GOOD(?) HEAVENS!

 

The other bloggers have, predictably, drifted off into religious la la land in their latest posts. I say predictably because old people's memories tend to dredge up experiences from many decades ago rather than what they had for breakfast this morning or whether they put their pants on the right way.

Robert, having finished and actually having deleted all of his nonsensical ramblings on the cross and how it should be carried, has recalled some silly stuff that the Catholic nuns 'taught' him at primary school.

"You are probably wondering which John I am talking about. It's the one that baptized. Tradition says he was born without original sin. The magisterium of the church doesn't pronounce this as doctrine so I guess RBB and TC may choose not to accept it if they want.

So which two other persons full in this category I hear you ask. Both Jesus and Mary were conceived without sin. John had to wait until Mary visited Elizabeth to get the Holy Spirit and move in her tummy.

In the Catholic calendar only three birthdays are celebrated. Jesus, Mary and John. Most of the rest of the feast days are for saints entering heaven i.e. dying."

At least he's consistent in his naive witterings but I do wonder why he still believes in and propagates this puerile nonsense unless ... he's regressing.

Richard, while being a professed atheist (and who is going to Hell) still obsesses about religion and particularly the nonsense that those nuns 'taught' him at primary school. His current obsession is rewriting bible stories, largely to piss Robert off and to try to get him to delete his posts and even his blogs - the equivalent of disrupting sports games and taking his rugby or soccer ball home which he apparently used to do as one of the Garden Road boys.

This is from his latest post:

"I see that Robert is back. He's going on about Original Sin and how three people were born without it. That doesn't seem fair. The story goes that God the Farter Father inflicted it onto everyone because Eve bit his favourite apple. This 'all loving god' evidently let three people off. 888 was one of those three people. Hang on, he's part of the three entities in one god. One of the other two was a woman who became 888's earthly mother. Then there was a bloke named John. I don't know why he was so highly respected by this third of a god. Is God the Farter Father supposed to be older than 888? Well, they have both evidently been around for eternity, along with Karen. That makes them both very old, by human standards. If this father - son stuff is true, Karen MUST be the real mother and not Mary. Robert should start saying the rosary to Karen."

And this from an earlier one:

"I don't think the Holy Spirit (formerly the Holy Ghost) is a bird, I think it is more likely to be God the Mother. Catholics tell us that there are three entities in one god. Supposedly they have always been there, so the labels father, son and mother are a bit silly. This god has existed forever. Imagine just a little bit of this eternity, before man was created and God the Father sent his 'only begotten' son down to Earth.

Here is just a little bit of this pre JC time...

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.

Hey, eternity is a very long time!

I suspect that the whole mum and dad thing only came along when '888' was sent down to Earth to die on a cross."

I like these more than Robert's earnest evangelising.

I have also written bogus epistles and Gospel outlines along with fantasised religious figures (go to the 'search this blog' tab to find these) and decided to look up the internet to find other ones. While doing so though I found actual - real - bible stories and anecdotes that are so wacky that invention isn't necessary.

Here are some of these:

The Talking Donkey and a Hidden Angel
Scripture: Numbers 22:21-35
The prophet Balaam is riding his donkey on a mission when the animal suddenly veers off the road into a field. Angry, Balaam beats the donkey. In a shocking twist, the Lord gives the donkey the power of speech, and the animal turns around and complains about being beaten. Balaam, entirely unfazed by the talking donkey, argues right back until God opens his eyes to see a sword-wielding angel standing directly in their path, which only the donkey could see. 

Elisha and the Two Bears
Scripture: 2 Kings 2:23-25
While the prophet Elisha is walking to Bethel, a large group of local youths emerges from the city and begins mocking him, chanting, "Go away, baldhead! Go away, baldhead!" The prophet turns around, curses them in the name of the Lord, and immediately two female bears come out of the woods and maul 42 of the youths. 

