Noel, my astonishingly gifted younger son, is a tall, strong young man who habitually carries a stout blackthorn shillelagh wherever he goes, so it is rare for anyone to succeed in making him feel threatened or intimidated. His fellow musicians can’t do it. The people he works out with can’t do it. His professors can’t do it. But religious zealots can. I recently wrote of his concern that Mormon missionaries were imperiling his immortal soul, concluding that the path of prudence would be to kill them all before they were able to get him sent to Hell for failing to be converted by their unconvincing sales pitches.
Now, however, he is troubled by a more general and pervasive danger: street preachers, of whom the campus of the university he attends is unaccountably quite prolific, and who, he is now convinced, are utterly, irretrievably, and probably dangerously, insane. They frequently accost him on the “Diag”, a walkway that diagonally transects the quad which is more or less the geographic center of campus and which he must perforce travel several times every week.
A typical interaction with these Christian-sales-reps-without-portfolio goes something like the following:
Preacher (often carrying placard announcing imminent end of world): “You must repent your sins and accept Jesus Christ or you will burn forever in Hellfire!”
Noel (glancing up from Mozart libretto): “Beg pardon?”
Preacher : “You must repent your sins and accept Jesus Christ or you will burn forever in Hellfire!”
Noel: “What sins?”
Preacher: “The unholy trinity that consumes college students: sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll!”
Noel: “Well, I’m actually a virgin, have never done drugs or alcohol at all, and while I enjoy a few works that probably qualify as rock, I’m primarily into opera, which is my major at this university, and my intended career. So, am I okay?”
Preacher: “My son, if what you say is true, your self-discipline is admirable, but as things stand you are still doomed to burn in Hell throughout Eternity. Man is born in Sin and must accept Jesus Christ to be saved through his sacrifice and passion and thereby attain to the Kingdom of Heaven.”
(Street preachers apparently tend to speak in capital letters somehow.)
Noel: “His sacrifice? What sacrifice?”
Preacher: “Why, his death upon the cross, of course. “
Noel: “What happened after that?”
Preacher: “Why, he rose gloriously to Heaven and now Sitteth for all Eternity on the Right Hand of The Father.”
Noel: “Won’t that get uncomfortable after a while?”
Preacher: “Huh?”
Noel: “Never mind. So he was crucified, which must have hurt a lot.”
Preacher: “I can’t imagine anything more horrible to which a person could be subjected.”
Noel (eyeing the preacher wistfully): “Oh, I can. Lots.” Then “and Jesus knew this was going to happen?”
Preacher: “Yes.”
Noel: “And that he would then go to Heaven and live in glory and splendor at God’s right hand forever, eternally blissful?”
Preacher: “Of course. He is God and knows all things.”
Noel: “And this is what you call a sacrifice? Three hours of intense pain followed by an eternity of unimaginable wonderfulness, of which he was absolutely certain? To my way of thinking that sounds more like a shrewd bargain. Lots of people die in awful agony at least comparable to what Jesus suffered, without the consolation of knowing that in a very short time they would be in line for everlasting comfort and happiness. That’s like calling buying Starbuck’s stock at 70 cents a share in 1992 a risk if you knew for absolute certainty that it would climb 6000% in less than 20 years. Some risk. Some sacrifice!”
Preacher: “Well, He died for your sins.”
Noel: “Which, at the time, I hadn’t committed and, as far as I know, still haven’t.”
Preacher: “Man is born with a sinful nature. We all sin, my son.”
Noel: “So, whatever sins I’m guilty of, I had no choice but to commit them, even though I still don’t even know what they are?”
Preacher: “Oh, no. We have Free Will.”
Noel: “The film about the killer whale?”
Preacher: “Huh?”
Noel: “Never mind. So we have free will and can choose whether to be sinful or virtuous, but we are bound to be sinful. Bound by what?”
Preacher: “Our sinful nature.”
Noel: “But what must we do to be saved?”
Preacher: “Read the Holy Bible, son.”
Noel: “And if we do all the things it says to do in the Bible we will be saved?”
Preacher: “It is the Holy Word of God. It embodies The Law.”
Noel: “I have read the Bible, but some parts of it are hard to follow. Like it says in Samuel, that we should go and kill the Amalekites and all their pets. I was going to, but I didn’t know where they were. There didn’t seem to be any in my dorm or at the music school.”
Preacher: “That’s the Old Testament, son. Jesus brought the New Covenant.”
Noel: “So, does that mean that all the stuff in the Old Testament about not touching dead bodies and not boiling your kids in their mother’s milk is obsolete? We can do it now?”
Preacher: “All that stuff was ancient tribal folk law and was replaced by Jesus and the New Covenant.”
Noel: “But doesn’t Jesus say in Matthew “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished”?
Preacher: “I believe that every word in the Bible is true…”
Noel: “Except for the stuff in the Old Testament that Jesus said shouldn’t be changed but that you say was rendered obsolete by his sacrifice and death.”
Preacher: “Er…”
Noel: “And the Old Covenant, the one with Noah, where God said he wouldn’t ever destroy the world by flood again? That’s off, too?”
Preacher: “Every word is true. But Jesus brought the New Covenant to replace the old so that all may be saved.”
Noel (glancing nervously at the sky, which is getting overcast): “So, the Old Testament is out. But Jesus tells us how to live righteous lives, right? He gives us the Beatitudes, you know, who’s blessed and all that. He reiterates the commandments – not the original ten about keeping kosher, but the one’s people are always wanting to use to decorate court houses. He tells us to love our neighbors and to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Don’t pray in public, that stuff…So we know what we need to do in order to be saved. Live a righteous life, you go to heaven. Great! Things are definitely looking up, no pun intended.”
Preacher: “No, my son, no one may enter the Kingdom of Heaven but through the acceptance of Jesus Christ as their lord and savior.”
