Felonious Arson, Revenge, and an Impending Swansong for the Flock
A few years ago, a kid I used to play baseball with burned down a church, tried to burn down the high school football coach’s house, and then got nailed in a sting operation trying to sell a murder contract on the coach while in the county lockup. While I didn’t agree with his actions, despite my personal sentiments on organized religion, and more specifically, Christianity, I think my ire for this misguided punk stems more from his foolishness rather than any particular distate for his actions. After all, I lived in the city with more churches per square mile than any other in the United States. The savage, evangelical hum of this place is enough to send even the most stable person off the cusp into a frothing and bottomless insanity.
I was reminded of this incident while driving home from the public library at which point I happened to pass by the construction area for the new church being erected not two blocks from downtown. For a city this small (pop. 50,000), the church is an architectural mammoth spanning about eighty yards of what used to be the related Catholic school’s parking lot/playground. The church has three main wings, a bell tower [probably inactive], and a framed cutout that will soon be inhabited by a needlessly ornate, expensive stained glass window. I’m almost certain that if I’d had the time to properly survey the new building, I probably would have seen flying buttresses as well, but as of now, I can not confirm that suspicion.
The point of all this is two-fold and worth remembering if we are to let the Nature of Things take its own course. First of all, the arsonist who set fire to the original church was not of sane mind, which is not necessarily a bad thing if the instability is steered in the right direction. Whatever misgivings he may have had, I suspect his main motive in the church-related incident had something to do with a deep-seated hatred for the Catholic Organization more than any personal loathing within the school itself. However, I cannot say for sure, and to find out would mean more busywork than I am prepared to handle.
If his motives were, indeed, to take down an arm of the Organization, I must question his intellect. If anything, history has proven that the Revenge Center of the Catholic Church’s brain is extremely active. On a PET scan, it would appear as a white-hot mass of pure energy stemming from years of intolerance, greed, and the more recent trend toward heathenous activity in modern-day culture. Even Catholics are partaking in the Culture of Blasphemy, which might not necessarily stem their self-righteousness, but it definitely dilutes the pool of devoted followers who still live life by Old Testament rules. So in light of dwindling numbers and an almost worldwide acceptance of new-fangled hedonism, the Church is feeling left out of the equation. After all, most Catholics have discarded papal edicts and continue to use condoms.
Therefore, when an Arm of God is severed, they will rebuild it – make it bigger and better and charge it all to the company account. Catholocism is notorious for shoving our attacks back into our mouths and then solidifying the division between the Pious Few and the Hellbound Masses, which is why we will never defeat them of our own volition.
Remember what Ho Chi Minh said.
And it seems to me the Church tries to adopt a similar mentality with regard to Minh’s quote. The only difference is that, unlike North Vietnam and its allies, the Church is fighting a losing battle. Burning down a church will not expedite their destruction, but rather, will allow them to hold on for that much longer on account of bolstered support in the wake of an attack. [Take the Bush administration and September 11, for example. Without this national tragedy, Bush’s approval rating would have dipped below thirty points six months into his first term.]
I will not roundly reject people of faith, and I’m sure some of the better writers on this site are probably members of one religion or another. Still, the evangelical factions in most online communities are very well organized, and they flock to the hellfire ramblings of their comrades like Benjamin Franklin to a French orgy. It is a perfect example of what happens on a global scale, and the Jesus freaks are able to do this because they have a common creed – something godless warriors do not possess. The point here is not to be divisive but to recognize the landscapes and deal with them accordingly. Let us duly note right now, that we are not without our own satchelful of faults, pretension, and self-involvment.
All in all, the best thing we can do to end the Church is wait. We must take up Ho Chi Minh’s mantra ourselves and fight for however long it takes with our most powerful weapons – silence and education. Atheists, and church-haters of all walks have a grievous [yet, understandable] sin for which they must seek correction: adding fuel to the fire. I strongly believe it is time to stop injecting our own breath into all the hot air.
