
By the time God got Mary in trouble; making her pregnant with Jesus, the church had grown rich and powerful, but it wasn’t the Christian church.
Their rules were strict and their punishments cruel and brutal. They didn’t care if you were poor. They would NOT give you anything, which is why Jesus was born in a barn.
God loved his creations but they were straying from the path.
The last time God sent a message he nearly wiped the slate clean by flooding the entire earth. Maybe God thought killing almost everyone was too harsh and instead he would enter the world and make everyone calm down using love and reason.
We all know how that story ended.
In America if someone takes our stuff we blow their head off. If someone comes into our country uninvited we kick them in the pants and send them home with no supper. If you need a place to sleep and you don’t have any dubloons, tough titty!
Emperors weren’t comfortable with the words of Jesus. They wanted to be the judge, jury and executioner of their people. Jesus said God was the only one they should listen to. It’s why they tortured and killed him on the cross.
When missionaries wanted a powerful man to accept Jesus as their lord and savior, they had to minimize the words of Jesus. None of that “blessed are the meek stuff.”
Jesus taught us that people shouldn’t kill people. That we should welcome strangers, and if we’re mean to them we’re being mean to him and we’re going to Hell. If someone takes your coat, give them your shirt. If they kick your ass, offer them your balls.
Here we are, two thousand and twenty-four years after the birth of Jesus, in America, a country on a continent ruled by a system of laws, which was unheard of so many years ago.
We’re still talking about Jesus.
Christians talk about Jesus a lot, but they don’t seem to remember what he said or did. They remember lots of old testament stuff. Stuff that Jews based their religion on, but not much of what Christianity is based on.
It’s understandable considering Jews and Christians came from the same traditions. But Jesus was here to reform the church.
Don’t get it twisted. Jesus wasn’t trying to change God’s rules. The tricky pharisees were always trying to get Jesus to admit he was trying to change the written word of God, so they could justify torturing and killing him on a cross, but he proved them wrong.
Jesus wasn’t trying to change the rules, he was trying to change the people.
They killed him anyway.
Jesus knew they would kill him. He was being a pain in the ass to the rich and powerful. It’s why Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. It’s why JFK was assassinated. It’s why Vladimir Putin killed Alexei Navalny.
Powerful people don’t want to help the poor. They want them to go away. Or get a job. Or just quit bitching.
Which is why I’m confused by Christians embracing Donald Trump. He’s rich. He wants to kill criminals. He wants to kill people who don’t like him. He wants to wall off the southern border so no one gets in without permission, even if they die.
Capitalism and Christianity don’t blend well if you use lots and lots of Jesus, so churches talk about this guy named Jesus a lot, but they don’t emphasize what he taught.
I stopped thinking church was relevant when I was twelve years old. I had skipped big church to walk up to 7-Eleven so I could buy a pack of cigarettes and play the pinball machine.
I did it every Sunday. Mom and dad didn’t go to church, they just made sure I got up and out the door in time to catch the bus.
Sunday school was held in an old house next to the big church. After Sunday school the kids weren’t escorted to the pews, we were dismissed and expected to go to the sanctuary on our own.
I had to go to Sunday school but I discovered I could avoid big church by hiding in the bathroom or walking down the street.
That particular Sunday my mom was there. She rarely came to church. That she wasn’t willing to go herself pissed me off, until I became a parent. Then I understood.
I was walking back to church so I wouldn’t miss the bus home when I saw my mom stomping around the parking lot looking for me. I don’t know if I’d forgotten that mom would be expecting me in big church, or if my cousin threw me under the bus, but I freaked out!
Mom was embarrassed and it made me feel really bad. She didn’t force me to go to church anymore. What would be the point? Besides I’d been saved multiple times by those vixens in Sunday school with their passionate stories of Jesus and his disciples. Jesus was a badass.
Such courage!
I’d start to well up and that particular Sunday school teacher would hug me to her bosom and ask me to accept Jesus into my heart, again. And again. And again. I was a sucker for a good story.
The church up the street from my house peppers its lawn with powder blue and pink crosses from time to time. Sometimes there are hundreds of crosses. I don’t know why the numbers go up and down.
Because my drunken father threw random bible verses at me while verbally abusing me, I decided to read the bible. I got to know it pretty well. It’s a weird book, to say the least.
The first part of Bible is about how god created the world and put a couple people on it, who right away started breaking the rules. Those two people got kicked out of paradise and had a bunch of babies, that had babies with each other until the world was full of humans who treated each other like junk.
God tried to get everyone to be nice to each other by destroying cities, countries, even the entire world. He even entered our reality as a human being named Jesus and got himself killed, just trying to get people to be nice to each other.
Now Christians are embracing Donald Trump, who doesn’t even pretend to be nice.
Trump paid for a full page ad in the New York Times saying the Central Park 5 should be executed.
The Central Park 5 were 5 young men who were convicted of raping a woman jogging in Central Park. Eventually it was proven they were innocent, but the 5 of them spent from 7 to 13 years in prison.
Yes, Hillary Clinton wasn’t nice about the Central Park 5 either, but she was never our president, nor will she ever be.
When Trump came down the escalator to announce his run for president the first thing he did was shit on Mexicans. I don’t think Jesus would have appreciated that. Calling them illegal would have NOT made a difference to the prince of peace.
But abortion seems to be the biggest issue of all to American Christians and Donald Trump talks about abortion. He talks about no abortions after a certain number of weeks and how women who get abortions should be punished.
What’s baffling about Christians wanting to ban abortion is that Jesus didn’t talk about them. At all. He hung out with prostitutes. I would think the subject might have come up if it were a big deal.
If prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, I’m guessing 'abortion provider' isn’t far behind.
Jesus knew about abortions but he had bigger fish to fry, and to give away to the masses, even if you couldn’t pay for it. Free fish for everyone! Come on down to the river! Jesus is having a fish fry!
The only religious basis given for being against abortion is an expanded reading of the sixth commandment: thou shalt not kill.
Jesus put his weight behind that commandment when the pharisees wanted to stone a woman to death for having sex outside of marriage. Jesus embarrassed them when he picked up a rock and said, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Her accusers walked away.
But Christians think it’s okay to kill people, especially if they’ve committed a crime, even if the sixth commandment forbids it. The sixth commandment does NOT say, “Thou shalt not kill . . . unless they committed a crime.” They didn’t flinch when their next president wanted to kill 5 guys falsely accused of rape.
Jesus is supposed to be our life-coach not a cardboard cut-out propped up next to a perfumed, suit wearing televangelist.
I abandoned Christianity when I was told one of my kids was going to Hell for being gay. Not because Jesus said my kid was going to Hell, because he didn’t.
When I was told my child would go to Hell for being gay I couldn’t abide the idea. So I said, “Then I will reject Heaven. I will go to Hell because I don’t want her to be alone.”
I got the same feeling when I heard Christians talk about illegal immigrants. America is the richest country in the world, but we want to close the border because we don’t want to share?
I got that feeling when I heard that a woman died because her doctor was scared to perform an abortion, even though it was the only way to save her life, because their state banned abortion in the name of Jesus.
I got that feeling when I saw an old white man on his knees praying in front of a Planned Parenthood clinic in a run down neighborhood in Wyandotte County Kansas. He’d driven up in a late-model Lincoln Continental and printed on the back of his windbreaker was, “Pray for the fetuses.” Not, “Pray for the mother.”
If the key to passing through the pearly gates is to abide by the words of Jesus then I’ll be seeing a lot of familiar faces in the afterlife.
It will be one Hell of a reunion.