When The Man Doesn't Come Around

The song "The Man Comes Around" was on my playlist yesterday and it got me to thinking about how all the major religions, as well as most of the offshoot cults, teach things like "your reward is in the afterlife". They ram that message into your mind, over and over again, that you should accept your lot in life and not question it. One of the most popular pieces of Christian literature is The Beatitudes:

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall possess the land.
Blessed are they who mourn: for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Those are wonderful, comforting things to hear if you've been downtrodden, under the heels of oppression for all of your life. Yet, when those things are being told to you by the same people who are in bed with the oppressors, it is false comfort and it is placating the masses. The Beatitudes end up sounding more like this:

Don't ask why your little pension fund is gone and you will have stock shelves at Walmart with your arthritic hands until your life is over, at least you'll have treasure in the afterlife.

Don't resist when the riot squad comes to remove you from your home because you missed a few payments, yet your tax dollars bailed out the bank when they made mistakes. Just peacefully give up, live on the streets and in heaven you won't have a mortgage.

Don't mourn too much for your child who died in another useless war which further bankrupted your country and lined the pockets of billionaires even more. They're sitting up on a fluffy white cloud, just waiting for you.

Don't demand justice when you are ripped off, lied to by politicians, or your water and land has been polluted. No worries, this world is just temporary and Jesus will don his Hazmat suit and clean this whole mess up.

Don't ask why you haven't had a raise in years, the success of the company depends on you giving up more benefits, and the CEO getting yet another multi-million dollar bonus. You'll get to play on piles of gold in the afterlife.

Don't question why adulterous politicians are the champions of "family values" while a loving gay or lesbian couple are "destroying the sanctity of marriage". Just keep sending your money, so they can keep spending it on their sins and you'll get to see God, once they cure the world of the gay agenda.

Don't stand your ground, don't fight back, and don't question authority. Big Brother knows best. Now submit to another groping by the TSA and a warrantless monitoring of your internet history like the rest of all God's children.

And finally, stop bitching about being persecuted. You're gay, you "made a choice" and you'll burn in hell unless you find yourself attracted to women all of a sudden. The real victims of persecution are the people who are trying to oppress you, now just be quiet, climb back in the closet and pretend to be straight. Maybe if you pray hard enough, God will allow you into Heaven.

That's basically how people have taken the words of prophets over thousands of years and created a comforting belief system to keep the masses quiet, dumb and complacent. If there is an Almighty Being, it is certainly not interested in what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms and it certainly wouldn't approve of the suffering of billions for the sake of the luxury of the top 1%.

If there is a "Man" and "The Man comes around", I think some people are going to be unpleasantly surprised and if there isn't a "Man" and there isn't an eternal reward, there would be no more horrible feeling than to know you suffered all of your life, for nothing.