The Deadly Church Service
Scripture: Acts 20:7-12
During one of the Apostle Paul's famously long, late-night sermons in Troas, a young man named Eutychus falls fast asleep while sitting on a third-story window ledge. He drops straight to the ground and is pronounced dead. Without skipping a beat, Paul goes downstairs, embraces him, and brings him back to life before returning upstairs to break bread and finish his sermon. 

A Terrifying Angelic Titan
Scripture: 1 Chronicles 21:14-17
After King David conducts a census that displeases God, he is given three choices for punishment: three years of famine, three months of enemy attacks, or three days of a plague. David chooses the plague, which takes the lives of 70,000 men. David then looks up and sees an enormous, terrifying angel of the Lord standing between heaven and earth with a drawn sword outstretched over Jerusalem.

Zipporah Saves Moses
Scripture: Exodus 4:24-26
In one of the most bizarre and abrupt passages in the Old Testament, the Lord meets Moses at a lodging place and is about to kill him. In response, Moses' wife, Zipporah, takes a flint knife, cuts off her son’s foreskin, and touches Moses' feet with it, declaring, "Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me!" The Lord then leaves Moses alone. 

Jesus Curses a Fig Tree
Scripture: Matthew 21:18-21
On his way into Jerusalem, Jesus is hungry and walks over to a leafy fig tree looking for fruit. Finding nothing but leaves, Jesus curses the tree, saying, "May you never bear fruit again!" The tree instantly withers and dies, leaving his disciples completely astonished. 

OK, are those weird enough for you? There are many, many, many others - lots in fact. Talking about lots or Lot I'll leave you with this from Genesis 19:

Genesis 19
Sodom and Gomorrah Destroyed

 The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground.  “My lords,” he said, “please turn aside to your servant’s house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning.”

“No,” they answered, “we will spend the night in the square.”

But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate. Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”

Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him  and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing.  Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

“Get out of our way,” they replied. “This fellow came here as a foreigner, and now he wants to play the judge! We’ll treat you worse than them.” They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door.

But the men inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house and shut the door. Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, young and old, with blindness so that they could not find the door.

 The two men said to Lot, “Do you have anyone else here—sons-in-law, sons or daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you? Get them out of here, because we are going to destroy this place. The outcry to the Lord against its people is so great that he has sent us to destroy it.”

So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were pledged to marry his daughters. He said, “Hurry and get out of this place, because the Lord is about to destroy the city!” But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.

With the coming of dawn, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Hurry! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away when the city is punished.”

When he hesitated, the men grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them safely out of the city, for the Lord was merciful to them.  As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!”

 But Lot said to them, “No, my lords, please! Your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you have shown great kindness to me in sparing my life. But I can’t flee to the mountains; this disaster will overtake me, and I’ll die.  Look, here is a town near enough to run to, and it is small. Let me flee to it—it is very small, isn’t it? Then my life will be spared.”

 He said to him, “Very well, I will grant this request too; I will not overthrow the town you speak of. But flee there quickly, because I cannot do anything until you reach it.” (That is why the town was called Zoar.

 By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land.  But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

 Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord.  He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace.

 So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived.

 

Lot and His Daughters

 Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave.  One day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children—as is the custom all over the earth. Let’s get our father to drink wine and then sleep with him and preserve our family line through our father.”

 That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and slept with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

 The next day the older daughter said to the younger, “Last night I slept with my father. Let’s get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and sleep with him so we can preserve our family line through our father.”  So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in and slept with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

 So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father.  The older daughter had a son, and she named him Moab; he is the father of the Moabites of today.  The younger daughter also had a son, and she named him Ben-Ammi; he is the father of the Ammonites of today.

You couldn't make that stuff up - well, you couldn't but I could only this time I didn't have to as it's in the bible.* Vile stuff really and no, on second thoughts I don't think I'd write about a man offering up his daughters for rape along with the other depraved scenarios.

* Cutting and pasting brought to you by The Curmudgeons Inc.ⓒ