Part I: For the Secularists
There is no escaping Paris. Not now, not today, and there won’t be for a long time. I once went to Paris with no intention of ever escaping, but somehow I did, and now here I am, back in the empire. I intended to write to America as an expatriate, but that would have been sort of weird, since I’ve never been much of a patriot.
Since September 12th, 2001, we have lived in what is often called the “Post 9/11 World.” I fear that now we will live in the “Post Paris” world. If you think that the Post 9/11 world contained a demonstration of the absolute, unchallenged superiority in firepower the northern hemisphere possesses over the rest of the world and created the most horrific…bungling cluster-fuck this world has ever known, you just wait until we tread our asses fully into the Post Paris world.
There is nothing that will ever compare to what is in store for us. The stupidity of mankind…and I mean ‘man’ kind as opposed to ‘human’ kind, because ‘woman’ kind and ‘child’ kind are going to have to bear the brunt of the vengeance and death that ‘man’ kind will create in the wake of this tragedy.
Don’t worry, women and children, we will tell you that we are doing for you; that we are doing it to keep you safe. Maybe you will believe us and maybe you won’t, but that doesn’t really matter, does it? That’s because we’re going to do it anyway. It won’t be for you, it will be for us, because ‘man’ kind lives for conquest and death. We rule this ball in space, and when you dig down to the nuts and bolts of the matter we get what we want; and what we want now more than ever is revenge and hell on earth.
Why do you think we made all of those ‘1st person shooter’ games? We need to prepare all of those lazy cheeto-eating boys for the glory of popping a cap in some less-than-human enemy’s ass. Why do you think we call movies with ungodly amounts of violence ‘blockbusters’ and advertise them through every media outlet we’ve devised until you either go see the movie, or puke…or both?
Likewise, why do think we call movies with ungodly amounts of sex ‘pornography’ and legislate them into a shadowy corner of your computer’s browser history? It’s simple; we don’t want you out there mastering the art of fucking, we want you out there mastering the art of killing!
Brace yourselves and batten down the hatches, my friends, the Post Paris world is coming.
I wrote an essay in 2008 entitled “The War on Terror Will Be Different.” In this essay — written before I had any interest in seeing that God was beside me at all times — I stated that if the North was to fight this war against Al-Quaeda, the one thing that would insure defeat was fighting it as a conventional war with military personnel. That was one of the objectives of the the people who planned, financed, and executed the 9/11 attacks.
They knew that if the United States and few other ‘loyal allies’ voluntarily launched a conventional war in the Middle East, it would become a quagmire from which they would never be able to extract themselves. They knew this because part of their plan was that they would never allow the northerners to extract themselves. They were right, weren’t they? They knew how we would react.
Sorry, America, but the moment the first boot hit the soil of Afghanistan in October of 2001, they won and we lost. We might have been able to minimize our defeat then, but not anymore. When the Bush Administration manufactured the danger lurking in Iraq and declared war on a weakened and constrained Saddam Hussein, it was done, and our defeat was complete. At this point I think our best bet, if ‘western civilization’ is to survive at all, is that we just need to ask them for their terms and be done with it. Find a railroad car and sign the papers.
I also stated that if the North was to have any chance of victory in the war they saw as necessary that it would have to be different. “W” told us it would be different, but what he apparently meant was that the difference would be that the United States would rationalize the use of torture, extreme rendition, the use of black sites, the reclassification of prisoners of war as ‘enemy combatants’ so that we would not have to afford them the protections of the Geneva Convention, and outright murder of prisoners already in custody as the new “American Way.” On top of this, our tax dollars went to private contractors who did the work of our SS and Gestapo so that the government could shield itself from accountability for these crimes and maintain their dark shroud of ‘plausible deniability.
In my statements on how the war would have to be different if the North was to have any hope of victory my recipe was simple: it would have to be fought with judiciaries, courts, intelligence gathering, police, and an unprecedented amount of international cooperation. Of course, there are very, very steep dangers in that as well, but this post is not for that. I will post that essay in about a week so that you may read it if you like. I stated that only by employment of these measures and the tactics they entail, could anything other than our utter defeat even be possible. Oh well, nobody ever listens to me anyway.
