N
Nuty
Guest
In the following piece, please observe that I do not refer to god as "God" as is common in many places in modern literature. What's the deal with that? Is that god's proper name? Is that how one might find him in the white pages? Or are we supposed to be reminded of the godliness of god by this mysterious capitalization? Perhaps we're nervous about confusing god with some other omniscient creator of all things? As in "Oh, you mean God?! I see, I thought you were talking about Gilbert Godfrey… we call him god for short". I declare that if you believe in god, then you should not need to refer to god in any goofy way that leads to controversy and unanswerable questions. And I submit that god will not be offended either way. If you don't believe in god… well, then you're going to hell, so there's no point even talking to you.
Here we go…
I'm sure it will come as no surprise to you, that most people have not read the Bible from cover to cover. The few that have probably didn't understand most of it (because it's largely gibberish). So, as someone that belongs to the former group, I suspect that you erroneously think, as I till recently erroneously though, that Moses went to the top of Mt. Sinai, where god gave him the 10 commandments and then Moses came back and passed these on to the Hebrew masses that were waiting eagerly below.
However, as it turns out upon closer inspection, god delivered the commandments to the masses directly. They all stood with Moses at the base of the mountain and god loudly said "ok, here we go, pay attention, these are the rules you have to play by. 1) Thou shalt not… etc etc. Then Moses went up the mountain to get a hard copy (because the stone tablets wouldn't fit in a fax machine). When he returned 40 days later, he found the people worshipping a golden calf. The last part you're probably familiar with. But I bet you never really gave it much thought. Well, lets do so now.
Think about 40 days. That's not a whole hell of a lot of time! I mean, we're talking about a month and a week. Think about your own daily routine.
You wake up, you make some toast, you rub some jam on it, you drink a cup of coffee, you take a shower, you head off for work. You and thousands of other people get on the train and then as you're getting off the train… god appears and says to you and everyone else "DON'T SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEW YORK POST!!". Now provided you were reasonably certain that this was a message that god had delivered to you personally, and provided that the other people who heard this message confirmed that they were fairly certain of the same thing; that god came down and explicitly told you, not through code, or encrypted messages or smelly bums with wooden placards, speaking in tongues, but in plain, un-Ebonics English… "DON'T SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEW YORK POST!" How long do you think it would be before you called to subscribe to the Post? A month and a week? Well, I don't know about you, but not only would I not subscribe to the Post after 40 days, I can boldly declare that I would NEVER subscribe to the New York Post. EVER. Not if they offered free weekends, not even if they started putting out a paper that was actually worth reading. If the Post was the greatest piece of published work since the invention of the printing press, once god tells me not to order the Post, and I am satisfied that it was, in fact, god, and not just a cleverly distributed New York Times marketing ploy, there is just simply no fucking way that I would ever subscribe to the New York Post after that. Furthermore, I wouldn't even consider it! I mean, it wouldn't occupy a single moment of my time till my dying day. That would be one matter that would be permanently resolved in my life and would never need any further introspection. I would still think about whether or not to call in sick, or if I "want fries with that", and I might still wonder what the meaning of it all is. I might even ponder what it is about the New York Post that god would want to protect humanity from (although, if you ever gave the Post even a cursory review, the answer to that question would be fairly obvious), but as to whether or not to order a subscription, there would be no contemplation. AT ALL. And when the telemarketers call and try to have me agree to home delivery, I bet none of their pre-printed responses to all of my varied, potential rebuffs would include one that adequately contradicted me saying, "I'm sorry, I can't subscribe to the Post, god took the time to personally address me and several thousand others, and has declared to us that we are forbidden from subscribing to the Post… Yes, that's correct, god. No, I don't want Newsday either thank you, but that's just my own personal choice and not a demand from the creator of all things… yes, you too, have a nice day".
40 days after god personally delivers an oratory of the 10 commandments to the Hebrews they have erected a golden calf and are worshiping it. But wait it gets better… the very first commandment is "Thou shalt have no other gods before me". So, seeing as how I'm sure none of them had a pen at the time, it would stand to reason that Moses would come back after 40 days to find them running round disrespecting their mothers and fathers and coveting their neighbors house… but, no, he arrives to the sight of them disregarding the very first rule. And there is no way that they can use the excuse that they thought that perhaps it wasn't god that had talked to them but rather clever marketing agents from the New York Times because just before telling them the commandments, god, again, in no uncertain terms, introduces himself to these people with the words "I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage". Obviously only the real god could know about the whole Egypt bondage thing… no other god could have gotten the news so fast back then. I mean, this really burns my bottom. How fucking short sighted can you be?! Didn't they just days earlier, learn first hand that this god does NOT fuck around! I mean, it's only been a week or so since god put on a really marvelous show with plagues and death and snakes and blood and then as the grand finale, he went and parted the sea, allowing the Hebrews to cross and when they did, with no hesitation, he closed the sea upon all the Egyptian warriors who were pursuing the fleeing Hebrew slaves. This is one bad-ass god! Why would you dis him like that?!
