I’m beginning to wonder if my understanding of being a Christian hasn’t been fouled up somehow. It might explain why my health ain’t so good and there’s a hole in my financial bucket. Let me give you an example. Like a stooge I’ve been going around for years thinking Bible believers are supposed to be charitable people who take care of the sick. Now, I’m finding out that I was full of it! No such thing.
I’ve been paying more attention lately to how true Christians act, and I’m learning some things. I’m talking about getting back to basics here. I’m not talking about wishy-washy, weak-as-water Episcopalians or Methodists here. No, no, no. I’m talking about salt of the earth fundamentalist, evangelical Christians, the kind that are all fired up for the Lord, our last bastion of freedom, keeping the country from slipping into socialism. You know, like onward Christian soldiers!
Those fundamentalists, they aren’t wringing their hands and fretting about a bunch of poor, sick people who can’t pay their just and legal debts. They’re committed to social justice—the kind that operates collection agencies, files wage garnishments and forecloses homes. Good, solid, American, Christian capitalist social justice.
Sick people are kinda gross, anyway, and they’re all like sinners. Everybody knows we should all have scorn for sinners and for those who’ve made mistakes in their lives and find themselves in hard circumstances. Jesus did that too, right?
“Actions have consequences,” the Good Book says. “The wages of bad choices is poverty, sickness and death.” I’m not really up on chapter and verse like I ought to be, but I’m getting better at it. I’ll look up this citation and come back and paste it in later. I admire those evangelicals who can rattle off obscure passages from Jeremiah as easily as they can quote the Second Amendment. If you’re gonna be a good Christian that’s important.
I’ll bet Jesus didn’t put up with no slackers! He was probably saying, like, “Get behind me, accursed Slackerites, for thou art abominations in mine eyes!” and “Wicked are the poor for they shall be mine chosen enemies whom I shall hate and make sick unto death and throw into Hell everlasting,” and like that all the time. I know that isn’t in the Bible, but I’m learning that Jesus said a whole bunch of stuff that isn’t exactly in the Bible. He was here on earth for 33 years, you know, so he must have said a lot more stuff than just what’s in the book, right? Makes sense. It’s kinda like the Constitution. I’ll get to the Constitution later.
Being a good Christian means being smart. Too smart to let a bunch of Mexican illegals overrun your country and turn the USA into one big welfare pinata. And, did you know that almost all of the illegal aliens in this country are Catholic? What’s that tell ya?
Americans won’t take marching orders from the Pope! I read all about the Pope’s plans to use the Mexican illegals to drive us into a New World Order in a flyer that was stuck on my windshield at Kroger. I taped it up on the wall next to my computer.
A good Christian knows his way around. He’s a hard, savvy and cynical person, always on the lookout for anybody who might be getting away with something or, maybe, you know… who’s like getting something for free. If a Christian guy lets people get over on him, well, he might look like a chump or something. Jesus, how would it look for Jesus’ peeps to look like chumps? Onward Christian soldiers.
God, I might look a little less like a chump if I had a truck, and I might just know how to get one. If I do right, keep all the commandments and keep calling the President a liar, God might just get me a truck. Man, I’d really like to have a new F150!
Oh, and Christians are supposed to be just bustin’ proud of themselves and all the stuff they have—stuff God gave them because they’re righteous and love the Lord. Being the right kind of Christian (no pun intended) almost guarantees financial peace and prosperity. Christians should never miss an opportunity to tell everybody who will listen that they keep all their bills paid, and paid right on time.
Ain’t no Christian spongin’ off the government or getting a damn thing for free, pardon my French. They ain’t giving none to slackers neither, and they’ll shout down any pork belly politician who suggests that some things ought to be free. There’s a special place in Hell for socialists!
There ain’t nothing free—especially Freedom with a capital “F.” It’s important to say that out loud and to post it a couple dozen times a week as a status update on Facebook.
Man, I wish I could talk like these Christian guys I see at the protest rallies on tv. I see their status updates and comments on Facebook too. It’s tough, manly talk. The kind of talk that gets the girls. More about girls later.
“I ain’t pledging my allegiance to no A-Freekin-American President! My allegiance is to my God, country and my guns, and not necessarily in that order! Oh… and to my family and the Constitution.”
“Me and the little woman,” I heard one of those Christian guys saying, “we’re socking away a little nest egg, and I figure that for every dime I’m tithing at church I’m getting back thirty-seven, thirty-eight cents. Over a year’s time that comes up to enough to send both the kids off to the Hosana Montana Bible Youth Sweat Lodge for a whole week. It’s a tremendous Spirit-filled event that we wouldn’t want our kids to miss. Fortunately we’re Christians so we’ve got the $900 each to make it happen for them.”
