Suffer the Students

Even as an atheist, which I declared myself to be for many years, I took inspiration from the story of Christ. The only difference was that I felt free to mock the Scriptures here and there, something I dare not do any more. (My cartoon character, the Holy Roller, is merely intended to parody bad evangelists.) My sense of God's presence and of the existence of an afterlife has come to me by intuition and I have learned that my intuition is highly reliable by the exercise of rejecting this mindset in late 2007, after my first conversion experience, and experiencing all the horrors that resulted from this decision. I'm a little ashamed that my faith was not strong enough to sustain me the first time, but I am relieved that I have been given a second chance to stand up for the Lord in this very evil time in history. One advantage that Christians have over adherents of other faiths is that Christ knows our suffering. Unlike all other deities, He submitted to the humiliation of pain and death. When we are in pain, we can be comforted by praying to a God who knows our pain. And since we are all doomed to die, we can turn to Christ for comfort at any point along our fateful passage. There are a lot of suffering souls out there and they are all welcome to visit me here. If you're a student who gets picked on in class, I hope you can compare your situation with mine and gain some real perspective. Had this gang rape of my music and comedy occurred when I was younger, I might not have survived this long. But once you get out of that classroom, the consent of your peers becomes less and less important.
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Selling Christ Short

I have always been interested in information around the life of Jesus. One prominent researcher in this area is Elaine Pagels, whose book, The Origin of Satan, first suggested to me the possibility that the official Christian account of Christ's execution was altered to make it acceptable to the Romans. It is a compelling argument, backed up by strong evidence describing Pilate as the kind of governor who would crucify people at the drop of a hat, but it fails to heed the extraordinary nature of Christ and how his presence often led people to behave out of character. The extraordinary nature of Christ, even outside of his arguable miracles, was that this common carpenter's son who was doomed to suffer a slave's execution would be worshiped as God incarnate by billions of humans for millennia following his death. I believe that such greatness has a way of reaching back to its source from the future, endowing the person with a kind of larger-than-life aura. Peter had a good solid career as a fisherman and all it took was one visit from Christ, a total stranger, to make Peter abandon his livelihood and follow Christ all the way to his own crucifixion. So perhaps Pilate was equally moved by Christ's presence and determined not to take responsibility for his death. If the Prefect of Judea intuited that he was about to execute the future God of the Roman empire, it would certainly trouble him. I think the source of antisemitism is essentially religious and centers on the refusal of Jews to accept Christ as their Messiah. I think this would exist free and clear of how Christ's execution is depicted in the Bible. Antisemitism is the result of misinterpreting the brilliant teachings of Christ, for most Christians do not hate Jews. And some Jews have even converted to Christianity. There's an organization called Jews for Jesus that may support me in this argument, even though I'm a Gentile. March 7, 2015: Since this is a sensitive topic, I must be careful how I present this argument. I do not wish to add any more hate to the world. I agree that it was the Romans who killed Jesus. But I also believe that Jewish religious authorities were threatened by Jesus and wanted him killed. They thought he was a false prophet and a dangerous influence on the crowds. Jewish laws are quite specific in the Old Testament on how to handle anyone who might equate himself with the Most High God. Such a man was to be killed. But in Christ's lifetime, Israel, or Judea, was under Roman occupation. The Romans enforced the laws of their provinces and punished anyone who might try to do so in their place. So the Jewish religious authorities needed the permission of Roman authorities to execute Jesus or perhaps these High Priests would have ended up on crosses themselves. So Jesus, the way I see it, was killed by both the Jews and the Gentiles. All of humanity is responsible for his death. And while the Gospel of John may unfairly quote the Jews as wishing to take collective responsibility for this blood guilt, its depiction of his manner of execution on a Roman cross equally blames the Romans. Yes, and let's not forget what makes Christ great: his death and resurrection. How could Christ accomplish his holy mission without going to the cross? His cruel execution was necessary. To impose punishment on his perceived murderers is to contradict God's plan.
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A Note on Immortality

I would like to explain the moral of one of my short stories, Immortality, written in a rather naive and yet undeveloped style back in 2004. The story is about a penny pinching asshole who gets scientists to lengthen his lifespan indefinitely so he will not have to part with his money. As he ages, he is wounded by tragedies that make him less enthusiastic about his life in this world. As he ages, he also grows wise and with this wisdom he comes to value his money less and less. The story ends with his suicide, when he finally realizes that he can not cheat death in a world that was only designed for temporary use. Do not wait until you are on your deathbed to realize what is truly important in this life. By then it may be too late.
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Easy to Believe in Hell

Some people wonder how I can endure this terrible time of injustice when I stand alone against a vast, evil apparatus like the out-of-control U.S. arms industry. This is where my faith in God comes in. In order to accept unjust suffering, we need to see some reason for it. We need to see why God allows evil like Dick Cheney and George Bush and NBC to take root in our world and cause so much harm. My experience as an artist helps me to answer the question. When Christ was being led to his cruel execution, he said 'Now is the time when the power of darkness prevails.' Darkness is essential to our world. My drawings demand dark areas which help to define the illuminated ones. There can be no light without darkness and there can be no good without evil. This is why there are evil, damned souls sharing this world with the righteous. This is why there must be a Hell to dispense with the otherwise destructive presence of the hateful on the scale of eternity. My foreknowledge of the divine justice which awaits the souls of the wicked who defy me lets me accept whatever fleeting gains they may make in this fleeting reality.
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Too Big for History

Don't let the lack of secular references to Jesus in the history books discourage you from believing in him. He was here, but the media of his time didn't think he was important. When I look back on the last seven years and I see who's been getting all the credit and glory from my songs and blogs, it's easy for me to see how Christ's greatness would also have been overlooked by the people of his time. Given the lack of integrity of people charged with keeping such records, Christ's omission from the history books might even be considered as proof positive that he was, in fact, here. (I am also doubtful that I am related to Wolfe Tone.)
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Camp Jesus

Before I get into my main topic, I need to clear up something about one of my poems. Some people have taken my 'Sue Ann Grape' as an accusation of fraud against Nancy Grace. I did not list her name at the top of my poem as I did with the ones which targeted copyright violators of my work, but I can understand the confusion. I doubt that Grace would be guilty of any such crimes. I just pointed out a few amusing things I noticed about her to create a fictitious character. I mentioned the following in the past. Sometimes I have this dream about being at an outdoor religious convention where each faith competes in a tent building contest. My team built a rather bare bones structure with plain white canvass. The Satanists, however, had a dazzling tent, featuring elaborate, colorful patterns and expert embroidery, which looked like the runaway winner. But when the judge came by to rate our tent, he was able to project the most beautiful image from his own heart, a flattering mural of his dearly departed mother, onto the plain white field. We won. But that Satanist tent still makes me laugh when I think about it. (Did they use this on any TV sketches?) This, I believe, is what Jesus meant by saying that no one may enter the Kingdom of God except as a child. A child's mind is like a plain white sheet, free and open to receive the glory of God. But human glory, however impressive, presumes perfection and obstructs God's superior hand.
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SNL: Ted Haggard's Allies

I often hear about how the TV 'took my laughs' and I wonder if anyone has yet noticed the subtle but important differences in how they presented these works. They were not all laughs. Some of those poems that they turned into comedy sketches were quite serious. The best example might be The False Prophet, a poem I wrote to illustrate how a wealthy evangelist might end up in Hell for distorting the Word of God. This poem has a lesson to teach. It was not written for a laugh. When the TV turned it into a cheesy comedy sketch, the original meaning of my words were lost. How many other of my serious efforts are laughed away as comedy now as a result of such crimes? I shudder to contemplate it. By reducing my poetic warning about the perils of dishonest preaching to a mere comedy script, it looks like the casts of shows like Saturday Night Live are Ted Haggard's allies. Who would have thought so until now?
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