What's So Funny About Peace, Love & Eternal Hellfire

Hour two of an eight hour drive from Cincinnati to Maryland covers Ohio’s rural east. It’s huge and flat and when the sun sets in your rear view mirror, the dark blues of the horizon line bleed into stretches of violet and magenta, before giving way to a gorgeous, soft blue above. It really is quite beautiful.

Then you pass a roadside billboard that reads, “HELL IS REAL” with a red ‘R’ for effect, and your whole Mid-West, Nature-Appreciation high has a quick and hard come down.

Further down the same interstate, the Ten Commandments are given their own series of billboards, painted as though they were the background set painting for a middle school play about the Bible.

Now, I have no problem with believers; I just don’t share their beliefs. I do, however, have a problem with people who wish to force their beliefs upon others. I do have a problem with soapbox lecturers who use misrepresentations of ancient texts to justify their own biases and predispositions. According to my beliefs, that makes you an asshole.

I’m sure the Big Ten, as I’ve taken to calling them, were, at some point, very sage guidelines for both human and community survival. Don’t kill each other, don’t bone your buddy’s wife, and don’t steal your neighbor’s slave. All timeless principles, I’m sure. But we now have the benefit of thousands of years of collective knowledge and experience on which to base our lives. Do we really require proper slave-owning instructions today?

Let me put it this way.

I’m sure that when Rocko, having just crawled out of his cave dwelling one morning, stumbled upon his cave neighbor, Clubo, trying to have sex with an elk, he wanted very much to help out his wayward friend. Rocko's cousin had attempted this very act many moons past and had met with an untimely death as a result. Rocko tried to explain this to Clubo, but Clubo did not care: fucking an elk felt good, and he liked it, so he would continue to do so--regardless of the recent outbreak of Caveman VD. So, Rocko needed a different way to convince his friend. One night, Rocko pointed to the moon and told Clubo it was a great man who watched over everyone. And because the moon did resemble a person's face--and the fact that he was an idiot--Clubo believed this. Rocko then said the moon did not like it when cavemen had sex with elk; that, in fact, the moon only wanted cavemen to have sex with cavewomen because that would make more people to help their struggling civilization thrive. Clubo did not like this rule, but Rocko said that the moon would make Clubo’s dick fall off if he had sex with the elk. So, Clubo found a nice Mrs. Clubo and had many Clubo kids, and long ago forgot the warm touch of the forbidden elk.

There you go. That’s religion to me: Rules about fucking elk. Rules to govern one’s life that, I believe, represented the best wisdom available at that time. But we live two millennia later. Humans and culture have progressed in ways unimaginable even a hundred years ago. We need not fear the bacteria in pork. We need not only mate with the opposite sex to propagate the species. We need not rely on mythology for meaning or purpose. And we need not fear the boogeyman at the pulpit.

Hell is real inasmuch as your most horrific dreams are real. It’s a millennia-old hypothesis based on shaky data. Hell is the wet dream of the world’s most twisted masochist.

At least, that’s what I believe.

Exodus, Chapter Twenty, Verses 1 - 17

Then God spoke all these words:

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.

Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

You shall not murder.

You shall not commit adultery.

You shall not steal.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.

You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.