I think that at their base, religions try to provide an answer to humans on the three big questions; Where did we come from? What does it all mean? What happens to us when we die? I personally don’t really care what the answers are to any of these questions and I feel confident now that nobody here on Earth has the answer. I find it abhorrent that Christians of some denominations preach that if you don’t believe in “our savior” Jesus Christ, then no matter what kind of person you are and what deeds you perform during your life, you will be damned in hell for eternity. I saw a graphic storybook pamphlet just the other day, in 2019 AD (the year of our lord), that displayed exactly this. It showed a person trying to cross the lake of fire and good deeds only took you part of the way across, like a bridge that was only half completed. It was only with a crucifix that the gap was filled and easy passage was provided over to the safety of heaven. In fact with the crucifix firmly in place, no good deeds seemed required at all for you to stroll across. The magical cross bridged the gap without a need for anything else at all. Believe what we believe and you are one of God’s people. Don’t believe and you will go to hell. To me that seems a completely fucked up belief system, basically just a perfect way for writing into your doctrine that you are someway superior to others. Not to mention the powerful controlling mechanism this provides for the Church. No wonder we have had many hundreds of years of missionaries with their ethnocentric views trying to “save” the poor savages by converting them to Christianity. Taking children away from their mothers to put them in good Christian homes or institutions to try and breed the savage out of them. Typically this was done with goodwill and with best intentions. These, often goodhearted, people thought that they were doing the right thing for those poor unfortunate godless kids. It can only be through a sense of superiority according to your teachings that you can possibly believe that it is any way good to separate a child from its mother in such a systematic way. The Jews had a different air of superiority. They believed that they were God’s chosen people. It says so in the Old Testament, so it must be true. Unlike the Christians who tried to convince everybody that they should also be Christian, the Jews didn’t really want to let anybody else into their club. They certainly didn’t seek them. If your mother is Jewish, you are Jewish. Otherwise you’re not. Simple. And clearly some deference to the fact that we can’t ever really be certain who the father was. Even Jewish women must have been open to temptation from some suave, handsome, smooth talking Samaritan back in the day. To convert to Judaism there was a lot of study to be done to make sure that you knew all about the faith, meetings with the rabbi and eventually a test to see whether or not you were worthy. If you really wanted to become Jewish then you really needed to want it bad. I remember having a sense as a kid that people who converted to Judaism weren’t real Jews, no matter what they did. I was a kid so I’m sure that this thought didn’t just spring from my own mind but permeated my consciousness through exposure to this idea from elders of the tribe. Famous converts always seemed welcome though. I can recall that my family was really happy that Sammy Davis Jr and Elizabeth Taylor had become Jews. Paul Newman proudly identified as Jewish even though his mother wasn’t, but in his case, that was good enough for us. I mean, who wouldn’t want Paul Newman? The Jewish community of Melbourne was so cliquey that there were even levels of being a Jew within it. I didn’t go to Mount Scopus (a local Jewish high school) so was somehow made to feel a lesser Jew by those who did. I was instead at a Church of England boys’ grammar school loaded up with pedophiles and anti-Semites and I was certainly made to feel like an “other” by a number of people who inhabited that space, both students and teachers. I’d get jostled by a group of other kids on the way to class who would disparagingly call me Fourbee i.e. four-by-two, rhyming slang for Jew, while pushing past me and laughing at me with ridicule. I seem to recall being called a Christ killer on occasions, which always seemed a little incongruous to me given that he was a Jew himself and I felt pretty certain that he had famously been killed by the Romans.
