Category Archives: Religion

Conceding defeat…

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE —- OFFICIAL STATEMENT

I come before you this evening with a heavy heart. A few moments ago, I sent a tweet to Pope Francis, congratulating him on his election as your next Pope in Rome. Your support of my candidacy for these past few days has been a source of strength for me, but tonight we must come together behind the victor and accept that my dark horse candidacy was, at best, a long shot.

I have no intention of letting this sound electoral defeat drive me out of the arena… and if asked, I would happily serve as Vice Pope or in any other position that didn’t necessarily require poverty and chastity as conditions of employment. Unfortunately, tonight was simply not my time to step up to the big chair. It’s a fair bet that we’ll get another chance at the job since the Sacred College has once again chosen someone old enough to be my grandfather (and an actual Catholic) for the job. I do, however, find it suspicious that the ballots were all destroyed before they could be independently validated and the formal announcement was made before appeals could be filed with the court, but I digress.

So in conclusion: Congratulations, Your Holiness. We’ll see how things turn out next time around.

Lifetime appointment…

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Aside from the celibacy thing, I’ve always thought being Pope would be a pretty good gig. You get to live in one of the world’s best and largest museums, you’re the absolute monarch of your own sovereign country, your personal bodyguard has those snappy uniforms, you’re head of the only organization I can think of that dates back to the time when a Caesar ruled the known world, and about a billion people go along (more or less) with whatever you tell them because you theoretically speak with the voice of God.Slide1 Let’s be real honest, even for a non-practicing Protestant like me, that sounds like a pretty sweet job. Plus, it’s a lifetime appointment, so it’s not like you’ve got some wackadoodle member of a House of Representatives running around trying to impeach you.

I’m not making light of Pope Benedict’s decision to resign. I think it shows a remarkable degree of self discipline to walk away from the kind of temporal authority that goes along with the fancy hats and armored thrones of his office. The guy was basically elected king at 78 – an age by which I plan to be either retired for over a decade, dead, or possibly both. By 85, I don’t think I can fault him for wanting a little down time before going off for a more personal and very final introduction to his maker.

Of course there’s more to the story than has come out in the media. Over two millennia the Catholic Church has gotten very skilled at guarding its secrets, so we may or may not ever really know what was going on inside the Vatican when the decision was made. I guess one of the perks of being the Bishop of Rome and Successor of Peter is you really don’t have to justify yourself to anyone.

If the princes of the church are looking for an unorthodox candidate, I’m happy to throw my hat, as it were, in the ring. My Latin is a little rusty, but pope-ing it seems like good work if you can get it.

The God of Happy Accidents…

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There’s something that’s been bugging me for the last few days. It’s one of those things that most don’t consider a topic for polite company and I’ve swung from one side to the other debating whether this was the right place to even bring it up… or whether I should bring it up at all or just let it be one of those questions that agitates me quietly forever in the back of my head. Since I use this site as a platform for pretty much every other flavor of Buddycontroversy, I don’t suppose religion should be more off limits here than any other topic has been in the past.

It won’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows me that I’m not exactly what you’d call religious. I’m not sure I can even get away with describing myself as “spiritual,” as many people seem to prefer these days. It’s not exactly that I’m anti-religion, but I’ve never quite been able to accept faith as the ultimate evidence of things not seen. I’ve always liked my evidence to be something a little more corporeal. Despite that, I’ve always had a healthy level of curiosity about world religions and have a tendency to pay attention when they are discussed academically.

This past weekend I heard a theologian argue that we can’t really blame God when something bad happens. In the next breath, this same panel member argued that we should praise God for all the good things that we enjoy in the world. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where my train of thought came off the rails. It seems to me that if we’re going to worship an all knowing, all powerful deity that is responsible for every good thing that happens, the very nature of an omnipotent God demands that He also be responsible for bad things when they happen. To think otherwise suggests a divine duality – one god responsible for all good things and another responsible for only bad things. That’s a pretty problematic concept to tinker with when the world’s major religious groups are pretty well established as monotheistic enterprises.

After writing that last paragraph, someone is sure to argue that I just don’t like religion in general or Christianity in particular. Because I know my own mind, I can say that’s not exactly true. I’m fine with religion and with Christianity (as long as they’re not being forced on anyone at the point of a sword)… what chaps my ass is hypocrisy. If someone of faith had the stones to go on national television and simply say “sometimes God just lets bad shit happen” I think I’d be fine with it, but to absolve your particular deity from responsibility because it doesn’t fit with the traditional narrative that God is Good requires a level of mental gymnastics that I’m not comfortable carrying out.

Although I’m not a theologian by any stretch of the imagination, it seems to be that if there is a God and He is, in fact, all powerful and all knowing, then we’re doing Him a disservice by only giving Him accolades for the happy accidents of life. Sorry, but if He wants the credit when things are going well, He’s going to have to share in the blame when it’s gone to hell in a handbag, even if it’s only because free will was His idea in the first place. How’s that for a controversial stance?

Only one?

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I’m not sure I can fully embrace any religion that only endorses only one Good Friday per calendar year. As far as I’m concerned personally, there are 52 of them and they’re all equally Good. Blasphemy or not, that’s just the way it is.

Maybe it’s time to strike out and set up my own Church of the Good Fridays and enjoy all the tax advantages of being designated a religious organization. Then again, that sounds like it could involve more work than I’d really be willing to put into it. Good Fridays are most assuredly not about working hard, so it seems that would be the central conflict within the church. Before long, those who wanted to work hard on Fridays would splinter off and set up their own practices and then where would we be? I’m in no humor to deal with a Reformation over the weekend, so perhaps it’s best if we just observe our Good Fridays individually as the spirit moves us.

