Jesus at the Tollbooth

Believing in Jesus is like when someone pays it forward at the tollbooth. Has that ever happened to you? You're waiting in line at a tollway and when you finally get to the booth, the attendant just waves you through because the guy ahead of you gave him an extra 50 cents for you to go through. It happened to me one time, and it was a great feeling. I've done it for other people since.

Now what if the guy ahead was waiting for you beyond the tollbooth and he wanted his 50 cents back? What if he wanted your car? What if he told you if you didn't give him your car, you'd be tortured for eternity?

That is the deal we make with Jesus. He rolled up to God's tollbooth and said "Let me get all the cars for the next 2000+ years". Word gets back from car to car that this guy is paying tolls ahead. People who go through, and have to give him their car go back in the line (on foot) and tell everyone how great Jesus is for paying our toll. You want to say 'no thanks, I'll pay my own toll' but, then you get tortured for eternity.

He did us a favor thousands of years ago, that we did not ask for but for which we are still in debt countless generations later. I do not call that salvation. I call it extortion.

If you are waiting in line for the toll, realize THERE IS NO TOLLBOOTH. You can go right on ahead.

"Go right on ahead..." Does this permit us to do whatever we want? Moral relativism! Egad! No, to stick with the metaphor I say we have traffic laws we all choose to obey for the overall good of the drivers on the road. Morality has evolved to ensure survival as we fine tune the social contracts by which we exchange certain freedoms for security. Like my right to swing my fist ends at your face. Although we may blindly follow traffic laws, they are at least based on reason. Using the Bible as your only moral compass is like following traffic laws from horse and buggy days.

Modern Christians can now feel comfortable getting on board with evolution. "It's the method God chose for creation," they will say. Natural Selection? Sure no problem. It's elegant in it's simplicity and efficiency. Surely the work of the Creator (nevermind explaining how a system of gradual complexity comes from a being much more complex in the first place. O right, He exists outside the physical realm. Whatever, moving on). They can believe in a historical Jesus, one who performed miracles and was resurrected and science simply reveals more of God's wondrous creation.

But how do Modern Christians feel about the Garden of Eden these days? Can you say now that you believe life was created in 7 days, people first, then plants and animals, as described in the Bible? Are you hesitating? Are you saying "Well a "DAY" isn't really a day because in the original Hebrew DAY just meant some period of time". If you want to talk translation, check out Almah, the word for 'Virgin' and see if that changes anything. No, I mean Genesis, Chapter 1, in the inerrant , as in true as written Bible.

You NEED the garden of eden story to happen as written so you can achieve Original Sin because that is what Jesus is saving us from. As a pastor once told me as a child, it's like God shot arrows of judgment at the whole human race, angry at our disobedience and sin, but there was Jesus, his only son, to intercept those arrows and suffer so that we may have eternal life. I was about 10 I think. Scared the shit out of me.

Now that Christianity is modernized and it's ok to believe evoution is God's chosen method of creation, the Garden of Eden becomes a just a story again. Why do we need to be saved because of events that took place in a story?

Again, there is no tollbooth. Stop worrying about your place in the afterlife and start affecting life in the here and now. Pick a cause and do what you can. Do it because you're inspired to help people, not because you fear judgement down the line or you think a god wants you to. I trust someone who does a good deed with no expectation of reciprocation way more than someone who expects repayment, with interest for a debt you did not incur yourself and for a favor you did not ask for.


Amen.

Comments welcome.

Austin City Limits Festival in Aught-Eight. | The Real Guitar Heroes

Austin City Limits Festival this year came in a concentrated dose from Friday evening through Saturday night. For me it was the return of the Drive By Truckers. I used to see them every time they came through town. One year I saw them 8 times in a week. My friends and I committed to the task starting in Dallas and tracked them through Denton, Austin, and back down to San Marcos. It earned us an invite back to the house where they were staying. Wildly drunk, I couldn’t keep up and my girlfriend drove me home. After that I could usually get in a quick conversation with Jason, the band’s youngest member and now that he’s left and I let two albums worth of tours go by I’m back to anonymous fan status. And that’s still a good place to be with the Truckers because you’re in good company. Their latest album Brighter than Creation’s Dark is especially raw and to the point. No pretense with these guys. Looking around at Emos I realized I was surrounded by sweaty men who knew all the words and were frequently singing along with arms around shoulders. DBT’s songwriters speak honestly about suburban living, the pain of war, and what grabbed me is a quick line at the end of the song Self Destructive Zones that I felt struck at the core of what’s happening with kids and music today.

