Irksome Facebook Post of the Week
It's baaaaaccccccck! To think I was able to read FB for weeks without feeling the need to call out someone's irksome meme. This week find myself unable to help myself.
What I'm going to say today is going to shock and anger a lot of people. I'm going to be accused of being hostile to your religion and that I'm "bashing" you. (Well, at least I would if anyone actually read this blog.) So be it. I just can't get over this.
Look everyone. We have a gen-u-ine miracle on our hands. Someone's entire house was demolished. He lost his most important possesion, his biggest investment, his source of shelter. But that's okay. His Mary-On-The-Half-Shell survived.
Is considering this to be some kind of joyous miracle some kind of joke?
That Mary-On-The-Half-Shell isn't going to rebuild the house. It's not going to feed the family. It's something to pray to, and I'm sure that's exactly what you want to do. Let's pray to a God that saw fit to destroy your house and leave nothing but a Mary-On-The-Half-Shell. The shell is only big enough to fit a statue of Mary. The owners of the house will have to spend the next year living in a FEMA trailer. It will take time, money, and insurance red tape to replace a house. Had the house stood and statue fallen, the owner could have gone to a garden center and bought a new Mary-On-The-Half-Shell for fifty bucks.
Thanks God for taking my house away and giving me the miracle of an intact Mary-On-The-Half-Shell. Clearly this is proof You exist and love me.
To me it's as silly as the "miracle" of the WTC "cross". God allowed thousands of people to die on 9/11, but we should all be grateful that He left behind a pair of crisscrossing steel beams. Constantly seeing any two items in the shape of a cross as automatically holy seems like some kind of religious Freudianism. Just as any long, thin, item is a phallic symbol in Freud's world, so two crisscrossed items become an automatic symbol of Jesus and have holy power.
I thought the 10 Commandments said that you are not supposed to make graven images. Statues of saints and Mary and crucifixes with Jesus on them seem to be part of some cosmic loophole in that rule. It seems as long as they depict the right graven images, it's okay. They are still imbued with some holy power. This is despite the likely inaccuracy of the images. No one really knows what Mary or Jesus looked like. Chances are pretty good that most traditional iconography got it wrong although Western Christians often don't like to admit that.
I know for religious people this gives some kind of hope and comfort, but I think the mental energy spent venerating photos like this is wasted. Just as the surviving Mary-On-The-Half -Shell isn't going to do much benefit to the owner of this house, neither will venerating it on Facebook. How about making a donation to the Red Cross instead? Give the people who lost everything some real help.
What I'm going to say today is going to shock and anger a lot of people. I'm going to be accused of being hostile to your religion and that I'm "bashing" you. (Well, at least I would if anyone actually read this blog.) So be it. I just can't get over this.
Look everyone. We have a gen-u-ine miracle on our hands. Someone's entire house was demolished. He lost his most important possesion, his biggest investment, his source of shelter. But that's okay. His Mary-On-The-Half-Shell survived.
Is considering this to be some kind of joyous miracle some kind of joke?
That Mary-On-The-Half-Shell isn't going to rebuild the house. It's not going to feed the family. It's something to pray to, and I'm sure that's exactly what you want to do. Let's pray to a God that saw fit to destroy your house and leave nothing but a Mary-On-The-Half-Shell. The shell is only big enough to fit a statue of Mary. The owners of the house will have to spend the next year living in a FEMA trailer. It will take time, money, and insurance red tape to replace a house. Had the house stood and statue fallen, the owner could have gone to a garden center and bought a new Mary-On-The-Half-Shell for fifty bucks.
Thanks God for taking my house away and giving me the miracle of an intact Mary-On-The-Half-Shell. Clearly this is proof You exist and love me.
To me it's as silly as the "miracle" of the WTC "cross". God allowed thousands of people to die on 9/11, but we should all be grateful that He left behind a pair of crisscrossing steel beams. Constantly seeing any two items in the shape of a cross as automatically holy seems like some kind of religious Freudianism. Just as any long, thin, item is a phallic symbol in Freud's world, so two crisscrossed items become an automatic symbol of Jesus and have holy power.
I thought the 10 Commandments said that you are not supposed to make graven images. Statues of saints and Mary and crucifixes with Jesus on them seem to be part of some cosmic loophole in that rule. It seems as long as they depict the right graven images, it's okay. They are still imbued with some holy power. This is despite the likely inaccuracy of the images. No one really knows what Mary or Jesus looked like. Chances are pretty good that most traditional iconography got it wrong although Western Christians often don't like to admit that.
I know for religious people this gives some kind of hope and comfort, but I think the mental energy spent venerating photos like this is wasted. Just as the surviving Mary-On-The-Half -Shell isn't going to do much benefit to the owner of this house, neither will venerating it on Facebook. How about making a donation to the Red Cross instead? Give the people who lost everything some real help.
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