Living God's Will

Dear George,

Slaughter is sweet when God approves.

God is silent and the faithful hear his command to destroy the “others” in acts of destructive creation. Each bomb dropped creates a score of burnt offerings whose stench is pleasing to God.

Every dead body is a sacrifice, a word that comes from the Latin sacer (holy) and facere (make). Doesn’t it warm you heart to know that every bombed baby is sanctified? (Of course in the Jewish heaven you don’t get 72 virgins; you get 72 Jewish mothers who make you feel guilty for sins you never committed.)

Religion sharpens its steel when it morphs myth into a linear history complete with a deed to the property. It is when this history is in place that limbs are torn asunder and viscera rots in the noonday sun, all to the greater glory of God.

God blesses the righteous who do his will, as they understand it, which they never do, but it doesn’t matter because God’s will has nothing to do with anything even though it fills their hearts with the fire of carnage and mayhem, all to the fulfillment of a destiny grounded in make believe, but the truth is that evil thickens into a black, vicious stew when it is leavened with the Spirit of God.

This is why God is so important. We are a nasty species, but our overly developed brains need a justification for our nastiness. Without it, we might feel guilty over the carnage we love to create. But doing God’s will makes it all right. With God on our side we can wade through blood up to our waists and not feel a flicker of remorse. Rape and pillage come easily to the devout.

(Jesus almost blew it with his message of “loving your enemies.” That’s why Paul was given the mission of destroying Christianity, and he succeeded beyond his wildest expectations by twisting Christianity from a religion of universal love into one that promises the redemption of individual sins. The faith has been marginalizing Jesus ever since. The Prince of Peace has been demoted to our “Personal Savior.”)

Where would we be without the piety that facilitates progress by ridding the world of backward natives who lead backward lives in backward societies that would be content with a patch of land and a few olive trees?

I’d drop to my knees and offer up a prayer of thanksgiving, but God wants me to go out and kick some ass…at least I think he does. Or was I hallucinating? Was it God, or the pipe?

…does it really matter?

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones