The Not Happy Thread

As a Christian, I have a difficult time with churches. It's what one song calls a "stained glass masquerade," or what I call the "First Baptist Social Club." Church should be a place where people are encouraged to think, to question, and to get realistic help for their struggles. I'm of the opinion that if I'm sick, I need a doctor, not prayer. If I'm struggling with stress, I need realistic advice, not Bible verses.

I believe the Bible is true, but the last thing I want when I'm in any kind of pain or problem is someone saying, "Jeremiah 29:11!" or "I'll pray for you!" There's also an "us versus them" mentality, where we Christians break our arms patting ourselves on the back for not being like non-Christians. At the same time, there's a "you're never good enough" mentality where, if you feel like shit for sinning, that's evidence of your salvation and should make you happy, because at least you're not lost in sin like non-Christians.

Come to church, smile, don't ask questions, remember you're shit, feel happy about it, then go home. No thanks. I've got better things to do with my Sunday mornings, like...well, pretty much anything. The Church and I have vastly interpretations of the Bible, and while we agree on a few things, they've managed to package the idea of God into a cult that controls people, not a relationship with God as I've known it.

/soapbox

 

I got kicked out of a funeral once. When one of my friends passed away the only formal wear I had that either wasn't in storage or at the cleaners was a blue velvet tuxedo. Her mother (who was definitely not a fan of mine) was very angry with me over it and told me it was disrespectful to the dead, so I told her if the dead didn't like it they could tell me themselves. There was a fight and we were ushered off into separate corners. About a year later the mother passed away and I wore the same tux to her funeral. That was the one I was escorted out of.

 

I could tell you stories, @Sclavus ... unbelievable but true stories about my mother's cult--err, church.

I'll give you just one: the evening of the day my mother's died (she died early in the morning), some relatives and her pastor, who had the coldest, meanest eyes I've ever seen on any "human being" tried to "break me" into accepting their crazy version of spirituality. I had not eaten all day, nor slept for two nights, they all knew it, and that bastard pastor began interrogating me and following me around my crazy religious relatives' house, along with them, to try to bring me to me knees, as they say. (I lived in another state and stayed at their house, not knowing them well enough to know how crazy they were.)

It was the first, and hopefully, last time I have ever literally turned on a person of faith screaming "Get the fuck away from me!!!" Seeing fear in the pastor's cold eyes and realizing he probably thought it was the devil coming out of me, I decided to go all out and scare him out of the house. So I did.

Those relatives and I no longer speak, and I'm good with that.

 

It's kinda funny looking back on it, but I was once chastised by a Pastor for being in church with long hair and a light beard.
(I wasn't attending. Just there to fix a door.)

 

You should have shown him one of those pictures of Jesus in which he had long hair and a light beard.

 

Aw, now see, @The Dapper Hooligan, I'd welcome a blue velvet tuxedo at mine! [Jots Note To Self: Invite @The Dapper Hooligan to funeral to liven up the joint.]
And, I'm sorry for the loss of your friend and that you were treated shoddily at their funeral. That truly sucks.

 

Did he think you were impersonating Jesus? Being that you were there to do a form of carpentry and all...
That's laugh out loud funny!

 

If only he could have found someone in the church who was a carpenter.

The long hair thing also bothered me especially considering the amount of times I had Leviticus 19:28 thrown at me because of my tattoos, whereas Leviticus 19:27 literally tells you to not cut your hair or trim your beard, but I guess if you're going to listen to the bible, you only listen to the parts that agree with your predisposed notions of what it actually says.

 

Unfortunately, I believe it. I've been screamed at for calling snow "crap" because "God's creation isn't crap." I've also had people try to exorcise demons of various sins and struggles out of me. Some Christians quietly do a lot of good for the world. Others seem hell bent on making sure everyone thinks we're all batshit crazy.

 

How the hell did I end being responsible for turning this into a discussion about religion? All I did was point out a genre of music I don't like.

Next up, my dislike of red kidney beans, which I'm hoping will slip just as seamlessly to Adolf Hitler.

 

If they'd had smilies in Biblical times, Leviticus would have been salted and peppered liberally with , , and especially .

 

Sure. Due to not getting into art school and and Mrs. Hitler tryiung to force little Adolf to eat
kidney beans, drove the little guy to seek out a career in genocide.
(Should have given him a lifted Chevy, to make him feel compensated for having a tiny dick.) Why the hell not?

 

I've had that thrown at me for my long hair, and when I had my ears pierced. I just start a discussion on why the Mosaic Law was fulfilled by Christ's death and watch their eyes bulge. Apparently I'm not supposed to understand Scripture. Oops.

 

Kidney beans go well in soup. Duck Soup was a movie made by Groucho Marx. In the late '50s, Groucho Marx toured Europe and when they arrived in Germany, he demanded to be taken to the remains of the bunker where Hitler killed himself. On arriving, he climbed the 20 foot tall pile of rubble and, stone-faced, danced “a frenetic Charleston, for at least a minute or two.”

