Bible Theories...

Living in the Bible Belt of the Southeastern USA, one comes to a certain appreciation, or comes to a certain understanding about Christianity that you probably didn't have before you lived here. God and Christianity assails you from all sides when living in the South. You're never very far from it. Never. Some may argue that this is a good thing. Well, I guess that just all depends on how you view this certain form of religion to begin with. I see it all of the time. It goes from the people I work with who sign their e-mails, "Have a blessed day" to just driving along down any road in North Carolina where there appears to be a church literally every mile or so. It's actually kind of annoying if you ask me. They just beat you over the head with it.

Anyway, the Bible, the end all be all document for the folks from the Bible belt. Most people I know at my workplace have one on their desk, they read it at lunch, and carry it around like it was their lifeblood. Which to some of them, it just might be. Now going back into my Catholic education, I'm to understand that the Bible is the literal word of God as it was handed down to mere mortals through some sort of divine intervention. The prophets wrote the Bible, and the disciples wrote of their stories and travels with Jesus throughout the years. The biggest problem that I have with folks and the Bible is the fact that they take it as the literal word of God. And the problem that I have with it, is that it wasn't written by God, it was written by the hand of men. Men are fallible, and therefore I can deduct that their writings are subject to the same failings. The other major problem that I have with it, is that a lot of these writings came from people (the prophets) who said that they heard God talking to them. OK. Today if you have someone who says you have God talking to them, nobody believes them, and generally these same folks get a good looking over by a mental health professional. A lot of times, the "voice of God" that these people are hearing is nothing more than a schizophrenic break with reality. These are the people that you can see standing on a corner somewhere with a sign reading something like, "THE END IS NIGH!! REPENT SINNERS!!" or something along those lines. These are no doubt, the same people who wrote large chunks of the Bible. Back in the day, these folks didn't know anything about mental illnesses, so if someone heard voices, it had to be divine intervention. It couldn't have possibly been their own brain playing tricks on them. This is why I don't think I place a lot of stock in the Bible and its teachings. They were probably written by a bunch of raving lunatics who went untreated in their mental illnesses because people back then didn't have the capacity to understand what was happening, nor the medical knowledge to correct it. If they had lithium back then, we probably wouldn't have had the Bible as we know it now.

The other thing that really bugs me about living in the Bible belt is the relentless pursuit by Christian conservative groups to press their agenda into public schools. They want to teach the Bible as literature, they want to teach creationism and intelligent design instead of actual sound science like evolution, and the thing that especially bothers me is that the only form of sex education that they want to teach is abstinence. They think, and I can't believe that people actually still think this way, that if sex is not presented to the kids, they won't do it. I guess that's why North Carolina has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the country. Abstinence education must be working oh so well. If you tell a kid about safe sex and condoms, this isn't going to make them go out and do it. When are people going to realize this? The other argument that parents come up with is that they want to teach their kids about such things, and they don't want schools teaching them about it. Well, this would be find and well, except the parents don't take the responsibility to teach this to their kids. They just ignore it. The other sticking point, and this allegedly goes back to the Bible, is that whenever they try to teach kids about homosexuality, they cry foul! They cry about how this is against God's will, and against their religious beliefs, and how it's just wrong and that they don't want the "homosexual agenda" propagated to their kids. Homosexual agenda. This is a term that makes me laugh. Do people really think that there are groups of homosexuals running around the country trying to recruit their kids into their "movement"? Trust me. There are people who think this. I heard a bunch of them talking about it on NPR yesterday. These same folks, I wish I could remember their group name, were railing on about how they aren't homophobes, but that they just don't want to hear about it, don't want their kids to know about it, and basically just want to disavow any knowledge that it exists in the world at large. Yeah, not homophobic. That would be akin to me proclaiming that I don't have a hairy back, when everyone I know knows damn well that I do. These people of course do this in the name of God. I have to believe that God is probably pretty pissed at the stuff that people try to do in his/her name. Same goes for Jesus.

Why is it every Christian or conservative group, or combine the 2, relate themselves to the word "family" somehow? Are the rest of us that don't maybe have a religious affiliation, or are to the left of the political spectrum of things any less inclined to be family type of people? I think not. It makes me mad when I hear someone proclaiming family values. As if someone else doesn't have them just because they think differently. I do believe that the Christian right movement has become emboldened after the 2004 elections, where their horses won a lot of races, and now they are trying to ramrod their values down the rest of the country's throat. I feel like it's almost the 1920's again. People trying to get the Bible taught in public schools, intelligent design accepted as fact, labeling biology books because they contain mentions of evolution in them, and then there are the dominionists. These are the people to be especially afraid of. These are the people who want to turn America into a fundamentalist Christian nation. Think Iran, except for Christians instead of Muslims. They want to enforce Old Testament law, and essentially kick anyone out who doesn't agree with them. You might think that this is some sort of fringe movement, but indeed, they have about 3 million people who believe in this crap, and who are working to effect that change. Be on the lookout. Check out this link to a Rolling Stone story about this group of people: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/7235393?pageid=rs.Home&pageregion=single7&rnd=1112887778015&has-player=true&version=6.0.12.1040

And I'm out.