The Divine Tragedy
ACT 2 - Let there be truth…
Remember the words of that Baptist pastor in my first article on this? When talking about Jesus, he said:
“How incredible that a life that ended in so much pain and agony thus released the world from sin and spread so much love!”
And might I add: “Isn’t it incredible how a religion that was founded on such love, compassion and forgiving has caused so much hurt, pain, blood and death throughout the centuries?”
Murder in the name of religious justice has always been accepted as a way of the end justifying the means. The Catholics had their crusades and their witch burnings. The Muslims have their Jihad and their constant warring factions. At one time or another most major and minor religions have applied violence to spread or “prove” the justice of their teachings.
Does this mean the religions themselves are perverted and demand blood sacrifices to sustain the Truth? No, of course not. The religions themselves are for the most part Common Sense in the “words of God”. Very few instances in the Bible’s New Testament or in the Koran talk about violence or the enforcement of one’s will upon another person’s will. This is all something made up by the leaders of the societies practicing said religions as a way of controlling their people and expanding their riches in the name of the Lord.
The Romans saw their once so mighty empire crumble in the 4th century and needed new ideas to preserve power and control. Emperor Constantine racked his brain on what to do. It was not something that could be solved by more warfare since the borders had grown too distant from Rome itself and much too many resources had already been used and exhausted defending them. How then keep people and nations in check? Easy… You conveniently adapt a new religion whose formula easily applies to the continuous ruling of Europe. You set up a hierarchy within that religion (not anywhere mentioned in the bible) with an omni potent Head Cheese (the Pope) and his trusted lackeys (Arch Bishops) and make sure that they are represented in every court in Europe whispering strategies in the kings’ ears and cashing in on the taxes. The bishops sent out to every diocese to rule the different parts of whatever country could only be appointed by that country’s Arch Bishop who in turn could only be appointed by the Pope in Rome. The Roman Empire never fell to pieces… It fell back, reorganized and came back in a new package that has survived to this day.
Emperor Constantine (who worshipped the Sun and didn’t believe one word in the bible) was made one of Catholicism’s first revered Saints by getting baptized on his death bed. Be sure to remember him in your prayers.
The Muslims have changed very little since day one and still pretty much live by the Koran they way they always did. Since it is a religion adapted by a people that are more prone to fanaticism it is easily incorporated as a main ingredient of most Arab countries’ very constitution and is used and abused to control and govern.
Who’s going to rise in rebellion against a national leader who is also a Man of God? You keep the people steeped in religious teachings that suit your ruling and deal hard and swift with free thinkers, thus creating a brain washed people afraid to step on God’s toes and dying (literally) to carry out his will as told by their fearless leader (because he is in a bunker).
Religion is so easy to use to control people. Why is that? Mainly because people who unquestioningly subscribe to a religious teaching are the kind of people who are looking to someone else for leadership and guidance. The people who drank Reverend Jones’s laced Kool-Aid are the same people who faint at Pentecostal meetings and the same people who flew the planes into the World Trade Center on 9/11. A bunch of easily impressed minds desperately looking to belong to something that makes sense out of their pathetic little lives. When these people are caught in the claws of the Man with the Plan they are happily doomed to carry out whatever fuckuppedness he has in mind.
Fanaticism… It’s a killer. Once deployed in a person’s mind fanaticism is in control. You can’t argue with a fanatic, you can’t trust a fanatic, you can’t reason with a fanatic and you sure as hell can’t make a fanatic ever see anything but the Truth as perceived by him- or herself. Every aspect of society has their resident fanatics. Political fanatics, environmental fanatics, sport fanatics etc… But it is usually the religious fanatics that will kill you in a blaze of glory. Their glory… Not yours.
I don’t trust people who belong to extreme faiths... The guy next door with the Bible in one hand, his gun in the other. People belonging to extreme faiths are so much “Holier than thou”. That’s the way it is. They will be going to heaven, not you. They have the ear of the Lord, not you. They are filled with eternal love and endless bliss, not you. In my opinion this should be my own personal problem, but no… these people don’t only think they are better than I am, they also want to rub it in my face.
This is a true episode from my life:
Saturday morning. The doorbell rings… I roll out off bed, blinking the crust away, licking my velvet teeth and stumble to answer it… Maybe it’s someone with a big goddamn bottle of Excedrin? I open up and there in front of me are two little ladies, sporting big grins of self importance.
“Yeah…?”
They look me up and down, frown at the tattoos, wrinkle their noses at my long hair, shudder at the sight of my pierced eyebrow, look at each other and nod in perfect unison. “We are from the Jehovah’s Witnesses and we would like to talk to you about that.”
Notice how they never ever give you their names? They are not people anymore; they are now Jehovah’s Witnesses. I am much too tired for this crap.
“Yeah, OK... Sign me up. I’m in… Send me my welcome-kit in the mail. Goodbye.”
A sensibly shoed foot is firmly placed in the crack of the closing door… “Eh Sir…” (and she uses that term the way you dangle a dead spider in front of you as you are about to flush it down the toilet) “… We would really like to talk to you about it though.”
“What?” I say trying to kick her foot out to close the door, “I already told you to enroll me.”
“Well you see Sir; it’s not that easy… You can’t just enroll." And with that the door is flung open by a woman possessed by God.
“So what the hell do you want from me?” I say, resigning to her divine strength.
“We want to tell you about us.”
I get it… They want to tell me how I am going to burn in hell, and how they are not. Well, fuck them. “Hey, listen ladies… Unless your membership numbers in the Jehovah Club are less than 144,000 you are going to burn right next to me and you will have lived like sheep for nothing.”
They look dumbstruck. “Eh Sir… It is true that only 144,000 of the true faith are to be elevated to sit with the Lord, but…”
I sigh. That’s your last line bitch, I think to myself, say goodbye. “Well maybe the Lord will let you empty the True Few’s spit buckets and mop the clouds. Otherwise I'll just see ya' in hell. OK?”
Slam.
How people belonging to religions that have developed such different literal interpretations of the very same original texts can support those teachings even when they make no sense whatsoever to their own truths, is just mind boggling to me…
Take Catholicism for example. Nowadays a harmless enough religion right?
How often does your average Catholic read the bible? The very basis of their faith? Once a week, once a year? Never? Of all the Catholics I know I don’t think any of them ever opened up the Good Book once to check the truths as brought to them at mass.
So millions and millions of people practice a religion based on ONE man’s truths, put down by men of a patriarchal society in writing a hundred years after this ONE man’s death, compiled into a book called the Bible by a sun worshipping Roman emperor as a mean to sustain government and control of the factions of Europe and then brought to the common man in latin (at first) by local priests (scholared by the Roman Catholic Mafia) interpreting the texts from the point of authority.
You know the Whispering Game? Everybody sits in a circle and the first person whispers a sentence to the second. That person whispers the same sentence to the next and so on until it has gone full circle and is back to the first person again. The sentence has always changed somewhere along the way. A word here or there is missing or added, or the very message itself is lost or changed.
If we can’t be trusted to pass on the truth to each other in a child’s game, how can we trust man to pass down thousands of events, episodes and quotes through hundreds of generations from one society that looked nothing like ours to today's modern society? We can’t… And the only reason it is still perpetuated is because we want to believe.
Believing is man’s victory and his downfall. It is his strength and his weakness… If man concentrated more on believing in his own spirit and look for salvation from within instead of accepting other people’s truths for gospel I am certain we would live in a better world today.
Religion is not evil or stupid, but the practice of it can be.
~ The Divine Tragedy ~
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Religion is the source of most things evil. Let me bone it out for you.
In Me I trust.
