Why Only Dummies Search For God in the Net? – A Cautionary Tale

Some articles are easy to write, others are just painful – this is the latter. I had it lying around in my inbox for months rotting away, but it seems like a good time now to just let it go when all the confetti about the ND speech has settled. It’s a very personal take on what happens when we go on-line to search for God – a cautionary tale even about how a good idea can go so very wrong so bear in mind though the message may even be humorous, the message is dead serious. If you’re not in the mood for the personals this Tuesday, skip it.

Still around? You probably did it yourself didn’t you? Don’t worry it happens to the best of us – feel better now? Let’s dive in!

Religion, I am sure means many things to most people and calling yourself a Christian simply means making a commitment to Jesus Christ. It also means Christians are often part of a community, where they often have to struggle with relational and personality issues which sometimes leads them to question their faith.

Sometimes the shit piles up real high and the people who you placed so much faith in simply lets you down – you feel cheated and despite your best efforts, you just know deep inside they’re not worth following. Doesn’t matter how hard you pray. Or even how long you choose to hold on – eventually, you let go, sigh, pick and go leaving the body of Christ. Usually no good bye’s are necessary, they (the stayers) have seen it all before, you (the quitter) just know what you’re supposed to do, close the door quietly on your way out, suck it in and walk never ever looking back once. It’s a story that’s played out millions of times in church life all over the whole hardly a new motif – only this time. In the internet age, things are slightly different.

God is in the internet! So one site I visited proclaimed. Another even suggested, “lay it down all here!” For the beat up Christian, it’s a too good to pass off without just checking it out only because most wayward Christians haven’t really abandoned Christ entirely – somewhere snuggled in the hurt and pain, he’s still there. Whether that is good or not, hey that really isn’t my call and I don’t even feel qualified to talk about it. All I can do is share with you my personal account of the before, during and after story. But as far as spiritual bumming is concerned, you know that place when you’re in but out in limbo trying to figure out whether it’s all worth it to go back in again or stay out in the cold. The possibility of discovering God again in the internet has an unmistakable allure. Even at my end point, I sensed church contained something I desperately needed if I really wanted to live a purposeful life. As much as I tried to fill my first Sunday’s out of church with things, I still felt the pang of separation from the body of Christ. I missed the communion, the warmth of fellowship, along with the sense of community which comes from being part of a shared community.

It didn’t take me very long to figure out faith when it isn’t nourished eventually develops a crusty shell of cynicism. After a while one finds all sorts of justification to give meaning to the cause of the embattled Christian.

I told myself this again and again I really have to make the effort to find God even if he’s in the internet. After all didn’t he appear as burning bush when he spoke to Moses, so what stop him from talking through the net? These days, I am told even the Devil wears Pravda. That was the kicker that led me to search for God in the net – it’s amazing, how the mind often finds the right facts to make an argument whole even if they’re holes so large that one can walk right through them. For one I came out with so many open minded assumptions about being able to find God in the internet, even my neuron-surgeon neighbor suggested that I should pop in as she said, “just to make sure everything is alright upstairs.” That could be the reason why she doesn’t answer the door bell these days.

You see I just figured out God was simply like some great industrialist. You know like General motors or Natsteel and the Bible is simply a instruction manual, study it diligently and I am sure, you’ve be cruising away nicely on all six cylinders.

There lies the danger and before I continue further let me just say: this is a cautionary tale on why faith should never ever be taken lightly especially if one harbors the illusion of doing it DIY style. My haphazard journey to rediscover God comprised of two things, studying the Bible and reading the word – I reasoned how wrong could I really go? Yeah I am sure, I would probably have to winnow the hucksters and charlatans from the real, but hey that’s true for everything these days, even when comes to buying a bar of soap, so it shouldn’t be so hard after all – should it?

Cut to the chase, trying to find God with Bible in cyberspace is just plain dicey. It’s easier to believe the benefit of a good education coupled with reading broadly inoculates one against the usual diatribe that’s one there – you know what I mean God is a alien, sell everything because the end time is coming – those sort of messages proliferate the net like those leaflets that clogs up the post box – most of the time, we just chuck them out, but every now and then a catchword reads: “hey this makes sense!” Remember what I said: religion is dangerous!

After a whole month of wading through it DIY style: It didn’t take me long to realized the more I looked for God in the net, the more confused I became. Firstly, I realized God blatantly contradicts himself time and again. I even came to the conclusion, God the CEO of Judaeo-Christian faith is a confirmed psychopath, guilty of all sorts of crimes against humanity.

Don’t believe me. Consider this: God appears to have no sense of scale and perspective. He is prepared to kill people for the most trivial of reasons. He even tries to rub out poor mind-ye-business Moses on his journey to Egypt because he forgot to circumcise himself. Yes, it’s even written, don’t believe me look at Job 15;26,

“Anyone who is born whose flesh is not circumcised on the eighth day is… to be smashed down and annihilated, to be uprooted from the face of the earth.”