America and the rest of the North chose boots on the ground, and now we can enjoy, for another three decades at least, the pain and subtle pleasures of a boot in our ass. I don’t know who to thank for that.
Part II: For those like to call themselves Christians
There is no escaping Paris. Not now, not today and there won’t be for a long time. I once went to Paris with no intention of ever escaping, but somehow I did, and now here I am, back in the empire. I intended to write to America as an expatriate, but that would have been sort of weird.
I am back in the empire. Pardon me while I let the horror of that sink in. The situation is horror to me because since my return I have begun this walk with God and seek, in a mostly failing manner I might add, to live as His Son, Jesus the Christ commanded us to live. I do this and walk through a society that is full of pagans who masquerade as Christians and have hijacked the name of the Prince of Peace, and turned Him into their god of war.
Sickening.
So, if you thought that my statement in a previous post that: “If the institutional evangelical christian church in America is still part of the body of Christ, it’s the asshole” was offensive to your pathetic “Christian” sensibilities, then stop reading right now. Go away and stick your head in the sand, or up your ass, I don’t care. Well, that’s lie. Actually I do care. I’d much rather see the base of your cranium winning a battle with your sphincter than see you on the beach with your ass in the air waiting for…
For the conservative ‘Christians’ who are still reading I say “Bravo!” I want you to keep reading, because Part II of this essay is for you and I am calling you out.
Repent!…and (in your best hillbilly voice) accept Jesus into your heart.
Not all at once, but please, my brothers and sisters, step back from all of this civil religion that serves as no more than a grotesque chaplain to the empire and look at the face of Jesus. Look at Him and see how he is looking back at you. He will always look at you with compassion, but if there is a hint of “what are you doing?” in those eyes then you need to reassess.
He came to save us, not so that we had a means to punch a ticket to paradise, but to reconcile us to the Father and to each other. This reconciliation is not just for the individual, but all human societies and cultures. He came to reconcile all we have built and done back to God. To try and show us the way back to God; not primarily from an individual perspective, but from a humanity perspective.
I gave sermon some months ago in which I stated that what we read in what has become known as “The Sermon on the Mount” was Jesus’ sermon. When he taught and preached in synagogues, temples, village streets, or fields, that was His sermon. That is what His Heavenly Father sent Him to tell us. He didn’t have five or six sermons; He had that, and of you ask me, it pretty much says it all.
There is that and His Eleventh Commandment: That we are to love one another. No qualifiers, no ifs, ands, or buts, but that “As I have loved you, so you are to love one another.”
I’m not fooling myself that any of that is easy, especially in a world that praises violence and revenge, but it is necessary. So if you call yourself a Christian and have any evil thing to say about our Muslim brothers and sisters in this world, remember the Eleventh Commandment.
There are evil anti-christs out there running America’s evangelical churches who will tell you otherwise. They will dehumanize the world’s adherents to Islam and will tell you that the Qu’ran preaches and encourages the murder of anyone who will not accept their faith. I have a newsflash for you. The Bible does the same thing. The Bible has countless accounts of the murder of men, women and children in the name of God and of Israel.
There aren’t many guarantees in this world but I can guarantee you one thing, the episode in the Bible in which the nation of Israel went into the land of Canaan and, in fulfilling the will of God, slaughtered every man, woman, and child wasn’t written by the Canaanites. I believe their version would be somewhat different.
I will finish Part II of this essay with a very simple truth. If you call yourself a Christian — a little Christ — and you support war, or if you think building earthly wealth on the backs of the poor without lifting them as you lift yourself is acceptable in any way, or if you think that adherents to another brand of faith are further from God than you, then you are not an actual Christian.
You are lying pagan who is defiling the name of my savior in the name of your evil and corrupted world. You are a lying pagan as much as was the emperor Constantine who thought he’d try taking our wonderful symbol of Christ’s suffering into battle to see if there was any ‘victory mojo’ in that thing. You are a lying pagan who sees the figure of God made flesh as a ticket to a cool place when you die and nothing more. You see Christ’s reconciliation as something for you, but not everyone else.
Newsflash number two: If you support War, Greed, and Christianity Uber Alles, I think you will be in for a big and very unhappy surprise when you stand before God and Jesus has to declare whether or not He knows you. Sorry.
