So. The holiday season is in full swing, and I’m nuts. I don’t mean that the season makes me crazy—which it most certainly does—but, rather, I wish to say, “‘Tis the season,” and as a separate issue, “I’m nuts.” The season part should be obvious to all but the most oblivious, and the nuts part—while obvious to many—has an additional hidden and somewhat obliterated component, the lid on which shall stay closed for a while longer. Something is brewing and the end product’s qualities are not yet known.
Me, I’m long a humbugger and Xmas detractor, an inclination that began with my first childhood memories of praying to God for my Jesus Birthday wishes. My Baptist mother insisted that we pray to her Christian God for our Christmas wants rather than write to Santa because, as I later learned, Santa Claus is an Imaginary being. Reimagine that!
She didn’t overtly attempt to prevent my sisters and I from thinking Santa was real when we did believe, but she did overtly, covertly and with great impunity, attempt to force us into accepting that her other imaginary being was the real thing. OK, maybe that should be “Real Thing.”
But for me, once the fairy tales of Santa, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy and the Boogeyman became exposed for the farces they are, it wasn’t long before I questioned, then challenged the realities of The Southern Baptist Convention. Admittedly, an adolescent exposure to a Baptist Deacon Boy Scout leader who specialized in the Pedophilia Merit Badge provided fuel that flamed the fires that burned my religious faith. It’s mighty hard to sell a loving-God faith-concept to a child whose life has been wrecked by the same asshole teaching the kid’s Sunday School Class.
I have long believed that we humans invent imaginary entities to do our dirty work, like discipline kids or enforce rules those we govern won’t like, and also to cover our asses for those unexplained situations in human life—like death and calamity—and likewise, we conjure-up imaginary characters to instill blind faith in others. Somewhere along the line there was this one guy who first tried magic mushrooms and had an “otherworldly vision”, a direct instruction from some God.
In my senses of history it’s been the stoned, the insane and the megalomaniacal who have invented Gods, and for all the same reasons we dream up other imaginary things. To me, our gods and devils are cut from the same cloth as Santa and the Tooth Fairy—each an imagined idea developed to add either peace of mind or disciplinary control. Or both.
The only reason Santa isn’t a God is that he was created with a specific, short shelf life.
Then, again, the first god might have been invented by a lunatic who needed no hallucinogenic assistances to have conversations with some invented deity. The younger of my two sisters—the one who died a couple years back—had this imaginary buddy named Miss Meanie. Until she killed her bad news friend by tying her to the railroad tracks to be smashed by the train, my sister never did anything wrong, it was always the divine Miss M. When caught red-handed, little sis would claim M. Meanie made her do it.
Me, I don’t see my five-years-old sister’s imaginations any different than inventing a god. I guess the flipside of being the smartest animal is not having the smarts to answer every question, so when we humans can’t prove it, we make it up.
But I have often wondered what was the base causal issue behind the original imagined deity? Why and when did the first god get invented? Was it the fear of dying or perhaps was it some early leader wishing to gain a third-party supporter of infinite magnitude to assist with keeping the masses controlled? Maybe it was both. Was tribal chieftain Grog having trouble getting his guys to go Mastodon hunting because a big Saber Tooth Tiger was lurking the Masty herd and everybody was calling in sick for the weekly hunt for red meat?
“Look boys,” says Grog as they sit, hungry, by their sacred campfire. “The Fire God will protect you from the Devil Tiger, and if you die, you won’t be dead—He’ll put you up in this nice cave over to the other side of the Great Mountain Gorge with three young wives, a fire that will never go out and never-ending Mastodon steaks. Now, let’s all hold hands and ask Fire God for some favors.”
Don’t you think the whole seventy-two virgins bullshit is a bit excessive? I think Grog was closer to the perfect number. Maybe if I was younger I could see my way to properly husband more than three wives at a time. While I’ve had my share of now exes, there was no duplicative habitations, and I must say that when fully-engaged with a woman, I’ve got my hands full concentrating on the one.
As an atheist I have to admit that my life would be easier if I still believed. As a kid, praying for forgiveness and thinking that God forgave me was a required, nightly absolution that prepared me to start each next day with a lightened heart. It also made it easier to slip up that next day because I knew that God would forgive if only I prayed for it end-of-day.
As an old fart, how much easier would it be to face my final days if I believed that I would go to a better place when I die? What worries could be eased if only I could convince myself that God raped a young virgin who lovingly bore Him a bastard god-child who would later be sacrificed by his daddy-o for me so that I could spend eternity in Heaven with both the slain bastard son and God his veryownself? OK, that might be Veryownself, with the capital “V”.
When I think of these original imaginers of the first gods, I’m reminded of David Coresh and that guy Jim Jones and Chuckie Manson—those sellers of some god’s evil intentions. Three among those who have told followers to castigate and deny all other gods except their own. Hell, Jones actually proclaimed that he, himself, was god. My thought is that since any time you gather more than two people together, political and cultural ideologies will be structured- a cult will form. Tribes form, power is vested in someone, or some thing. Disagreements and arguments cause tribes to splinter and the next thing you know we’ve got The Third Baptist Church of the Northeast Quadrant of Southwest Dallas.
We also end up with Judge Roy Moore. Feeling a little like you’ve contracted the ADD?
OK, I have a point and here it is. I had a discussion with this guy at the poker table about my atheism. He told me that without his Christian God there would be no morality, “Think the Ten Commandments.”
My reply was simple. “What you are telling me is that your fear that an imaginary being will punish you if you don’t do the right thing is why you do the right thing? Me? I do the right thing because I decide to do the right thing because it is the right thing to do. I choose to be moral, I’m not forced to do so out of fear.”
Of course also not said is that the Devil never made me do anything either. While I’m often tempted to explain my inappropriate behaviors with blame on a higher force field, truth is it’s all on me.
Now, having said all of that, I do have a god who for some reason only manages to visit in my sleep or at those times when I’ve been mellowed by one, or more, of Nature’s magical elixirs. My god is pretty cool on comparison. Other gods visit as snakes and burning bushes and elephants and that sort of stuff. Mine has come-a-calling as Jane Fonda in Barbarella, Jeffrey Holder and Harry Belafonte singing a Calypso duet, Salvador Dali’ and a giant fly, as examples.
My imaginary god has way more imagination than yours and he’s not quite the asshole that some others seem to be. Bottom line? (Sing to the tune of “My dog’s better than your dog”:
“My god’s better than your god, my God’s better than yours! My god’s better than your’s is, ‘cause my god’s the only god!”
So let’s all get in the holiday spirit and FUCK Walmart!!!
