Okay, duck because I'm about to get ruthless...
With
The DaVinci Code hitting theaters this weekend, it amazes me the passionate vitriol with which some Christians are attacking this movie. Even in my office, I've heard the church goers have the most baseless and negative comments about a book they haven't even read in most cases.
And even those that do read it have the same stock line: "It's only fiction." Well, what do you think
The Bible is? If you think that
The Bible is a historical document full of factual information then you're an idiot. If, however, you understand that
The Bible is a historical path of spiritual thoughts mixed with history that many different cultures contributed to and is a snail trail of mythological art and rituals which were metaphorically valid at some point in time but which are as outdated today as stove pipe hats, then you are one step further on the road to understanding.
And I don't care if you're an scheister ass like Rod Parsley here in the Midwest parceling out fear and hatred in the guise of religious worship or if you're a neo-hipster Christian like Tony Pierce who doles out five cent sermons in stream of consciousness prose posts that seem open-minded on the surface but on closer inspection turn out to be bigoted, cliched, and dried up idol worship without substance. If you're bashing a book you haven't read because it challenges the card house of metaphoric worship you've set up for yourself as the corner stone of your existence, then you are small-minded, petty, and pathetic.
And I've just about exhausted my patience when it comes to people who have no tolerance for ideas different from their own. I'm talking about people whose entire self worth is wrapped up in a string of broken imagistic experiences they have mistaken as a static entity which exists independent of the natural world but is actually as fragile as a cotton ball thrown into an open flame. I'm talking about ego people, the beginning and the end of it. I'm talking about true freedom which only lies beyond the known and can never register in a mind that has been humbled through the submissive worship of symbols instead of through the complete death of the ego and the total cessation of time which accompanies it.
I'm talking about Eternity here, the realm of the sacred in the temporal flow of birth and death which all animals are imprisoned in from jump.
In the first chapter of my upcoming book
How to Think, I decimate the entire foundation of Western thought as mere idol worship and put out a clarion signal to move beyond this petty first stage of thinking to the next creative phase of freedom in thought. Many will be incapable of this leap past logic and hero worship but you know what, too bad! Show me ten people whose minds are completely free from the corpulent husks of religions and philosophies built through time and death and I will show you a lever long enough to move the universes both within and outside the limited mind of man.
I have gone back to reread my copy of
The DaVinci Code (the illustrated edition) before I go see the movie. I loved the book and it doesn't matter to me one iota if its fact or fiction. I love it the same way I love the story of Jesus rushing the Temple of Jerusalem and turning over the money changing tables, pointing his finger in the faces of the politicians, the merchants (corporations of his time), and the priests who stood at the barricades of heaven cherry picking souls like a cosmic Club 54 and said, "Fuck you, assholes--there are things in this world and the next which are not for sale or barter. So back up before my daddy bitch slaps you and tears this temple of stone down to the bone (and I'll rebuild the bitch in three days as a final eff you)!"
Regardless of its historical authenticity, Dan Brown has given us one hell of an interesting mystery to read and reread for hundreds of years and at the same time, he stuck a red hot poker up the asses of the holier than thous of our world and is smiling all the way to the bank about it. And now the same churches responsible for the burning, torturing, and general mass murder of 5,000,000 women over a 300-year period are being called to account for their physical and spiritual crimes against humanity. Well, boo hoo! My heart's pumping purple panther piss for them.
See, I respect real faith which is as immovable as the massive black holes at the hearts of galaxies. And if your faith happens to be fed through the symbols of
The Bible and is something that connects and opens you to the human beings and the natural world around you as well as the god and gods within you; then I say, "A Salud! Consider yourself on the path of enlightenment!"
But if your faith is dependent on wooden symbols which are constantly in danger of succumbing to the fires of time and history and you use these symbols as weapons and gates of death to keep you separate and distant from your fellow man, then you are a cosmic fool and I predict that an ocean of fear will swallow your wooden faith like a sewer grate tossed into the open ocean from heaven.
The final word is that if a book of fiction is enough to challenge a faith based on the historical accuracy of your religious metaphors, then you never had faith in the first place and deserve to lose your illusions. So stop lying to yourself, free your mind, and read the frigging book already.
LINKS:
If you ever needed any proof that the government, all of its branches, were a bunch of lunkheaded wastoids with the sense of three-toed tree sloths, look no further than the recent "effort" to unearth the late (and should have been long forgotten) Jimmy Hoffa. The search involved "more than 40 FBI personnel, along with demolition experts, archaeologists and anthropologists." That's probably about sixty people who were paid with US tax dollars to dig up someone who has been assumed dead and missing for over thirty years now. This investigation is about useless as nipples on a man.
