Join the Neopoet online poetry workshop and community to improve as a writer, meet fellow poets, and showcase your work. Sign up, submit your poetry, and get started.

The Bible Tells Me So

This blog will be offensive to some people.  Tough shit.  These are my opinions and stances are are not presented as anything else no matter the whining and gnashing of teeth from those small minded imbeciles who believe everyone who does not believe as they do is personally and publicly attacking them.  For those people I have one thing, at this time, to say:

Go fucking pound sand you fucking morons.  If you do not like what I write, fucking ignore it.

Now that we have that out of the way, let's get started, shall we?

I am a person of faith.  I have been so for all of my life, first through instruction in my house as I grew up and later through decision as a teenager and adult.  I should mention this is a constant decision.  It's not like saying "I love popcorn,"  It's akin to saying "I have considered this morning and all of it's components and decided it was good for me."  Faith is either engaged or useless.  People who claim faith and never consider or challenge it are superstitious morons.  They do not have faith, rather they have something they have decided is truth, something they refuse to ever consider again, and something they use as a mallet against the beliefs and lives of others.

If it is not clear, I am not a big fan of these people. They often tell me I am going to Hell because I have violated some idiotic conclusion they have been told is fact but they have never bothered to subject to reason or logic.  These people are beneath contempt and really, I enjoy pissing them off.  As I have a talent to make these people bone spittingly angry and I enjoy doing so, well, I consider it providence.

Because I do not go into their lives and intentionally anger them.  No, rather I make a statement, such as:

"Homosexuality is not a flaw any more than light hair is a flaw."

And they respond by pretending they know they mind of God and normally trot out the Bible to "prove" their point.

As a person of faith, I get rather annoyed at people portraying God as a petulant 3 year old child throwing a fit so when they make a statement they want to be accepted as fact, I counter with whatever I know will piss them off.  Why?  Because you cannot reason with unreasonable people.  All you can do is counter with a more ridiculous position and keep modifying your stance and position until you are taking their original position and using it to support your argument.  This is when they start arguing against their original stance and this is when you agree with them and point out that the original position is flawed and cannot support any such statement as they initially took.

It's a matter of exposing their hypocrisy so blatantly that even they can see it.

Because folks, the Bible can say anything you want it to say if you are twisting it the right way.  If there was only one way to view the Bible, well, we'd all be speaking Sanskrit and there would only be one religion based around it.  Instead we have translations and sects and sects within sects and so many splinters of splinters of splinters each claiming to have the one true interpretation, because theirs is the literal word and everyone else is wrong.

Really?  EVERYONE else is delusional?  Why?  Is it because you have carefully considered all of the available information and constructed a point of view that is consistent and can be defended with fact and reason or is it because you have decided one person or group must have the right answer and all the rest are of the devil?  Well, God tells me you are all wrong.

God said it, I believe it, that settles it.

Hey, I win, I just said I am invoking the truth as revealed to me by God so if you do not agree and support me, you are going to hell.  Oh, and God said you need to send me all of your money too.

Folks one of the core things you must realise is that faith, any faith, is belief without proof and of anything this nature is NOT a reasonable conclusion.  It may be important, it may be inspiring, it may even be life changing, but it ain't reasonable because if it were it could be demonstrated with actual fact.

I do not believe I must have food to survive, I know it.  I do not believe I must breath to survive, I know it.  I do not believe water in my lungs will kill me, I know it.  But I do not know that God exists, I have faith that God exists and I do so because of my life and experience and, most importantly, because it makes me feel better.

I can admit my faith will be seen as delusion by those who do not hold it.  So what?  It's faith, it is a conclusion reached without evidence, that is what faith is.  You might as well deride my choice of ice cream as my faith because my faith is not threatened by the beliefs of others, nor is it assaulted by people who do things I find reprehensible.  The only thing that could shake my faith is for me to decide that the benefits of it do not outweigh the detriments.

But what about the Bible?  Isn't the Bible the literal word of God?  No.  The Bible is the writing of men who are trying to express their faith in terms others can understand.  What's more it was written by a culture that enshrined slavery and the treatment of women and children as property.

So what?  Should I bend my thought and life to fit a message I pretend exists so I can hate and mistreat others?  No.  Rather I should sift through it and look for thought and action that was inspired, that ran contrary to the prevailing thought of those brutal times.  Charity, compassion, aiding those who need it. 

As for folks who insist the Bible is the literal word of God because the Bible says it is the literal word of God and that makes it the literal word of God I need you to remember one thing. God tells me She was misquoted and that the Bible is not the literal word of God.  And when given the choice of believing you or God, I have to go with God on this one. 

No doubt some are content to sift through the Bible for messages of hate against those they have already decided are worthy of hate but I believe God is smarter than that.  Just as the Bible does not define God nor is God responsible for the Bible.  Had She been so I trust She would have been smart enough not to class a spider as an insect, a rabbit as chewing their cud and pi equal to 3 as well as not having two (2) stories of creation, and not thinking it was a good thing to sacrifice children when you ran out of sheep.  Oh I could go on but it gets redundant.

And I use the pronoun "She" just to piss some folks off.  Because if God is "He" then God has testicles and a penis and an anus and takes a dump, etc.  As none of that is relevant or important, well, I'll just throw it in occasionally when I need to make the unreasonable so angry they actually say what they mean.

OK, all this is fine and dandy, but what's my point?  I am glad I asked.

If you want to have a moral argument with me and demonstrate why your position is superior, leave God out of it.  God is smarter than you think and God tells me anyone who claims their position is more Godly is a moron hoping to cow folks.  Since I believe God is responsible for kick-starting the universe and since I believe thought and reflection is the ultimate way to worship God, I will remain unimpressed by the mumbling and chanting of those who cannot be trusted to tie their own shoes much less construct an argument that is reasonable and thoughtful and demonstrate some small amount of critical thinking.

As a person of faith I do not pretend fact when I have none and I do not respect those who do.