The Holy Church of the Electric Chair

Whatever your spiritual/religious belief system is, when the time comes that you pass from this Existance and go into the Next, how do you think you'll feel when you discover whatever it is you think you know as the Truth turns out not to be?

...but I think they left some stuff out.

8:13 PM 2/26/07 · Those more learned than I can probably reflect on this and bring it into clearer focus. Then again, one such type person actually got me onto this line of thought about 5 months back when he revealed to me that something a lot of Christians are aware of isn't actually mentioned anywhere in the Bible. Keeping in mind that not all of the faith actually believe in a Devil or Hell for that matter, this still seems kinda odd for me.

Actually, I'm a bit confused how the faith can exist without a bad place really. Isn't that the dividing line? Lead what is deemed the ideal life and go onto Heaven but if you're bad you're gonna burn...

The story that many know goes that the Devil was once an angel by the name of Lucifer and was among God's favorites. There was some disagreement, I've heard various versions of what it may've been about, and it was of such magnitude that Lucifer was booted out of Heaven and locked in the basement; a cute colorful reference I've heard used for Hell sometimes. Other angels were likewise knocked down there, guess Lucifer had a gang, and that was about that.

This story is not in the Bible in any variation that I am aware of...yet many of the faithful know it. After I learned it wasn't in the Bible I chatted with what few friends I have that like that sort of thing, even those that just label it as Christian mythology. All were as surprised as me that it's not in there.

The thought occurs to me that a lot of what is in the Bible is drawn from the Torah, as Christianity was literally spawned from Judaism. As much as the really religious like to slam Dan Brown there are things he's gone on about that tracks with other religious history I've heard; and by heard I mean from you guys. When the Bible was first being put into print, or I suppose inscribed might be more accurate, there was a great council/committee assembled to undergo the task. There was much debating among them about what should go into the Bible and what should not. Stuff like the Gospel of Judas Escariot was definitely out for understanable reasons...

...although how a guy can be deemed a traitor before he even had the thought of betraying anyone escapes me...

...so what I'm wondering is if the story regarding the fall of Lucifer and his rebirth as the Devil might've been in the Torah and just not made the cut for getting into the Bible. Makes me wonder what other things weren't included.

There's another tale I'm familiar with, of so called Christian mythology, that I'm fairly positive isn't in the Bible...but I could be wrong; let me know. It goes along the lines that Adam & Eve were not the first two humans...or more precisely Eve wasn't the first woman. God created a man and a woman and dubbed them Adam & Lilith and they were equal. Apparently upon their first coupling Adam had a major problem with the fact that Lilith wished to be on top, complained to God...and thus Eve was created from a part of Adam.

I've always had a problem with this story, not the least of which is I'm not sure of its authenticity. I know it's a truly ancient tale, and it would go a long way to fitting the timeframe's belief in woman are meant to be inferior to men as was the custom at the time. Not the least of which that I didn't think any coupling was going on in the Garden of Eden, thought that didn't come up as the fun activity we all know and love until much after the expulsion from paradise...

...and not to get too personal, possibly worthy of a different type of community, that's actually a favorite position of mine. Adam clearly had issues!

Regardless, I don't recall any mention of Lilith in the Bible, as the first woman or otherwise. Although history has seen fit to make most mentionings of her as some form of demon.

My question is are these tales, and others I'm not aware of, accurate? Were they originally in the Torah and not included in the Bible for some reason? Is it possible they were just of the oral tradition and deemed unnecessary to be included in the Bible?

Better still, do you know either of these two stories and where do you know them from?

Maybe it's my whole acknowledging more than one God thing but when you come right down to it there's a little something funny in the water here. I mean the Greeks had the god Zeus and his extended family to worshipm the Norse had Odin and his extended family to worship, the Wiccans have Gaea, the Egyptians...you get the idea. It's pretty much a deity and his or her bretheren guarding over a specific group of people.

When Moses popped up with his whole "Let my people go!" riff he was a representative of their god (who is generally just known as 'God'; it;'s all about the capital G wth this one). The Egyptians did not discredit the existance of this deity but simply labelled It has was appropriate from their point of view; God of the Jews.

