The Antichristian Phenomenon

I know this is a bit after the fact, but for various reasons I was not on the internet much over the holidays, mostly because my grandmother does not have internet, and that’s where I was.

By going to my Grandmother’s house over the Christmas Holiday, I was obligated to attend Mass on Christmas Eve.  She is deeply religious and my mother will do anything to ensure that I do not break her illusion of god-fearing grandchildren.  I have reason to believe she fears that my irreligous state will reflect poorly on her parenting, but that is the topic of another article.

Returning to church was somewhat of a landmark for me, as I used to attend mass very regularly throughout my childhood and through High School, but since escaping off to University, it had been a full year since I last set foot inside a church of any kind.  I did not even attend Easter Mass last year, as I did not go home for Spring Break and as a result there was no obligation.  However there was not much of an option in this circumstance.  I decided to mentally take note of how a full year of separation and a rapidly declining faith changes the impression of Mass, and create a little write-up for the ACP.  Oh yes, and this is a Roman Catholic Mass, by the way.

First, the preparation.  I do remember Christmas Eve mass used to be a very big deal when I was a young child.  My mom would take us out shopping to purchase a new outfit for the occasion (the same happened for Easter Mass), as generally I had outgrown my past year’s dress, and in years I hadn’t… what a travesty to wear the same dress two years in a row!  Also we generally attended Mass at the church in my hometown so this was my first experience with Christmas Eve mass at any church other than that one.  Getting ready for Christmas Eve Mass in the past also generally included curling hair and dolling up a bit, because God cares that you dress up for this specific Mass.  No really, he does.  You have to be a step above normal Mass because this is a Holiday, he’ll probably send you to hell if you attend in jeans without your hair styled.  At least, that was the impression that I got from my parents and the other members of my congregation…

Fortunately, my mom has been a bit lax in what I have been allowed to wear over the past few years, but since it was my Grandmother’s church, she was a bit more strict, but at least I could wear dress pants.  I sincerely hope that none of the readers here can sympathize with this sort of foolishness.  Perhaps in the future I will write an article about church “Dress Codes”…  Regardless, I was able to get away with my Thor’s Hammer necklace (I don’t think my mom understands what it means, or why I wear it anyway), a thin scarf with skulls and crossbones all over it, and simply run a brush through my hair.  That’s right, no hair spray OR curling irons.  So far, this whole church thing is not quite as bad as I remember.  I stuff Richard Dawkins’ “River Out of Eden” in my coat pocket and wait forever for everyone else to get ready.  There was a special on the History Channel about giant man-eating Anacondas to watch while I waited, which was pretty awesome.  I’m probably going to Youtube it later, it was that cool (here it is!).  Apparently Florida is having this problem with Burmese Pythons that escaped during the hurricanes and… oh yeah, church.

We helped my grandparents into our van, and drove off into the cold.  (Un?)Fortunately due to my grandfather’s current state of health we were able to use their handicapped tag and parked right next to the doors and a life-size, very ugly Nativity set.  Some things don’t change between churches and the horrific Nativity displays are one of them.  I swear they use the cheapest plaster and paint, and hire the worst sculptors and painters to create these absurdities, and then proceed to light them rather unflatteringly, to make them look even WORSE than they already are.  We helped my grandparents into the church, and as a young man (who would be the lector) opened the door for us I was nearly bowled over with an overwhelming stench, that brought back decades of anxiety and anger.  Incense.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the smell of some incenses.  If my room mates happen to be smoking cigarettes downstairs, I light up a bit of the sweet perfume in the center of my floor to drown it out and relax.  However, the Catholic Church must have some business deal with a company out there to be the exclusive provider of their full line of shoddy, cheap aromas.  A while back, the Church I attended in my hometown purchased different incense, that smelled sweet and pleasant, but since then, they have been purchasing the same disgusting scent my Grandmother’s church used that night.  I closed my eyes to let the brief nausea pass and followed my family to a pew that was in the second row from the front, in front of a smaller Nativity set, equally as hideous.  I refused to genuflect and marched to my seat near the end.  Already I was feeling a little bit uncomfortable, but I had some time to kill as we arrived about 45 minutes early to get a seat so I calmed my nerves by reading about the “utility factor” of male to female births and whether a son or daughter would be advantageous in various animal species in terms of passing down DNA and ensuring descendants.  Fascinating.  Not Church related at all either.

The building began filling up rather quickly and about 20 minutes before Mass started, a choir began to sing various Christmas carols.  I relearned exactly why I disliked organ music… Overall the music quality was sadly lacking.  At this point, my dad leaned over and pointed out that there was a random girl in the nativity scene, the first either of us had seen that was not the Virgin Mary.  She was carrying a pitcher of water, and wearing a red apron, which seemed to have the breasts emphasized with a white highlight.  Good job on being politically correct.  There was also some random half-naked Amish guy, I don’t know what he was supposed to be… a shepherd maybe?  With the cheesy nativity scene, christmas lights, trees, choir, and happy organist, I could only think of one word to describe the atmosphere, and no pun intended of course: gaudy.  And the priest hadn’t even entered the scene yet!!

I missed the Procession as my nose was still buried in Dawkins, but when I finished the page I discovered that I was standing up and the priest was giving the greeting.  The time that passed between the introduction and the first reading are jsut a blur, a testament to how good I got at tuning out the mass in the years before.  Then the lector had to go and piss me off.

He was a young, attractive man, no more than three years my senior or one year my junior.  Isaiah 9:2-7 was the reading, though I imagine it might have been edited slightly, as I have found that in-Church readings always seem to say exactly what the preachers want them to… out of their biblical context.  His voice was firm, but slight wavers betrayed his nervousness.  About the time he reached the boots of warriors and cloaks rolled in blood, his voice picked up a malicious sneer, and his eyes flashed with arrogance and blind zealotry until the last line; “The ZEAL of the Lord of hosts WILL accomplish this.” OH?  When exactly?  Last I checked, our world was still war-torn and stricken with everything BUT peace.  Oh yeah, I almost forgot, he meant after the second coming and heaven and stuff, which is apparently sometime soon, and has been “sometime soon” for the past 2000 or so odd years.  And everyone forgets why these sorts of verses were really written in the first place.  Here’s a hint, it has something to do with Jews and captivity… not Jesus.

After another really bad musical interlude, the lector stood back up on the podium, a bit more confident this time, and a lot more arrogant.  The second reading was from the Letters somewhere (of course), but my ability to tune out nonsense prevailed and all I can remember is an overwhelming desire to punch the lector in his smug face… or at least stand up and scream “BULL SHIT!” but my grandmother was there and I mustn’t make her look bad.

Then the Gospel, yay… Of course, it was some version of the Christmas story, shepherds in the fields and angels singing, and all that nonsense.  I’ve always wanted them to recount the two stories right next to each other to see if anyone notices the discrepancies…  But regardless, it was homily time.  I worked hard to pay attention, as usually this would be the time I’d imagine dragons crashing through the stained glass windows with the mission of carrying me off to fantasyland, and paying attention was really really hard.  The homily was an anecdote about the Children’s mass a few hours earlier, where he asked Children questions about Christmas and Church.  I think it was supposed to be touching and funny?  The priest made sure to lay on a bit of guilt, tell everyone they need to be reborn for the next year, try to sin less, and think about others in the holiday season.  I was pretty sure I’d heard the homily before actually, and it reminded me of the recent ACP aricle on the same topic.  He also told a mind-numbingly stupid stock story about a girl who bought a hair comb for her grandmother to illustrate some point about giving and selflessness, and finally it was over.

Which meant we moved to the second half of mass: Liturgy of the Eucharist.  Originally I had intended on not taking Eucharist, but the fact that we went to my grandmother’s church changed that plan, and I walked through the motions as I had for many years.  The beginning of the second liturgy is an excessively long series of prayers and rituals (all of which I have memorized) mostly carried out by the priest as the congregation kneels.  I refused to kneel, and instead sat forward in my seat.  I will do a number of things to maintain an image, but I will never kneel at the altar of a dead god.  The very act of kneeling is at its heart degrading.  Instead my mind wandered, storming in discust and rage at what I had witnessed thus far around as the familiar words bounced around my skull.  Nothing new.  My resentment and anger built as the rituals carried on, and I felt thoroughly gross after shaking everyone around me’s grimy, dirty hand.

