Conservatives Miss Point. Imagine That..

Says Fox News, defender of the Faith:

A New Hampshire couple has pulled their son out of his local high school after the teen was assigned a book that refers to Jesus Christ as a "wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist."

Sounds terrible don't it? Wow. What kind of school board would insult a good conservative by making their kid read a book -- let alone a book that takes a swipe at JC himself? But don't worry. This being Fox, this story is about as accurate as a busted sun dial...

The book in question, Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed", is a biographical account of a woman trying to make it in America on minimum wage. The part that caused all the fuss? Ehrenreich describes attending church to hear a minister talk about The Sermon On The Mount. She found it perplexing that the minister redacted all Jesus' talk of social justice, fairness, equality, community, etc. (i.e., pretty much the entire theme of The Sermon On The Mount) and presented him only as a 'corpse', stripped of humanity, relevance and meaning:

It would be nice if someone would read this sad-eyed crowd the Sermon on the Mount, accompanied by a rousing commentary on income inequality and the need for a hike in the minimum wage. But Jesus makes his appearance here only as a corpse; the living man, the wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist, is never once mentioned, nor anything he ever had to say.

Yup, that's the bit conserva-kid and his parents in New Hampshire objected to. That's the bit that made them "slam down" this "junk" book, take the kid out of school and become Christian refuseniks. Damn, talk about missing the f*cking point.

This really reminds me of when I had that bumper sticker saying "Jesus Save Me From Your Followers" on my car. I always thought the message was pretty clear. But I soon stopped bothering to count the number of purple faced loons, supposed Christians, who'd toot their horns, flip me off and even try to run me off the damn road for expressing that opinion. "Hey buddy, you got a problem with Jesus? Well this is a Christian country so f*ck off out of here if you don't like it!" Errm... nope. I have no beef with Jesus, I got a problem with you though bubba...

It was no surprise that a thing like nuance was entirely lost on people who, I'd assume, were Christians of a conservative persuasion. But, hell, it's not even nuance: that bumper sticker was a straightforward criticism of them not Jesus - and that's what got them mad. Just like Ehrenreich, I was attacking those conservatives who try to jam their own dogmas down Jesus' throat, discard the actual message of the New Testament and then get mad at people who reject their self-serving distortion of Christianity. If anything, that bumper sticker and Ehrenreich's book both try to defend Christianity. But, just as with patriotism, it's always personal for conservatives: Attack conservative "Christians"? You attack Jesus. Attack conservative "Patriots"? You attack America itself. (Man, talk about "hey, it's not always about you...")

So let me risk the wrath of conservative God and say I detest these people and their never-ending, egomaniacal projection. Will they ever realize they're worshipping conservatism as a false idol, elbowing Jesus out the way and setting themselves up as God? Do they realize that they're the ones who are mocking Christianity and making it meaningless? And that, if there's a hell, they're putting themselves on the fast track? I guess not. After all, they don't call it 'blissful' ignorance for nothing.