On the way back home from clothes shopping I passed a billboard that said “Being God’s Apprentice, You’ll never be fired.”
I don’t think they thought that line out very well,
but I loved it, anyway.
It’s great because it’s indicative of the fundamentalist movement in America in general. Maybe it’s indicative of fundamentalism everywhere but since I’m only familiar with our particular form of extremism I’ll leave it at that. Anyway, it shows a basic contradiction of thought that if people bother to peel back a bit of the religious wrapping they’ll get to some great gifts of truth.
Take this statement that I’m prattling on about, for example;
Being God’s apprentice, you’ll never be fired.”
An apprentice is someone who is learning under a master’s tutelage. OK, so far so good. Now.. unwrap the present a bit and what’s underneath?
Put into context, an apprentice studies under a master’s guidence with the aim to become a journeyman, with all the rights the master has to be able to grow from being a fledgling to being a tradesman or artisan in her own right. Many go on to become masters themselves… See where this is going?
This is US Christian fundamentalism in a nutshell. Christianity has so much history and so much thought put into it and so much internal contradiction that to actually get into studying it in depth is a wild ride and a garaunteed growth experience. However, in fundamentalism, God’s promise that we all have a choice means that you get to choose to follow God with blind faith and go to heaven, or follow your own path with rational/empirical curiousity and go to hell.
Here’s a disclaimer.. I’m not a Christian at all, so I guess I get to peel back whatever layers or wrapping I wish and I’ll spend my time in hell in good compnay with non-Christian and Christian people who do choose to pull back the curtain on Oz.
(I’m not sure if this should count as a diary but I just felt like ranting and flapping my gums. Hope that’s OK!)