Time goes on, things change, a nice wholesome virgin girl gives birth to Jesus/Yeshua/whatever name you choose to refer to him by; the son of God (big G). For the longest time I didn't wholly buy that the Christians, as a whole, believed Jesus was actually God given flesh and not just the son of...but a post I made to that effect a couple weeks back has shown otherwise. However, this does represent a mildly odd problem when you think about it...

...least when I do.

The Jews worship God.

The Christians worship Jesus.

While it can be argued, and it is by many of them, that the Christians acknowledge that Jesus is in fact God (little g)...the Jews do not share this opinion. Seeing as it was their God (big G) first then it stands to reason they should be the authority on this.

So which way do we look here?

Jesus and God are different beings, said so by the different people that worship them. The Chrisitians can toss up that "Holy Trinity" bit as much as they like but without the faith that God originated from backing the concept (an oddly polytheistic "3 as 1" concept no matter how you slice it) then it can not be used as an irrefutable fact.

Thoughts?

I suspect there are a lot of them out there but I only know a couple. With all the humor that seems to surround Jesus, in the form of standup comedy and stuyff we pick up in school, you'd think there'd be a lot of them. Short of cracking open a joke book and going to the religious humor I can't name that many...

...but as I said, I know two.

( Warning: contents may be sacriligious )

Do you know any Jesus jokes?

Was having one of my usual odd religious chats, sparked by my always bizarre religious posts, when this came up. Because of it, rather that going on into an extensively lengthy post (preamble is my family's genetic curse), I have one simple question for you.

Can God be sexy?

In my continued quest to come up with a question that no one can quote scripture at me for...

Let's say, hypothetically, God pops up in front of you and asks for a cookie. What kind would you get?

Obviously there's no wrong answer to this but feel free to explain your response.

This is kinda touching on a post I made last night about taking God's name in vain, though not entirely. The thing of it is that when you come right down to it no one really takes God's name in vain because "God" isn't a name.

It's a title.

It's a position of status.

It's the sign you'd see on God's cubicle...if God were the type of deity to sit in a cubicle.

I've never quite understood why it is no one refers to God by an actual name, instead going with the title. This is not a problem you get with polytheists...although that might be that since you're dealing with a multitude of gods in those instances it would be a little confusing to refer to each one as simply "God". Suppose if it were the title and the field of expertise that might work but really...

...names are much simpler.

A stretch back I figured Islam had the leading edge on the whole use of name thing...until someone explained to me that "Allah" is just "God" in another language.

Oh well.

The name in vain post popped up the possible reason that it used to be very bad mojo (for wont of a better word) to actually refer to God by a name. Sadly I was kinda floating on fumes of caffine at the time and don't remember why that is so let's stick with the essentials; maybe that same person will revisit that response and remind me.

Near as I know, from a Judeo/Christian perspective, God has two perfectly decent names to work with...maybe just one because I heard there was something of a scandal on one of them; no, I don't remember what. Those names are Jehovah (scandalized one) and Yaweh. These are two really nice, happy, easy to remember names.

Why doesn't anybody use them? Why is it all about the title and not the name?

1:00 PM 11/12/06 · I've never been a big fan of an ancient belief, that is still practiced in the world today, that the sins of the father are visited upon his children. It's not limited in scope to just that, pretty much any ancestor done wrong and the descendents get blamed.

What a crock of *insert appropriate word here*!

Not surprisingly, to me at any rate, as an extension to this I don't believe in original sin. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Sure, folks sin but they shouldn't be blamed for the sins of others just because of some distant familial line. If I'm not mistaken, the whole original sin package stems from either Adam & Eve (snacking on the fruit of knowledge) or Cain killing Abel (nothing like a little sibling rivalry).

Either way, their sins were their sins. No one elses.

However, people do sin; it's a thing! There does seem to be some waywardness in what is and isn't a sin depending on a person's belief system. However, let's keep this fairly simple.

What are your sins? Yeah, you...the person reading this. If you're so gung ho on everybody sinning then you must have some idea what your own sins are.

Care to share with the class?

5:00 AM 10/5/06 · Missed the beginning of the report but I'm assuming it had to do with the premature death of children considering the part I heard. It said that Catholics belive that when babies die their souls goto Limbo. It is additionally believed that all of the souls of the people that died prior to the birth of Jesus are there as well.

