Mr. Christian

Because I am single and need very little I sometimes forget the importance money has on people’s lives and how it can affect their public displays of faith and sometimes even their actual faith itself. Let me caution the reader that I don’t necessarily mean spiritual or religious faith. I am talking about membership in communities of business, occupation, philosophy, science, sports, politics, so many social arenas in which like-mindedness can be perceived as so important that it supersedes what is right and often even what the individual genuinely believes.

The easiest example of what I’m talking about IS, of course, religion or, the less disparaging, more accurate term, “spirituality.” If you’ve been to as many churches as I have you’re bound to have seen one or two of those poor lost souls who spent so much money, time and effort going through seminary, Bible college, or other spiritual training, gathered a flock of believers, built a church, and finally provided for themselves and their families a decent living only to meet with some circumstances or some knowledge that caused them to completely change their minds and lose their faith. Perhaps the loss of a child or spouse, a visit to an economically disadvantaged area, shaking hands with Dick Cheney, witnessing a natural disaster or something of that nature that would call almost any spiritual optimism into question has rendered them non-believers. But it would be a shame to waste all the years of study, the struggle, and of course MONEY! It might not even be possible to start again. So they just continue on robotically going through the motions. But now phrases of faith that once made their spirits soar with joy feel like acid dripping from their tongues. They sweat at the pulpit hoping instead of praying that the congregation doesn’t see the spirit being sucked out of them by the very words that used to enliven their hearts. Maybe the one and only thing they desire more than the ability to just defrock and scream at the top of their lungs, “I am a complete fraud!” is just making it through one more day with their families’ financial affairs intact.

As I become more worldly, well-read and misinformed, I am beginning to see this character partly obscured by the misinformation but unmistakeable nonetheless cropping up in so many instances that I am going to give him a name. Henceforth he shall be known in this entry, and possibly others, as Mr. Christian. Okay?

Now as I said this is not just a phenomenon of the church. And though it is a heinous state of affairs for the victim, I am learning to almost welcome the recognition of Mr. Christian since the alternative for me has usually been rage and/or wonder at the inexplicable fatuousness of humanity. Yes before I formally made the acquaintance of Mr. Christian I thought an awful lot of people were unwilling brain donors and halfwits. But now I know they are suffering with a spiritually degenerative disease the only treatment of which seems to be either mind altering drugs, stacks of cash or a combination of the two. I am sensing the reader may know a Mr. Christian or two but wants me to provide an example, maybe two. I’d be glad to oblige.

We ignore a million miracles a day. I believe that if a person could concentrate hard enough; could educate his/her soul; could match his/her spiritual vibration with the frequency of all nature so that we could just be aware of every miracle we confront in a single day there would be no religious bickering. We would all just KNOW the truth, the light, the Tao and debate would be so unnecessary it would not be a consideration. But then life would be too easy wouldn’t it? I don’t believe God can be proved or disproved. But I also believe that the desire for proof, the necessity of it is a very human and unenlightened idea. The Christians say Heaven is within you and every man has been given the measure of faith. Taoists believe that the Supreme Ultimate is beyond the power of human words to describe or human thoughts to encompass. But each person has in his/her mind a concept of it. If one is true to one’s Self and follows Its teachings, who need be without a teacher? God is not something you can PROVE, we have to just “be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)

Ah, but the fools have their teachers too. Words seem different from the chirping of birds but is there really a difference? When I hear guys like Richard Dawkins chirping on about how nature is an inanimate, unintelligent, non-sentient, unfeeling force yet it makes selections, (natural selection-a moron’s oxymoron), to purposefully bring about strategic genetic mutations, I am positive I see Mr. Christian! This is just one of many examples of things Dawkins writes about and lectures about that are now very commonly called, “scientifically proven theories.” HUH? It’s almost painful to watch him try to overjargonize and slickly sophistrate theory after theory that has pseudoscientific backing at best and hard science DISproving it far beyond that which science deems scientifically necessary. If you watch him closely he’ll usually resort to the “I know you are but what am I” argument. Has nothing changed since the kindergarten sandbox? What I mean is tomorrow you might just hear Dawkins say, “Overzealous religious fanatics try to prove God using theory after theory that has pseudoscientific backing at best and hard science DISproving it far beyond that which science deems scientifically necessary.” He has become what he has learned to hate and it’s eating away at him. He’s like a criminal who wants to be caught. And because I chose to read him before I criticized him, I will never question his intelligence or his way with words. That’s why I just KNOW he can’t believe the crap he’s shoveling. But it IS still keeping him a high paid guest speaker and best-selling author amongst those who will ingest just about anything as long as there isn’t a deity as one of the ingredients.
I think to date his most brilliant accomplishment was figuring out how to defrock himself in front of his flock of disbelief-suspenders announcing that he is a fraud without looking like a complete and utter plonker. He actually did it when he said that he is “6.9 out of 7 positive that God does not exist.” That satisfied his hordes of previously convinced while at the same time giving God a 1 in 70 chance of existence. This, when you consider the scientifically calculated odds of the simplest new species being formed by genetic mutation was 1 in 3.6X10 to the 2738th power against, is a virtual admittance of God.