It really begs the questions… what would it take to convince these people? How much more would god have to do before they listen to at least his first commandment?! You have to give it to god, he is amazingly tolerant of his children's disobedience. If my children ever started worshiping a golden Pokemon instead of me, I don't know that I would be as lenient as god was to the Hebrews.
You know what is even more startling? The 40 day number is actually misleading. In reality they didn't even wait THAT long! Think about it. 40 days is when Moses came back and found them worshipping the golden calf. Back then, you couldn't just order up a golden calf on E-bay and have FED-EX ship it next-day overnight. Making a golden calf had to take some time. You have to consider the fact that they're not wandering around the desert dragging about a giant brick of gold. They had to gather a lot of golden earrings and fillings and RUN-DMC necklaces (which were all the rage at the time) and melt them in some sort of vat (one might also wonder why they would have dragged a giant vat along through the parted red sea. If I was the owner of a giant vat, and I was being chased by marauding Egyptians through the newly, presumably temporarily parted, Red Sea, I might consider abandoning my giant vat, however necessary it might be to the reallization of my dreams of starting up an on-line vat renting business, once I am no longer a slave to Pharaoh, in favor of increasing my odds of surviving said adventure, but whatever… let's say they had a giant vat) then they would need a master sculptor who would have to spend some time working on the wax mold, from which you would make the iron template from which you would cast the final work. I am not familiar with all the details but I am amazed that they had a finished statue upon Moses' return! It would make more sense if when Moses got back, he found them still looking for the guy with the vat (because I refuse to believe that there was more than one such guy). But no, Moses came back and found them heavily engaged in worship. This means that they had to get started IMMEDIATELY after god was done speaking. In fact I suspect they commenced with the project while god was still reciting the 3rd or 4th commandment. It must have gone something like this…
God: Thou shalt not kill…
Heretical moron #1: "oh, Christ, how many more of these "commandments" are there?!
Heretical moron #2: I don't know… but they just keep getting more and more restrictive, I don't know if I can deal with much more of this. Next thing you know, he'll be telling us that I can't fuck your wife.
Heretical moron #1: Oh, come on, he's not THAT stupid! He would never say something like that, I mean what could be the harm in fucking my wife?! It's the perfect distraction while I'm out and about envying and subsequently stealing your silverware
God: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife
Heretical moron #2: Ok, that does it, where's the guy with the vat?
Obviously they had to start by violating the very first commandment to really bring the point home. Freedom from bondage or not, this god character was not going to tell them what to do! Their cognitive ability must have been roughly equivalent to that of a half empty carton of cottage cheese for them to think that god was going to stand idly by and watch them spit in his face in this manner.
I don't know if you remember, from your bible study what happens next. Moses, in an act that can only be described as highly suspect, demands that all the people that had obeyed the 1st commandment and refused to worship the golden calf, kill all the people who insisted on worshiping it, even if that means brother killing brother and father killing sister and mother killing uncle and grandfather killing second grand niece twice removed on the step brother's side and… well, you get the idea. Not surprisingly, the fact that Moses is demanding that the fourth commandment be ignored in order to facilitate punishment for ignoring the first doesn't so much as cross anyone's mind as they gleefully pull out their daggers and start slicing and dicing their way through the crowd.
Once this begins no one notices Moses jumping up and down and yelling that he only said this to illustrate the folly of what these people had been doing while he was gone. He was hoping that the irony of ordering them to proceed with such a preposterous act of contradiction would make these sadistic idiots put aside their practiced ways once and for all and settle into a life of spiritual growth and prosperity. By the time anyone noticed his floundering and yelling, half of the people were dead. And I say, "good riddance"! That's Darwinian "survival of the fittest" at its best! I'm glad to be a descendant of someone that was smart enough to follow a really really simply rule that was offered to them PERSONALLY by one bad-ass mother of a god. Or perhaps the descendant of someone that was clever enough to hide in the vat while all the killing was in progress. Either way, it's all good.
