The Next Notch in the Bible's Belt

Oh, that pesky science and its twice-damned scientists.

The ultra-religious (from any denomination) are like housecats: They prefer things just the way they are and get hopping mad at even the slightest change, and will resist such changes vehemently. They’re not above the social equivalent of peeing around the house to make their point loud and clear. For the Convinced, there is no sin when you’re acting in the best interest of your Faith.

Now, within a hundred or a hundred and forty years after the death of Christ (depending on who you ask) the New Testament was scribbled down, and essentially pushed aside the Old T., but in a gentle way, as if to say “we still believe in ya, but this here’s the new kid in town.” And the teachings of Christ were phrased in slightly more user-friendly and socially acceptable terms. Gone were (most) of the animal sacrifices and stonings-to-death of errant daughters or smart-alec sons. Christianity was seen by a handful of power-hungry philosophers for what it was: an extremely powerful force for shaping the future of states and society for unguessable distances into the future. It merely needed to be altered a bit, just sort of “streamlined” and given more smiley-faces, some nice landscaping, a touch of paint here and there, and voila! Social repression and state control for pennies on the dollar! And for the true believers: rationalizations by the bucket full and a chance to feel righteous with a far simpler set of maintenance guidelines. Thus was the only eternity a soul can win on this earth won by these men: to be forever remembered, at least in name.

Of course, as the years have lengthened so has the list of “adjustments” made by the church and all the churches of the church, and all the sects of the churches of the church…whew. Anyway, imagine them, if you will, as notches in a belt as the waistline expands. And expands. Now, in today’s world with science and technology mapping the genome, breakthrough advances in medicine and astronomers seeing with simple telescopic photography almost all the way back to the beginning of time (and it’s a long way, the numbers are unfathomable to normal people), the fundamentalists who preach Creationism, which holds as a central tenet that God made the earth almost precisely 6,000 years ago, have to preach louder and louder to make their voices heard above the growing din of reason. In the face of heaps of evidence, not surmise but diamond-hard evidence, to the contrary, the Creationists do what fundamentalists of any kind do in such situations, they stick to their beliefs with renewed vigor and defend themselves with hopeless dictums screeched at the highest possible volume, invading minds where they weren’t invited in a frantic attempt to gain new recruits. They brainwash their children in order to ensure their legacy of blindness and destructive fallacy will continue at least one more generation. One is reminded of Saddam Hussein’s Information Minister in 2003, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, as American and Coalition tanks were rolling over the Tigris into the heart of Baghdad, exclaiming with perfect aplomb how the infidel invaders were being beaten back on all fronts, and dying by the thousands in the fires of righteousness, etc., etc.

What this means is that if Christianity (just to pick the Fundamental most popular on my own home front of America) wants to survive, it needs to heave the hard-line Creationists over the proverbial rail of the Ark and start planning the next great alteration of the Bible. Who knows, maybe yet another testament is in order? Since they already have the “New” one, perhaps they can call the next one “The Eternal Testament”? which rather stymies any possibilities for a fourth testament but hey, no one alive today will be around to deal with that problem so it’s not really worth worrying about is it? Perhaps it’s time for the soul-saved to roll up their sleeves and work on revising the Word of God, just as it’s been done for two thousand and seven years, with the eloquence of the all-too-flawed human voice. If someone can devise smelling salts of sufficient strength, they might wake up Paul and get his thoughts on the matter, though I doubt the old Saint’s viewpoints would be helpful in a modern context. A little too much vinegar, methinks.

First off, they’ll have to change a few things to truly safeguard the future of large congregations, heavier collection plates and continued political power:

· Considering the Gay Issue: Perhaps it can’t be fully endorsed, but it’s probably time stop actively hating it so much. It’s not a guaranteed ticket to Hell* anymore.

· Science: Time to get rid of the Adam and Eve thing, and find a clever way to put God at the beginning of the Big Bang waving out a match as the fuse runs down on the beginning of time. This 6,000 years ago thing just isn’t going to hold up anymore.

· Women: It’s time to accept them as full human beings. Why not? What the heck.

· Other religions: As long as you don’t come in to Sunday Mass and try to steal the parishioners, have at it!

· Zeal for Bloodshed (see above): This probably has to be folded up and put away for good now, like a child’s toy outgrown. People just don’t want to die anymore, what are you gonna do?

* Hell: This probably has to go as well. Just stick with a version of Purgatory, waiting around for a second crack at life on Earth, but no actual Lake of Fire or endless torment, etc. That’s so eleventh century. Talk to the Buddhists about this reincarnation thing, could probably get some excellent mileage out that concept.

So here’s where the metaphor continues: The notch in the belt needs to be made to loosen what could ultimately be fatal pressure on the church that doesn’t adjust. But the problem is not, ultimately, the belt. The problem is the increasingly obese creature that needs the belt loosened in the first place. If the zealots are keeping their ears to the ground (which by any definition of what they stand for we can assume they are not) then they should be aware that without a change, the death throes of their sect have already begun.

The New Christian Universe (if I were on the ‘task force’): God created the universe and all it’s many galaxies and nebulae, et al, and his reason for this is beyond our understanding, but we must team up with our scientists (only those not actively seeking to disprove the Lord’s existence) and continually seek new answers into the cryptic but perfect message of our Lord.

Not that it makes much more sense, but at least it’s plausible. It could be right. And that’s, quite often, all you really need.