More About Why I Despise Mike Huckabee

Happened upon this little happy article today. I’ll summarize for you: Mike Huckabee was one of the Southern Baptist church leaders who signed a full-page ad in 1998 declaring and affirming the newly-imposed Southern Baptist tenet that wives should “submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband.”

The article follows with a bunch of trumped-up BS trying to twist and explain the language in a way that makes Huckabee NOT look like the complete misogynistic bastard that he is. Here’s one of my favorite passages:

But ideally the Ephesians V family is a family in which there is mutual submission to one another in the fear of the Lord. Therefore, when there are matters of discussion, both husband and wife converse with each other, seeking to find consensus. In those rare instances where consensus is not reached, the wife says, “Okay, you have the responsibility and accountability to stand before God one day and give an account of the decision you’re going to make. But I–voluntarily–submit to your leadership is this instance.”

I don’t care what particular diety one prays to, the notion that a man should have the final authority in ANY household just because he has a penis is BULLSHIT. As I recall, in the Bible, which Southern Baptists and all Christian religions call The Word of God, and from what I learned in sermon after sermon in my more docile days, that particular God made woman from Adam’s rib to be at his side. Not his head to rule over him, nor his feet to be trampled under him.

It’s our differences and variations that make this country unique and exceptional. Different religions, races, creeds, languages, whether they irritate us or enthuse us, are the very basis on which this country was built. But let’s look at the main goal of any established religion: to convert others, to bring them in, to “save” them. And I guarantee you that if we continue to elect men like George Bush and Mike Huckabee to the Oval Office, this country will slowly but steadily cease to exist as a democracy and emerge as a theocracy while these men continue to turn their apologetics into national policy.

Future Presidents: surely, adhere to your faith. Keep it, treasure it, and practice it without shame. But do not will it to be universal law. And by the way, running your campaign based on your faith is just tasteless and cheapens and demeans the very meaning of it. Pitiful.

Romney vs. Huckabee

I’m only going to say this once: Voting for someone because they subscribe to a particular religion is just as stupid as NOT voting for them because they subscribe to a particular religion. I really thought we had come farther than this as a country. Two hundred and thirty-one years of progress, and we still have this debate?

This is amateur politics. I don’t give a rat’s ass what God you pray to as long as you can run this country effectively and don’t force me to pray to the same one.

The Golden Compass

Personally, I have not read any of Pullman’s books, but I’m seriously considering it after seeing the movie. I’m stoked that kids are into these books, which from what I’ve heard, seem to be the best follow-up to the Harry Potter craze to date.

So why the big controversy? Well, it seems that authoritative groups get a little prickly about their authority being challenged. Where’s the best place to start when trying to affect widespread change? At the bottom. In this case, with the children. What the chur. . . er, I mean, Magisterium is trying to accomplish in this case is to detach children from that which gives them knowledge of the world; in other words, that which gives them the ability to think for themselves and question convention. The goal of the Magisterium is, after all, not only to rule their world, but to rule all worlds outside their own as well. Does any of this sound familiar? And perhaps just a tad biting? At one point near the beginning of the movie, a member of the Magisterium even says “… if we don’t stop this, there will always be freethinkers challenging our authority.”

Which, besides the need to fix that kid’s teeth, is pretty much the only thing that bothered me about the movie. The religious and socio-political overtones are *so* obvious that it almost feels like an insult to the over-twenty crowd. However, that’s not the crowd to which the books or movie were marketed. Which means that the kids in the theater today will someday watch this movie again as (hopefully freethinking) adults and say “Ooooh, I get it now.”

So, there’s a church-like organization in the film which represents the “bad guys.” This is why right-wing groups are in hysterics. The “don’t say anything bad about my religion/political party/pagan cult and don’t say anything good about anyone else’s” mentality is getting a little old. And if we’re being honest, the only reason these people are so upset by the depiction of the church in this film is because it’s so damn accurate.

What’s the goal of any religion? To spread it. To convert others. To take that religion and make it accepted and taught everywhere, not just in our own backyards, but every country, every continent, everywhere in the world. (Hmm, circular reference, much?) What Pullman does is expose to his audience – in this case, a very specific audience with the potential to affect real change in the world – some of the reasons why this might not always be the best thing to do.  And I, for one, applaud him for it.

I was never taught to question authority, but as I grew older I realized that those in charge were rarely the ones who cared about those being ruled over. At our most basic level, humans exist for one purpose: to promote our individual survival. Those with power have always, and will always, do whatever they can to prevent those without it from challenging the status quo. This will continue, until we learn to question, to challenge, and to demand the best for ourselves. We have become a species of sheep, content to follow and obey.

