Holy Reformation, Batman! - When Falls the Coliseum

Published 2000-2001
When Falls the Coliseum

Holy Reformation, Batman!

In about 50 years, probably fewer, the reigion of Palestine and Israel will look more like Nagasaki during WWII than the "holy land" it is purported to be. When the Palestinians have run out of eager teenaged suicide martyrs and the Israeli tanks have run out of the gas that American Sports Futility Vehicles have savagely sucked away, the U.S. Government, Inc. will be happy to step in, at no charge, and "atomically alter" the landscape. (Free "Nuke 'Em!" stickers to the first 100 patriots to fly an American flag in their front yard!)

Just as Enron typifies the cretinous practices of corporations, so the infinitely recycling conflict in Israel and Palestine exemplifies the dangers inherent in many organized religious practices. Those who worked for Moron - excuse me, Enron - pledged their allegiance to a company that at its core was corrupt, because it's in the nature of corporations to be so. Likewise, those who practice organized religions are also investing their faith in something natively corrupt, in many respects, anyway. Granted, religions wear a guise of goodness, but often beneath this merry mask lies a scornful snarl.

But before I delve too deeply into my haughty harangue, let me affirm that I advocate religious tolerance and freedom. So even though I do not deny Marx's infamous analogy relating religion to drugs (users can shoot up holy water and snort crushed up communion wafers!) and although I think Mao, rutheless cultural rapist that he was, had a point when he eerily proclaimed that "Religion is poison," I strongly oppose anyone's efforts to actually suppress religious beliefs. After all, it was Mao who committed atrocious acts in Tibet, and my greatest sympathies are with that crushed country, whose culture was intimately intwined with its religion. (And of course, Mao was practicing his own brand of religion, that of facism.)

Notwithstanding all of my PC pandering toward those who "have the faith," the fact of the matter is, I'm a religious skeptic. No, I'm not an atheist, because in my mind atheism is just another religion. If you must label me (and in today's corporate world, who doesn't have a label, slogan, and line of sweatshop-manufactured clothing?), label me an existentialist.

Institutionalized religion is tantamount to corporations in several key ways. At Enron, you've got the CEO; at the Vatican, you've got the CEPope. At Enron, you've got people in uniforms (in this case, suits) speaking in an arrogant vernacular (corporate-ese); at the Vatican, you've got people in uniforms (in this case, robes), speaking in a defunct vernacular (Latin). At Enron, you've got the company handbook, which is filled with unfair demands; at the Vatican, you've got the Bible, which is filled with harmful commands. In the corporate world, you've got peons sleeping their way to the top; in the religious world, you've got priests raping those at the bottom. In the corporate world, you've got millions of unquestioning serfs working to promote a materialistic ethic; in the religious world, you've got millions of blind followers working to promote a materialistic ethic disguised as a spiritual ethic.

Perhaps I am being too harsh toward religion. After all, most religions have some good in them. But that is precisely where the problem lies: in religious institutions, contradictions abound. Religion is neither wholly good nor wholly evil. (Why is it whenever I use that word now I feel like I've gone back to kindergarten and George W. Bush is my teacher?). Rather, religion is a double-headed dualism. Most religions exist to combat evil, but often end up embodying it instead.

In other words, whenever someone does something good in the name of religion, they are doing what their "holy" book tells them to do. And whenever someone does something bad in the name of religion, they are also doing what their "holy" book says.

To give some flesh to my argument, allow me to discuss a few instances of use and misuse of Bible passages. During his civil rights protests, MLK borrowed copiously from Biblical verses to illustrate the moral purity of his cause. He quoted Galatians when he said, "All are equal in the eyes of God." He also cited the "promised land," and urged the government to "let my people go." He further echoed the Bible when he encouraged protestors to "love your enemies," and to "turn the other cheek."

Now, I am not one to insult Dr. King; he's one of my personal heroes. But consider the fact that the dunce-capped KKK and other uptight whities have used the Bible to endorse exactly the obverse of what MLK preached. Many of these groups proclaim that the "chosen people," or the "true Israelites" are white American Protestants. The groups also cite parts of Romans 12, an otherwise innocuous passage, to drive home their view that white Christians have a "godly conduct, godly nature."

Now it's true that the KKKreeps, in this instance, are mishaping the Bible to fit their own asinine agendas. However, ponder this: Certain Bible verses directly condemn Jews, and these passages were used in the Inquisition to persecute them, and are still cited by some extremist groups to make racist claims. In Acts, Jews are branded "stiffnecked and uncircumcised." And in the Gospel of John, Jews are considered pagan and damned to hell.

The Bible is also commonly used to either support or oppose discrimination against gays, to promote or protest the ordination of women, to justify or contest capital punishment, and to advocate or decry war. Many of the verses cited are sometimes ambigously worded, a fact which still doesn't stop people from quoting the Bible for their petty purposes.

(What is not so ambiguous is the Biblical verse that names eating pork and general fornication abominable activities. So, the idea is, if you're a Bible-thumper, you can beat up gays and spit on female priests, but ONLY you stop slobbering over pork chops and getting laid. (Or maybe you could kill two birds with one stone and just stop "getting porked.") )

What I like about Dr. King is that he was able to discern the good in Bible and shove the other mess aside. His message was a simple one of peace and love. Dr. King intuitively extracted the humane passages and, whether consciously or not, discarded the rest.

In order to reform all religions, I think we should do exactly as Dr. King did: throw out all the crap so that only the good remains. Burn all of the pages of the Old and New Testaments that explicitly or implicitly preach hatred, that condemn unbelievers to an eternity of infernal misery, and that portray god more as a satanic sibling (ala the Book of Job) than the doting deity portrayed elsewhere. Rip out all the pages of the Koran that call for a jihad against infidels or that admonish those who do not heed every syllable of Muhammed, and flush them into a swampy oblivion. Repeat process with any "holy" book that contains potently harmful or ambiguous verses, and leave only those passages that clearly call for peace and love. (The Buddhist Dhammapadda might be one of the few books that would remain intact...)

In order to better guide the misguided masses, this religious reform is in order. Because, you see, only an elite group of spiritually gifted folk - Catholic mystic Thomas Merton, Sufi poet Rumi, Mother Theresa, Gandhi, the Dalai Lama all leap to mind - are able to move beyond the ruinous rhetoric that plagues many religious texts, and actually practice pure deeds.

My preference would be for people to accept that religions and the phantom gods that populate them are manufactured myths. But if people cannot let go of their attachments, then they need to realize that if religion is to be used it all, then it must be applied to further the ends of peace and love. Otherwise, a wicked waste of time.