When everything was prepared, and the crackers and juice properly Jesus-ified, we filed around to recieve our divine snack.   I actually have always enjoyed the taste of the crackers they dish out, symbolic caniballism aside, so this was not the most painful part of the mass, and instead of kneeling to pray afterwards I returned to Out of Eden to read about the mating habits of salmon.  The word “SEX” was printed no less than 10 times across the page, referring to both gender and the act of mating, so I hope the nice happy family behind me was approprately disturbed as they leaned half across my seat in prayer.  “OMG SEX IN CHRUCH! BLAFSMEMEY!”

Unfortunately my brother copy-catted me and pulled his book out too, so my dad quickly chastized us for our inappropriate behavior and I was left with nothing to do but listen to more Christmas carols and stare at the random nativity-scene milkmaid’s prominent breasts and wonder why the craftsmen felt the need to make them so… obvious…  Eventually the priest allowed everyone to sit again and began the closing procedure (This mass has ended, go in peace!  “THANKS be to God!”).  It seemed to end rather abruptly, but I suspect that was my incredible tune-out ability at work yet again. Regardless we went back to my grandmother’s, and ate a lot of ham.

Now a few closing comments.

One of the realizations I reached while ignoring the priest during the prayers was that every single Antichristian should attend Church once in a while.  It can be easy to forget just how real and imminent the delusion is, and arrogant lectors and homilies serve to help keep the flames burning.  I left that mass renewed, though not in the way the priest intended… instead I was renewed in my passion to move towards total eradication of such nonsense, to oppose it with every fiber of my being.  I also realized that in the short year between masses, I had gone from a mushy agnostic-atheist-kinda-still favoring some fluffy God concept and maybe-all-religions-have-a-puzzle-piece-of-wisdom to something pretty close to a miltant athiest.  That’s quite a change to mull over, I haven’t fully digested my thoughts on the matter yet, I’ll get back to you when I do.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a good Holiday season!

In this article a few topics converge to the core of what I would call my quarrel with Christianity, its teachings and more importantly: its followers or rather lack thereof. You might think “a lack of following?” and following that remark present me with an estimate of the vast amount of people who identify themselves as Christians, being a big chunk of the global population pie. And that is exactly my point: these people identify themselves as Christians whereas I am speaking of strict followers of Biblical dogma.

I must start with the Old Testament. Anyone who has ever read even part of it will undoubtedly recognize that this collection of books is mostly concerned with he history of the people of Israel. The god found in the Old Testament presents itself as one only concerned with the Israelites. This god completely lacks any sympathy for any other tribe or people and will not hesitate to wipe out any people, city or tribe that are either a threat to his precious, chosen people or who simply piss him off for various petty reasons. It is an angry, tribal god, a boastful bully who enjoys the reek of burnt animals and requires his followers to cut off a part of their penises. Regarding the Israelites themselves, the Old Testament describes how this people was freed from Egyptian slavery and how they consequently, after many a bloody conquest, they established kingdoms (of Judah and Israel). However, these kingdoms were lost after the Israelites were conquered by other peoples, leading the Israelites into Babylonian exile. Of course, this was all the result of disobedience of that wonderful god. However, because the OT god is such a good guy, all hope was not lost, since through Isaiah it was prophesized a king would come who would would restore the kingdom of Israel, rebuild The Temple and other neat things such as reviving the dead and making the OT god the god of all nations and peoples.

