Christ gets crucified, once again

Oh, the irony.

After close to 2,000 years (give or take, no one really knows) of trying to cram Christianity down the throats of millions around the world imbued with common sense, the hordes of faithful have now spoken:

Comedy Central should just leave religion alone.

That was the general public reaction (y’know, the ol’ comment thang) to word that the network — famous for wussing out and censoring images of Mohamed — is considering a cartoon in which a resurrected Jesus Christ is portrayed as a slacker youth in New York, who doesn’t get along with his perpetually distracted father, who in turn is addicted to video games.

I kid you not. Sounds pretty damn funny to me!

In fact, I’m wondering if Trey Parker and Matt Stone are kicking themselves. They’ve been using JC as a character for years, and a spinoff was just sitting there, begging to be done.

Anyway, the general reactions ranged from hurt to bemused to disgusted. But that’s religion for you. The fact that multiple sects of evangelical Christianity spend much of their time trying to convert people doesn’t strike any of these people as ironic.

Selling religion is fine, you see, because — delusional and irrational or not — lots of people have it. Deriding it, on the other hand.

Well hell, that could lead to dancing.

Issues like this make me wish the average American knew more about the founding fathers, more specifically Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson loathed organizaed religion — he even rewrote the lessons of the New Testament into a reinterpreted Bible, taking out all of the mysticism and magical silliness.’

He would’ve loved the idea of a show that could make fun of religion. When asked about his support for Deism and Unitarianism — constructs allowing the practice of spiritual communalism without subscribing to a religious ethos — he remarked, “Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.”

The modern translation of that is “any God who could’ve created as screwed up and complex a race as man would have appreciated it if we wondered if he was even there sometimes.”

But that would be rational. Whining about Comedy Central, for some, is just comforting.

Why fluffy is God

The Lord works in mysterious ways. It was Gary Cooper’s last line at the end of “Sgt. York” when he returned home from WWI and found the government had built him a brand new farmhouse. The Lord was rewarding him for ignoring “Thou Shalt Not Kill” and picking off 25 Germans with an American Enfield rifle. Mysterious for sure.

You may be wondering why the Lord is good to your neighbour considering all the sins you’ve observed him committing through your binoculars. How do you unravel the Lord’s mysterious ways without professional help? Where do you find Fred, Velma, Daphne, Shaggy and Scooby in the Yellow Pages? So many questions.

The answer, friends, to God’s mysterious behavior is so alarming that you’d better make sure you’re in a calm, safe place before reading any further. Are you safe. OK, good. God isn’t really as smart as everyone makes Him out to be. Don’t believe it? Why else would he make genitals so vulnerable and logs accross rivers so slippery?

Essentially, God is like your cat. He quietly prowls around and pounces when he finds prey. It’s the luck of the draw who he gets and he loves to play with his catch. The more you struggle, the more fun Whiskers and God have. So take my advice — if God has you under his paw, play dead and scramble under the sofa when he gets bored and starts licking himself.

God, like your cat, is also mostly interested in who is feeding him. If God is rewarding a Toyota executive with a pool full of bikini hotties while punishing you with chemotherapy, think feline. Have you fed God a fish lately? You could win God’s favour by emptying your bank account into a collection plate, but remember that like cats, God is fickle. He may scratch your face in bed the morning and ignore your snoring partner because he knows you are the one who provides the Tender Vittles.

Cat worship died out in ancient Egypt, I think, because it was too scary. Bad, bad things happen in the world and it’s much more comforting to believe there is a guiding force like God giving it order and justice. But there isn’t any justice when it comes to earthquakes, birth defects or gas chambers. Still, most people would rather blind themselves to reality and explain “God’s” actions as being “mysterious.”

Shitty things happen in the universe for no good reason. Cat worship is actually more logical than current religions when you think about it.