Find Your Own

Somewhere along the way, the meaning of the Bible got lost. Here's what the Christian religion means to one person. Find your own meaning, damnit. This one's taken.

I got myself into one hell of a mess the other day when I generously remarked that I had a paper in high school that I felt supported my belief that the Bible is not a sexist document per se. The hypothesis was that there are sexist documents within the Bible that were used to justify the culture of the times. A friend is dangling precariously on the edge of becoming a religious studies major, and he immediately challenged my thesis. As of this writing, I have received a fourteen-page critique of my Biblically illiterate analysis, which he prepared.

I am thrilled. Really.

I would love to know enough about the subject to defend myself rationally. I often come home from classes and parties with the feeling that I have been held in judgment and then sent home to burn in my own private hell. Now that sounded oddly Biblical.

It's not that I don't appreciate the influence of the Bible in today's largely Judeo-Christian society. I don't think that I have to be assaulted in the street by wild-eyed, would-be prophets who want to tell me I am not really a Christian because I live in this sinful town. Apparently, if I call myself a Christian, I am fooling myself into a false sense of salvation.

I do not wander about the campus with a big reader-board with the message "Save Me, I'm a Christian" nailed to my forehead. Apparently, however, my severe, albeit nonexistent pagan tendencies shine through. And although I am certainly not diametrically opposed to the ideal of Jesus Christ and do believe in God, I find myself riddled with sinful wishes like: "Why doesn't that asshole climb up and nail himself to that damned cross he drags all over town? Then we'd know how much of a martyr he is without having to heckle him for the information."

In general, I applaud the reemergence of religion in our society. Faith of any kind, however, seemed to me to be an entirely private issue that should be fully detached from public demonstrations. But then, I have always been one of those wacky radicals who actually believe in the idea that the religious tendencies of strangers were just none of my damned business. And yet, those who have taken their religion to the extreme of self-righteousness walk a dangerous line and not just with me. Every interpretation of the Christian faith has indicated to me a belief in love and in Jesus Christ. End of story. I always thought human beings were not in a place to judge other people or lifestyles. Certainly, the faith is intended to instill insight into believers about the ideal life, but judgment is the burden of God. Let Him work out the differences when it is time. Anything more is hypocrisy which serves to discredit the word they seek to spread.

Perhaps it is the failure of the public school system to teach the Bible as literature without proselytizing that which is at fault. Biblical references that are not blatant fly past me. The only people that I could think of who ever spent a few days in the belly of a whale used to be Gepetto and Pinocchio. The Immaculate Conception was a Madonna compilation album. God was a bearded white guy who could strike you down at any moment for taking his name in vain by merely pointing a finger. Obviously, my knowledge of the Bible was not extensive then, nor is it today. In the Sermon on the Mount, however, He confirmed my intuitive beliefs. He said that someone who believed in God in his or her own private way was better off spiritually than those who went to church to uphold a public image. He said that someone who bore false witness to God and persecuted others because of a difference in the practice of the belief would know where they were going, and the persecuted would live with God after death.

I prefer the unimposing Chi Alphas who listen sympathetically to my pleas for help now that my partner in crime and I have led all UO virgins to believe that there was a club for them. The young man who answered the phone just said, "Oh, goodness" and "Oh, dear." It was so refreshing to not hear about the excruciating way in which I would traverse into a much worse hell than Dante could have ever invented.

A friend told me, in his typically cogent fashion, that the best way to lead someone away from God was to talk about homosexuals as second class citizens, bomb abortion clinics or speak of killing abortion doctors as justifiable homicide. God does not want His subjects hunting down the evil and doing His dirty work, "lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up the wheat with them." (Matthew, 13:29)

The best weapon against this fanaticism is to educate yourself. Instead of wishing for tortuous fates to befall the local fanatics, quietly ask them to read the passage that supports their conclusions. If they can supply one, take it in context and see if it really says what they imply. As the Violent Femmes said, "He's mixing up the truth with something funny, I start to see / He's telling lies, lies, lies..." Dance a jig here. Few fanatics can quote the correlating Scripture without stretching the interpretation a bit too far.

Ultimately, though, we all have to accept that Biblical literacy just is not what it used to be. I know so little that I actually received as a gift from my parents a Cliff's Notes to the Bible, if you will, named Brush Up Your Bible. Maybe itŐll shed some light on exactly where it says Eugene is the next Sodom or Gomorrah. I would like to read that one. It's always good to know how God will bring His wrath down upon you.

Farrah Bostic, a freshan, majoring in guerrila pamphleteering, is a staff writer for the Oregon Commentator