the real question is what specifically I’m supposed to do about it. If anything, no different from what is done already. So what difference does it make?

Okay, one difference. And I’d rather be happy and smiling.

Merry Christmas!

Oh, and I didn’t feel like doing another gay ass video this year.

Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute!

It’s a sort of “common knowledge” tidbit about the Bible that gets circulated around. Everyone is all like “ooh, Mary Magdalene was a hooker and then she found Jesus and was changed.” It gets believed she was the woman they were throwing stones at when Jesus made his famous declaration that only he who is without sin may cast the first stone at her.

But if you actually read the passage in the Bible (it’s in Luke somewhere), you see the woman there is not named.

So where are you people getting this?

I mean, it makes for a bit of an inspiring little story that even this unclean whore could still rise up to being one of Jesus’s disciples, in an unofficial sense. Or his wife depending on who you ask. But that is just not what’s in the story, whether the canon gospels or the lost ones.

Hell, isn’t there enough made up shit in scripture as it is? Must we add to it?

Here’s to You!

So I raise my glass and say, “Here’s to you, Animaniacs!”

I made of mention of this in last year’s Secular Specials entry, where I mentioned the reasons some Christmas specials tend to not touch the story of Jesus’s birth much (or it at least might seem that way). Basically, it’s safer not to. With all these oversensitive Christian morons running around, one false step on the sacred ground that is the nativity story could have like 5,000 midwestern churches wanting your head on a platter. Yet you might have these same people also whining that Jesus is being phased out of Christmas, a doublespeak typical of evangelicals. They want Jesus to get more of a mention, but if you try, they pipe up with “YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG!” And because doing the nativity story can have the side effect of coming off as proselytizing, makes it all the more appealing to just stick to other Christmas stories.

There’s also the issue of how exactly the nativity story would even be incorporated, evangelical whininess aside. I mean, it gets at least a casual mention on a lot of sitcoms and whatnot (I’m thinking of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air when the family was staying in a ski cabin or something at Christmas and Will says “no one else is being let into this cabin unless they’re with a pregnant virgin on a donkey!” Hehe.) But that would pretty much suffice since, let’s face it, the story is pretty boring. In which case, it’s actually pretty widespread and the people saying otherwise are either blind or nuts.

But I’m getting way off track here. There is one Christmas special that nailed it. Not proselytizing. Not disrespectful. Includes the show’s usual zaniness. I’m of course talking about the Animaniacs segment “Little Drummer Warners“.

Well, admittedly, it’s a little low key for Yakko, Wakko, and Dot, though that is perhaps just part of the humor when they go into the all out musical number, hehe. But it works and I really can’t see how either the religious or the secular can find it offensive. I’m sure there are some who find a way, but screw them.

In any case, something to shove in my dad’s face next time he whines that Charlie Brown’s Christmas is the only Christmas show ever to mention Jesus. But even in that, it’s still pretty much just a casual mention.

But the story continued after Linus’s soliloquy. Charlie Brown was now smiling as he took the tree out of the auditorium, and then came the real moral to the story, one that rings true for a lot of people during the holiday season. When he said this line: “I’m not going to let all this commercialism ruin MY Christmas!”

He was getting all depressed because of how everyone else was celebrating Christmas. Then the reminder of Jesus came, and then came the realization that the holiday can be so much more, so he decided to celebrate his way and be happy because he wanted to be happy, not worry about if the others approved. Sure enough, he decided this and walked out with the tree, and the others decided the little tree wasn’t all that bad. Amazing what a little dignity can do.

Now I’ll be honest and admit the Jesus thing specifically was perhaps the intended moral to the story, a Jesus-is-the-reason-for-the-season thing. Nonetheless, the other, broader message remains.

Basically, what does it matter how anybody else celebrates a holiday? You’ve got people running around whining about the kind of decorations people are putting up, whether they’re too secular or not secular enough, if Chanukah is represented enough, blah blah blah. How are other people spending Christmas? Why are they doing that? THEY ARE DOING IT WRONG!