I've asked on this before, the whole where did people go before salvation by the Messiah was an option, but I'd always been reassured that they had all been saved retroactively. So which version is true? Has anybody heard about this Limbo thing before?

Do you suppose Jesus was a cat person or a dog person?

Why do you feel this way?

Figured this was as good a day for this as any seeing as, for some reason beyond the ken of man, livejournal posts hit an all·time low on Thursdays.

( before you look under here keep in mind that God made me this way )

7:48 PM 8/29/06 · One of the things I like about most of my religious posts, other than the truly wonky nature of the things I go on about, is the responses. They range from the people that want to discuss whatever it is I put forth, those that outright condemn me for it, a few that pray that I will one day be shown the way from on High, and the seemingly holy war that erupts among the commenters when they discover they don't quite see things eye to eye. More than that, as I learned via my previous main account, even though the initial outpouring of comments may go on from days to weeks...sometimes I will be pleasntly surprised by someone who decides to get their 2¢ in as far as a year after the fact.

By the by, to those that hope God will show me the way someday...did you ever stop to consider maybe that already happened? Not saying it did, suspect I'd know it less than anybody else, but it is an interesting thought.

Moving right along...

...preamble seems to be the genetic curse of my family line.

I seem to go on about Jesus quite a bit which mainly stems from the fact I find him to be an endlessly interesting guy. Moreso the fact that nobody seems to get his name right, I only actually use Jesus because otherwise no one would know who I was talking about. From numerous posts and discussions, like I went on about in that first paragraph, the consensus opinion from those as or more learned than I is that his name was Yeshua. The last major Jesus posting I did I actually learned the reason why most folks refer to him by the "J" name...

...in the King James Bible, named for a certain King James who started this particular mess, he decided that Jesus was to be called that so as his name wouldn't be confused with another man in there that is currently listed by the name they both shared.

I've often felt the fact that no one in the Bible has a last name was a miraculously ongoing typo.

Wow.

Kinda scary.

Went through all of that just to lead up to one question.

Preamble...it's a curse on us all.

Traditionally children are named by their parents and I'm sure there was no exception when little Jesus came kicking and screaming into the world. Only problem is that he had 3 parents: Mary (Mom) & Jospeph (Stepdad) & the Big Guy (Dad)...

...do not covet thy neighbor's wife my ass! I suspect this was where the phrase do as I say and not as I do was invented...

...but I digress.

Whatever that original name might've been...who do you suppose it was that named him?

...but I'm willing to risk it.

xposted to Naughty·lil·Devils and a few other places

On the way to Mom's to help her with some stuff around the house, before getting on the train, I was skimming the SF Weekly. Used to be a much more fun paper to read until they removed the personals section. Regardless of how bad a mood I was ever in...a quick skim of them would either get me giggly or scare the bejeebus outta me.

Either way, whatever had me down previously would be the furthest thing from my mind.

Still, the Savage Nation is usally funny to read. There was this one guy complaining about something and he used an amusing visual image of the Pope and that got me to thinking.

The Christian faith at large, not all of and certainly not limited to it, has a rather big thing against homosexual marriage, gays in general, and obviously transgenders and transvestites. From the lowest of the low to the highest of the high these folks are generally viewed as bad and wrong and sinful and...you get the idea.

The funny thing if that regardless of the denomination or disparate branching of the faith, they largely take their heading from that guy in Rome that lives in the Vatican; the Pope. This is particularly interesting considering that most days, possible all as I can't picture the current or his predecessors in jeans, the Pope is wearing a dress.

Okay, technically I assume the outfit has a specific name other than something so feminine but really...it looks like a dress. It doesn't help that the current guy seems to have a perpetually lecherous expression on his face, regardless of mood, but we've got a guy in a dress making decisions on the wrongness of men that like dressing as women...

...partially. The stance is against homosexuals as a whole and not just the transvestites but still.

Something wonky this way comes.

Okay, that's my 2¢...go back to whatever you were doing.

• I don't see Jesus as my lord and savior. That last bit maybe but definitely not the first. This was a guy that balked at any special treatment that people tried to show him. He was a teacher...not royalty.


• When Jesus walked on the water, do you suppose his feet got wet? Were there ripples caused by each step?


• Jesus lived a fair stretch of time and was executed. Then he rose from the dead, spooked a few people, and disappeared. What exactly happened to him after that? Did he go onto Heaven or is he wandering the world to this day as a well preserved zombie?