What I come away with, after thinking about all this is that I know that although the only thing that god ever parts for me are the doors to the 7 train, I will NEVER EVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES subscribe to the New York Post, and I don't even need god to tell me not to… I'm just going to assume that that's the way he wants it, and follow this sacred, unspoken commandment. I sincerely hope that you, rise above the cottage cheese, and do the same.
Here we go…
I'm sure it will come as no surprise to you, that most people have not read the Bible from cover to cover. The few that have probably didn't understand most of it (because it's largely gibberish). So, as someone that belongs to the former group, I suspect that you erroneously think, as I till recently erroneously though, that Moses went to the top of Mt. Sinai, where god gave him the 10 commandments and then Moses came back and passed these on to the Hebrew masses that were waiting eagerly below.
However, as it turns out upon closer inspection, god delivered the commandments to the masses directly. They all stood with Moses at the base of the mountain and god loudly said "ok, here we go, pay attention, these are the rules you have to play by. 1) Thou shalt not… etc etc. Then Moses went up the mountain to get a hard copy (because the stone tablets wouldn't fit in a fax machine). When he returned 40 days later, he found the people worshipping a golden calf. The last part you're probably familiar with. But I bet you never really gave it much thought. Well, lets do so now.
Think about 40 days. That's not a whole hell of a lot of time! I mean, we're talking about a month and a week. Think about your own daily routine.
You wake up, you make some toast, you rub some jam on it, you drink a cup of coffee, you take a shower, you head off for work. You and thousands of other people get on the train and then as you're getting off the train… god appears and says to you and everyone else "DON'T SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEW YORK POST!!". Now provided you were reasonably certain that this was a message that god had delivered to you personally, and provided that the other people who heard this message confirmed that they were fairly certain of the same thing; that god came down and explicitly told you, not through code, or encrypted messages or smelly bums with wooden placards, speaking in tongues, but in plain, un-Ebonics English… "DON'T SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEW YORK POST!" How long do you think it would be before you called to subscribe to the Post? A month and a week? Well, I don't know about you, but not only would I not subscribe to the Post after 40 days, I can boldly declare that I would NEVER subscribe to the New York Post. EVER. Not if they offered free weekends, not even if they started putting out a paper that was actually worth reading. If the Post was the greatest piece of published work since the invention of the printing press, once god tells me not to order the Post, and I am satisfied that it was, in fact, god, and not just a cleverly distributed New York Times marketing ploy, there is just simply no fucking way that I would ever subscribe to the New York Post after that. Furthermore, I wouldn't even consider it! I mean, it wouldn't occupy a single moment of my time till my dying day. That would be one matter that would be permanently resolved in my life and would never need any further introspection. I would still think about whether or not to call in sick, or if I "want fries with that", and I might still wonder what the meaning of it all is. I might even ponder what it is about the New York Post that god would want to protect humanity from (although, if you ever gave the Post even a cursory review, the answer to that question would be fairly obvious), but as to whether or not to order a subscription, there would be no contemplation. AT ALL. And when the telemarketers call and try to have me agree to home delivery, I bet none of their pre-printed responses to all of my varied, potential rebuffs would include one that adequately contradicted me saying, "I'm sorry, I can't subscribe to the Post, god took the time to personally address me and several thousand others, and has declared to us that we are forbidden from subscribing to the Post… Yes, that's correct, god. No, I don't want Newsday either thank you, but that's just my own personal choice and not a demand from the creator of all things… yes, you too, have a nice day".
40 days after god personally delivers an oratory of the 10 commandments to the Hebrews they have erected a golden calf and are worshiping it. But wait it gets better… the very first commandment is "Thou shalt have no other gods before me". So, seeing as how I'm sure none of them had a pen at the time, it would stand to reason that Moses would come back after 40 days to find them running round disrespecting their mothers and fathers and coveting their neighbors house… but, no, he arrives to the sight of them disregarding the very first rule. And there is no way that they can use the excuse that they thought that perhaps it wasn't god that had talked to them but rather clever marketing agents from the New York Times because just before telling them the commandments, god, again, in no uncertain terms, introduces himself to these people with the words "I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage". Obviously only the real god could know about the whole Egypt bondage thing… no other god could have gotten the news so fast back then. I mean, this really burns my bottom. How fucking short sighted can you be?! Didn't they just days earlier, learn first hand that this god does NOT fuck around! I mean, it's only been a week or so since god put on a really marvelous show with plagues and death and snakes and blood and then as the grand finale, he went and parted the sea, allowing the Hebrews to cross and when they did, with no hesitation, he closed the sea upon all the Egyptian warriors who were pursuing the fleeing Hebrew slaves. This is one bad-ass god! Why would you dis him like that?!