The verse goes:

The hippies rode a wave putting smiles on faces,
that the devil wouldn’t even put a shoe
Caught between a generation dying from its habits,
and another thinking rock and roll was new
Till the pawn shops were packed like a backstage party,
hanging full of pointy ugly cheap guitars
And the young'uns all turned to karaoke,
hanging all their wishes upon disregarded stars

It’s that last bit about karaoke that makes me laugh then shudder. I read karaoke as ‘Guitar Hero’. Kids are using video games to mainline fame directly into their veins. You get to skip practicing, skip writing your own songs, skip the pain, and just crawl in the skin of Slash. Nintendo knows it too. The commercial for Rock Band shows a mob of hip teenagers invading a suburban home as if it were one of rock’s hallowed venues. Mom’s probably heating up pizza pockets in the living room. They flow downstairs into the basement where there’s a full stage, lights, mics, guitars, instruments, and probably a load of laundry running in the back.

I was guilty of a similar fantasy when I was a teenager. Instead of video games, it was pure imagination. I wrote an ongoing story of an alternate future where all my friends had a band. We practiced in the back room at my parent’s house. We performed at the fine arts camp in Michigan I went to. Then I caught up with my age in the story, which was the last year of high school and it occurred to me that if I had spent less time writing and more time practicing with my friends we might actually have a band. It took years to get used to the idea that I could just go out and play my own material in front of people if I wanted to. I never did form a band.

Without digressing too much I think Guitar Hero will be the drug of choice for teenagers who have the dream but don’t see why they should have to pay dues when they can go directly to rock star status within a video game. This is not an apocalyptic problem. What will happen is those same kids will realize that heroin is not nearly as rewarding as living in the real world, including the sacrifices you have to make to live in it. Maybe they will become so pent up from funneling their creativity through a plastic 4 buttoned guitar that the aftermath will be the most moving, inspired rock music we’ve heard in generations.

ACL always proves that good music is still happening, and it’s not all that underground. It’s just not on the radio. You can trust teenagers to root it out, too. They have nothing but time on their hands to plumb the internet and social networking for quality, or at least original manifestations of Great Music.

The Truth Train

Any religious conversation usually winds its way down to the prime mover argument. It will start with the idea of intelligent design, the watch found in the forest, who was the designer? and so on. Then eventually all the way back to the big bang. The universe had a beginning, so what caused it? Who/what caused the big bang? What was there before the big bang? All very important questions. After the scientist shrugs and says “well we’re just not sure”, Christianity clears its throat, proudly steps to the lectern and says “Well let me tell you Who caused the big bang, it was this Fella named God, his only son is Jesus, he died for our sins, it says so in the Bible for which we can provide evidence of its inerrancy. The end.”

The problem is they are passing off an hypothesis for a solution. It’s a tough hypothesis at that because it is un-disprovable. We are damn lucky to be able to look as far back as we can into the birth of our universe, which is something like a second after the big bang. Before that? Well, that’s a tough call. I honestly don’t know how we’d even go about finding out what existed before the big bang or what caused it. In fact, it makes my brain hurt.

Fortunately, Christianity has been more than willing to give us an answer. An answer that we made up thousands of years ago and paraded it as common sense through a combination of good deeds and brute force. But it really doesn’t explain anything, since you’re still left to explain the origin of God. Fortunately again, the Bible eases that anxiety by telling us that God is timeless, there was nothing before God, he exists beyond our physical realm, and other exceptions. I don’t buy it, but a lot of other people do.

So it’s as if it comes down this: Truth is what you get when you stop asking questions. I’m going to call this the Truth Train and it goes like this:

In the beginning the Truth Train left the station with all of humanity on board. It didn’t go very far. It just let everybody off in this old time neighborhood called Nature and Ancestor Worship. It was ok, nothing fancy but it was a place to crash after a long day of hunting mastodon.

Polytheism Town was built just outside of Nature and Ancestor Worship. Lots of marble columns. Hard to navigate.

Then they built this neighborhood called Christ-ville. People shunned it at first but after a few moved in they told their friends. In fact they would get back on the train, go back to the old neighborhoods and either persuade or force those guys to get back on the train and come up to the new place. So they did. And they built more and more houses to fit everyone.

But the Truth Train started servicing areas beyond Christ-ville, including Helio-Centric Town and Evolution City. At first Christ-ville told their citizens those cities beyond were full of trashy, classless types. You don’t want to go there. Then they built a wall and said if you go there, we’re going to kick you out of Christ-ville. I mean it!

Eventually though, Christ-ville annexed Helio-Centric Town and much much later even Evolution City. (There’s still controversy over this. Some parts of Christ-ville don’t recognize Evolution City’s Right to Exist. Very polarizing)

And the Truth Train just keeps rolling. New tracks are being laid all the time. These days most people are getting off somewhere in Christ-ville. Some still live in the original parts, but more and more people live in the suburbs of Evo-Town and just try to ignore the stink-eye they get from the folks in the old part of town.

These people are pretty happy with their lives. They know the train keeps going, but there’s a lot of security in Christ-ville and the schools are ok, so they stay.

Some people stay on the train though.