I think the real question is, how are YOU celebrating? Celebrate your way and be happy with it, and everyone else will do the same. If you’re the only one who puts up a Christmas tree anymore while everyone else is decorating gigantic stuffed dragons, then what does it matter? They’ll do the weird dragon thing and you’ll put up your tree. Why is there a problem?

Are you a Pagan who feels Christmas has “stolen” your traditions? Stop your pussy bawwwing for a moment and celebrate with your own tradition anyway. You may notice you still can and what anyone else may do with wreaths or hollies is none of your concern. Sun still sits over the Tropic of Capricorn this month, so go ahead and celebrate and quit whining about what those mean old Christmas people are doing with it. The hell does it matter?

And if you didn’t want one of those big pink aluminum cones for a Christmas tree and instead wanted the little green wooden one, then by all means take it and be happy with it and tell Lucy to go fuck herself with that football!

I allow myself half back on Saturday, and then as of sunrise Easter morning, it’s “He Is Risen, All Bans Lifted!” Hehe.

Anyway, with so many of my day to day stuff off-limits, such as Coke, Minesweeper, and beef, it’s a little difficult. Yet it’s not difficult in that it’s necessarily hard to keep away from these things for six days. I’ve got to make sure I don’t eat or play something I’m not supposed to without realizing it!

That’s when it occurred to me. Look at many of the evils of the world, the oppression, the cruelty. They are not committed usually because of premeditated desire for oppression or cruelty, but because they hadn’t thought otherwise. That’s why abuse breeds abuse, and tyranny breeds tyranny. The victims become those who victimize, because they never knew differently, and never were made to rethink the conventional knowledge they’ve always accepted as tacit gospel.

This is what fuels every abusive family, as abused children grow up to be abusive parents. This is what fuels the extremist Muslims and their oppressive Sharia law which they try to extend around the world, since most of the extremists are only following what they’ve always “known” to be right, no matter how horrible or heinous. And, of course, it is what caused Jesus to be crucified.

He was up there on the Cross, and those Roman bastards were having so much fun torturing Him. Why? Were they evil? Depends. Their evil stemmed not from wanton desire to be horrible specifically, but this was just how they did things, how it always was to them. This was a source of fun to them, since the idea of it being a bad thing to treat a human being like that never crossed their minds.

So I guess that’s why Jesus was all like “Look, Dad, these guys are nuts! They don’t know what the FUCK they’re even doing! Try not to be so angry about them. They’re just really stupid.” Okay, that was cleaned up a bit in the Bible, but whatever.

But, seriously, Jesus was a nice guy who believed in being nice and peaceful and forgiving, and look what happened to Him! He was a sacrifice sent from heaven, thrown to a pack of wolves known as human beings, who tortured and killed the nice guy because he dared to be nice and non-conformist and believe in and preach things contrary to what the powerful masses wanted to hear and believe. Whether He was really divine or not, no denying that!

Why was it done? Not out of specific desire for evil. It was evil brought on by complacency and the belief to go along with the group, to never question authority. So often an evil deed is done, and the solitary reason for it is “It’s my job.”

So, in a way, to question and be cynical is godly. The strongest evils are those with precedent, and precedent is caused by those going with the flow and continuing the evil without a thought.

So-called Christians, particularly in the South and such, shriek at the idea of being different. To them, to be different is to be sinful and impure. These people get so caught up trying to protect and promote purity, they don’t even know what purity is! To them, purity is conformity. To them, a man with a wife and three children whom he beats and tortures all the time seems pure, while a gay couple with three children whom they love and respect would be considered impure. These people don’t seem to realize, or care, that this mindset is what got Jesus crucified in the first place, and perhaps why God sent Him here to begin with.

It takes the purest heart and the soundest mind and the bravest cynical soul to break the cycles of evil. Because, regardless of what they personally may believe on the subject, they are the true Christians.

Way better than me just trying to remember not to drink coffee this week. Hehehe.

