Christians have fallen on hard times. You know, those people who believe in the teachings of that guy from the backwaters of Nazareth. Seems that we just can’t get a break. Oh sure, there was some good times at Antioch. And a couple of the boys set up Saul on the road to Damascus.
Yeah, we had our moments, what with the monks in Ireland helping transcribe the olden texts from the Roman Days, with some other stuff from the three amigos Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Whatever. But then there was the Crusades and Spanish Inquisition, which put a dent in our name brand.
Later on down the line, our venerable leaders decided we needed to really nail down the date that the Nazarene was nailed to a stake, so they hired some astronomers. Those fuckers had ONE JOB. While it is true that the star-gazers nailed down Easter, they also said some other shit about the cosmos. Which was true. The Church don’t take kindly with the truth, unless it’s them laying it down. Fuck off, Galileo, and your heliocentrism.
Where was I? Oh yes, the Jesus Movement, when Jesus done left Chicago and hit the Left Coast. Totally dove-tailed with the Hippie Movement. Because love. Amirite? And it was a thing. Then the music died. I could still hear it, being all old school. One day in the early 1980s I got into a high school gym in Anaheim, where they were playing the music, and I kicked off my shoes. Buddy Holly wasn’t there, but his backup band was.
The Band was jump-started by The Dude, aka Lonnie Frisbee, a hippie from way back. He was The Dude who supplied electricity to the Calvary Chapel, Harvest and Vineyard movements in Christiandom. Then the Church discovered that Lonnie was gay, and they kicked him to the curb for having buttsex. You can look that shit up yourself. I once met The Dude on his way down the ladder, at a Vineyard thing. He was still The Dude, still a hippie from way back, and we could have been bros.
Not long afterward, the music died a second death. I hung on a bit, but noticed in the late 1980s that the worm had turned. I walked into the fancy Vineyard new digs in Anaheim, fucking silk upholstered chairs and the girl said the music wouldn’t play. On my way out, I saw the Barbarians handing out leaflets hating on women getting abortions. The Visagoths were already over the gate, the Romans were gone, and the Dude was dying of AIDS.
And then shit went from bad to worse.
You think it’s hard being an atheist, pagan or agnostic? Try being a Christian when the baggage we carry piles so high you have to have a helicopter to rise above the shit. Nowadays, your ticket into the Church is the same one that gets you into Hell. Because, as far as I can tell, you can’t say shit about so-called Christians who hate and kill. We’re the fucking Good Germans, where evil prospers because happy people say nothing.
Hey God: Where’s The Dude?