Christians are supposed to tell everybody they’re on solid financial ground because it shows they aren’t poor—and because they ain’t poor, God likes them better. Or maybe they’re not poor because God likes them better. I don’t know. I’m might have that part backwards.
When I went to church as a kid they taught me that God said just about everything he had to say in the Bible. No, no, uh uh, no way. I’m learning that there’s a lot more to God’s holy word than just what’s in the Bible.
I mean, the Bible’s inspired and all, but what about the Constitution? It’s inspired too. Every infallible word of it. I mean, you know, God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and Thomas Jefferson used them to write the King James version of the Constitution of the United States. That’s where the Constitution came from on which our country was founded.
You can’t walk into a bookstore and buy a U.S. Constitution K.J.V. Did you know that? There’s only one copy of it, and it’s in a museum in Washington. That’s why nobody’s ever actually read it. We just know what’s in it, including the red letter parts that Jesus himself said, because it’s just the same stuff that’s in the Bible anyway. Well, except the part about the guns. The Second Amendment, I think. Yeah, the Second Amendment. I think the Constitution is mainly about guns, really, with, you know, the Ten Commandments.
Did you know that the stuff about freeing the slaves wasn’t in the Constitution originally? A case of men changing the word of God? You decide.
I know one thing for sure. The worst thing that a Christian can do is to have anything to do with socialism. If you want to go straight to Hell, just start talking that socialist crap. Jesus hates it! How many times are we going to have to beat back the Red Menace before we get the message across?
Socialism = Communism + A-Freekin’-American Black Muslim President = Tyranny!!!
Now, see, when you say stuff like that, the freedom-hating, atheist liberals will call you a racist. That’s their way of spreading atheism and persecuting Christians. Just because you don’t think that a black A-Freekin’-American could be qualified to fly a plane, let alone run the country, doesn’t make you a racist!
The fact that it eats your guts out and makes you want to puke up a hairball that an A-Freekin’-American is commander in chief of our sacred armed forces doesn’t mean you hate him because he’s black. Liberals twist everything around. You hate him because he’s a swine sex goddam sodomite lovin’ socialist, communist nazi who hates white people and wasn’t even born in this country! He’s the racist. Not you! Makes sense.
Being a Christian ain’t nothing like I thought. Did you know that Christians have the hottest sex in the world? I’m talking about evangelical Christians, now, not the fake Christians. Don’t believe it? Just take a gander at this.
MSNBC wouldn’t lie about it, would they? Wait a minute… isn’t that a socialist, liberal network?
Anyway, I’m gonna have to rethink everything I thought I knew about being a Christian. It’s time to tune in to that brand new kind of old time religion, find a church where I can see the preacher clearly on a forty-foot high JumboTron screen, and lip-sync talking in tongues. It’s gonna be hard to get all that old brotherly love, compassion, charity and sacrifice crap out of my head. But, if it’ll get me a truck and it’s good for the country, maybe I ought to try.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for clearing that up, Brother Prentice. Helps me understand those of my neighbors who, when they think of a model Christian, think of Dale Earnhardt before anyone else.
To be fair, though — those evangelical Christian churches with the ministers with Jumbotron-sized mouths often hide a lot of very different Christians. I wish more people on the left could swallow their own Jesus-induced hairballs long enough to talk to these people for a few minutes. Might even learn something about, say, poverty and labor struggles and environmentalism in their own backyard, instead of, say, Colombia.
The observations are funny, but the sad thing is that they are serious too. I have heard so many right wingers say “I want my country back!” over the past couple of months and now I want to say that I want my religion back. Christianity is about what Christ taught us, and he taught us to love one another and take care of one another. He didn’t teach us to hate or think we are better than anyone. Jesus was always surrounded by the poorest people and by people who no one wanted to associate with. He taught us to pray about forgiving each other as we would want God to forgive us. Why is this so hard for so many believers to understand and to remember?
I want my religion back.
You are right about wishy-washy Episcopalians. I’ve been an Episcopalian all of my life, but things have gotten so bad that I may have to change denominations. Not only have we decided to ordain gays, but my church no longer allows concealed carry during worship services.
Wow! I kinda like how you think! Just never heard anyone put it that way before. But I have to say that I agree with you and with Kaitlin’s comment. Where IS the love, compassion, forgiveness, understanding and empathy that Jesus modeled for us in associating with others. It’s true that Jesus was strong in his opinions when he needed to be – but hey, there’s alot of folks out there trying to emulate Him in this arena and they just aren’t getting it right I don’t think. Nice to know there are others who think the same. I also have no desire to point fingers at others because I always come back to “how can I judge another man’s servant – to his own master he stands or falls.” The Lord will deal with their hearts. It’s not my job. But thank you for giving folks reason for pause.