Be afraid, very afraid

Bells were ringing, the choir was singing, and Bishop-man deliverd the Easter lecture to his Christian flock. Let’s see what he had to say:

In his Easter message this weekend, the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney Dr Peter Jensen has warned of the occult.

The Archbishop is particularly concerned about people using the supernatural to contact deceased loved ones.

That’s right dear reader, one of the leading Christians in the country, with a pendant hanging from his neck showing a deceased person on a cross, during a festival celebrating the alleged resurrection of said dead person some 2000 years ago, tells his congregation that to believe someone could establish contact with people who passed away is very silly, supernatural, indeed witchcraft. Mwuahh ha, ha, ha, that is delicious.

A man whose whole professional reality is based on being able to communicate with a dead person, whose religion is based on the idea to promise a life after death, argues that we should be concerned about people trying to contact the deceased. The butcher telling shoppers not to make gravy.

The Archbishop then continued his sermon by sharing with his sheeple the initial finding of his investigation into the phenomenon of people evoking the spirits:

Dr Jensen told ABC radio's AM program there has been a surge of interest non-traditional religions.

"There's become a great deal more freedom than there used to be decades ago, with mind and spirit stuff; new age religions," he said.

"All the sort of stuff you see very prominently in book stores.”

Competition angst, that’s what this is, and as per Religion 101, competition needs to be stomped out. When operating in the holy industry, the standard weapon of choice to smear opposition is to pass judgment and brand them as sects, or as in Jensen’s case, new aged spirit stuff.

My hypocrisy meter almost maxed out when I took a reading on Jensen’s Easter message. Seemingly totally oblivious to the fact that his own religion was once upon a time considered an occult movement, with a guru gathering followers, which then set forth to convince others of their self-righteous claim to be the new, the one true religion, the Archbishop chooses to debase other people’s believe systems coz they aren’t quite as antique as his own.

It appears the priest’s line of reasoning is straight forward – The older an religion, the more believable and true it is. However, following his logic, we should all be converting to Hinduism, the religion with the oldest recorded roots, predating Sumerian, Egyptian and Babylonian cultures. By world religion standards, Christianity and Islam are new kids on the block, new age spirit stuff so to say.

But the Bishop kept the best part for last, where he reveals who his audience should blame for re-birthing this heretic past time of trying to get in contact with the dead. And the culprits are:

"But there's also been a large migrant intake into this country from people who haven't been impacted by Western cynical secularism, but culturally have a strong belief in the afterlife and in supernatural beings; in ghosts and spirits.

"And a surprising number of people therefore who are now living in Australia are quite concerned about, and fearful of I think, of this supernatural realm."

Uhh yeah baby, daft migrants with their unwashed believes engaging in voodoo majic, bringing with them from their homelands all those “occult” traditions the Christian missionaries weren’t able to extinct for good. For their good that is, because as most well read people would know, in the Christian life after death model there is nothing to be scared of. Apart from burning eternally in hell.

So, Archbishopman says don’t try to communicate with any souls in the after life, other than Jesus that is - you are allowed to talk to him. Believe in his father and you got nothing to worry about. Remember Adam and Eve, any indiscretion on this part and you won’t make it to heaven, sorry mate, flames on fire for you. Which probably explains why hanging out in your bookstore’s New Age section will lead you to nightmares.

Happy Easter

God's R Us

Interesting topic over on Blogocracy today, where Tim Dunlop picks up on the seemingly eternal question: Is there a God?

Here is what amounts to his conclusion:

...The universe is immense and existence is hard, in the best sense of the word, and God just seems like too pat an answer, too self-serving. Add in the codifications—faiths --that allow one set of believers to pit themselves against all others and the harm done by this self-serving idea very easily outweighs the good...

In other words, NO, or at least unlikely enough so as to render the concept not worth believing in.

Having also bounced this rhetoric question of God - Yes/No? through my Hall of Thoughts on various occasions, I come to a similar deduction, the one almighty God is a human concept born in the hope for equalising justice and a life after death, a omnipotent being that can be used as universal explanation for what is and isn't happening.

I can't understand why so many people are like sheep in their approach to ideas about the afterlife and how the fabric of life is knit. My guess its due to either one of the following (or any combination):

• lack of fantasy
• the human group/herd instinct
• early childhood indoctrination
• thinking of "might as well"

I almost wrote

• simplistic world view

but then, just in time, I realised that it could also be my assertions that are steeped in naivety, it's not that my theory is all too complex either.