Last night was the first night of Pesach (Passover) and so we went to my mum’s place for the Seder, as is our family tradition. Traditionally in our house this involves me reading some pieces in Hebrew from the Hagadah (Pesach prayer book), drinking a lot of wine (it is written in to the ceremony that everybody MUST drink four glasses of wine, while leaning to the left), eating way too much delicious food and listening to family favourites, such as Fiddler On the Roof and the soundtrack to the stage musical Hair. I knew more about the Jewish religion than either of my parents and was the only one who could read Hebrew so I was always the one running the Seder. As the years have gone by the stories have seemed more and more farfetched to me. I mean, how slow on the uptake would Pharoah have had to have been to need God to bring down ten plagues on him and his people before he acquiesced and let the Jews leave Egypt? How did he not realise after the plagues of blood, frogs, lice and wild animals that God was serious? And for that matter, how is it possible that the same God who saw fit to turn Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt for just one backward glance at Sodom, would have the patience to actually give Pharoah nine last chances at relinquishing before he decided to finally kill his eldest son and the first born male of every Egyptian family, to show that he really meant business. Surely in reality he would have smote Pharoah after only one warning. I told you once motherfucker, now take that. Clearly Tarantino didn’t write the bible. Even in soccer where they roll around like pussies you only get one yellow card before you’re sent off with a red, so how come God, who at one time decided he’d had enough of the whole world and drowned them all except for Noah and his crew just so that he could start all over, all of a sudden had so much patience? And it wasn’t even just the people he took out. What kind of vengeful God also slays the first born male cattle because they happened to be owned by Egyptians? As if they hadn’t already had enough to deal with through the plague of the pestilence. What bollocks. But no less bizarre than the notion that Mary and Joseph who were husband and wife never had sex. Could Joseph not get it up? Was Mary not really attracted to him? What went on there if they were truly in a loving committed relationship? And if they didn’t consummate their marriage, doesn’t that mean legally by common law that they weren’t actually married. And if that’s the case, was Jesus actually a... you know? Not in the euphemistic sense of the word, because he seems like he was a really decent guy (told people to be nice to each other) and had some awesome party tricks (fed a whole mob of people somehow on only one loaf of bread and a fish), but in the so-called biblical sense. Mary falling pregnant despite her and Joe not getting jiggy together seems more than a little bit suss. Joseph must have had some serious questions to ask. It seems like a stretch at best.
The other night I went to see the fortieth anniversary screening of the Life Of Brian, clearly the most accurate documentary on religion ever made. Screw the calls for religious instruction to be reintroduced to schools in Australia. This should be mandatory viewing for all kids as part of the education curriculum.
Brian: “You've got it all wrong. You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves. You're all individuals!”
Crowd: “Yes. We are all individuals”.
The stoning scene in all its ridiculousness (I’ll have two points, two flats and a packet of gravel) seems an embarrassment that should have been consigned to historical times long long ago, yet persists today in a number of countries. Only a few weeks ago, the Sultan of Brunei decided to reintroduce death by stoning for gay sex and adultery as part of some strict interpretation of Islamic law (even though stoning is not actually ever mentioned in the Quran). How is this possible in 2019?
The mob arguing over trivial symbols (Follow the gourd! No, follow the shoe! It’s a sandal, not a shoe!) in five seconds completely sums up the splits in Christianity and Islam into their various denominations. When Life of Brian was released there was uproar. Religious Christians and Jews felt united in being offended. “Blasphemy”, they yelled and I’m sure they would have liked to have stoned the Pythons to death if they could. Really it just put these belief systems under scrutiny, holding up a mirror to show how it all looks as an observer from the outside and to see where the cracks may appear. To me the gaps seem so wide that you could drive a camel train through them.
I think that for a lot of people (maybe the majority?), religious occasions are much more about family connection than they are with any religious doctrine. Pesach to me is certainly much more about getting together with my family and eating my mother’s food than anything else, and I look forward to it every year. The stories of Moses and his crew invariably facilitate good conversation over the four cups of wine, even if the stories themselves seem to lack any credibility. I know also that in a lot of Christian households, Christmas is much more about family and feasting than any religious belief. In the last Australian census, for the first time in our nation’s history, the largest single religious affiliation, recorded by just over thirty percent of the population, was “no religion”. Up almost eight percent from five years earlier. Thank God! Perhaps there is hope for us all yet.
