MetaCatholic

Feeling completely stumped about what to say at a school Ascension Day service this week, I tried Googling for some ideas. After all how do you explain the ascension to young children in a fresh and stimulating way? I did come across some ideas for visual aids that could help. But typing in various search phrases including “ascension” and “explain” proved to be a big mistake.

I have decided that, after looking at pages like this one, or this one, that I have been mercifully innocent of the crazy whacko world of DIY religion and pseudo-scientific spirituality.

We are AMBASSADORS OF LIGHT who serve as the “BRIDGE” between consciousness paradigms by assisting others into the higher dimensional system of new earth energy.
We live and love from the Unified Field of Higher Consciousness. Children of the Sun is an organization of people that are dedicated to Self Mastery while serving in impeccable integrity and self responsibility. We are the Avatars and Christed Ones, emerging in collective power.

No love, you’re a bunch of deluded people who’s lives must be really boring to make up stories like this.

In addition to each chromosome’s 2 strand double helix of DNA, there are an additional 10 etheric strands of DNA available to each human, which have been dormant since the beginning of recorded history. … This is the Original Divine Blueprint, what man USED to be. It has been written that Jesus had 12 strands of DNA activated.

Not, however, written by anyone who knew what they were talking about.

It is hard, I think, to know whether to laugh or cry.

I wish I could believe with a clear conscience that Matt Taibbi is exaggerating in this report. (HT Andrew Brown) Unfortunately, I’ve come across, or had friends who’ve come across, similarly bizarre and scary stuff done in God’s name.

We don’t get to see the utterly batshit world they live in, when the cameras are turned off and their pastors are not afraid of saying the really dumb stuff, for fear of it turning up on CNN. In American evangelical Christianity, in other words, there’s a ready-for-prime-time stage act — toned down and lip-synced to match a set of PG lyrics that won’t scare the advertisers — and then there’s the real party backstage, where the spiritual hair really gets let down.

To fit in, Matt invents the most wonderful problem past

“Well, uh, OK, then,” he said. “Matthew, do you want to tell your story?”  …
“Hello,” I said, taking a deep breath. “My name is Matt. My father was an alcoholic circus clown who used to beat me with his oversize shoes.”
“He’d be sitting there in his costume, sucking down a beer and watching television,” I heard myself saying. “And then sometimes, even if I just walked in front of the TV, he’d pull off one of those big shoes and just, you know — whap!”

The trouble is, this is far less bizarre than the kind of stuff that happens on “deliverance camp”:

“In the name of Jesus Christ, I cast out the demon of cancer!” said Fortenberry.
“Oooh! Unnh! Unnnnnh!” wailed a woman in the front row.
“Bleeech!” puked the bald man behind me.
Within about a minute after that, the whole chapel erupted in pandemonium. About half the men and three-fourths of the women were writhing around and either play-puking or screaming. Not wanting to be a bad sport, I raised my hand for one of the life coaches to see.
“Need . . . a . . . bag,” I said as he came over.
He handed me a bag.
“In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of handwriting analysis!” shouted Fortenberry.
Handwriting analysis? I jammed the bag over my mouth and started coughing, then went into a very real convulsion of disbelief as I listened to this astounding list, half-laughing and half-retching.
“In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, I cast out the demon of the intellect!”

You really couldn’t make it up.

That last phrase seems to say it all: “the demon of the intellect”. It is exactly this kind of dangerous nonsense that the church needs to be delivered from, and a healthy application of our God-given intellect is the best way forward. No wonder these idiots think the intellect is dangerous: the exercising of the intellect is the exorcising of this dreadful and demonic drivel.

I posted the other day on what looked like a weird creationist comment I’d received but not published, from a man called Herman Cummings. Now he has commented on that post.

What I have been teaching is not new. I’ve been “preaching” it since 1993, but the powers that be keep what I say from the public (news media), and pastors, priests, and rabbis are too stubborn to host my seminars (along with institutions of learning). … Hear me, and get your heads out of the sand. Moses wrote about six visions which he was shown by God while on Mt. Sinai, in 1598 BC. Those six visions, described in Genesis chapter one, were not in chronological order. Neither were any of them contained in the same week. … All doctrines which you are familiar with are false!!

So there you have it. Mr Cummings is the world’s expert on Genesis, and the only reason we haven’t heard his theories is because “the powers that be” are conspiring to keep us in ignorance of his brilliance. It is positively shocking.

