Oh Christ, the Passion
In case you're wondering why little groups of well-dressed, unnaturally happy people are scurrying up and down your street, kneeling in prayer on your front lawn, and leaving suspicious looking flyers in your mailbox, it's just the Gibson nation out promoting the new movie, The Passion of the Christ.
That's Gibson as in Mel Gibson, he of such other Christian epics as Lethal Weapon, Payback, and Mad Max.
Ah, but our favourite Aussie action star has been busy finding Christ these last few years, with the result that we're in for yet another telling of the biggest publicity stunt in known history: the story of a God who figured parting seas and flooding plains wasn't getting anyone's attention, so why not become mortal, flog himself for a few years, die pitifully, and leave everyone to feel guilty for millennia.
George Bush could learn a few things from this guy.
The fact that this still hasn't got everyone and his yarmulke heeding the good word has got evangelical Christians wrapping their do-goody arms around Mel's latest flick thinking that once their non-believing friends see this tearjerker, they'll be lining up to sing hymns, spread the word to their wayward friends, and maybe lay a few dollars in the collection plate of their local ministry.
That's if there is such a thing as an evangelical Christian who has any non-believing friends to drag to a theatre.
Now, all this comes from the same line of thinking that promotes Israeli statehood, not out of any sense of concern for Israel, but because some guy who was clearly taking copious quantities of hallucinogens some many hundreds of years ago said that there's got to be a stable Israel before all those Bible-thumping followers of Billy Graham and his ministries can be scooped up into heaven.
After that it's simply tough tit for Israel and anyone else left behind.... Hey, they warned us!
Well, after being roused from my bed on the day when the Good Lord apparently said we should all rest (depending who you talk to, of course; Jews and Seventh-day Adventists have other feelings on the matter), by three little disciples of his holiness the carpenter who wanted to remind me about this upcoming movie, leave a few Bible passages and tracts, and ask if I would care to join them at a gathering they were having that night, I finally decided that it's time to do more than just grumble about Australian actors and pop some more Xanax.
What's needed is a little education in some of the basic tenants of Christianity, as good or bad as they may be, for those who claim to speak in the name of the Good Lord, because there seems to be an obsession amongst the most recent righteous believers in Christ to quote Revelations, forget the Sermon on the Mount, claim persecution when someone calls them on it, and in the case of our good friends to the south, smite their sorry, unbelieving asses just to emphasize the point.
Now, forgive me here, but, did not Christ, salvation to millions of souls and potentially of great economic interest to Mr. Gibson's Icon Productions, instruct his followers (a rather ragtag bunch at the time to be sure, but people getting in at the ground floor of a new scam usually are) to "turn the other cheek"? It's a silly notion, I'll grant you, but I've never seen an adherent of the Book of Matthew ever actually follow such a ludicrous, and downright lethal idea when they're caught in a bar fight with little more than their wits and a pocket full of lint.
Nonetheless, I'm thinking of knocking on a few doors, staking out some welcome-mat high ground, and generally being as annoying and as righteous as I can be before the cock crows something other than "be quiet, we're still sleeping!"
Because, unlike nine o'clock on a Sunday, that's when I'm up.
What could be better than putting on a suit, knocking on a few doors, and passing out a pamphlet or two with quotes and pictures from service men and women overseas; images of the people we sent them to protect, and the people we sent them to kill? Why not sit down at four in the morning and really examine what that all means, and just what the Good Lord would think of what we are doing in his name?
Because it'll never sell, that's why.