• Why did they translate his name? Jesus isn't very Aramaic, the language spoken in his region & time. Scholars, I've checked, say his name was actually Yeshua. So, why is it everyone calls him other than his given name?


• It'd be a shame if he died a virgin. I mean, with all the guy had to put up with in life it'd've been nice to know he got a little on the side.


• Jesus was of the Hebrew faith and born Jewish. I've never quite gotten why those that follow his teachings aren't still Jewish...or at the very least Hebrew.


• I can picture Jesus in torn jeans, blue baseball cap worn backwards, standard shirt with the sleeves rolled up, seated on the front steps of some major library, totally engrossed in a book on Eastern philosophies with no difficutly whatsoever.


• Don't actually know if Jesus had any brothers or sisters. Don't know if he might not've had kids of his own. Don't even know if he has surviving blood relations to this day. However, wouldn't it be really cool if he did?


• I don't buy into the whole Jesus being God thing because not only would that mean he got his own mother pregnant with himself but it would kind of lend itself to God suffering from multiple personality disorder.


• Even though I put no stock in it, can't help but laugh at a notion from Red Dwarf: belive it was Rimmer who didn't believe in the reality of Jesus because any child who developed magical powers and not tried to join the circus was a ludicrous concept.


• There's been a lot of controversy, in relatively recent decades, about the ethnicity of Jesus given the region of the world he lived in and how he is most often perceived to appear. While I think the message is more important than the man....I highly doubt he was caucasian.


• I remember this little bit, I saw in a movie, how Jesus first came as a lamb but he shall return as a lion. This tends to give me a hybridized mental vision of him and Rambo.


• As messed up as the world is today, if Jesus actually did come back it wouldn't be long before he was put away into some federal lockup.


• I'd like to think he'd be just as disgusted with the production of "Jesus Christ Superstar" as I was.


• I hate the crucification....and I don't mean the event itself. Going into a church and seeing a representation of him hanging there bloodied and broken, in obvious agony; its barbaric! I get the whole died for our sins bit but that doesn't mean we should have to see it anytime we goto worship. I'd much rather see him represented doing what he did in life rather than the slow and painful way he was brought down.


• Given the types of folks Jesus hung out with before it occurs to me that the faithful might be in for a rude awakening. A guy that didn't choose to live in the lap of luxury before is unlikely to start now.


• Similar to the last one, Jesus came up in the Hebrew faith but was largely rejected by its religious leaders. I'd be very much surprised if the same thing didn't happen again should he return and interact with the leaders of the Christian faith.


• There are many who believe Jesus will return someday but how is he supposed to be recognized? It's not like there's a wholly accurate description of the guy or listing of identifying marks; can't exactly check his dental records. For all anyone knows he may've already come and gone.


• Reincarnation not being an exact science, wouldn't it be interesting if Jesus returned as a woman?

what do you think of this: http://www.lakewood.cc/site/PageServer
watch your volume. the site has built in audio.
i just watched a piece on nightline about it.

on one hand i think its great that its serving so many people and i also like that it's fairly homegrown.
but on the other, how much money went into this? why does god need such a gigantic....building? couldn't that money have gone somewhere it was needed more? all i'm seeing is a big theme park arena with a fake waterfall (and no cross anywhere?), chicks in too much makeup and expensive clothes, and a guy that doesn't talk about sin because he wants to avoid controversy. maybe that's why the church got so big though. not talking about controversial issues allows everyone to stay comfortable and never be challenged to grow.
i can't help but think "benny hinn!".

but like i said, god can use anything for good, and i'm sure there are many people benefiting greatly from the place. i'm just not sure about their "tactics", if you will. but i like my church simple and traditional and this is about as far from simple and traditional as you can possibly get.

there's my 2 cents.

Is it just me, or is Christianity an inherently selfish religion? Everyone talks about it being a gift from God that we should be overjoyed at. But it still sucks to be God. I mean, isn't it weird that we celebrate the torture of a Hebrew rabbi who lived 2000 year ago?

Christians are very weird when you stop to think about it.

Just saying...

Praise God! my sister just accepted christ! she is now saved and now my sister is christ as well as blood!!!

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/07/15/adoption.church.ap/index.html