May 30 2004
You can't lie to God
Yet most American Christians and Jews lie about Iraq, Islam, and themselves
By John Kaminski
The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz version) is one of my favorite books. It describes how after death our souls pass through a place called the bardo, and after reviewing every event that has happened in our lives through conversations and confrontations with apparitions called the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities, we either evolve into pure light or choose the time and place of our next reappearance on this physical plane.
I am not a believer in reincarnation. So it took me awhile to realize that this ancient ritual prescription is more about life than it is about death. We carry the memories of every bad thing we've ever done in this life with us, and when we die, these thoughtless transgressions are going to come back to bother us. Which makes it a lot better to confront those episodes long before we breathe our last. You know, beat the rush! Make those last moments more comfortable, because when you think about it, we really live our lives in order to have our deaths be the best, most enlightening experience of our lives. I mean, nobody has an utterly clean slate after very many years of life, but having confronted one's own faults prior to the moment of big sleep will at least make that last closing of the eyes a lot more peaceful.
It was in this vein I was chatting with a friend the other day about the sundry forms of religion in the world, many of which seem hateful skeletons of what a fully functional, compassionate and healthful human being should be.
Of course it was the vengeful, superficial brand of religion espoused by the current U.S. president that set our tongues to wagging. George W. Bush is fond of saying how he talks to God every day, and God tells him which country to invade, which innocent people to slaughter from the air with his high- tech weaponry, and presumably, which multinational corporations upon whom to bestow his ill-gotten gains.
Bush's brand of religion is endorsed by a larger audience of American evangelical Bible-thumpers, many of whom advocate the death penalty for such human subgroups as homosexuals, peaceniks and all those who don't accept the fire-and-brimstone version of their Christian holy book.
In our conversation, my friend, shaking her head at all these punitive pronouncements so popular among those who seek to get everyone else to believe the way they do, brought up Catholic confession, and noted that at least Catholics are made to verbally confess their sins on a regular basis to help keep them living honest lives.
But as far as the bizarre belief that some people, including Catholics and George W. Bush (among millions of others), have special insight as to what "God" really said, nothing these days tops for sheer sickness the relationship between the Jews of Israel and the evangelical Christians of the United States, all of whom are collectively known as Zionists.
This special relationship, which is behind what is perhaps the most heartless and destructive political philosophy of all time (the policy of pre-emptive war), links Jews and Christians in a downright pathological bond in which the two pretend to be philosophical allies while underneath the surface each is working and praying for the utter destruction of the other group.
The Christian evangelicals support Israel because it fits their fixated belief that their messiah will only return if Israel is controlled by the Jews. However, when their messiah returns, they believe he will destroy the entire Jewish population, or at least those who don't instantly accept Christ as their savior. The cynical Jews, on the other hand, don't really care what the Zionist Christians think, because they don't believe in Christ at all and are merely contented by the political and financial support brought to them by a group they consider subhuman, but politically important. This is truly a match made in hell, the forging of a powerful coalition of lunatics who together aim to turn the world into a smoldering cinder merely to fulfill their own mutually exclusive and insane desires.
So, getting back to the conversation with my friend, she insisted that some people, when push comes to shove, actually try to lie to God, because their egos are so big, and their religion is merely something they use a badge of social status and acceptance. These people, she insisted, merely use the concept of God for their own psychological aggrandizement, and because they are willing to lie to God, they certainly are willing to lie to their families, friends and everybody to achieve their own selfish objectives.
I let this percolate around in my mind for awhile, and then vehemently (or as strenuously as you can be when you love someone and disagree with them) objected to her characterization that people, in their last moments of life, would actually try to lie to God.