This is a very important clash with Christian belief, which is rooted mainly in the New Testament. Jesus did not revive all the dead, nor does the entire world now serve God (look at me!), nor was death abolished since Jesus’ arrival – nay, Jesus even died himself. As the Moshiach (“the Anointed One” who will bring the Messianic age), Jesus utterly fails. Still, Christians swear by him as the Messiah prophesied in the Israelites’ scriptures, even though the Israelites’ themselves disagree (and for good reason). Leaning on the crutch that is the Old Testament, a new dogma developed with Jesus as the center-point. The gospels from the newly formed scriptures claim this Jesus figure spoke of a god of love for everyone; or rather: some new god as it does not match the pattern of our Old Testament friend. Other important theological additions include the concepts of Satan, heaven and hell. All these modifications and additions strike cacophonous chords with the older scriptures, but such seems the nature of Christianity: Reinventing dogma as it goes along. It is this exactly central characteristic that I often find myself entangled in.

To part from the basic level of scriptural discrepancy and move into the realm of Christian theology, we see the aforementioned central characteristic return. There are numerous Christian denominations with varying interpretations of the scriptures and I will concentrate on the prime example: Catholicism. Catholicism stands out among the denominations not just because of its size, but because of its sheer brutality. Over the centuries the Catholic Church made the Judeo-Christian religion into a political machine. This machine has had a firm grip on many powerful nations in the history of the world, with the pope at its head. This political influence brought about extra dogmatic additions and inventions which lead to “holy” wars (and consequential plunderings, one of the factors in the the amassment of the excessive wealth of the Vatican), the Spanish Inquisition, the selling letters of forgiveness “from god”, and so on. One of their more recent dogmatic inventions is papal inerrancy, which as an effect relieves the pope of any responsibility.

The Catholic Church is of course an extreme example of the reinvention of dogma and I am certainly not arguing that this practice will lead to the monstrosities we find in the history of the Catholic Church. To be fair, I will provide you with another example, and it is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Mormonism. In addition to the original scriptures this church has the book of Mormon, magically revealed to the church’s founder Joseph Smith, Jr. The book was supposedly translated from golden plates having “unknown characters”, given to Joseph Smith by an angel named Moroni. The plates are, of course, now buried somewhere in the hills near Smith’s house. Mormonism hasn’t lead to anything too disturbing, barring occasional polygamy and the wearing of magical underwear.

You average non-catholic, non-Mormon Christian thinks he has not strayed as far from the Biblical path as those silly Mormons, but nothing less is true. Although they have indeed not built an empire or added any extra books to their precious Bible, they are in fact very unbiblical in just about every aspect of their lives. Most of them simply don’t realise it, because they haven’t actually read the Bible. I have no statistics on this, but time and time again I find myself debating a professed Christian who hasn’t even read “the Holy Book”. I am sure anyone who is active in these kinds of debates have had similar experience. These particular Christians tend to forget that there is a reason why we oppose their religion. It is because we have studied it, through experience and inquiry and have found it not to belong in the world we inhabit this day. Hiding gods whose baseless laws and morality they unverifiably passed to men have no place in modern government. Without actually having read the horrific, inhuman laws found in the New Testament or having realised God’s disgust for us as worthless, sinful mortals you as a self-proclaimed Christian have no right to call “their” God just and loving. These “Christians” have a one-sided conception of the Biblical god. In my experience, especially Christians from largely secular countries have this skewed perspective, and in these countries Christianity has once again reivented its dogma, and a new Christian god is born yet again.

There is but a relative handful of Christians who have actually understood the Bible and its god. A lot of them spend their lifetime trying to piece the biblical puzzle together in such a way that their god can be called loving in the face of his vile deeds – spending their lives studying theology. Some of these Christians write Apologetics, doing just that: thinking of excuses why an all-loving god would do such horrible things – and not to mention finding ways how scripture can be interpreted so that it doesn’t collide with scientific discoveries, but this is largely beside the point. There are also those Christians who do not try to understand the actions of God, but take them for face value. These Christians are abhorred by almost all Christians for giving them a bad image. It is the likes of Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church I am speaking of. These Christians show a much better understanding of the Bible and God: God does indeed hate homosexuals, God does hate sinners, and God will punish us for eternity in hell after we have died if we escape the apocalypse. It is ironic that their scriptural knowledge is not applauded by fellow Christians, but rather ignored. Ignored, like Christians have ignored so much else: the maturing of human society, our sobering from our superstitious beliefs and our advancement in the knowledge of the world in which the Bliblical God and Biblical doctrine have no place.