It really begs the questions… what would it take to convince these people? How much more would god have to do before they listen to at least his first commandment?! You have to give it to god, he is amazingly tolerant of his children's disobedience. If my children ever started worshiping a golden Pokemon instead of me, I don't know that I would be as lenient as god was to the Hebrews.
You know what is even more startling? The 40 day number is actually misleading. In reality they didn't even wait THAT long! Think about it. 40 days is when Moses came back and found them worshipping the golden calf. Back then, you couldn't just order up a golden calf on E-bay and have FED-EX ship it next-day overnight. Making a golden calf had to take some time. You have to consider the fact that they're not wandering around the desert dragging about a giant brick of gold. They had to gather a lot of golden earrings and fillings and RUN-DMC necklaces (which were all the rage at the time) and melt them in some sort of vat (one might also wonder why they would have dragged a giant vat along through the parted red sea. If I was the owner of a giant vat, and I was being chased by marauding Egyptians through the newly, presumably temporarily parted, Red Sea, I might consider abandoning my giant vat, however necessary it might be to the reallization of my dreams of starting up an on-line vat renting business, once I am no longer a slave to Pharaoh, in favor of increasing my odds of surviving said adventure, but whatever… let's say they had a giant vat) then they would need a master sculptor who would have to spend some time working on the wax mold, from which you would make the iron template from which you would cast the final work. I am not familiar with all the details but I am amazed that they had a finished statue upon Moses' return! It would make more sense if when Moses got back, he found them still looking for the guy with the vat (because I refuse to believe that there was more than one such guy). But no, Moses came back and found them heavily engaged in worship. This means that they had to get started IMMEDIATELY after god was done speaking. In fact I suspect they commenced with the project while god was still reciting the 3rd or 4th commandment. It must have gone something like this…
God: Thou shalt not kill…
Heretical moron #1: "oh, Christ, how many more of these "commandments" are there?!
Heretical moron #2: I don't know… but they just keep getting more and more restrictive, I don't know if I can deal with much more of this. Next thing you know, he'll be telling us that I can't fuck your wife.
Heretical moron #1: Oh, come on, he's not THAT stupid! He would never say something like that, I mean what could be the harm in fucking my wife?! It's the perfect distraction while I'm out and about envying and subsequently stealing your silverware
God: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife
Heretical moron #2: Ok, that does it, where's the guy with the vat?
Obviously they had to start by violating the very first commandment to really bring the point home. Freedom from bondage or not, this god character was not going to tell them what to do! Their cognitive ability must have been roughly equivalent to that of a half empty carton of cottage cheese for them to think that god was going to stand idly by and watch them spit in his face in this manner.
I don't know if you remember, from your bible study what happens next. Moses, in an act that can only be described as highly suspect, demands that all the people that had obeyed the 1st commandment and refused to worship the golden calf, kill all the people who insisted on worshiping it, even if that means brother killing brother and father killing sister and mother killing uncle and grandfather killing second grand niece twice removed on the step brother's side and… well, you get the idea. Not surprisingly, the fact that Moses is demanding that the fourth commandment be ignored in order to facilitate punishment for ignoring the first doesn't so much as cross anyone's mind as they gleefully pull out their daggers and start slicing and dicing their way through the crowd.
Once this begins no one notices Moses jumping up and down and yelling that he only said this to illustrate the folly of what these people had been doing while he was gone. He was hoping that the irony of ordering them to proceed with such a preposterous act of contradiction would make these sadistic idiots put aside their practiced ways once and for all and settle into a life of spiritual growth and prosperity. By the time anyone noticed his floundering and yelling, half of the people were dead. And I say, "good riddance"! That's Darwinian "survival of the fittest" at its best! I'm glad to be a descendant of someone that was smart enough to follow a really really simply rule that was offered to them PERSONALLY by one bad-ass mother of a god. Or perhaps the descendant of someone that was clever enough to hide in the vat while all the killing was in progress. Either way, it's all good.
What I come away with, after thinking about all this is that I know that although the only thing that god ever parts for me are the doors to the 7 train, I will NEVER EVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES subscribe to the New York Post, and I don't even need god to tell me not to… I'm just going to assume that that's the way he wants it, and follow this sacred, unspoken commandment. I sincerely hope that you, rise above the cottage cheese, and do the same.