I have a philosophy.
I am a Christian, though most other Christians would argue with me over that fact because I go to no set church and hold with no set docuterm but my own. Plus I drink, smoke, screw, fight and am not real damn good at turning the other cheek.
I live in a city of about 20,000 people – give or take a few hundred and based on whether or not it is the tourist season. Currently, there are over 156 churches in this small city, which, to some, would indicate that it is a very holy town. (It ain’t.) A few years back, the religious minority managed to get all of the topless bars banned – so millions in ‘sin’ dollars now flow into neighboring cities which have topless bars. Then they managed to cut down on the normal amount of bars (in the entire city there are only 10 or 11 bars and they are small). There are 3 actual liquor stores. They got the soft porn magazines in stores shoved into wrappers and hidden behind the counter to be only partially displayed. They kept out porn stores and have been trying real hard for over 10 years to close down a place called Mr. Smoke who dares to sell potentially pot related smoking equipment – in which one may smoke tobacco, 1960s style psychedelic stuff, and, in a back room, sexual toys, assorted lotions and various items as well as the same porn videos allowed to be sold by video shops. (His glass pipes are things of beauty and wonderful to behold.)
The few $20 and $50 prostitutes who wander around are quickly caught, jailed, fined, released and/or run out of town but the $1000 to $3000 a night ones drive Delorians and spots cars and frequent the several EXCLUSIVELY RICH communities. Along with city leaders, major bankers, various high up officials and so on.
Wen will not go into the undercurrent of drugs and the astonishingly easy availability of such nor the past history of the city actually providing the State of Florida with weed when the Feds cracked down on the imports and the great pot fields out in the county which, somehow, never got discovered over 20 years ago.
The local Christians, and Christians in general are so fragmented into various sects that they cannot even agree on the interpretation of the Bible Texts. You have Baptists, Methodists, Seventh Day Adventists, Catholics, Presbyterian, Lutherans, The 1st, 2nd and 3rd Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian churches. The Church of the Holy Fire, the Evangelical splinter group (the most noisy of Christians and hard headed and gullible), then a number of ‘The Church of …(fill in the blank as desired)’ all over the place.
With so many churches and so many ‘moral’ laws, one might think my town a great place. Nope! The businessmen happily screw you, the city tags taxes onto everything it can, the rich get zoning laws changed at a whim, the property is over priced, the average wage low and there is a huge gap between rich and poor. The City does not donate a cent to the local homeless shelter, street people are often ‘encouraged’ to leave town, the local tax assessor and city leaders somehow manage to get ‘tax confiscated valuable lands’ for pennies on the dollar BEFORE the public knows about them and they even managed to pull the teeth on the local City and County union so that an employee, unjustly treated by the city or county, can get no help from the union at all.
BUT – we HAVE OVER 156 Christian Churches! There are more being built also.
Christians cannot even get along with Christians. Poke 100 ministers and priests in a room and you’ll get about 80 various interpretations of the Bible. Catholics believe that a human, ordained by another human, ordained by a supposedly sacred human can absolve a person of all of their sins. (The Mafia loved that. They were nearly all Catholic and committed happy and horrible murder knowing that at the end of their days they could be absolved of all sins and step into heaven.) Most of your politicians are Catholic and, under the same belief, have no problem with robbing the poor, taking bribes, sending thousands off to die in a politically motivated war, denying veterans benefits and screwing any girl they come across.
Then one has the Jewish religion, from whom Christianity came, and to whom, the ‘grateful’ Christians turn a jaundiced eye. Then the Jewish religion breaks down into sects, but much fewer than the Christian ones ranging from strict following of the ‘old ways’ often considered suppressing civil rights, and those being more open and lenient.
Plus the Bible was written some time after the death of Jesus Christ by His followers and these were humans imbued with Holy Fire and we all know what happens when a person equipped with fanatical zeal starts interpreting religious texts based loosely on actual experience and memory. Things get changed – usually according to the beliefs of the actual writer. Plus his own personal feelings get put down along with what he considers to be the morals of the land. (Women do not play a real good role in the Bible – though they only can bring forth a child and it has been proven that they tend to be hardier than men. Plus, lacking copious amounts of testosterone to cloud their judgment, they tend not to go and start wars over someone giving them a dirty look and happily getting thousands killed in the process who normally would not have wanted to fight in the first place.)
Plus, it seems apparent that many writers of the Bible did not agree with each other in some things and some left large chunks of explainations out. It is, by all means, an excellent book for it has lasted 2000 years, but it is hard to intrepret and translating it into various languages means that the intrepreters took some liberties. Like, ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ in the origonal Hebrew actually meant ‘Thou Shalt Not Murder’ which kind of gives things a whole new meaning.
Then one includes the tendency of the major Christian Churches to ‘secrete’ things they decide are not for the viewing of the unwashed masses that has to do with their religion. (It took a while to get the Dead Sea Scrolls into the public light after they were found and I’m not sure if ALL of their contents will be exposed for public view.)
Now we go to the Moslims, who, though they hate to acknowledge it, are actually a splinter group of the Jewish religion, and we can clearly see how well a country is run when the Religion controls all and people can be slaughtered on the spot for accidentally violating a religious belief.
In my beliefs, the Bible texts should grow or adapt to some extent with the people as they change with the times. Many people should ponder upon and decide upon any odd interpretations and any translations from the original text should also be debated on by more than just a few. It should be considered and understood that even a Holy man, writing religious text is HUMAN and his human qualities and biasedness will come through in what he writes. If he is STERN, considers women as an inferior sex, to be owned and treated like property because that is how he was raised, then so will he write it into his text – for the good of the ignorant masses.
So, basing a country on Christianity is a good start, but, in my opinion, Christianity needs to get its act together more and Christians need to start agreeing with Christians.
(Ever meet those Holier Than Thou church members who would not say shit if they had a mouthful, who seem to look down on anyone else they consider not as ‘blessed’? They annoy the shit out of me and those which have plenty of money seem to consider that money as God’s Gift To THEM and THEM alone and hate like hell to part with much of it for charitable reasons. Plus, most good Christian businessmen that I have met are ruthless, cut throat buggers when it comes to operating their companies.)
I’m a Christian, but I have my own beliefs. I don’t give a hoot that there is a Jewish Temple a couple of miles from me, Moslems don’t bother me so long as they do not try to force their religion on me, and Buddhists do not bug anyone. I figure that 95% of all telev