I only hope that a generation of shepherded parents don’t belittle their children into dismissing the message of these books & films. I hope that, armed with the knowledge that such a choice exists, future generations affect real change in the world around us. And what will happen if parents endeavor to raise freethinking children? True, a good proportion of those children will ultimately decide to adhere to commonly held statutes and conventions. And some will not. But guess what? They will all have made that decision on their own. And that is what will take us from sheep to shepherds.

Bargaining

Dear God:

Yeah, it’s me again. I know you and I have had some serious issues over the years, and I doubt you even still. Yet I continue to acknowledge your presence even as I entertain doubts of it. Over the past year I’ve made a conscious effort to give you credit when things are going well rather than only blaming you when they are not. You know as well as I do how many nights I’ve engaged in some really heavy ceiling staring, ponder you, questioning you, talking to you. . .

And I try not to make too many requests. This is mainly because I figure whatever it is I’m asking for, I can probably work out on my own at some point, and also because it feels a bit presumptuous to beg favors from you when there’s so much animosity between the two of us. I wouldn’t just walk up to someone I’ve just sucker-punched, or who has just spat on me, and ask for a helping hand.

So of course, as luck would have it, I find myself smack dab in the middle of a predicament and I have nowhere else to turn. So here’s the deal:

Don’t take her away. Please, whatever else you have going on up there, just please don’t take her. I simply cannot believe that after everything you’ve brought her through, and as much faith as she puts in you, that you wouldn’t bring her through this. She has so much left to give, so many laughs and tears left. She has survived so many horrible, horrible things; this can’t be her undoing.

Whatever odds you and I have been at over the years, she has never doubted you. I ask for nothing except for her.  And what do you get in return?

I wish I knew. I wish I had something to offer. Could I promise never to doubt you again? To be good for the rest of my life? Never to ask for anything again? Sure I could. But we’d both know (you more than me) that it would be a lie. I can only say that it would serve to re-energize that little hamster spinning the wheel of faith in my brain.

She needs you. I need to believe that  you’re there with her. Maybe it’s postponing the inevitable, but as long as she has love and life to give, I will postpone it indefinitely.

Maybe this isn’t how this works. I have before been accused of using you like a credit card. That is not my intent. But it’s all I have right now.  It’s all she has.

Sincerely,

Leslie

Jesus! No, really. . .

I should have been working, but a quick glance at some website or another led me down a path that has consumed the majority of my day. Despite my best efforts to put my intense curiosity aside, too large a portion of my day was taken up by reading everything I could about this new documentary that posits the discovery of the tomb of Jesus. Nay, the tomb of the family of Jesus. To my surprise, which hasn’t quite quelled over the uproar regarding such suppositions presented in the highly fictional Da Vinci Code, a vast majority of the debate from religious fundamentalists here doesn’t seem to concern so much whether or not this tomb actually contains the bones of that Jesus, but around the postulation that Jesus was married. And to Mary Magdalene, much less!

My question is this: WHY would it matter so much if Jesus was married and had children? The Bible of the Christian faith states that Jesus was without sin. Being married and reproducing is not a sin. In fact, if I recall Sunday school with Miss Pirtle accurately, God tells us in Genesis to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. Mmmkay.

So most Christians with whom I’ve spoken about this issue say that if Jesus was married and had children, then it would disrupt the entire religious community and *everything* they believe would be false, and they know it to be true, so it’s not a possibility. I have a hard time making the connection here. If God created the Earth, then He’s most likely responsible for the rest of the universe as well, yet He failed to mention these side projects in the Bible, aside from the stars and sun and moon that we’re all so familiar with. So if He didn’t feel it necessary to divulge such creations to us in the Bible (if you choose to believe that the Bible was, in fact, written by God Himself), who’s to say that He would have felt compelled to recount every single bit of information about Jesus and his life in the Bible as well? (And I won’t even get into the Gnostic Gospels here and the Gospel of Mary that *most* experts agree was conveniently left out of the Bible and the fact that it does state that Jesus had a companion. . . that’s another post. Or the fact that it would have been normal and expected of Jesus to have married. . . that’s too cliche). When it comes down to it, maybe it’s none of our business who Jesus married and how many kinder they pumped out. Maybe it’s irrelevant to the tenets of the Christian faith. Why couldn’t Jesus, father or not, husband or not, still have died on the cross for the redemption of our sins and risen from the grave and ascended into Heaven? What is it about having produced offspring that would have made that absolutely impossible?

