You better watch out

My father's surgery is in Blacktown in greater Western Sydney. This places it in the heartland of the Hill Song Church community (although it operates more like a company). Hill Song is the Australian equivalent of the messianic Churches that are one of the key planks of George Bush’s popular support. This means that occasionally my father’s waiting room has copies of American Christian magazines. One of these is The Philadelphia Trumpet. The September/October 2005 edition of this magazine has a special report on '7/7', the London underground train bombings that occurred in 7 July. It makes for comical, if vaguely alarming reading.

The ‘7/7’ edition is basically a collection of paranoid, alarmist essays which argue that the shining beacon of the free world, the United States, (which is described as “the greatest single nation on Earth”) is under threat from ‘the Moslems’ (Iran), ‘the Continentals’ (the European Union), and ‘the Asians’ (China and Russia). Of course the subtext of this is that Satan is pulling the strings from above this axis of evil, and the US has been put on notice.

The problem with this scenario, as The Trumpet sees it, is that the United States and the United Kingdom trace their ancestry to the original Israelites, so if they get trumped by the evil three we’re basically all screwed. As one writer convincingly explains…

The modern history of American and British greatness is rooted in ancient history… Chapters 12 through 50 in Genesis detail this family history.

In Genesis 12:1-2, God rewarded the unerring obedience of Abraham by promising that He would “make of thee a great nation.” In Genesis 17, God promised Abraham again that He would “multiply thee exceedingly” (verse 2) and that Abraham would be “a father of many nations” (verse 4).

No matter what’s making this water taste metallic, that argument gets my vote!

Reading this glossy magazine reminds me of similar publications which claim that the Koran prophesized everything from the collapse of the Soviet Union to Britney Spear’s short marriage to a high school friend in Las Vegas.* Or the Hindu pamphlet I read some years ago which claimed that a vast Hindu empire controlled most of the Middle East many thousands of years ago.

The irony of ironies is that most theists have the capacity to find humour in the absurdity of other religious belief systems, yet cannot identify similar absurdity in their own. Which is why I worship grapefruit. It’s round, it’s sour, but if you add sugar it’s very nice. Think about it.

* If you doubt my claim you are clearly under the influence of the Devil. Pray to God for forgiveness!