I’ve almost given up writing about organized religion. Regular readers are aware of my views, and I’d as well bang the wall with my head as attempt reason on American Christians.
Unfortunately, in this part of America at least, it’s very hard to get away from them. While Christians get hot and sweaty around the underwear at any suggestion they may not have the absolutely perfect answer to the post-death experience, they are more than happy to shove their beliefs down my throat every hundred yards along the highway.
I’m talking church hoardings and mile high notice boards.
With religious slogans now marketing well on the internet (any local pastor can purchase his Sunday sermon and get half a dozen Jesus slogans thrown in as a ‘This Week’s Special Offer’) the quality has sunk to a level barely worthy of notice. One or two still manage to make it out of the slime of gratuitous Godliness, but the majority are at best, a crudely pathetic play on words. Most high school kids could do a better job.
The pastor of the church en route to my local grade school generally manages to clean the gutter with his tongue when it comes to Jesus slogans. His latest offering is no exception, and must surely have fallen out of a Kellogg’s packet.
Most of us enjoy the thought of Friday as the last workday before a glorious weekend, and no doubt others besides me utilize the ‘TGIF’ motif to signify the fact.
Consequently, when the latest addition to this brain-dead pastor’s slogan-fest appeared on the hoarding I was irked, to say the least.
Not content with some staid and depressing Biblical quote designed to shrivel the faithless in their boots, he’d taken one of my favorite little acronyms and mutilated it.
“TGIF – THANK GOD I’M FORGIVEN”
Having resisted the urge to walk straight in and spit in his font, I instead began to ponder on just what it was that required such forgiveness. I applied it to myself, but for the life of me couldn’t come up with anything I’d ever done that could truly demand Divine forgiveness, certainly not sufficient to warrant some bod spending three days nailed to a cross.
Mind you, a hundred yards down the road was another church with a slogan that read: “It wasn’t nails that fastened Jesus to the cross, it was Love”, so perhaps it wasn’t so bad, after all.
I mean, Love? I guess it was more like being, well, super-glued.
If the Christian God made us all in his image, then it hardly seems fair to penalize us for not being perfect. The clerics found a somewhat convoluted explanation for this by inventing ‘original sin’, which basically means it doesn’t matter how perfect we are, we have to be forgiven because some mentally-retarded idiot ate the wrong apple somewhere in the dawn of time.
And guess what? Two hundred million Americans bought it. Talk about gullible! It’s no wonder this country’s overflowing with snake oil salesmen.
Geeez! All I can say is,TGIF – THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY.
Damn me, no it isn’t. It’s only Wednesday.
Well, God forgive me for making that mistake!
Filed under: God only knows
“Jesus died for your sins, now what are you going to do for Him?”
Answers:
Who asked Him?
Which ones?
How did He know?
I didn’t think they were that bad.
If He’s dead, what does it matter?
If He’s in Invisible Perfect Afterlife why is He concerned with my doings?
Shouldn’t it be the other way around, like:
Why didn’t He ask me what needed doing for my sins?
Wasn’t His death a cop-out?
Like He couln’t be bothered?
XO
WWW
He died for my sins?
Strewth! I may be getting on a bit, but bugger me, I’m not that old. He died a looooong time before I was even thought of.
I cannot think of a job that pays better for less work than being a preacher and lots of people respect them to boot (unlike the other creeps who rip us off).
WWW – you’ll never go to Heaven.
TOB – are you sure about that? Maybe you just look older than you are?
Flimsy – has to be the best job on the planet. Of course, for the really great perks you need to get yourself one of those Super-churches.