Maybe it's because I've led a somewhat sheltered life. For instance, I've never, like so many Iraqi and Palestinian families, had a loved one shot to death by a soulless enemy right in front my eyes. Or like a Hutu or a Tutsi, I've never seen one of my children hacked to death by someone who can't explain why he's doing what he's doing. Or, like an Afghani or a Serb, I've never seen one of my children born with grotesque external tumors on his face because someone had bombed my neighborhood with poisonous radioactive ammunition. I've led a sheltered, coddled, relatively affluent American life, for which I constantly give thanks to God and many others for my good luck.
But the idea that, at the final moment of death, someone would actually lie to God as they enter the infinite realm of dark shadows is just beyond my comprehension. How could anyone, faced with the freighted moment of their final departure from this life, tell a lie to an all-encompassing being who knows the truth about everything? What kind of delusional indoctrination could make somebody attempt something so ludicrously impossible?
Then I began to re-examine all these hateful things that so- called religious people are constantly saying. I have long held the belief that the people you can trust least are religious people, because they use their divine excuses to refute reason in any and all situations. The current U.S. demolition of Iraq provides a clear example. We are going to bomb these innocent people into submission so they can have freedom. What is wrong with this picture?
It is high time for people of good conscience to ignore the dictates of their so-called spiritual leaders and abandon their churches, if they continue to preach divine retribution for what is clearly a case of robbery and mass murder cloaked in noble rhetoric.
And it is time for all Americans to turn on their murderous government and support freedom for the Iraqi people against the shocking sexual perversions of the U.S. government. That’s right — only perverts and moral criminals support what the U.S. is doing in Iraq.
What is right is right, and the U.S. attack on Iraq is clearly wrong — immoral, inhumane, ignorant and against every single word a truly just God would ever utter through those who pretend to be his bewitched human interpreters.
The same goes for Christian and Jewish pronouncements against Islam. Muhammad wrote that worshippers of other religions should be protected against discrimination, and their shrines protected. That makes Islam morally superior to both Christianity and Judaism, whose commonly held holy books (i.e, the Old Testament) endlessly preach destruction, murder, and robbery against all those who won’t accept their evil version of ancient events.
To all Christians, I say: how can you accept as your messiah a cynical, figmented construct not verifiable in history who was invented by a Jewish rabbi who changed his name from Saul to Paul?
And to all Jews I say: your God is Moloch, who values money and power over compassion and respect. Anyone who thinks their subgroup is supernaturally superior to all others is bound to be destroyed by the resentful retribution of the masses. It’s only a matter of time.
In this respect, both Christians and Jews worship an evil God. All of you will suffer eternal torment when you die for failure to use both your brain and your heart to a minimal extent. If you believe God put us here, it had to be for us to use our brains and our hearts to protect and nurture this wonderful garden he gave us to thrive in.
Getting back to the subject of lying to God, I switch now to another Book of the Dead, the Egyptian one, the actual title of which is “The Book of Going Forth by Day,” for a much more intelligent and functional description of what happens to you when you die, and how you should really live your life (if you need to be religious at all, and sooner or later, most of us do).
When you die, you go before the Goddess Ma’at and your soul is put on a scale and weighed against the Feather of Truth. If your unforgiven sins reveal that your soul is no heavier that that single feather, then your soul is allowed to travel blissfully through the Field of Reeds and across the River of Truth to the Island of the Just, where it will repose in peace forever.
But if it is found to be heavier than the Feather of Truth, your soul is fed to Thoth’s dog! (Think very big teeth.)
I’m sure you will agree with me that in this sad day and age of war and lies that the gurgling hordes of human souls on this planet — those who believe you can lie to God by using the hateful phrases of warped preachers who are far more interested in property than propriety — are just so much dogfood.
John Kaminski is the author of America's Autopsy Report a collection of his Internet essays seen on hundreds of websites around the world, and also “The Day America Died: Why You Shouldn’t Believe the Official Story of What Happened on September 11, 2001,” a 48-page booklet written for those who insist on believing the government’s version of events. For more information about both, go to http://www.johnkaminski.com/. A second collection of his essays, titled “The Perfect Enemy,” will be published later this summer.
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