Chuang Tsu says if one side is right while the other is wrong and the other is right while the one is wrong, the best thing to do is look beyond the right and wrong. I think this means that only trivialities lend themselves to bickering and quarrels. Another smart man, Hannibal Lecter once said, “Look inside yourself.” For that which is important I think this is good advice.

I also get a bit tired of the politician/businessperson, (because, who’s kidding who, are they really separate entities nowadays?), command performances any time there is a “March On” protest these days. Talking about “ill-defined messages,” “general incoherence,” comparing to Stalin’s Russia, showing pictures of one dumb, pot-smoking, bandwagon-jumping, dissident who with his flattened out beer case made the sign, “Tax the rich,” and saying, “Gee, we just don’t get it! We can’t understand! We want to help but you aren’t making your message clear to us!” Then you see some sycophantic columnist hoping to score some points with the 1%, (which in Canada starts at around 250,000 bucks a year REPORTED income and we all know that a stat like this has a very high degree of variability), or at least be invited to one of their New Year’s Eve parties write a column entitled, “TAKE from the RICH.” And in the column the obvious issue that the whole world knows is never mentioned: We just want the rich to be taxed EVENLY. Warren Buffett did not say his secretary was taxed more than him, he said she was taxed at a higher RATE than him. I heard from a reliable source, Geoff Loomer a former tax lawyer and professor of law at Dalhousie U. that any Canadian making half a million a year in Nova Scotia should not be paying taxes. Any Canadian making a million a year in Nova Scotia ISN’T. What do you figure the numbers for Ontario and B.C. would be?

THIS is the truth folks. Somebody in a position a bit too powerful got a bit too drunk and let the cat out the bag. That’ll happen in Nova Scotia. If you throw in facts like capital gains tax has been provincially and federally eliminated for the rich, though the rest of us poor schmucks still pay it; a euphemism I love “tax shelters” abound for the rich and they don’t have to go to the Cayman Islands, the Cayman Islands come to them; the entrance fees for immigrant investors – never used to improve Canada as is ostensibly their purpose; you have to BE a millionaire to be an immigrant investor in Canada, nothing else; there is a competition for the most obscene tax waste in Canada every year that includes things like Quebec plows plowing roads with no snow on them getting government employees work despite weather conditions and getting government employees work in the summer repairing damaged roads; and you throw in your worst waste of Canadian tax payers money here; it seems to me like the middle class in Canada is getting a political rodgering like the H & R Block commercial. You’ve seen it. The one where the doctor is viewing the behind of the patient and diagnosing the problem as “tax pains.” At least I think it’s an H&R Block commercial. That’s Canada in a nutshell. Victims of annual political sodomy and still keeping that stiff upper lip! The fact is the very wealthiest of Canadians are able to arrange their taxes so that they are paying nothing. This makes the oh-so-usual reasons for paying taxes here ring a little tinny eh? “You have a civic duty!” “If you don’t pay tax you can’t complain about the government.” “It is tantamount to treason to avoid your patriotic duty to your country.”

Perhaps the bigger issue here is what do the folks with all the REAL money hear? THEY’RE the ones who need to hear all this. They're the ones taking every opportunity NOT to help their own country. And they are the ones best equipped, (since they are filthy rich and won't notice the expense), to do so. The middle class of Canada, who feel the pinch to a greater degree, is supporting this country and if I were prime minister I would give them ALL a few years OFF taxes altogether! TAX the RICH! EVENLY! It’s pretty simple. SO simple that you absolutely KNOW these politicians, who, let’s face it, even though we might hate their guts, are chosen for their intelligence, they KNOW they are chosen for their abilities to ameliorate the masses. I don’t want to be ameliorated any more! I want to be dealt with as someone who is worthy of putting in the effort for! I don’t want to be addressed from parliament by Mr. Christian any more! These phonies may have once believed that they were in it to help Canada and the people of our wonderful country but money has a way of changing all that. If they could THEY would all scream from the Rocky Mountaintops that they are frauds. But alcohol and one good deed in ten keeps them thinking that they are not damaging the social fabric of the nation.

I am sure I could go on and on with the snakeoil salesmen and three-card corner practitioners I think are just a bunch of Mr. Christians who have realized that their faith is gone long after the realization that their faith is unnecessary to the furtherance of their profession. But I don’t want to tax my reader too much. This is already too long. I invite you to give my comments about your own Mr. Christians. I’m sure you have them…