I have been watching the precious gains in social and psychological evolution that America made in the 1960s (along with the rest of the countries of our world, who've either been following the US, or have been pulled into its cultural ways more or less forcefully) just slip away, one by one. The corporazi have their part in this of course, but they're managing to do this as part of their unholy alliance with the "Holy Rollers", aka "Christianist nutballs".
The Christianist nutballs frighten me far more than the Islamist ones, but that's just because of geography: the Christianists are in my country, and are taking it over. Really, just look around at some of their websites and some of the newspapers and maybe just look around your damn neighbourhood, even. I think the thing that's most disquieting about all this is their kids, and the stuff they actually seem to believe because it's become OK for their parents to keep them out of school (and the influence of both their peers and other adults) and teach them what they'd be learning in school, if they only were living in the Christian theocracy they believe is the One True Way.
Look at how popular the fucking Jonas Brothers are, with their 'purity rings'. Look at the megachurches and Jesus Camps that are all over the goddamn place. Look how in some states there's been a winnowing away of various parts of the science and history textbooks so that kids will be shielded from 'the secular evil'. Things like rewriting the history texts to make slavery seem like it wasn't such a bad idea, and you probably already know what they've done to the whole idea of evolution with that oxymoronic Intelligent Design business.
Have you had a talk with your kids today about the things the Army of Christ's children are going to be talking to them about? Go pop that phrase into a search engine and prepare to be terrified. It can give people a really chilling feeling to read the manifestos of nut groups who seriously wish to see them dead...which is why I understand why the Islamist nutballs do scare people, even though that's being terribly exploited by the corporatists - who need to convince the populace that they need more weapons and mercenaries (otherwise known as "security consultants".)
I'm having a hard time deciding whether the corporatists or the Christianists scare me more these days. It's about a tie, really. It also doesn't matter, because they've joined forces with the goal of eliminating from the culture the kind of person who would be thought of as either a "hippie" or a non-labeled variant on the general concept of "bohemian". Not just eliminating the ideas hippies, bohemians or what-have-you espouse, mind you...I mean, eliminating the people who espouse them. These people want an American government that represents their interests, which include ending my life--along with lots of other lives, which they want ended for similar reasons. I'm not being over-dramatic or paranoid, to put it this way. It is a fact.
They want America's law to be parallel to Biblical law, because they believe that Christ's Second Coming will not occur until all Earth governments observe Biblical law as their own law. There are saner Christian sects which claim there's no biblical support for that notion, but we all know how easy it is to read just about anything into the confusing texts that make up the Old and New Testaments.
These incredibly fucked-up persons tend to never find things like global warming or nuclear war to be bad. In fact, they believe the opposite. They celebrate anything that could be a 'sign' of the End Times. They are excitedly anticipating the big event is going to happen in the next ten to twenty years. A lot of them believe in that "Rapture" event that'll beam them to Heaven and leave all their clothes strewn about back here on Earth. Thanks to the authors of the "Left Behind" books, and demagogues like Glen Beck, there's now a significant part of the population of the US that doesn't think this idea is loony.
They get interviewed by press-people - both real writers and the paparazzi. I remember watching a video in which an interviewer asked a Dominionist Christian preacher what he thought Heaven would be like. The guy just said, in perfect deadpan, that he would ask the Lord Jesus Christ if he could please have a special room with screens showing the Earth experiencing the "Tribulation", so he could watch all the sinners being cast into Hell.
"Tribulation" is Dominionist-talk for the Hell-on-Earth that is supposed to happen while Jesus' Lamb and Satan's weird dragon-beast thing face off and knock each other's hit points off for a while before Yahweh announces "Show's over. Nothing to see here" and turns the whole mess of Earth into a temple for His name's glory. Or whatever.
That's not my idea of Heaven. Heaven is supposed to be paradise, for um...heaven's sake. And my sake. Of course. Now, me? I'd prefer something involving lots of pretty hallucinations and snakes and cats, and a hundred different kinds of flowers with a hundred unique scents, bits of maguro nigiri to eat and chilled orange juice to drink and turquoise pools of water that's perfect to swim in, maybe throw in some some beautiful boys with blondish red fiery hair that streams out when the wind blows through it, and a cavalcade of drugs I've never heard and never gotten to try before. That would do it! (Fortunately, I've had all these things in my life at various points - sometimes even all at once.)
There's something WRONG with that man who was interviewed, who proudly shared that his idea of Heaven would be watching the people getting their bodies pureed in the fire of an Earth which he believes will turn into Hell for anyone not pledged to Yahweh and Company. This is the worm in the God fruit: there grows this derangement of the ego, which tastes the self-righteous death-dispenser's power and then begins jonesing for more of it...There is a sick madness which lurks behind the idea of exterminating those who don't act exactly like they do and who might decide to kill you if you don't kill them first.
I don't get a thrill or a rush when I imagine killing someone. In my whole life there's only one person I've ever hated enough to wish dead, and when I have caught myself in the middle of thinking about that wish all I have ever noticed that I'd get from it was a sick feeling, a mind-nausea which was very unpleasant in a way defying description. This horribleness will only goes away when a cat sits on me - for this is something that cures lots of really icky things like this, and seems to just "make it all better" again.
I wouldn't even want to order the people who want to put me to death to be put to death! I suppose this is something of a conundrum: a rather sad survival flaw: we secular humanists and neo-pagans and whatnot are sometimes so tolerant, we find ourselves tolerating the intolerable...and then, it rises up, and refuses to tolerate us.
I don't care if they have a deep inner need to force people like myself to worship their horrible, jealous, insecure yet power-mad, misogynistic, intractible old Middle Eastern God. I just want them to leave me alone, and leave the rest of us alone to experience divinity in the different and wonderous ways we've found to experience it.