In fact if you ride it long enough you get to a place that’s not so bad either. You realize there are other nice places to live besides Christ-ville (which you can always go back and visit). It’s a place where you can get along with your neighbor just because you want them to get along with you, without fearing retribution from the Authorities. It’s Reality City, and it’s getting bigger all the time. The developers can’t even tell you where the edge of town is. If you keep going on the train, the edge just gets further and further back, and you see parts of the city you didn’t even know where there. You could spend a lifetime exploring it. If you get yourself into a Fallacy part of town, you can just back out and go down another street. You don’t have to buy a house built on one of those old Assumption foundations.

Me? I’m riding the train to the end of the line.

What does Super God want?

Super God wants you to stop worshipping God.

Super God is God's Grandfather.

Super God.

I don’t believe in God. I believe in Super God. I used to be an atheist. There were so many questions I had. Every religion I encountered seemed to be sure they were the one true religion and worshipped the one true God. So rather than taking a chance, and due to a massive lack of evidence I resigned myself to atheism.

Everything made sense as an atheist. Life evolved via natural selection, the Bible was compiled by many sources over a long period of time in which the events were exaggerated, and other religions sprouted from similar traditions. I was troubled by the brutal history of the church and terrorists who would blow themselves up to show their faith. How could they know they were right?

Then one night I was lying in bed and suddenly felt paralyzed. I opened my eyes to a white light beaming through my window. It covered me like a blanket. All of my atheist instincts were screaming this was not real, but an angel appeared. Actually, he was a Super-Angel. He explained everything to me.

His name was Aawell and he first explained that he was merely a human shaped manifestation of the one true god. I said that I didn’t believe in God. Can you imagine? Telling an Angel you don’t believe? But Aawell said he understood my doubts, and that is why I was chosen to receive this message.

“There is a reason all of the people of this small world argue over their petty differences of belief. They cling to their scriptures but they do not see the Truth. All are Right, yet all are Wrong” he said.

“That doesn’t even make sense. How can that be?”

“The God of Moses is real. The God of Jesus and Mohammed is also real. Vishnu the Preserver, Zeus and Poseidon, Zarathustra and yes even Satan, all as real as your very own body. They created the world and everything in it just as they said. Do you believe that?”

“No” I said. “Science shows a different sequence of creation than what’s described in the scriptures. It’s one of the main reasons I didn’t buy in.”

“There are those among your kind who have seen the truth. They have been persecuted by the followers of the Child Gods. Did your philosophers not posit their must be a First Cause?”

“Yes. They say that every effect must have a cause, which is where religion sets God as the First Cause. But that contradicts causality to begin with so it doesn’t work. Did you say Child Gods?”

“You are very acute. My master was wise to choose you. All of the Gods of your planet are mere children to the Super God. A being of immense power. Omniscient, Omnipotent, and All Loving, although Love to him is an unpronounceable concept inaudible to human brains. He created the Oververse and populated it with younger Gods with all the Powers of Creation. The God of the book you call the Bible is one of his Children. He asked Supergod to provide him a planet. Knowing that a planet must exist in a system of other stars in a Galaxy (Super God’s rules) Super God balled up a wad of matter in his massive hand, squeezed it into infinite density and then blew on it. Yahweh waited until the Earth was formed and life had evolved up to a point where he could show himself and introduce his own version of creation.”

“This is too much!” I said, mouth agape. “Why are you telling me all of this?”

“Because Yahweh is getting out of hand. Like a child he became bored with his creation. His followers were utterly devoted to him so he decided to test them. First Job, then Jesus, on and on until he split himself in two and called himself Allah. He started feeding his people conflicting information and now your whole planet is fighting over who is right. All are right, yet All are Wrong.”

“Why doesn’t Super God reveal himself to the whole world? Then maybe people would understand what you’ve just told me.”

“He already has. People see HIM everyday and mistake him for God, or Allah, or one of the others, or just as Nature. You People respond to this idea of Prophets, so Super God elected you to spread the WORD. Before you were born, Super God commanded God to create a child from parents who would teach him about computers, and who would meet a friend that would teach him about the Internet, which is how the New WORD will be spread.”

“No one will believe me. I don’t even believe this is really happening. Can I ask a question?” I asked. The brilliant being above my bed nodded. “What happens after we die?”

“I’m afraid I cannot answer that question. We tried letting humans know, but they got distracted and started doing weird things in their First Life. Super God does not care about you as God does. We know what will happen but that is only for us to know.”

“Doesn’t Super God defy the First Cause rule too?” I slyly tossed out to him.

“No, Super God is the creator of yours and all of the unseen universes in the Oververse. Your universe obeys its own physical laws set in place by Super God. None of your microscopes or telescopes will break through the veil of the Universe you occupy. That is why you need me, a temporal extension of Super God to reveal his Truth to You. No more questions. Go forth and tell the world you bring a great truth to it. The Truth of the Super God. God’s God. “

And with a flash Aawell vanished. I went immediately to my computer and tried to write down what I could barely comprehend. It made sense in a strange way, and I didn’t need any proof because Super God’s angel spoke to me directly.

Oh FUDGE

Just another way to spread the Word (for Word, see next post)