The Audience And The Bible

I spent twenty minutes on the phone between shows tonite at the Funny Farm in Atlanta with someone who'd called to complain about my first show. I happened to be walking by when the booker was laughing and pointing to the phone so I took the call.

Weird how you will argue with an insane person forever, hoping to win.

I'd opened the show reading Corinthians 13:5, or maybe its 5:13, that says you should not associate with drunkards and the sexually immoral, etc. just letting the good Christians folks know that now was the time to leave.

Of course, no one did. Not right away.

About ten minutes in, when they found out I wasn't kidding, they started leaving. And then, between shows, they started calling. The guy that I talked to told me, as he'd told the booker, that I wasn't funny because I had to walk out with a Bible and a newspaper rather than "just making trees funny" or what-have-you.

I argued with him. Laughingly, but I still spent time arguing.

I am no different than the audience I disdain. I get off on being angry. It's a hobby and it's not a hard one but at least I know why I'm angry.

I don't really know the Bible. Enough of the ridiculous parts have been pointed out so that I can get to them to make a point. The parts that condone slavery, rape and death to just about anyone who does anything from cheating to sucking a dick. You don't have to read the entire Warren Report to figure out that the JFK assaination wasn't the way they played it off. The problem is bringing it out in a way that makes people aware of the obvious flaws rather than simply being bombastic and making people double back and clutch to the bullshit they were weened on.

People don't believe in the Bible as a whole work. Most people who say they do have never read it beyond the shit that makes the bumpersticker. But if you push em against a wall, they start crying faith.

I've yet to find the way to make it funny and do it in a way that actually does make people reconsider that nonsense they have taken as fact. Until I do, I'll continue to take calls between shows.

It isn't that I want to make folks pissed off - not that it hurts me when they are - but that it makes me absolutely and uncontrollaby fucking nutty when people can't understand how obvious it is in it's duplicity.

You believe in this nonsense why? Because you sought it out and it struck you as sensible?

Trust me, if I had a vision from Jesus right now - telling me that all that shit is on the up and up - I would buy it. If a green spaceman beamed me up to his ship and told me that we are all clones, I'd start a cult. But that doesn't seem to happen to anyone but inmates and addicts - the ones religion tends to discard first.

Any religious belief without basis is limiting at the expense of the soul. The moments of true spirituality I have had have been awe-striking and better than love or having money on the dog. The times I have spent seeking it have always felt like the most important and rewarding work you can do. To write off those moments with the most applicable scripture passage or to manage all your highs and lows by sitting on your knees and quoting some Biblical passage is lazy and cheating yourself from finding something real and all your own.

You believe? No, you don't. Someone told you that you had to believe and you believed them so you say you believe. But you don't.

I have no reason to believe so I don't. I prefer child-like wonderment. If I believed what you claim to know for fact, I'd make sure to pray and die early. Until then, I'll continue taking calls from bile-spewing rednecks tween shows and arguing until I can't stop laughing.

stanhope