He is come in peace in the winter’s stillness
Like a gentle snowfall in the gentle night
He is come in joy like the sun at morning
Filling all the world with radiance and with light.
He is come in love as the child of Mary
In a simple stable we have seen His birth
Gloria in excelsis Deo, Gloria in excelsis Deo!
Hear the angels singing “Peace on earth!”

He will bring new light to a world in darkness,
Like a bright star shining in the skies above
He will bring new hope to the waiting nations
When he comes to reign in purity and love.
Let the earth rejoice at the Savior’s coming
Let the heavens answer with the joyful morn.
Gloria in excelsis Deo, Gloria in excelsis Deo!
Hear the angels singing “Christ is born!”

But, as I also told my dad, in spite of this, he’s wrong about that in the first place. Charlie Brown Christmas is far from the only special that even mentions Jesus. It’s just the only one that gets played on primetime network TV that does.

Simpsons, South Park, King of the Hill, Family Guy, Robot Chicken, and many other shows of the like have included the nativity in some way in their Christmas episodes. Of course, they’re all shows that are in no way out to impress people in a general sort, they exist to entertain and don’t care whose toes they step on. So it’s safe for them.

Then I remembered Animaniacs. It’s been SO many years since I’ve seen it, but I recall they had a Christmas episode which had a nativity segment. Yakko, Wakko, and Dot were poor shepherds wandering the desert to go visit the manger. Wakko was the Little Drummer Boy, and they did a few musical scenes. Something like that. So, yeah, for a daytime cartoon within the past fifteen years, one made by Steven Spielburg no less, to feature the nativity, I wouldn’t exactly say it’s a dying Christmas story.

So, really, where is this idea of “you’re not allowed to associate Christmas with Jesus anymore” even coming from? Oh, wait, that’s right, my dad, your typical persecution-complex stricken baby boomer who is only “Christian” when he’s using it as a point to make himself seem better than Jews or Muslims. Sadly, he’s hardly the only person like that.

I mean, I’m not saying there isn’t some degree of fear of mentioning the religious aspects of Christmas, but I think it’s greatly exaggerated. And even for what there is, there’s no shortage of intelligent people calling bullshit. So everything’s fine.

As I mentioned several weeks back when ranting about atheists, identifying myself as Christian tends to confuse people. They’ll come up with all sorts of stereotypes and presumptions about my character, as well as what my exact beliefs must be. And when I say that my personal belief system does not align with what they’re telling me Christians all are supposed to believe, I get to be told that I either don’t understand my own religion or I’m not really Christian.

Well, I don’t claim to be a theological expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I still do not hesitate to call myself a Christian. Why? Because I believe in love, and to believe in love is to follow Jesus, and vice versa.

Is that to say non-Christians who believe in love don’t actually believe in love? No. They still very much do. I’m suggesting that since they believe in love, which is in and of itself the entirety of real requirements to be Christian, then these people are Christian! Meticulously following the Bible does not a Christian make. To snatch a line from Pirates of the Caribbean: “They’re mostly just guidelines anyway.” You can’t spread hate and call yourself a Christian. The two contradict each other. Christianity is love, and to love is Christian.

What about Buddhism and other peaceful loving religions? Well, they’re peaceful and loving, right? Then they mesh with Christianity. There is no conflict. Any conflict there is unimportant and ought to be cleaved out. They have the same essential beliefs. In other words, every religion is right.

Then why do I call myself Christian? Well, I do in fact believe Jesus was the Son of God, and spread the love and purity around while on earth, before a bunch of jerks finally said “GTFO!” and crucified Him, but showed up again for a bit a couple days later. What I also believe, however, is that He wasn’t the only one. There were saviors in many other religions, who were supposedly born to virgins and fathered by God, who preached peace and love with twelve bumblings sidekicks, and eventually died for our sins. Were they all of this just like Jesus? To that I am bold to say, “Sure, why not?”

So, if I believe there were many saviors, why do I latch onto Jesus? Well, that’s simple. I choose to. You can pick any one you want really, if any at all. I attribute the belief in peace and love to Jesus Christ, so I call myself a Christian.

Yeah, it really is that simple. For me anyway.

Peace!