Where you left your keys ...Rick's Cafe Americain

Whenever something horrible happens to innocent people, like the Holocaust, the recent tsunami, or the presidency of George W. Bush, someone pipes up to exclaim that this disproves the existence of God.  It doesn’t, so stop saying it does (you know who you are).

When good things happen to bad people, it can mean one of three things: (1) there is no deity pulling the strings, protecting the weak and promoting the righteous; (2) there is a deity, but he/she/it is a wicked deity and takes pleasure in the suffering of mankind; or (3) there is a just, loving deity who is waiting to punish and reward each of us in the afterlife.  Each of these scenarios is consistent with reality as we perceive it, and the third is consistent with the Judeo-Christian belief system.  In fact, belief in an afterlife allows the faithful to reconcile virtually anything with their belief in God.

In the case of bad things happening to good people, imagine a family of righteous, good-hearted people.  Now imagine the father (Bob) is actually a serial pederast, but his wife and kids, who are as pure as the driven snow, have no idea.  It is hard to imagine a way to punish Bob in this life without also punishing his wife and children, who don’t deserve it.  Multiply that little dilemma by several billion, and you begin to realize that it is mathematically impossible for any God to mete out punishment justly in this life.  Hence, the afterlife, where Bob is sodomized with barbed wire for eternity, while his wife and children sing in a choir of angels.

So, if you believe in an afterlife, lucky you!  If you don’t, well, then you probably don’t believe in a just and loving God—but that doesn’t mean others can’t.

1) So WHAT if the Jews killed Christ.  WASN’T THAT THE POINT??  I mean, I’m no theologian or anything, but if Christ hadn’t died . . . well, I think you see where I’m going with this.  So, the next time you see a Jew, I want you to stop, doff your pointy white hat, and say: Thank you, Jewish person.  Your spiritual ancestors killed the Son of God so that I could be saved.  Then give him a little kiss, right on the horns.

2) Get some help, you antisemitic little fucker.

In Genesis, God creates the heavens and the earth, and then he rests.  Then, as an afterthought, he creates man, and puts him in a garden.  In the center of the garden, he puts the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  Then, the very first thing he says to man is, don’t eat from that tree, “for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” If you ignore the fact that God didn’t have to put the tree there at all, it sounds almost protective.

But the snake tells Eve, “Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” And guess what?  The snake was right.  They eat from the tree, and they do not die.  Instead they are cursed by God and sent forth from Eden.

Why does God so punish them?  It is in part because they broke his commandments, but also because he seems to fear mankind:  “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.”

Is any of this starting to sound familiar (other than the obvious)?  The ruling party establishes policies designed to ensure its own hegemony, at the expense of the governed.  To do this, it withholds critical knowledge.  When a sinister (from the Latin, meaning “on the left") creature (or, in our case, creatures) reveals the truth, the dominant party curses that “subtil” creature/party “above every beast”, and sets up cherubim ("mysterious composite being[s],” sort of like the USA Patriot Act, or Johnny Ashcroft) to guard the source of its secrets and power .

Praise the Lord.