I couldn’t resist a quick Google. I came across, among other things, this page on the history news network

This letter is to inform you that I teach a class on Genesis to science teachers. The title of the course is “Moses & Creation: Biblical Reality”. It is a 15-hour class that tells the truth about the first three chapters of Genesis, so that the teachers won’t be speaking in ignorance about what Genesis is saying to mankind. Neither theology nor secular science are anywhere close to knowing what advanced scientific knowledge is contained in Genesis.

My name is Herman Cummings. I am the foremost terrestrial authority on the book of Genesis.

Now, somehow, I have the teeniest stirring of an inkling that trying to have a rational argument with Mr Cummings might not be the world’s most productive, or indeed possible, course of action. So what do you do when the seriously deluded start leaving comments on your blog? Ignore them, delete them, or ban them. Whatever I do, I have a feeling it will feed the conspiracy troll.

Welcome to the new egalitarian world of education in the UK, where Bucks New University is offering a degree in selling beds. Bucks is technically an abbreviation for the county of Buckinghamshire, but it might say something about the commercialisation of education. This university’s range is remarkable; apparently it offers three separate degrees in textiles: Textiles Surface and Fashion, Textiles Knit and Textiles Print. There’s nothing like specialisation in the “Faculty of Creativity and Culture”.

There seem to be two very different engines driving this “educational” train. The first is a hangover of silly sixties socialism. Universities are elitist, therefore we shall call everything a university, and allow everyone to gain a degree. The second is a commercial brashness that sees no value in anything that is not immediately economically productive. Skills take priority over knowledge, and training displaces learning.

Next week, a doctorate in crayoning and colour.

Darrell Pursiful hopes that this is an April Fool running late.

You must be SBC and cannot have been anywhere near anything sinful in the last 6 months.

I’m not sure that sin is something Southern Baptists make jokes about, unfortunately. (PS Darrell I think I may have to pinch your wonderful tag for this one: Christendumb)

I wish this were unbelievable. A group of “conservative evangelical” Christians try to convert people engaged in a Good Friday ecumenical walk of witness. There is a kind of sick irony in trying to hand a tract about Jesus to people who are following a man carrying a cross.

(HT Dave Walker / Church Times)

You can learn many things from a bishop, but I never expected to learn about such things as this. (HT Alan Wilson)

Yeeeaugh!

Lingamish has a novel piece of advice: Read the Bible Naked. I am not sure God’s commands are any easier to obey in the nude(see Genesis 3). It would, at the least, build a hedge around the law for those worried about incompatible fibres in the same garment.

Curiously at about the same time as I received this advice from David, a comment on Chris Tilling’s blog directed my attention to (and this is deliberately not formatted as a link – you will have to copy and paste) the unbelievable www.sexinchrist.com/shaving.html. This is the page you may (dear sensitive soul) find least likely to offend. Somebody please tell me this site is a cruel spoof. It may make you want to keep your hermeneutical clothes on, however.

Suzanne draws attention to these ghastly sample wedding vows, and rightly lambasts their ideological patriarchy. (Intriguingly though, their minor adaptation of the traditional vows omits the words worship and obey for the man’s and woman’s vows respectively, which is at odds with the blatant sexism of the rest.) I simply wonder how anyone in their right mind could actually think these were good wedding vows.

“According to Ephesians 5 and with His enabling power, I promise … ” is a wildly inappropriate register for the context (and bad grammar), but it’s nothing compared to this:

{N} we read in Genesis, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife,” and in Proverbs “Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing.” He has ordained that the husband be the head of the wife. He instructs me, as the one who will be your husband, to love you as Christ loves the Church. It is my desire and delight to follow this scriptural teaching.

It’s almost as if the bloke is casting around for a way to obey this biblical pastiche, and happens to stumble across the woman standing next to him. “Oh, look, what a coincidence to find you here at the church just as I was wondering how to obey this marriage teaching of my pastor’s. Would you care to help me out?”

Mind you, some of the woman’s vows are just as grim: “On this special day, _____, I am reminded of the verse James 1:17″ Yeah, that’s what they all say. It’s amazing how often that old romantic James just springs to mind at the altar.

Leaving aside all the theological reasons for tearing most of these vows to shreds (and there are many) you just have to wonder that anyone could be so up their own ideological arse to think these are in any way appropriate to the occasion.

Somehow, I think this is a gift too far. They may have picked the wrong Madonna for this one. Just when I think someone has reached the limit of “christianising” merchandise, I get proved wrong yet again. I am not sure whether this sort of thing comes down to commercial interests fooling Christians, or to Christian stupidity in being unable to recognise the difference between tasteless folly and their faith.

Far too many people seem to find it hard to distinguish between being a “fool for Christ” and being a complete bloody idiot.

And far be it from me to display my prejudices, but I fear that “Made in the USA” sticker says more than it means to.