Monday, January 09, 2006

I've been a bad, bad girl...

According to the dictionary, I am a profane individual, in that I am frequently irreverent in regard to what some (ok, many) people consider sacred. I am a Christian, though not in any traditional sense of the word. It would take *way* more space (and time and effort) than I have here, now, to explain my beliefs. I believe that other faiths have validity, and I don't mock the religious beliefs of others. However, I *do* laugh at the eternal human presumption to know what God is thinking and planning.

I personally believe that an all-knowing, all-present, all-powerful deity could only be amused at our attempts to know and understand the vastness that is Itself. And to *assume* that we could possibly know what this unknowable being's Will, Plan, motivation, and intentions are is ludicrous even to this lowly human. In this regard, I take Neil Gaiman's stance: "God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time."

This is all going somewhere, I promise.

When last I visited my brother's family in Illinois, he was in Biloxi for the month, helping clean up after that bitch hurricane who used my name. I was helping my SIL watch the amazing children I'm lucky enough to play Tía to. It was somewhat late in the evening, and we were flipping through channels when we stumbled across THE funniest show in human history. Made all the more funny, of course, by it's intended deep seriousness.

The show is called, "Kirk Cameron" and airs on TBN. What it IS, is Kirk Cameron and his associates basically wandering around with a decent videocamera, accosting people on the street and trying to "save" them. I'm talking in the mall, outside nightclubs, you name it!

Now, we *had* imbibed a few glasses of wine, so I think our fits of giggles at his earnestness can (and should) be forgiven. What I'm NOT so sure about is this - I have started tivo-ing the show (yes, it's a SERIES) purely for my own amusement. I watch it to laugh at the absurdity that's so terribly lacking in modern sitcoms. Some of the cultural ignorance displayed on this show is truly sad, and sometimes downright scary, but it's simultaneously so ridiculous that it's laughable.

So... am I going to Hell? Or, rather, if I *believed* in Hell (which I don't) do you think I'd be going there?

3 comments:

mireille said...

Tell me, are you over your Kirk Cameron thing yet? Please say it's so. xoxo

katiedid said...

Oh you are so right - I tried to dig up some video online of his "show," and omg, I think I may have nearly died. What a couple of loons! They went to freaking JERUSALEM to convert Jews, and then they were "surprised" by the negative reaction, while making a rather oblique comparison to how the Jews treated Christ in that weird antisemetic tone some superduper evangelicals get. Yeah, guys, I only wonder why they might have found your preachifying disgusting. Oh, and then there's another one on Satanism. They choose to focus on rock music (how 1950 of them, no?) and interview people at a rock concert (I think they went to Ozzfest?) I was rolling - they picked some totally drunk redneck guy to challenge and "interview," and despite his completely inebriated state he STILL followed a more logical line of reasoning then they did. Hee! Kirk Cameron, making drunks with mullets look better than you'd think, one show at a time.

You have the best recommendations, thanks T!

Trina said...

M - I'm getting there. I've watched several now, and I'm fast cycling from amusement into irritation and offense.

K - Isn't it horrendous?!? I watched one recently where they tried to get an *atheist* to admit he was wrong, or at least start believing in God "just in case". It's like watching a train wreck, where passengers start streaming from the wreckage like clowns from a miniature car...