Don’t worry, for all is not lost! Having alerted you to the fact that your personal salvation is at risk if you continue to take the Lord’s name in vain with your hatred of others, lust for war, and love of money I cannot in good conscience leave you hanging there with nothing to worship. I have the perfect solution for you. It is a religion that is skyrocketing in popularity among white supremacists everywhere. It goes by several names; Asatru, Canuatrú, or Dísitrú. For you I will simplify it and call it “Odinism.”
It is worship of the Norse Gods, and the two of you are a perfect match! There is no fairy-ass Jesus-style enemy love or forgiveness in Odinism, there is only power and conquest. And the best part for most of you is that Valhalla is whites only.
Now I know that there are some issues you will have to work out. First, there are millions of people of color who share your hatreds, lusts, and loves, but I am certain that all of you will put your heads together and find a way to twist and bend the rules of this religion, just as you did the way of Jesus, so that all of you can enter your new paradise. I need to offer a little warning to my brothers and sisters of color. Your white compatriots will eventually allow you into Valhalla, but they will require you to enter as servants, and they will never allow you into the Great Hall.
The other problem, which seems easier to solve, is that your compatriots in the Ku Klux Klan will have to learn how to make giant Thor’s Hammers to burn in people’s yards. That shouldn’t be much of a problem, because I’m sure there is at least one knuckle-dragging mouth-breather among their ranks who was able to rack up a string of “C’s” in math that can work that out for them.
Enjoy your new religion and all of the hatred and lust Odinism not only grants you, but for which you will be richly rewarded by your new gods. See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya.
Part III: For the followers of Jesus
I wrote the following text to a friend and fellow pastor on Saturday morning: “The greatest danger for us in these Post Paris days, as followers of Jesus, is to find ourselves saying under our breath and in our hearts ‘Yes, God, But…'”
Those of us who live, as best we can, as followers of Jesus, understand the Eleventh Commandment and its universal application. We also look to Jesus’ sermon as the design for living that He meant it to be. It is perfect architecture and every beam, every load-bearing wall, every flying buttress, every room is designed to allow us to keep pace with God as we walk.
When the pagans look to God and say “Yes, God, I know we are supposed to love one another, especially our enemies, and pray for them; but these people, these Muslims, these animals are not worthy of your grace, mercy, or love and must be wiped off the face of the earth” we say otherwise. When they say “Yes, God, but…” we say “Yes, God.” There are no qualifiers, no ifs, ands, or buts. Just obedience to what he told us in His sermon.
That, my friends, is doing the tough work of God on this earth. Stand strong, stand together, and please, no longer fear calling out the pagans who take Christ’s name in vain. Jesus, in as close to a rage as was ever told about Him, cleared the temple of those who were defiling it. It is time that we follow His lead. Not in a rage, but with the calm understanding of the necessity of cleansing our temple that comes only from God.
We do not love what happened Friday night in Paris, but we refuse to hate in its wake.
Part IV: For my French brothers and sisters wherever you are.
There is no escaping Paris. Not now, not today and there won’t be for a long time. I once went to Paris with no intention of ever escaping, but somehow I did.
I love you and I pray that you will wait and find wisdom. I wish Monsieur Hollande had said different things early on Saturday morning, but he spoke to the revulsion we all felt. I cannot slight him for those words in those moments because I remember that he made that statement mere moments after he emerged from the Theatre Bataclan; moments after he stepped over the bodies of 120 people who had been massacred just hours before.
My beloved French brothers and sisters, you were wise enough not to follow our stupidity into Iraq. You refused to be blind lemmings and you will never know how much I love and respect you for that. As a humorous aside, some of you may know how the conservatives of this country rewarded you for your foresight. They changed ‘french’ fries to ‘freedom’ fries and ‘french’ toast to ‘freedom’ toast. It was quite humorous, and I have a confession to make” when it comes to green beans, I prefer ‘freedom’ cut.
My prayer for you in this Post Paris world in which you shall lead the world’s response is that you again be wise. I love you all and I pray that you are wise enough not to wage a war without mercy or pity, but to wage, instead, a war of mercy and pity.
Peace and love to all,
Niemand