Salvation

Religions such as Christianity betray the common but not universal human suspicion that we're no damn good. "Original Sin" is a tenet insisted upon by more than one Christian orthodoxy. We steal, we lie, we deceive not only our prey but ourselves in myriad ways ... But ...

Christianity is the big "But." But God, the magician who made the world, and who is perfectly good, and perfectly wise, and perfectly powerful, right by definition, has redeemed us. The world is the pawn broker, human nature is shoddy goods, but God will buy us out of the pawn shop anyway.

God does this by magic. By the magic of becoming himself human and allowing the world's secular powers — Caesar Augustus, the current of many of Judaism's Herods — to arrest torture and kill him. It's assumed that the world will punish the good, the way some would assume that the pretty blond virgin walking into Harlem with be forthwith raped and murdered.

That latter is one point on which I am still in 100% agreement with the various Christianities.

Christians, any of the varieties, typically believe that God's redemption applies to them while they're still in the pawnshop!

In other words, Christians behave as though, having bought the magic trick, they are now exempt from the standards by which their follows are damned. In other words: Romans and Jews are damned for having crucified Jesus; but Christians may now safely behave the same way!

A Roman Pope put out a contract on Martin Luther. The that Pope's "Christianity" save him? I don't think so. My Sunday School teacher didn't think so. But yesterday's church, the Church of the 1960s, defrocked genius and said Ivan Illich: is yesterday's church, the Church of the 1960s, saved? Can any of its members be? Is drinking the same tired old blood adequate magic to redeem us from continuing evil? Does God really want to save an inveterately stupid species?

The US advertises that it protects "freedom of speech." Yet the US arrested me in 2006 for something I wrote. The public defender made no attempt to assist me in explaining to the court that what they accused me of writing was a montage, taken out of context, composed malignly by the FBI. What I wrote was humor. I wrote it knowing that my humor has never been gotten by the public, only by isolated and exceptionally brilliant friends. The court has no sense of humor, the public defender assured me.

Why should drinking Christ's blood save those who stand with their thumb in their ass while Jesus' disciples are still martyred?