Anyone who tells you that having children would have made Jesus sinful and unable to enter into Heaven clearly understands nothing of the Christian faith.  And just because it’s not in the Bible doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Furthermore, I don’t believe the discovery of the bones or body of Jesus and his family (if this discovery is, indeed, what it claims to be) should rule out the possibility that Jesus ascended into Heaven. Where in the Bible does it say “the physical body of Jesus ascended into Heaven”? Open to interpretation, as the Bible and most literature always is, this could point to the more spiritual ascent of the soul in which we all believe today. Yes, yes, I know; the body was gone! That must mean it was in Heaven! Not exactly. Such a prominent figure’s remains would have been prime target for graverobbers, overzealous followers, and just plain freaks. It’s not far-fetched to suggest that they lied about the location of the tomb itself, or that it was moved in the three-day interim between death and resurrection.

Why can’t a discovery like this strengthen faith rather than challenge it? If it were any other subject, people would have no trouble in accepting the fact that we’ve been wrong. If we suddenly discovered that the center of the Earth is comprised of stone rather than magma, we would shrug and move on. But I suppose nobody wants to hear or admit that their beliefs could *ever* be mistaken. Yet, with thousands of different belief sects just in the Christian religion alone, someone has to be wrong. You do the math.

I just sigh. I’m in an exploratory phase spiritually right now, and when I see the reactions of left- and right-wing extremists to events like this, it makes me want to just chuck the whole thing. Still, I must keep in mind that these are the exceptions, not the rule. My relationship with God is my business, no one else’s. This discovery doesn’t change that.

Ye-up.

I’m going to church on Sunday.

*pause*

Breathe, people.

Hmm

I have considered more and more these days abandoning my search for God and answers to my questions about him.  With no one in my life whom I trust to answer them without judging me, and having not truly felt his presence, I’d say my efforts in this area have proven rather fruitless.

Then I stumbled across this site.  A compilation of quotes by some of JC’s most devoted fan club members.  Among them, one of my personal favorites:

“Believe In Jesus, Motherfucker!” Award “Lets get serious. You will believe a A FUCKING APE IS YOUR ANCESTOR. A FUCKING APE!!!!!!!!!! A PRE HOMOSPHIEN MAKES FOREST GUMP AND RAIN MAN LOOK LIKE ALBERT EISTEIN!!!!!!!!! Doesn’t make sense. Evolution is stupid. You have to be a jackass to be evolution. Do you think man used to be a hairy, ugly, illiterate not so bright monkey lookin motherfucker. Want to say to your kids ” this Ape used to be your ancestor.” Get real… How does a retarded ape envolve to a human. Don’t make any sense. sOUNDS LIKE THE FUCKING TOOTH FAIRY!!!! This is what I think, you have an ape, and a monkey.. Science is the study of. You humans compare the ape and monkey to a human and put them together. Scientist are misleading!!!! Will you let a ape do your taxes?? Can a ape drive a car??? Can a ape talk??? No!!!!!!!! Caveman is a illusion… Its kinda like the missing link. A dumb hairy motherfucker who doesn’t know how to make complex decisions. You guys need Jesus bad… You guys watch too much Discovery Channel. Know this ATHIEST RELIGION IS SCIENCE AND EVOLUTION, SCIENTIST ARE ATHIEST, AGOSTIC, SCIENCE IS MAN MADE RESEARCH. YOU GUYS DON’T BELIEVEN GOD BECAUSE SCIENCE DETERMINES YOUR DICISIONS. SCIENCE IS BASED ON RESEARCH BY GATHERED EVIDENCE BY MAN!!!!! SCIENCE IS NOT FACT!!!! JESUS CHRIST THE ANSWER!!!!”

By the way, can I just say that reading this particular post makes it VERY VERY VERY easy for me to believe, as this Neanderthal erroneously suggests, that we evolved from “a ape.” 

The rest of the stuff that I have read on this site has honestly turned my stomach and sickened me tonight to the tune that I'm pretty much ready to call myself a full-fledged atheist again.  Unbelievable.  I cannot believe people still “think” like this.  

Just. . .there’s just nothing else to say.  Absolutely sickening.

I have a good feeling about this

You know it’s going to be a good day when you wake up bathed in the warm buttery confection of fresh morning sunlight filtered through your windows.  When your eyes open and you smile rather than groan, and you stretch, delighting in the rich ecstacy that only comes with the first decent night’s sleep you’ve had in weeks.  When you turn and see your most beloved furry companion curled up in a ball in the crook of your arm, purring contentedly.

And it gets better when you call the jerk who ripped you off for $89.95 the day before and pleasantly explain your situation and don’t even have to ask for a refund – he gives it willingly.  Yes, I am living a charmed life today.  $23.35 in the bank at current writing, but couldn't be more looking forward to the undoubtedly wonderful two days that lie before me.  Not even the threat of an impending head cold can damper my spirits today.  

