I'm convinced that the Bible is nothing more than a really involved practical joke; a twisted, farcical rite of passage through the Pearly Gates in which, the better you do, the farther you get from eternal life.
Take Leviticus, God’s “abominable” bucket list. When you go down the checklist of anal-retentive, “offering” instructions and, “abomination” death sentences, don't they sound like things four freshman band nerds might come up with if they decided to make up their own religion because there was nothing interesting on Netflix on a Saturday night and they had a bottle of Mezcal and an ounce of weed to kill? I mean, don’t eat shell fish? Don’t shave your beards? Ixnay on tattoos? Don’t eat meats from animals with cloven hooves? (Like anyone’s seriously going to give up bacon and baby-back ribs?) C'mon! The God who made the Heavens and the Earth, The Holy of Holies who created all living things, The Host of Hosts who is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal, perfect and without sin – goes bat shit because you wear a poly-wool blend suit? He tells men not to rub their wieners together, but only after He makes their wieners so much fun to rub together in the first place? Really? How does that not sound like gag instructions for an amazingly complicated punking?
Christianity becomes totally understandable when you realize it’s basically an absurd, multi-part, knock-knock joke that’s been very poorly translated from the original Hebrew and Aramaic. Breaking news, folks. God never intended it to be taken seriously! I will bet you any amount of money, at a kajillion to one odds, if there is a Jesus, and he actually comes back sometime, the first words out of his mouth will be, “Gotcha! I can’t believe you people fell for all of that!”
I think, in particular, that the scriptures that command folks to hate, condemn, savage, enslave and kill for no rational reason are only there to see whether the faithful would recognize when someone was pulling their legs. You can almost hear the band nerds, at 2 a.m., with a quarter of an ounce of weed left, half-way to the worm at the bottom of the bottle, and the tuba player says, “We have to work smiting in somewhere. Smiting is awesome! Tell them to smite the shit out of anyone with basketball-colored skin who’s name rhymes with, ‘Dump.’”
“Nice outside the box thinking. But we can’t be that specific,” the bassoonist answers. “Or they’ll know we’re just bullshitting. It’s gotta sound mysterious. Like if they don’t do what we say they’ll get smoted? Smited? Smitten? They’ll get royally fucked up, themselves.”
“We could have them off the Germans. No one likes Germans,” offers the guy who plays the cymbals. Two heads nod drunkenly in agreement but the last guy, the clarinetist, shoots out of his nest in the bean bag chair. “We don’t have ‘em smite any one group. We tell them to smite anyone who doesn’t do an abomination right!”
Tuba picks up the pile of scribbled napkins by the XBox and starts leafing through them. “We have a ton of abominations here. Which ones should they get smited for?” Clarinet smiles. “All of them. That’s how we scare the crap out of them.”
“You have to be joking,” Bassoon says. “They’ll have to kill everyone they know and love! Daughters, sons, parents, siblings, neighbors! They’ll wind up spending all of their time smiting and burying. It’ll be a Quentin Tarentino film come to life!”
Clarinet takes a long pull of Mezcal. “And you’re point is,” he asks.
“The point,” Bassoon says. “Is this is supposed to be a religion, not a first person shooter video game. You get a bunch of really devoted followers and they’ll kill everyone in the world off in no time.”
Clarinet shakes his head. “No they won’t.” He thinks for a moment. “Okay, a few might. The really dumb ones. But you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few morons. Besides, it won’t take very long before the smarter ones get the joke.”
Tuba looks up from rolling a joint. “What joke?”
“This,” shouts Clarinet, waving his arms around the dorm room. “This whole thing. It’s all one cosmic whoopee cushion! A holy fart joke! All of these ridiculous ‘abominations.’ And the stupid shit we’re having them do on holidays? What the living Hell do colored hard-boiled eggs and a rabbit have to do with the death and resurrection of the Messiah? And making them put a tree inside their homes and decorate it with lights and shit for his birthday? Why? Because we can! We’re making them eat crackers and drink grape juice and pretend it’s the flesh and blood of the Son of God! I couldn’t get drunk or high enough to fall for something that grisly!
“Don’t you get it? They’re supposed to figure out that we’re just fucking with them! It’s all a game to see how stupid we can make them look! When we’re done making up all of this crap I’m organizing a pool. We get everyone in the dorm to put up $20 and the winner is the one who’s guess is closest to the actual date and time they finally tell us to go fuck ourselves.”
Tuba fires up the newborn joint. “I’m pretty sure we already have an abomination against that. No, I’m wrong. It’s one of the commandments. The one after, ‘Thou shalt not eateth yellow snow,’ and before, ‘Never spliteth tens in blackjack.’” He scanned the list of commandments and said, “Hey guys, we should probably consider cutting out a few of the sillier commandments if we want people to go for this.”
Cymbals walks to the window and scans the darkened street. “You really think people will fall for all of this? That they’ll actually join our religion and do all of this Looney Tunes crap?”
Clarinet joins him at the window. “I think the fact that nearly every living person on the planet knows what a Kardashian is, answers your question. #never doubt the power of stupid.”
“Amen to that,” Tuba answers, as he takes another hit off his joint.