Look! Here’s Jesus, the Lord and Saviour of about 20% of the planet spinning around! He may even be YOUR Lord and Saviour and here I am showing zero respect for the man, by mercilessly spinning him around! Ha ha look at Him go!

Ok so… if you’re thinking that my lack of respect for Him means there is automatically a seat in Hell with my name on it, then I’m afraid you’re falling well short of the moral and intellectual standards I’ve come to expect from my readers. Further, if you’re already preparing a comment complaining that I wouldn’t do this with an image of the Muslim prophet Mohammed then you shouldn’t bother, because you’re right; I wouldn’t for the following reasons:

Further to point 3 I would add that not threatening to kill me is hardly a selling point for Christianity— and to be honest I think it’s only clever PR of the last few centuries that has given this great religion the idea that threatening bodily harm is not the best way to win people over to your point of view. Wherever there is someone publicly making fun of Christianity, you will find an apologist whining about how other religions would never be so tolerant, and conveniently ignoring history prior to the last century or so.

It reminds me of how when an American citizen says something against their government, they are often rebuked for abusing that right to free speech which they wouldn’t even have if not for the good ol’ US of A! At this point the complainer is obliged to pipe down and respectfully desist the exercise of said right, out of some sort of, uh, gratitude? To paraphrase: WE GIVE YOU FREE SPEECH SO SHUT THE FUCK UP!

That a government allows free speech (notwithstanding evidence to the contrary) does not mean people should be eternally grateful for it, any more than I should be eternally grateful to someone for not kicking me in the balls. The government never owned freedom of speech in the first place, so it is not theirs to grant.

Similarly tolerance, respect and understanding are not owned by Christians, nor even widely practised by them many would argue— although for the sake of this argument let’s assume that every single church, minister and believer is in fact bursting with love, understanding and forgiveness for thy fellow man. Even then, the most claim a Christian should have to these virtues is that they practice them. They are neither the source nor the guardians of such goodness, and by claiming to be so they are effectively undermining non-christians, attempting to lay claim to the moral foundations of humanity itself. That’s called hubris!

People who are better than Jesus

• Socrates
• Angelina Jolie
• Me
• Most people I know

Who in this list would have insisted that everybody in the world must worship them, as well as their omnipotent father and his invisible pal the Holy Ghost— against whom I willingly blaspheme although I admit I’m still unsure what this part of the trinity is supposed to be exactly… is it just a polite way of describing the sperm of God? [Which reminds me: it turns out that Y chromosome is passed down from father to son virtually unchanged, meaning that the DNA of Jesus would contain the Y chromosome of God. If it were possible to test such a thing I would lay down money against Jesus’ Y chromosome looking particularly different to that of the men in Mary’s vicinity at the time of His conception, and I wouldn’t be the only one. Even though many Christians acknowledge the virgin birth is an absurd fiction it will doubtless remain canon]

Who in this list wouldn’t have used their amazing magic powers to do more than just a few tricks and the odd healing? Why not totally eradicate a few diseases from the face of the earth if there are such powers to be had? Why not bestow powers on others, to form a league of super heroes who could walk the earth fighting evil and righting wrongs?

Who in this list wouldn’t have willingly spent a few days in horrible agony for the greater good if they knew they would go on to spend eternity as Lord of the Universe?

Who in this list would wish to see their detractors burn in a lake of fire for all eternity? Think about someone who has really pissed you off recently, someone who has hurt you, or perhaps disrespected you in every way. Do you want to see them punished? Sure you do. Do you want to see them endure unbearable torment until the end of time? Um, I suspect not. How about being snuffed out of existence? Also probably not— but I can’t say for sure, and that’s why I didn’t put everyone on my list :)

Think about it… what exactly is so transcendantly wonderful about Jesus? People are brought up with the idea that he was automatically the most perfect man that ever lived, but no one seems to bother evaluating his character through his deeds. Personally I don’t think he existed, but even if he did, was he ever anything more than a talented, charismatic cult leader?

I think I would have liked Jesus a whole lot more if he had just come out and said "Guys, I am soooooo sorry but my father the creator of the universe is a total prick, and so vain that if you don’t worship him, like seriously, he will deny you everlasting life, and furthermore, depending on how seriously you take his drunken threats, if you don’t unquestioningly obey his every whim he will make sure that you burn in a lake of fire instead. Please, I’ll talk to him and do what I can, but for now you’d better do as he says! I know it’s not much of a choice, but at least he isn’t robotically controlling you all and forcing you to dance the hokey pokey, so be uh real grateful for that ok?"

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 17th, 2007 at 11:33 pm and is filed under Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.