Not all Christians support the Christianization of the American government, thankfully: it's the ones who call themselves "Dominionists" and "Reconstructionists" that want me, the family planning branch of medicine, the somewhat-democratic American government system, and perhaps also YOU, to be put to death. At the top of their list of people to destroy are gay people, drug users, abortionists AND women who've had an abortion, heterosexuals who fuck without getting married to one another, and idolaters.
Except for having never performed a D&C on anyone, I seem to have scored on this whole list. I am - and without shame - a transgressive sexual deviant whose perversions are too numerous to count, a very uncloseted druggophile, a woman who has no use for marriage as an institution who never got married (except to the LSD molecule) and on top of all that, I'm also an idolater.
Idolatry, to them, is THE WORST SIN THERE IS. It's worse than being an atheist to believe in God and repudiate 'Him'.
Well...I believe in "God" and yet I soundly, loudly, proudly and passionately repudiate and rebuke that depressing, regressive, ignorance-encouraging, and just plain mean God of the Israelites.
I "worship" - though I prefer to just say adore - a God that's not that God. Who or what is this "different God"?
Did you ever envy the people who feel such utter bliss as the purpose-bound, mission-critically focused religion-addled zealot? I did, once. But I had no way to reach that cloud...because I just couldn't stretch my belief that far without it feeling hokey and wrong. In other words: I still did not have FAITH.
God seems both a reality that's commanded the attention and obedience of the vast majority of living cells and tribes and nations, and a fantasy that's as unreal as a unicorn. One day, I asked the God of the Bible, which I assumed was the sole one in the picture since that is propagated by all the churches:
"Why don't you do something that would make me believe in you without some huge leap of faith that requires that I poo-poo what are, without a single doubt, proven scientific and historical truths in order to believe it the way you ask that I believe it?"
I didn't get an answer from the deity I had addressed.
Does it have too much scorn for me to acknowledge me? Was He off helping another customer? Was He "out to lunch"? Or just 'not quite there enough to get the message'?
My answer came from one of the other Gods. The one who really loved me, for a great many years - but that's another story, far different. But the conversation lasted a very long time, blinking in and out of focus as I lived through a day's events. This other God was so comforting to me and at the same time was exciting and inspiring.
There's more Gods out there, and in here, than molecules of air in all the oxygen in the universe. I searched until I found a higher power that made sense to me and now maybe you want to go and do this too.
You can. Really.
It's been a long time since God2 and I began relating to each other and to the outside world. Now, I can say that I have that 'spark' and that compassion and all the things that religion gives to the sorts of people who are the only ones who ever get anything good out of being religious.
They will talk to me, these people. They still love THEIR God, and are yet curious about mine. I tell them: this is a God who's not jealous and crazy, like Yahweh, who never sacrificed any son, especially his own. Or commanded anyone sacrifice the fruits of their labours to a temple where they're just burned in fire instead of feeding people needing food, A God who detests animal sacrifice. A God who is neither all-perfect nor all-knowing, who isn't insistent on having a throne to himself with no competitors.
One who appreciates logic, and one participates in the prayer process, often making it a two-way convo. One who doesn't make sex into a syndrome, and one who will - yes! - even make holy and divine love to me, in a transdimensional consummation that occurs on very special occasions.
It's also highly important to note that there's more than just MY God2!!!!
There's others who jibe with the general purpose but whose xenodimensional essences are different, more in alignment with minds who aren't like mine. They are coming together with the goal of merely offering an alternative to Yahweh, Allah or anything and everything that's "Satanic". Though monotheists whose faith is unshakeable will automatically call all this just more Devil-lies anyway, it is not. You will know it when you see it. You will feel the difference. Satan is just an antithesis - or would have you believe that. since Satan and the "LORD" were always on the same team just playing different positions - but the alt-God is not merely anti-God. God2 merely wants to be God for you, yet one who will listen and return your calls, who isn't obsessed with blood and death and war and who will still help you love your family, your neighbours, and guide your desire to live life in a holier way than you do now...but even if you've "lost your way" as a sheep and yet just can't muster a desire to return to Y's flock. Of course, if you don't want to be a 'sheep', that's great, too.
The addition of the superscripted '2' is just a way of expressing the idea that this divinely-manifest agency seeks to be a significant improvement in every way to the other prominent, most dominant idea of who or what 'God' is.
I am not partial to cults, and would never cotton to a God2 cult following me around...for a number of reasons, one of the rather important ones being that God2 doesn't want this, either. But every so often, here and there on the net and off it, I will leave a few signals. Just to gently point out that if you want it, there's an alternative to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. And also, there is an alternative to atheism, agnostic wishy-washiness, and the other major organized religions. There's an alternative that's far more real to the only other 'alt.religions' that I'd ever noticed, the ones consisting of the disempowered, disillusioned, scattered clusters of New-Agey pagans.
God2 is Not My Daddy. He's my best friend. And more than "just a friend".
Yahweh would have us never advancing beyond the morals - and the stories - of the Middle East in the years around the time BC flipped over into AD. God2 wants people to write His/Her/Its/Their Bibles themselves, with their own lives and stories and laments.
I love God2 because unlike the Other One, the New One has a sense of humor. MonoGod completely lacks both sanity and the ability to be happy. The New One does not lack these things. And thanks to the effulgent grace of the New! Improved! Relevant, Sensual and Funny Deity that you, too, can have a piece of! I am coming to not lack the ability to be happy myself. Once, I thought I'd never see the day that was able to happen.
Yes! We have miracles!
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