Personally, I’ll be observing my own weekly celebration of surviving 40 hours of salaried captivity by making dinner, possibly having several tasty adult beverages, and then promptly falling asleep on the couch. My church clearly wouldn’t be one that stands much on ceremony.

So from me to you, Happy Easter weekend… and try to keep all your Fridays good.

Burnt…

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I’m not a particularly pious man. I don’t think I can remember the last time I was in a church that didn’t involve a wedding or a funeral. I don’t think that makes me a bad person and I still think of myself, nominally, as a Christian. At least that’s how I was raised. Even if I were a hard core, mainstream Christian I can’t imagine a scenario where someone burning a Bible would result in me and my closest friends taking to the street and demanding execution for the guys who lit the flame. As a matter of principle, I’m opposed to book burning in whatever form it takes. Destroying knowledge is never good for the upward swing of humanity. Still, I think it’s time for our Afghan friends to take a deep breath and think for a minute before they decided this is an issue worth dying and killing for. I’m not a theologian or anything, but I’m pretty sure that God or Allah, or whoever you’re busy praying to doesn’t actually live between the covers of the Bible or Koran. At the end of the day it’s just a book – a collection of highly processed pieces of dead trees. You can no more destroy a system of beliefs contained in a copy of one of these books than you can destroy Kellogs by setting fire to the box of Corn Flakes I have sitting on top of my refrigerator.

Was it a mistake? Maybe. Was it stupid? Absolutely. Is it worth killing over? Yeah, not to much. I guess I just don’t have the mindset to be an extremist. Some things are worth fighting and dying for… To my way of thinking, though, anything I can buy from Amazon and have shipped to my house overnight doesn’t qualify for that level of importance.

Valentine…

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Cupid_is_CreepyAccording to the legend, Valentine was an early Christian priest who defied Imperial edict and performed illegal marriage ceremonies for Roman soldiers. The emperor forbade such marriages in order to prevent his troops from becoming too fond of home and hearth and therefore unwilling to depart its comforts for life in far flung garrison towns on the edge of empire.

By order of Claudius II, Valentine was arrested, charged, and convicted of treason. While awaiting the sentence of death to be carried out, Valentine seduced the young daughter of the jailer. For his crimes against the state, Valentine was beaten, stoned, and beheaded in 270 AD… Which means to show the love we have for one another, each year on February 14th the western world celebrates the execution of a convicted traitor and pedofile.

From all of us at jeffreytharp.com to all of you out there on the internet, have a very, very happy VD… which ironically is another thing you’d probably run into if you spent a lot of time with treasonous pedofiles like the saintly Valentine.

Move it…

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A lack of ranting and raving here is generally a sign that most is right with the world. Or more specifically that I’ve managed to avoid the masses and the raft of stupid they bring along with them. With that being said, I think it’s time to consider rejiggering the holiday calendar. I mean why celebrate Christmas in the middle of the bloody winter? It’s dark, cold, and there is every chance that you’ll find yourself snowed-in-place at any given moment. For a holiday that involves painfully detailed travel plans, wouldn’t it make more sense to schedule this type of event say in August when the days are long and low temperatures don’t plunge into the single digits? The church has moved things around on the calendar for years and for far lesser reasons. Surely no one really believes that an actual man named Jesus was born exactly on December 25th in the year zero (yes, I realize there was technically no year 0). And for the record, there was no concept of the Gregorian calendar at that point, so fixing the big day at the end of December seems to be speculative at best… So really there’s no reason not to get on the move-Christmas-to-a-warmer-month bandwagon. Join me, won’t you?

Bible belt identity crisis…

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The south/mid-west, for good reason, is largely known as the bible belt. If you’ve ever spent any time here and have seen the epic size of some of the churches they build, you know it’s true. This morning I had the opportunity to spend five hours driving from Memphis to St. Louis… and what I noticed most strinkingly was that every couple of dozen miles there was one of two billboards… the first were advertisements for what can only be described as a prolific density of “gentlemen’s clubs” and adult novelty stores. The second billboard type were more of the “sinners go to hell” or “end abortion now.” I wasn’t counting, but I’d estimate that easily 1/5 to 1/4 of all billboards along one 50 mile stretch of I-55 were for one or the other of these. Apparently the bible belt has a bit of an identity crisis, as I suspect at least some of the same butts in the pews on Sunday are the ones in the VIP room on Saturday night. I’m not making a values judgement there, by the way. I don’t care one way or another where someone is on Saturday night or Sunday morning, as long as they’re not at my house.

I hate to break this to both sides, but your signs aren’t making much difference (but the guy leasing the space appreciates your efforts). The wanna be pimps at the clubs aren’t going to change en mass because of this media blitz, that given the fading I saw on those signs, has been going on for a while. At the same time, the holy rollers funding those big new churches aren’t going to suddenly decide they need edible panties while driving down the interstate. You’re arguing past one another because neither one really gives a damn what the other side thinks.

I propose a compromise; a truce if you will. There’s room enough for all of us here and plenty of space for reasonable human beings to have a difference of opinion even on what seem like important issues. Truth is that I’ve got maybe 40 or 50 years left on this rock and I’m going to do what I want to do, signs or no signs. Some days that might be going to a club and other days that might be educating myself on the dogma of the faith. Life’s too short to think that it has to be all one way or all the other. In the immortal words of Rodney King, can’t we all just get along?

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To be determined…

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This is usually the time of year when I turn my attention and this blog toward the uncertainty I feel when tackling issues of organized religion. In the spirit of not repeating myself more often than is necessary, however, I’ll limit myself to wishing each and every one a happy and safe Easter, or Passover, or spring fertility rite, or whatever it is you’ve been celebrating. As for me, I’ll stick with keeping my own counsel.