Hard to believe, sitting here poor, broken, and destitute, that I have this overwhelming, undeniable feeling that everything is going to be okay.  Is it God?  I don't know.  Probably not.  I haven’t thought much about God lately.  Not as much as I used to.  And I don’t know how I feel about that.  I miss having my spiritual mentor, my touchstone around.  As much as he tried to explain to me, as much as he tried to make me believe, for me to have regressed so far is an insult to his passion.  His talent, though he doubts it, for spreading the word that he believes in so completely is profound.  Powerful.  Unequivocable.  But I digress.  

Whatever it is, I won’t question it today.  Or tomorrow.  

Crossing Bridges

I miss crossing the river every day. Sunrise on the Ohio always reminded me of why I loved living in a river town.

Work is frustrating lately. It’s becoming tedious and mind-numbing and horrifically repititious, and my boss hates me.

October is gone. I feel like I’ve lost a friend. Maybe I have.

I was looking at my finances last night, trying to figure out how I’m going to pay all the people who want money from me, and thinking that if I had a soul, I would sell it on eBay to pay all these people and get them off my back. Instead I broke down in tears and prayed, begging God just to show me that everything was going to be okay. “Just show me I will be okay, and I will stop worrying.” Bargaining. The third stage of death. But if He would just do something to show that He would get me through this, I could let all that worry abate.

So I went to bed.

I dreamed I was homeless. It was Thanksgiving and I was eating soggy stuffing and turkey from a styrofoam bowl at the Wayside Mission. Doesn’t bode well for my future.

I’m lonely all the time. Speaking of God, I have lost so much ground in my spiritual development. I have lost my touchstone. I think he believes now what I’ve known inherently all along – that I’m a lost cause. If he can’t believe in me, I have no hope of getting where I wanted to go. I thought it would be easier, in some ways, on my own, but I feel, absurdly so, abandoned. As long as I could talk to him about it, I was energized, enthusiastic, and whole-heartedly devoted to finding the way. Now I feel a little like Alice in Wonderland – “I suppose when you’re lost, the best thing to do is to stay in one place until someone finds you.” But who’s going to come find me this time?

I miss him, more than I ever thought I could.

Surrealism

I spend an increasing amount of time alone lately. I seem to have more and more people in my life, and I’ve gone out with several guys trying to find “that one,” but they all turn up empty. None of them compare. And none of them can offer what I want. So. . . alone I am and alone I will stay. I will embrace it and accept it and, moreover, pursue it.

So I took my book to the Falls today, found a nice secluded rock and read for a long while. I’ve always thought that if I was going to find God, I would find Him at the Falls. But something happened while I was there reading today. In my book, I was reading about the debates between “old-earth” creationists and “young-earth” creationists. Here I am, reading an argument that insists the Earth is no more than 10,000 years old, and wanting to believe it, thinking I could potentially believe it, and then I just stop reading. I look down at the rock to my right, and there, on top of all the patterns petrified into the giant rock on which I sat, is a small fossil resembling a bone or vertebrae of an unidentifiable creature that no doubt lived long, long, long, long ago. Then I start looking around, and these shapes, shells, bones, etc, are staring back at me from every inch of this rock on which I am sitting.

And I reminded myself to question everything. Sure, perhaps these fossils weren’t more than 10,000 years old, but it reminded me that there is irrefutable proof that the Earth has existed for billions of years. And stars and planets. . . by the time their light reaches our sky, it is millions of years old. By the time we see them, many of them are already burned out. The more I go on, the easier it become to rationalize the faith that I’m seeking and the easier it becomes to almost believe. But there’s always a part of me pulling me back and checking the facts, keeping me honest and accountable. I will not subscribe to a belief I do not understand.

That being said, alone isn’t all that bad. As long as I have a book, I don’t ever feel alone, really. And maybe in this one, I’ll find that I’m really not.

My Biography by A Complete Stranger

Dude! Someone wrote a book about me!!

Which is a nice segway into the purpose of this entry.

I have been accused, as I knew I would sooner or later, of pursuing this spiritual journey only because of the unfathomable amount of affection I harbor for the man who set me back on the path. Of course, this was said only in passing, and in a moment of extreme anger, but as I figured the issue would arise at some point and time, I feel the need to address it.

I have never, and will never, denied or falsely claimed beliefs or values to appease or impress ANYONE. My convictions are mine completely, and I have actually ended several relationships due to another’s inability to accept or respect them as they are. It would be an injustice to me and to the other to pretend to believe something I don’t just to win them over.