I personally redrew my picture of where we come from, who/what runs the show while we are here and where will we go to. I think it sort of started in my early teens, when (out of all people) my religious education teacher made a remark in class along the lines of

What if Jesus came back today, after 2000 years of Christianity? We, Christians or not, would stick him into a mental institution or jail, not the cross anymore, no, we have finally moved on from that after burning people alive for 16 hundred years, but we'd declare him a fraud, a loony, an extremist.

Jesus would be living as an itinerant, hang out with people our society classes as "loosers", he'd be a rebellious activist with a record for trespassing and being a nuisance in public. I couldn't explain this paradox much better than Kev Carmody, (I recommend his albums, essential listening) :

He was born in Asia Minor,
a colonized Jewish man.
His father the village carpenter,
worked wood in his occupied land.

He was apprenticed to his father's trade.
His country paid it's dues;
to the colonial Roman conquerors,
He was a working-class Jew.

Though conceived three months out of wedlock
the stigma never stuck.
He began a three year public life
but he never made a buck

because he spoke out against injustice;
saw that capitalism bled the poor.
He attacked self-righteous hypocrites
and he condemned the lawyers' law.

But they've commercialised his birthday now;
the very people he defied,
and they've sanctified their system
and claim he's on their side!

But if he appeared tomorrow,
He'd still pay the highest cost,
being a 'radical agitator'
they'd still nail him to a cross.

You see He'd stand with the down trodden masses,
identify with the weak and oppressed.
He'd condemn the hypocrites in church pews,
and the affluent, arrogant West.

He'd oppose Stalinist totalitarianism;
the exploitation of millions by one,
and 'peace' through mutual terror,
and diplomacy from the barrel of a gun.

He'd fight with Joe Hill and Walesa,
Mandela and Friere;
Try to free the third world's millions
from hunger and despair.

He'd stand with the peasants
at the pock-marked walls;
They'd haul him in on bail.
He'd condemn all forms of apartheid,
and he'd rot in their stinking jails.

He'd denounce all dictatorships
and Mammon's greed,
and the exploitation of others for gain.
He'd oppose the nuclear madness,
and the waging of wars in His name.

He'd mix with prostitutes and sinners,
challenge all to cast the first stone.
A compassionate agitator,
one of the greatest the world has known.

He'd condemn all corrupt law and order,
tear man made hierarchies down.
He'd see status and titles as dominance
and the politics of greed he'd hound.

He'd fight against the leagues of the Ku Klux Klan,
and the radical, racist right.
One of the greatest humanitarian socialists
was comrade, Jesus Christ.

Thanx to stratosph3R3 from over at RedHotPawn for the lyrics

So, if there was a Jesus of Nazareth, a powerful and kindhearted man who died in the belief that his cruel end would help us having our sins forgiven on judgment day, then he would be disgusted with the lip service morale of his followers. I am not an historian, far from it, so I can't really say if Jesus ever lived and what he was up to, but I am very much inclined to say that he was not the son of God, but God himself. And he appealed to the Gods within each of his fellow humans to wake up and show compassion towards all other beings sharing time and space with us. The following quote pretty much sums it up.

"When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself."
Peter O'Toole

That's it, not much more to say. IMHO we are all Gods/Goddesses, and because being a God means existing forever, and eternity being pretty boring after a while, we invented life, to escape the boredom of being a God. When we die we go back to being Gods, catch up with other Gods in Godland, and when we are fed up with godliness, we line up and parachute into a creature being born at that moment. One time round we want to find out what it is like to be a hungry child in Africa, next time round we line up in the rich kid column.

IMHO it's all about gathering different kind of experiences, see the world from many angles. I am a spiritual being who is having a human experience.

Any belief someone holds, as crazy as they might sound to some, has the same chance of being the truth as the christian, muslim, hindhu or any other faith has. It can be calculated with the following formula:

A person's belief / Never-ending possibilities = 0.000period01 %

Pretty slim I must admit, but not any less either. And now, just to introduce another possibility, what if whatever one believes would happen to one's soul at the time of death, will actually happen to this soul?

In other words, if you approach death and are worried that all your bad deeds will lead you straight to some kind of flamin hell, then that is where you'll go. Or if you believe you'll get reborn as a cow, you'll actually be reborn as a cow, and so on. The options are endless, but just in case, on my deathbed I'll be thinking of a nice situation I want to spend eternity in, like living with a nymphomaniac who owns a bottle shop.
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