Noel: “WHAT???!!!”
Preacher: “That’s right. No one may enter the Kingdom of Heaven but through the acceptance of Jesus Christ as their lord and savior.”
Noel: “So if you’ve been very virtuous and adhered steadfastly to the laws and not boiled your kids in their mother’s milk and not worshipped any idols, then if you’ve accepted Jesus you get in?”
Preacher: “Yes, son. But here’s the really good news: even if you’ve been very sinful, as I once was when I was your age, drinking and using drugs and fornicating with loose women and listening to the Devil’s message in the godless music of rock and roll, you can still accept Jesus as I have done and be forgiven and be guaranteed admission into the Kingdom of Heaven, as I have been.”
Noel: “How do you know? That you’ve been forgiven?”
Preacher: “I know it in my heart. It is what Jesus promised, and I believe in His Word.”
Noel: “But what if you’re just very righteous and follow all the dictates of the law, and don’t boil your kids and love your neighbor and don’t mess with dead bodies or consort with temple prostitutes or commit murder, and you give to the poor and minister to the sick? What if you don’t accept Jesus? I mean, not that you reject him as such, and hurt his feelings, but you just don’t find in your heart that you “accept him” per se?”
Preacher: “No one may enter the Kingdom of Heaven but through the acceptance of Jesus Christ as their lord and savior.”
Noel: “YOU GO TO HELL??!”
Preacher: “Of course. No one may enter the Kingdom of Heaven but through the acceptance of Jesus Christ as their lord and savior.”
Noel: “And boil forever in a lake of burning sulfur? That has to be worse than being crucified! Just because the whole Jesus thing never quite resonated…?!”
Preacher: “No one may enter ...”
Noel: “ENOUGH ALREADY!! I GOT IT!!!”
Preacher: “Peace, my son. One need only accept that which is given.”
Noel: “Let me be very sure that I fully grasp what you’re telling me. I can be the worst person ever. I can boil my kids and worship idols and fornicate with dead temple prostitutes while out of my skull on drugs and listening to “In a gadda da vida”, I can be the love child of Charles Manson and Adolf Hitler, if at the last moment before I succumb to the combined effects of tertiary syphilis and amphetamine psychosis I accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior, then I get into Heaven and spend the rest of Eternity soaking up the unspeakable joys of being in God’s presence?”
Preacher: “Yes, my son, you do. That is the Good News of Jesus Christ! Is it not glorious?”
Noel (turning a fine shade of scarlet): “And I can be the finest, most noble, loving, righteous, law-abiding, charitable, faithful, honorable and humane person ever to walk the earth, I can love my neighbor as myself, I can do unto others only as I would have them do unto me, I can sell all I have and give it to the poor, I can starve to death on a dung heap so that widows and orphans may have bread, but if after all that I neglect to formally accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior…?”
Preacher: “Why, naturally you go to Hell for all eternity.”
Noel: “And boil in the lake of burning sulfur…?”
Preacher: “Of course.”
Noel: “Nelson Mandela simmering away next to Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Einstein and Mozart, the Dalai Lama, the Buddha, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, Leonardo da Vinci and William Shakespeare, Ludwig van Beethoven and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Vaclav Havel and me?”
Preacher: “Yes, son. That, I’m afraid, is the, well, Bad News of Jesus Christ.”
Noel: “So, there’s basically only one rule: accept Jesus Christ and you’re in business, fail to do so and you are cosmically screwed.”
Preacher: “Yes, my son. You have seen the light. Praise be to God…”
Noel: “THEN WHAT IN THE NAME OF ANYTHING REMOTELY REASONABLE DO YOU NEED THAT 1200 PAGE RULE BOOK FOR?”
Preacher: “The Bible? Oh, that’s the true and undiluted Word of God.”
Noel: “But what the hell good is it?”
Preacher: “It is the true revealed…”
Noel: “Yeah, yeah. But all those hundreds and thousands of rules about what not to eat or touch, all those commands to kill these people and not kill those people, the admonition to be fruitful and multiply, the decrees that one must only do so under certain very narrowly defined circumstances which are still not specified…none of that matters at all? Billions of copies of that book are spread all over the earth, the subject of paintings, plays, operas, books, pamphlets, poems, entire college courses, entire institutions of higher learning, and the only part of it that has any significance to the long term prospects of any human soul is the requirement to ‘accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior.’ In your heart.”
Preacher: “Er…”
Noel: “You people are batshit crazy, you know that? You want people to read your book, YOU SPEND YOUR LIFE READING THAT BOOK. And every bit of it is utterly irrelevant except for that single eight word punchline. You are batshit crazy. Shit of bat, declared in your book of irrelevancies, by the way, to be a bird. And not a kosher bird, because it eats bugs. The divinely inspired folks who wrote this thing could tell that a bat ate bugs but couldn’t tell that it wasn’t a bird, and they had to formulate an elaborate and utterly nonsensical rationale for why one SHOULDN’T EAT BATS???!! You people don’t make sense. You don’t even TRY to make sense. You don’t even feel there is VALUE in making sense. In fact – and here’s the bottom line, I guess – you think it would be an insult to God to even attempt to apply the rules of logic to the most important thing in the human universe, and you think people ought to be consigned to eternal torture because of it. You are crazy. You are dangerous, and you ought to be locked up.”
Preacher: “No one may enter the Kingdom of Heaven but through the acceptance of Jesus Christ as their lord and savior.”
“So then I bludgeoned him to death with my stick, Dad,” Noel concluded. “You have to destroy their heads, like in the Bruce Campbell movies, right? I’m going to get a samurai sword or a battle axe. I don’t think the stick will last indefinitely, and I’ve got a terrible feeling that there’s a lot more of ‘em where that one came from.”
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