There you go, he’s a lousy engineer – I mean what kind of industrialist designs something that needs to be modified, it’s like one of those dodgy sock manufacturers that sells you a black and white pair and expects you the dye the latter black as if it’s the most commercially sensible thing to do – why didn’t he just lob it off himself, if it bothered him so much?

By the second week in the net, I even came to the conclusion not only does God regularly make a mountain out of a mole hill. He even makes Idi Amin look like the Pope. In Samuel 6, he toasted 50,000 curious peeking Tom’s for looking into the box: the Ark of the Covenant. How’s that for “overacting?” I wonder how in their right mind would toast folks for opening the cookie jar just to feast their eyes (You think the brotherhood is paranoid? We are like little mother Teresa’s in lace compared to him!)

Despite forming my natural prejudices about God – he did have at least one redeeming quality: he was honest about his psychopathic tendencies. To be fair, he even came clean with an open admission he was a serial killer. Don’t believe me? Consider this:

“I shall subject you to terror, consumption and a burning fever that will consume your eyes making you blind and short of breath,”

How’s that?

By the third week, I reckoned, If God were still prancing around cross dressing as a burning bush, Amnesty International and United Nations Security Council would probably be printing out enough red cards to sink a battleship to either condemn or rein in his excesses.

It didn’t take me long to realize after my DIY attempt at finding God in the internet, the verdict is clear as day. God needs to be promptly arrested and brought to account for his crimes against humanity and should be tried in the Hague alongside Slobodan Milosevic, General Manuel Antonio Noriega, Idi Amin, Sadam Hussein and Adolf Hitler – that’s really how bad it got.

And just to cap you off, if you think, I am too hard on God consider this: he doesn’t think too much of you. In fact he even lamented how one of his biggest boo’s boo’s was to have made humans, “…….I was grieved at heart,” he says in Genesis 6:6. So there you have it, you just an aberration in the wider scheme of things.

The other thing that regularly cropped up during my search for God in the internet was this: why does God always need a little bit of money? I mean you can’t go to any Christian site on the internet without missing a neon sign that says, “give me money!” Hey what’s happening up there in the corporate board room in heaven? Who is the financial controller up there? Don’t they any money sense up there? What happened to standard operational procedures, accountability and the nuts and bolts of being financially independent? Don’t they have something resembling the Sarbannes Oxley Act in heaven?

Why is every Christian site begging for a bit of money all the time?

Why is God always running short? Can someone please tell me? I know Kenneth Lee “Ken” Lay (April 15, 1942 – July 5, 2006) an American businessman, best known for his role in the widely-reported corruption scandal that led to the downfall of Enron Corporation died recently. So had the big guy appointed him as the new financial controller up there? Could that be the reason why there’s always a deficit?

By the fourth month of searching for God in the internet, I realized there is a reason why serial killers often claim that they hear God’s voice and are simply acting under orders. He is indeed the president of the looney tunes society. It’s enough for one to roll over in laughter and ask: Who is truly in bondage?: those of us who acknowledge the glorious emptiness of the universe, or those who worship a God who doesn’t even make an ounce of sense?

As I mentioned in the very beginning of this article, this is a cautionary message on the perils of trying to search for God in the internet – trust me winging it alone to find God in the internet just spells trouble and it doesn’t matter whether you happen to be a Christian, Muslim or even someone who worships Mickey mouse – it shouldn’t never ever be done, not even experimentally – the verdict is clear, it produces shitty results no matter how you cut it! At best you end up (like moir) so confused you probably need color coded shoes to stop you banging into walls. At worst, you could even end up getting mixed up with some cult that’s out to do real damage to people and planet in the name of God.

It’s a shitty pay out and trust me and it just doesn’t work.

Truth is simply this religion may be the written word. But words often have the capacity to transcend their dictionary meaning to encapsulate the broader “truth.” Taken too it’s extremely, it’s a powerful astringent that will always be the preferred means to recruit fanatics only because it can be cut in any way to fit the bill. Is it such a wonder that so many these days are drawn to radicalism these days by the those who know only too well how powerful a tool it is to further their own nefarious and destructive agenda’s. Be it spreading hatred, fanning divisions, sharpening the sense of disenchantment it’s just plain and simply dangerous – that’s why trying to find God in the internet is just so dumber than dumb. It’s enough for me to consider going back to church to consider the return to the fellowship, community, service and what it really means to be a Christian. Someday perhaps even an embattled Christian such as myself will return….one day…. I shall return……for only one reason alone and the rest can take a hike – in the name of my father.

[This has been brought to you by Aurora / written by Darkness / Spiritual / Brotherhood Press 2007/ 983725 ES The Brotherhood Press 2007]

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