 

They tried getting around that with me by saying it 'shows the spirit of the world.' Which basically means you're not doing anything 'wrong' but we don't like it, therefore you're not acting like a Christian. Which seems completely reasonable.

 

I'm not happy that every time I think one of my threads got a reply it was the Not Happy Thread. It is the WritingForums equivalent of an @everyone ping on Discord.

 

"In a nutshell - At the end of the day - All things being equal".

All heard repeatedly in meetings, or is it just a loop in my head by now.

I really like that first expression, and I don't care much for the two others, yet I find myself incapable of keeping my thoughts "in there", in that nutshell I mean. My thoughts of late are at least twenty three sizes to big to fit in a nutshell. As for the rest of the above, it is simply waxed over corporate babble which means absolutely nothing when it comes to the immensity of real life which is wild and wondrous. It is just a way to sum up the non-sense of those daily tasks in an attempt at creating hype and air and bullshit while not supporting what it takes to get the real work done. All things being impermanent is more likely as a truth, and it is what they have horribly failed to understand. Life remains magical, and it is hard to cage, gauge and calculate, so in reaction to the wild nature of who we are, they try to kill the magic and the variables of life itself in order to market it all. They are people of little imagination. I remain unimpressed and unmoved by the fabricated importance of those who try to manage and define human resources. So this may turn out to be a long post best suited for those who are also deeply disturbed by the insidious lies and control that slowly erode our freedom. I am addressing those who refuse to follow the traffic of corporate culture and say that they are just lucky to have a job.

God dam shitmill I tell ya, it hardly ever stops. But you know what, I have tried to slow down my brain by mediating, exercising, running myself ragged and "it" just ends up coming back to me in some form or another to tell me that there is something I haven't quite decoded yet. The shit mill of my brain is telling me that I may not be in the right place these days. So, I decided to find out what is the right place for someone like me. Hence I embarked on a sort of pseudo journey of the soul by seriously working with lots of so called professionals in order to tame my brain into submission. Needless to say that this has not been going too well. Most of these poor bastards have dropped me like a hot potato, and some of them were honest enough to tell me that I can't be helped and should find a more creative occupation than selling goods for a corp that no longer cares about what I can do with my accumulated skills. This leaves me a few real alternatives these days in order to earn a living, so I have decided to become a bohemian and live well regardless of the limitations of my present context. In fact, I remain unimpressed by what these professionals are calling for - adaptation to a world which demands the quelling of our emotions, humanity and freedom in order to fit into a mold suited to make peace with what is coming down the pipe. In good conscience I am still not able to ignore/accept the lies and the hype generated by the mongrels hungry for what they think is going to make them win this game that can not be ultimately won in this way. Hence, I have decided to accept my fate, the portrait of an artist as an old man is all that I can do now. Well, this may well mean that alot of craziness, magic and writing lies ahead. Well so be it, I am not done yet.

Hugs,

Albeit

 

Ah, yes. "Avoid the appearance of evil." Never mind context. If it looks evil, stop doing it. If we did that the way they interpret it, we'd stop breathing.

 

No. No, they don't.

 

Uhhh, you do know none of those pictures are real, right?

 

Well, if the ones of Jesus are fake, then the ones of Lucy and the Missing Link have to be real. Secular science FTW!

 

I have a stupid effing cold. I have not had a cold in probably 20+ years. I don't know if it's because there was a local epidemic of rhinovirus (per the county public health outbreak/culture reports) and my hand washing/avoiding face to face with people just wasn't enough, or whether it's these stupid immunosuppressant drugs I'm on.

Then there is the science meta-analysis that says zinc acetate lozenges, >75mg/day will decrease the length of a cold by 45%, but try to find zinc acetate in the drug stores. I did find zinc gluconate and it included citrus which the science results showed both to be effective but less so. Well you make do with what you have.

Grumble, grumble.

I was surprised to find the heavily advertised Zicam and Coldeze are both homeopathic zinc. The label says 2X instead of a milligram amount. So I asked the pharmacist what milligram amount that was. His answer, "it's homeopathic, there is no way to say".

D'oh! I hadn't noticed 'homeopathy' on the label. 2X technically means diluted two times more.

Fortunately my work schedule is light this week. Wine, tea, my feet up, and my keyboard.... I'm comfy at least.

 

Of course. My point was that it's usually the church officials who have them on display. Oh, never mind. The whole thing isn't worth pursuing, not even for a grin.

It should be acknowledged, though, that the aliens who visited Earth a couple of thousand years ago had color photography . Those photographs we see of Jesus are not actually of Jesus, but of a model who bore a close resemblance to Jesus but was slightly more photogenic and didn't charge as much. You should see some of the selfies the aliens took with the real Jesus . Too bad archaeologists are still looking for them. (Okay, one last grin.)

 

Yeah, the bible pretty much tells us this at Isiah 53. When it describes Jesus, it says "he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him." Not to mention that's just common sense. When was the last time you saw a Jewish man in his mid 30's with abs like this: