The Good Book

It's approximately 6 a.m. on the west coast and many of our people around the world are either preparing to attend one of many religious congregations around the globe for spiritual enlightenment. Be you Christian, Muslim, or Jew, black people have always been beholden to a higher power. Most of us draw strength from what is referred to as The Good Book. Well this morning I was awakened with a message that I thought I should share with you.

At approximately 5:18 a.m. I heard what sounded like the ring of a cellular phone-but it wasn't. I keep my phone on vibrate, and I live alone. As I lay in darkness trying figure out where that sound came from, the following message popped into my head.

Let's say we were playing a game of Monopoly, the popular board game invented by Milton Bradley almost a century ago. As we all know, there are rules to the game, and many of us can play the game without consorting the rule book. We all know you must own three properties of like color prior to buying houses, and there are a certain amount of houses you must purchase before you are able to purchase hotels. Common knowledge when it comes to Monopoly, correct? I knew you all would agree with me. Let's say we are playing Monopoly and someone decides to play by a different set of rules that gave them an advantage, what would you do? Most of us would either quit in protest, or begin to modify our style of play to level the playing field. This is a simple board game, and it wouldn't take long before we adopted a new agenda in order to remain competitive. So why is it we haven't done the same thing in real life? We've been living according to a book, told to us to be the word of God, for centuries now, and no one else is playing by those rules. In fact, some black people have convinced themselves that they are abiding by the book, when in fact they are not-and that is worse than abandoning the book altogether.

We all need spiritual guidance to a certain extent. But if you look at the religious congregations in our neighborhoods (especially the ones in major cities), some of them are the epitome of opulence. They profess to be pillars in our communities, but pillars of what? They haven't managed to rid our communities of drugs, prostitution, gambling, child neglect, gang violence. They profess to be the way, but they are about as effective to the ills of our community as penicillin is to HIV. Yet we migrate to them every Sunday morning to be administered a placebo that not only hasn't healed us, but has done us far greater harm than it has ever helped. We've been paralyzed by the message and rendered useless by the Good Book.

Rarely do you find me in one of their houses of worship, but I recently, out of love for my family, attended the baptism of my 6 year old niece. During the ceremony, I noticed during the multi-media presentation projected on the jumbotron, several quotes from several different versions of the bible. I found this to be strikingly odd. There's the King James Version of the bible, the New King James Version, the New American Standard Version, and the list goes on. Why the need for so many versions, and which now is to be considered the good book? In my opinion, they are all interpretations of the word of a God none of us has ever seen or heard. Yeah, yeah, I've heard the bullshit about he's known through his works, but why does He choose to be so ethereal and mysterious? It sounds like cruel and unusual game. In my summation of this whole religious fiasco, here's what I've gathered: There's this God who creates all the heavens and the earth, by himself without assistance from man. Then he creates man, and now needs him to help him spread his word. Never mind the fact that I have this ingenious system of passing down genetic traits, I am going to have you exist for centuries without knowing or spreading my word until you can devise this thing called a book to spread my word with. Huh? Come again? That makes about as much sense as me creating you without feet, and then one day you devise a pair, and me, God, give you a pair of shoes and say, "I've been holding these for you until you found a way to make feet."

Furthermore, I'm going to surround you with so much death and destruction, AND subject you to all sorts of abuses and then tell you that it wouldn't happen to you if you walked with me. Or, this is my way of showing you my abilities. That doesn't sound like the God with the angels and the harps and the like to me. That sounds like that other guy with resort south of heaven that is hot like Arizona, but hotter.

God has no use for man-made books. There are no books needed for the changing of the seasons; no books needed for the ebb and flow of the ocean; no books needed for the cycle of life-it all happens without the need of a good book. And wouldn't the notion that there is a good book indicate the fact that there's also a bad book floating around somewhere out there. There have been so many historical translations and edits to the supposed word of God, most of which have been altered to serve the needs of a certain unsavory ilk. It was said that King James had a scripture removed because he felt that it was the very scripture that promoted the death of his mother, Mary Queen of Scots. Now if he's adding and removing scripture based upon personal preference, how close can this be to the word of God?

It seems as though, in this day and age, we would have come out of the foggy haze that has seemed to have clouded our God-given common sense. If this is the same book that the raping, murdering, thieving, slave masters read and quoted daily...how holy can it be? Or maybe it is holy in it's edited state. Maybe no one is using it as a rule book any longer. And if this is the case, why do we pretend to do so as well? Let's cut the fucking shit and call a spade a spade. If you're drinking yourself into a stupor and fornicating like rabbits Saturday night, and then stumbling your worthless ass into church the next morning thinking that you're making amends for you unrighteous behavior, you're not fooling anyone but yourself. If there is a God, do you think he's going to give it shit that your blasphemous ass was in church Sunday morning when you were in an orgy Saturday night? If I were He, my answer would be no. Am I against drinking, fornicating, and promiscuity? No, I've probably at one time and in one form or fashion participated in it all. But I'm against those who straddle the fence professing to be one thing but practicing another. Furthermore, you have no concern for your community. You are just there (in church) to make amends for your frivolousness. Wait, wait, wait-wait a fucking minute. It just hit me. The purpose of the Church is no longer to help the community-it's sole purpose now is to make you feel less guilty about your wanton behavior. Ahhh, it makes sense to me now. No wonder the church hasn't been effective in curing the communities ills, it's like a personal bank account whereby customers go in to manage their diminutive accounts, ignoring the fact that the combined total of those accounts yields more power than they do existing individually. Ok, so then the assertion I made once about curing the ills in the black community was correct. I would get rid of about 10 percent of the population. Take that to mean whatever you wish, 10 percent of you would be gone-more if was necessary. Because you're only out for self and your community as a whole means nothing to you.

The Roman Catholic Church once fell under scrutiny for selling passes into heaven. Yeah, imagine that, man turning passage to heaven into a e-ticket ride at Disneyland. This whole thing disgust me in the worst of ways. My hatred and contempt for its very existence burns a hole in me the size of Tokyo. Professing to be pious while you mislead, murder, torture, and abuse people conjures up feelings inside of me that are indescribable. And to know that, at this very minute, millions of you sit in silence listening to worthless banter about changing your ways and honoring God, when the messenger is corrupt, and what you intend to do with the message is even more incorrigible causes me to weep for humanity. And you wonder why "God" off's so many of us throughout the history of the bible-we just can't steer clear of our sheep mentality. We refuse to use the brain God gave us to know when we've deviated from the path.

If there is a good book, we'd never see it-and if we did, we wouldn't know what to do with it anyway. It would probably contain too much information that would cause us to have to do something that resmembled personal reformation, and who has time for that? For the sake of my children and, hopefully one day, my grandchildren, I hope that the eyes of the masses are opened and we dispense with the idol worship and get back to the root of true religion. Our lives weren't meant to be lived so meaninglessly.

TPOKW?

Footnote-In my research for this posting (yes, I do research sometimes), I discovered that the latin version of the bible used was called the Vulgate. The word seemed too close to the word vulgar for me to ignore the similarities so I looked up the two words and this is what I've found.

Vulgate |ˈvəlˌgāt; -gət| noun 1 the principal Latin version of the Bible, prepared mainly by St. Jerome in the late 4th century, and (as revised in 1592) adopted as the official text for the Roman Catholic Church. 2 ( vulgate) [in sing. ] formal common or colloquial speech : I required a new, formal language in which to address him, not the vulgate. 3 ( vulgate) the traditionally accepted text of any author. ORIGIN from Latin vulgata (editio) ‘(edition) prepared for the public,’ feminine past participle of vulgare, from vulgus ‘common people.’

vulgar |ˈvəlgər| adjective lacking sophistication or good taste; unrefined : the vulgar trappings of wealth. • making explicit and offensive reference to sex or bodily functions; coarse and rude : a vulgar joke. • dated characteristic of or belonging to the masses. DERIVATIVES vulgarity |ˌvəlˈgaritē| noun ( pl. -ties) vulgarly adverb ORIGIN late Middle English : from Latin vulgaris, from vulgus ‘common people.’ The original sense was [used in ordinary calculations] (surviving in vulgar fraction ) and [in ordinary use, used by the people] (surviving in vulgar Latin and vulgar tongue ).

For those of you who may have difficulty grasping the point, I'll make it clear to you-those in charge of instructing you about God looked down upon you. The text used to instruct you about religion was edited for your consumption. How much of your best interest could they have taken to heart if you were considered beneath them. If you question any of this, look at how the Roman Catholic Church treated the indigenous people of the Americas when first they arrived. Wake up people.