That being said, what I credit this man with is his passionate and articulate way of communicating his own beliefs to me in a way that I have never heard. His unwavering passion and commitment to his faith have prompted me to pick back up a journey that abandoned years ago and had contentedly forgotten. I don’t know where I’m going to end up. If it is where he is, that would be great. But if it is somewhere else, then that is where I will be.

The desire to pursue this quest existed in me long before I met this person and will continue long after we have moved on from here, though I hope that never happens. This search is mine and mine alone. He did not start this fire. He only rekindled the coals that have been simmering for too many long, painful years, and now he fans those flames when they start to die. That is all. And I have found more faith and comfort in my life since I have picked back up this search than I ever had when I was trying to do it all alone. There has to be something in that.

He is my motivator, my guide, my touchstone. But I do not (and he will attest to this) readily believe everything he believes just to placate him, and I never will. As I told him, if and when I believe the things he does, it will be because God has come into my heart and shown me that those things are true. It will not be for him, or for anyone else on this earth.

There’s nothing else to be said in defense of my decision and desire to pick back up where I left off spiritually. It is what it is.

Confusion Never Stops

To say that I am confused is a gross injustice to the word “understatement.”

I tried to pray last night. I tried to pray this morning. But I cannot. There is a numbness about me now that has taken up residence in my mind and heart, an entity much like cancer, the invader becoming one with the invaded. Whatever it was that I thought I was praying to, I have come to question its nature and even my faith in its existence. Always questioning. Which is good, I suppose. But I’m just so tired.

Tired of searching for things. Tired of waiting for things. Tired of hoping for things.

I get within an inch of something that I want or need or have worked so hard for, and I lunge at it, grasping with what little strength I have left to try to hold on to it. And when I open my hand there is only air. I feel like I’m making these huge strides spiritually, then discover that they have been in the wrong direction. And I’m closer now to where I’m going than from where I came.

Hindu worship cows. They do not eat meat, or any living thing because they believe that our ancestors can be reincarnated as any living thing. And we don’t want to eat our ancestors. Now, having not been submerged in that beliefs system, in that culture, we pretty much immediately dismiss these claims as foolish, but hey – to each his own, right? Now imagine, having never grown up in a culture where the majority of the population believes that there is an invisible being in the sky who immaculately impregnated a young girl 2000 years ago and she gave birth to a child who grew up to perform miracles and was sacrificed by his own father to forgive the people of the entire world for all the bad, horrible things they were doing, and if we worship this man and pray to him and spread his message, we will be rewarded with all the treasures we could ever desire – after we’re dead.

To anyone outside of this culture, this is the ultimate wool-over-the-eyes. The most remarkably successful BS story ever sold. It’s just as foolish as worshipping the cow.

But you know what? I’m out there, trying with everything I have to believe it. Looking for reasons, praying – to whomever – for guidance, hoping that if the Jesus depicted in the bible does exist, that we will find each other and that I will feel his presence in my heart. I don’t know many people who take their notebooks to the park on a sunny day and just sit and think and write about spirituality and God. Many people lie awake at night staring out the window, I’m sure, but they’re thinking of their mortgages, of their kids, of their lovers or jobs. I think about spirituality. I ask myself if I was born a skeptic or became one by trade. I plan my journey. I don’t know how else to go about this. I cannot just turn on these beliefs inside me. If I could, I would. I don’t know what it is in me that mandates that I have reasons to believe this, that I have “proof,” physical or metaphysical. But if I told myself or the world that believed this now, it would be a lie.

I’ve never met someone who makes me so desperately *want* to believe as much as he does. His passion, his talent for spreading the word, his unwavering conviction and determination, all play together to paint a miraculous picture to me. But in the end, one human being will never be enough to make another one believe. It is something that has to be experienced, that has to be discovered and followed individually. But, as he said, what if he’s right?

Well, then, if I die today, I’m screwed.

But what if he’s wrong? Most people say “Okay, so he dies, and nothing happens. Big deal, you’re dead anyway.”

But what if he’s wrong and someone ELSE is right? What if it IS the Hindu who have it all figured out? What if it’s the Jews or the Muslims? HOW DO WE KNOW?

I just feel like I’m back to square one, figuring out if I believe in God again. Or *a* god. *The* God, I don’t know. Only this time, maybe I’m too numb and weak to make the journey. But I’ve made a promise to someone I love to never give up.

So, I will start over. Tear down everything I have built and begin again. But the most important thing is that I remain true to myself. I will not say that I believe something I don’t, no matter how badly I wish I did, no matter how much easier it would make my life.

So. . . hello again, day one.