bad religion

I was, this very morning, subjected on the bus to a very loud, very evangelizing conversation. Not, mind you, on the prison bus. The felons, if they have indeed accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior whilst in the pen, at least have the grace to shut the fuck up about it. No, this conversation started out as an innocent convo about football into which Ms Born Again inserted herself, discussing the moral failings of today's pro athletes and how she wouldn't pay to go see a game BUT how your average Pats fan wouldn't pay to see Jesus at Foxboro. It got better from there.

She started in on how hell is real, though people don't want to believe it. The gentleman whose conversation she had butted into said something about how Jesus judges you by what is in your heart. Oh, no. No, no, no, no. Ms Born Again was very adamant that good works mean nothing. You will only escape hell by accepting Jesus as your savior and admitting you are a sinner. Everything else is meaningless.

I think this explains a lot about all those scandals involving the bigshot Evangelical ministers, no? Being a shitty, shitty person is apparently okay. In fact, one would, if one were to use logic (I know, I know), extrapolate that being a shitty, shitty person is preferable because how can you admit you're a sinner if you aren't doing bad shite? I always joke about how confession is the Catholic get-out-of-jail-free card, because theoretically, you can do whatever the fuck you want as long as you get it all absolved before you kick off. But that's really not true. When you confess, you are supposed to be a.) actually sorry and b.) actually resolved to try to do better. You can't go to confession on Saturday afternoon and tell the priest you've been banging your neighbor's wife while you're meanwhile planning to head to her house on Tuesday for a little somethin' somethin'. OUR Jesus doesn't hold with that. But Born Again Jesus apparently is a-ok with keeping y'all out of hell no matter the sinning as long as you say, yo, Jesus, I'm bad but you're my savior, dude. No doing good things required!

Well, as you can probably imagine, I could stand only a little bit of this before I was moved to take my iPod out of my purse and try to drown it out with some Old Skool Aerosmith, which just happened to be what I was lifting to yesterday. Unfortunately, when the football guy asked Born Again Lady what she thought about 2012, the forthcoming exposition on the Rapture was lively enough that even Steven Tyler screaming in my ears about being back in the saddle couldn't block it from my hearing. I had to turn the volume all the way up. Not only am I going to hell, but I'll be fucking deaf when I get there. Sigh.

Born Again Lady also said that Jesus talked more about hell than anything else. I dunno. I am no Biblical scholar, and you know we (former or current) Catholics are weak on the bible, but I was forced to go to church enough in my youth that I've heard a whole lot of gospels-according-to. I remember Jesus talking about being your brother's keeper and not casting the first stone and how the rich man wasn't gonna easily pass into heaven and basically a lot of other stuff about love and forgiveness and social justice. Okay, it was the 70s and we had hippie nuns. But the priests were mostly old dudes. I'm sure they didn't just skip over the 95% of the New Testament Born Again Lady would have me believe is about burning in hell.

"Good works mean nothing." How do these people sleep at night? Yeah, I know, better than me, all smug and satisfied they've got it all figured out. I'll get back to you after I start the Church of Joe Perry's Leather Pants.***

xoxo

***Not really. Ever since I found out he's a conservative Republican, it's ruined his old-man hotness for me. I'm shallow like that.