Sometimes I find it hard to relate to people. They tend to be people of all walks of life, those whom I find difficulty with, but most prominently they're the batshit crazy types that are drawn to Christ. Look, me and Jesus are cool. I don't have any particular problem with him and, as far as I'm aware, he's on good terms with me. Not speaking terms, necessarily, but we're not like, involved in a blood feud.
That said, this whole Messiah business is kind of a drag. I mean, if you're just out preaching the Gospel and performing miracles and then you get crucified, that's fine. You've lived the life of, like, everyone in the Middle East at the time. That's what they all did, right? Totally normal stuff. Then some honkeys start calling you their Savior and blah, blah. I mean, it really harshes one's mellow, does it not? Likewise, I think it's all sort of over-hyped. I mean, most of what you'll read about homeboy is metaphor and hyperbole. So, why take it so seriously?
Actually, I'm not even going to get into that. It's a ridiculous topic. What I actually want to talk about is a guy who calls himself John the Baptist the Second. He lives...somewhere. I'm not sure. He's got a website and some trucks and shit. I assume he lives near my place, since those trucks are always withing ten minutes of my house.
They're recognizable because he paints them with biblical verses and what I assume he thinks are clever sayings about whatever crock of shit he belives. They all have fingers pointing upward, calling upon passing motorists (the only people likely to see the trucks he leaves parked in one of five places for the duration of a business day) to embrace Jesus as their Lord...or don't.
That's what gets me about the guy. He's obviously shoving this shit down my throat. Hence, little phrases like "You just proved this sign works!" implying that, by noticing the pre-school level artisanship of his vehicle and the copyright infringment of a black (Satanic?) sprectral figure next to the words "Who U gonna call?", I have somehow fulfilled whatever it is he's getting at. Essentially, I think the man is some kind of attention whore. But more on that a little later. Point is, he's force-feeding me this poorly-spelled garbage and then backing off, saying it doesn't matter to him if he convinces me, he's just getting the word out to anyone that wants to hear it.
Hey, look, I don't go around spouting off about Ragnarok drawing nigh (it is) and telling people that everytime a thunderstorm interrupts their life Thor is angry with them (he is) and I don't expect that I'll ever feel the need to do those things. However, if I did want to foce-feed someone what I believe I'd have the common decency (not to mention the ballsack) to admit to it. Don't listen to us raging heathens bitch about how you throat fuck us with your silly books and regurgitated scripture and try to appease us by doing just that and disguising it as a friendly reminder that Jesus is "totes awesumez". Because, seriously, if the fact that he probably sits in that truck beating off everytime someone stops to look at it wasn't there, I'd totally kick the shit out of him. Literally, I would kick him so hard in the testicles that he'd shit part of a kidney.
Likewise, if you're preaching, which he is, why would you imply free will? I mean, I get that that's a new approach for the Crusaders, but it's ineffective. The entire drawing point of their faith has been, at least in my lifetime, the fact that you can throw up your hands and ask Jesus to take the wheel and decide the course of your life (or, if you're on a lengthy roadtrip, he can drive while you smoke a jay and catch some sleep in the backseat). They don't want free will, which is great since Big G rarely allows people to utilize theirs, at least in stories. He gives them specific orders and, when they inevitably choose to disobey him, he punishes them with ridiculous shit.
His website, which I visited out of sheer furstrated curiosity, has a distinct lack of anything useful. I thought that, by reading the page titled "My Experience" I'd get some insight into this guy, his beliefs, or the point in his life where he went from merely "beleiving in God (or not)" to "Trusting and Loving God". I was mistaken. Instead, it contains the same shit the rest of his pages contain, only paraphrased about sixty times. Essentially, the Return of Christ is near and we should all accept him (or don't, really it's totally cool if you want to, like, burn and be demon-raped for all eternity. No sweat off my balls!). Basically, from what I understand, he took time out of his busy and, from what he vaguely hints at, shitty, meaningless life every single day to just sit silently and think about God and, eventually, he came to know God and God spoke through him.
Try that for a second, regardless of what you believe. Sit in perfect silence and think about God. Any god, I don't care. Think about Cthulu if you will (not, as I recall, technically a god but He'll do). Think about something so vastly powerful that everything you can sense, anything you can't sense, anything that exists, has ever existed, or will ever exist, only adds up to an infantesimal fraction of its being. Think about the nature of something like that, the size of it, the absolute power it weilds. Think about what it's existence must be like, being the only one of its kind (or, if you prefer, one of a comparatively small group) and how it must feel. In order for a being that enormous to understand (and, effectively, create) human emotion it must feel some empathy for us, it must share some of our feelings. Think about the vast expanse of eternity, where this being exists at all times in all places simultaneously, knowing all things except what it would be like to have a companion, or a race of companions like itself.
If you're not fucking insane, you did it wrong. If you are insane, then congratulations John the Baptist the Third. Your web empire and Chevy truck await you.
The fact is, sitting and pondering anything for too long will drive you batshit. Think of a word. Balls, for instance. Now think about nothing but that word, what it means, how it sounds, where you first heard it, whatever. Think of nothing but the word 'balls' and shortly, often within less than a minute, that word loses all meaning. It becomes an nearly unintelligible jumble of symbols that make a sound. You, in fact, understand it less by simply pondering it. Stoner movies do that. David Spade did it with the word road in one of the five-billion movies where he and Chris Farley played the same two characters (that did happen more than once, right?). Your brain becomes overburdened with that same thought and, eventually, unravels. What I'm saying is, beleif and rational thought are different things. If you thought rationally about the Divine for lengthy periods of time the way Johnny Boy implies he did, you'd no longer have any use for thinking about it because God would be meaningless for you. Or, if you're the philosophical type, your fucking head would explode.
Belief takes the stance that some things cannot be explained. I have to concur on that point. Some things you won't ever find a rational reason for, regardless of how many math equations you come up with. It's a leap of faith, so to speak. You accept that you can't exactly understand something that is happening, or something that exists, but you beleive that it is or it does all the same. Rationally, you need facts and science and theories and shit. Combining the two would mean you could prove something to other people with tangible evidence, rather than speculation and story-telling.
John the Baptist the Second has not done that. What he has done is taken a life that was, most likely, boring and uneventful, and made himself the center of a small circle of people more lost than himself by convincing them (and likely himself) that he knows his God. He's made himself more interesting, perhaps more financially successful and he may have even helped some people. Ordinarily, I would applaud him, despite my issues with his methods. In this case, I can only pity the people who follow him and boil over with rage at what he's doing. The people he may have helped are too weak to help themselves, and are, in my opinion, too weak to continue breathing. His insights are lackluster, his words are poor repitiion of other, greater men's words, and he, himself, is somewhat enigmatic and secretive (his real name is nowhere to be found). He's assumed an alias based on a mostly fictional character. In my book, he's hardly better than a furry and that makes him vile.
I'm not saying his faith and devotion have no place in this world. I'm just saying that people who misrepresent themselves for personal benefit are worthless. I'm saying that, if you're going to beleive something stand up about it. I'm saying that if you want to help people, do it through charity and donation, do it through buying them a hot meal or helping them fix their car or staying up late listening to their problems. Don't fool them into giving themselves over to something they can't whole-heartedly accept by using vague language and improper grammar. Give the needy something tangible, something that represents how far they've come from the pathetic wretches they were.
And if you have to give them something as theoretical as "hope", do it with kindness and compassion, not with forced ritual and contrived bullshit.
Otherwise, stay the fuck off the road and keep your asinine theology to yourself.
Ominously Yours,
-S.R.
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