Easter is over again, and the only thing that has been nagging my conscience is that I didn't do a Diatribe for the month of March. Consequently I have been facing allegations of laziness from the four of you out there who actually read my column. Sorry.
Anyway, Easter. What does it mean to you? Most of the world seems to see it as a celebration of all things chocolatey, and not of the Christian festival that inspired it. Was there actually a Jesus? Did he die on the cross? Did he, as my housemate Brendan has suggested, have it coming? Let's just look at the evidence.
The Bible is a fount of information. Depending on your point of view, it is fact or fiction. But then again, so is the Torah (incorporated in the Bible), the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Mahabharat, and the Karma Sutra. But the central tenet is that it is the word of God, albeit as told to various men who were the scribes and translators. This leads us to one conclusion, based on the info given that no man is without sin:
At least some of the Bible is a lie.
If man is inherently sinful, then there is a game of Chinese whispers from God down to man. "The ambulance is coming" quickly becomes "the purple goose is cooked alpha pension wigwam", as the scribe writes down what he thinks is correct, the translator translates and the publishing houses print while trying to avoid copyright lawsuits from the previous translators. Basically every question should be asked, from who was the proofreader, to why was the book of Ruth included at the expense of Tobit and Ecclesiasticus? Why were bits of Esther deleted? What happened to the Gospel according to Phillip? Obviously some selective editing went on, not to mention some complete fabrication.
But we can get some idea of the Almighty from the Bible, and we can conclude this:
God was not a good bloke.
A bit harsh, nonetheless all true - who else kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden after eating an apple that He told them not to eat? Want more? The genocide of almost the entire population of the planet under floodwaters, the visiting of the people of Egypt with terrible plagues, the stopping of what would have been the highest building the world would ever have seen by making the labourers speak different languages. Job was allowed to suffer immeasurably because God wanted to test his faith. Abraham was asked to sacrifice Isaac for the same laugh. Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt because she dared to look back at her hometown which God was in the process of destroying due to a rampant case of divine homophobia. Judas Iscariot was set up to take the fall for Christ's crucifixion. None of which, incidentally, confirms God's claim to be a loving and merciful God.
Brendan, incidentally, has this hypothesis that God is, in fact, the bad guy and that Satan is the good guy. Quite a strong argument when you look at the above info, and Satan doesn't seem to do anything to compare, save the aforementioned torment of Job, which God expressly condoned.
The above leads us to the next two conclusions:
God is a homophobe.
He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, due to their dabbling in the love that dare not speak its own name. Enough said. (Although it should be noted, the only witness to this was turned into a pillar of salt, and for all we know, God could have whisked the two towns off to another planet.)
Judas Iscariot was a saint.
Christians everywhere will strongly deny this, but the fact remains, if it weren't for Iscariot's 30 pieces of silver, Christ would not have been crucified. If Christ was not crucified, he wouldn't have been able to come back from the dead, which is central to Christianity. By coming back from the dead, he proved himself to be the son of God. It thus follows that, if it weren't for Judas, JC may never have been able to prove himself as the Saviour which he was.
One confusing thing that is reiterated throughout the Bible is the concept of the Holy Trinity. It should be seen that such a concept is impossible, due to Christ's embarrassing admission that he didn't know the date of Armageddon, and that only the Father knew. If this is truly the case, then the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit are three separate deities.
Confounding the issue even more, is the problem faced by anyone wanting to know who the Holy Spirit is, as "Lefty" doesn't seem to get as much print space as Jehovah and Jesus. Ladies and Gentlemen, I am now going to release a truth so fundamentally obvious, you will kick yourself several times in the shin, butt and groin as you wonder why you never thought of this before:
The Holy Spirit is none other than Satan.
That's right. Satan. Beelzebub. The Anti-Christ. The Devil. The Prince of Darkness. Lucifer. The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Mr Brimstone. Old Nick. Great Beast that is called "Dragon". May as well add Lefty to that list, as they are one and the same.
But how? Ever notice how Satan and Lefty don't ever appear together? God, the all seeing, all powerful, all knowing Father hadn't kicked Satan out of Heaven as late as Job appeared on the Earth, even though he must've known that Satan was the supreme evil overfiend and not the humble heavenly host that he appeared.
This brings us to the last in this series of startling Revelations:
God is neither perfect nor omnipotent.
God was on a learning curve, and he showed it by exercising his Divine muscle in the old days, and, even though far more atrocities are being perpetrated today, there are no more big floods, no more languages, no more towns being flown off to other galaxies far, far away. If God was perfect, he wouldn't have invented sin, would he?
And let's face it, if it bugs him so much, he only has to snap his fingers, and it's gone. And he hasn't done that, either. Most likely because he can't.
16 April, 2006 10:58