Waitin' fer Jeezus

How long have we been waiting for Christ to come back?  I mean, it has been a while.  What's he doing?

Well, let's see how long the Mormons have been waiting:

Dec. 25, 1835  -  D&C 87:8  "..until the day of the Lord come; for behold, it cometh quickly, saith the Lord."
Time elapsed:   175 years, 1 month, 14 days.

Feb. 4, 1831   - D&C 41:4  "And I will be your ruler when I come; and behold, I come quickly..."
Time elapsed:   180 years, 4 days.

So, our latest update was 180-ish years ago?  What, exactly, is the lord's definition of "quickly?"  180 years is easily 6-7 generations.  So... "I'll show up quickly, as in about when your great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren read this."  Someone needs to let god know that his use of 'quickly' is really confusing us.

Okay, so let's go back to the later New Testament books:

Traditionally 95 C.E.   - Revelation 22:20  "He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus."
Time elapsed:  ~1916 years.

So... now I'm really concerned about this whole 'quickly' thing.  Okay, so maybe 200 years is nothing to god, but 2000?!  Isn't that, like, 1/3 of the age of everything or something?  And he makes very clear that it's Jesus we're talking about in this passage.  And, if we want to put this in generations, we can probably say that here, the lord meant "quickly as in when your great^74 grandchildren read this."

Okay, let's see if Jesus himself was a little more clear and accurate:


Around 30 C.E.  -   Luke 21:27-32  "And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory   ... Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled."
Time elapsed:  ~1981 years.

And no, this is not taken out of context, go read it.  Well, Jesus was way more specific, right?  Same generation, so anywhere from 20-50 years, depending on how you define generation.  Oops!  That's somewhere around 5500% error.  Remind me again why we listen to this guy?

So... Jesus seems to be taking his sweet time.  Everyone is so sure that the second coming is right around the corner because of the state of the world...  just like people were during WWII... and WWI... AND the Civil War!
And that's just a few examples from the U.S.  All over the world, people have been feverishly declaring the coming of the lord since... well, just after 0 C.E.

I mean, jeez guys, how long do we have to wait?  Ten thousand years?  A millions years?  A billion freaking years?
Seriously, once the sun goes out, I think we can be pretty sure he completely blew off the whole party.


'Of course, if I were Jesus, I probably wouldn't be too excited to come back either:

"So I went to my people and told them I was god, and then asked to be nice to each other for a change and to stop being such big jerks.  They nailed me to a freaking tree!  

So I went back for a bit to tie up some loose ends and figured I'd show up in a generation or so, but it turns out.. my followers suck!  They don't love each other, for one thing, and anyone who isn't one of them, they kill!  

I mean, the idiots fought for centuries over the hometown of all the jerk-offs who killed me in the first place!  And they burned anyone who even had a clue at the stake for thousands of years! 

Anyway, no matter how enlightened they get, they are total jerks everybody, including each other.  I'm not going back until my 'followers' are at least mildly pleasant to be around."

Blasphemous Blogging?

So none of this that I'm about to write is really very kosher by any Christian's view, I'd imagine, but if there's a hell I'm probably on the way there in any case, so I thought I'd vent a little.

What would Jesus do?  We're supposed to ask ourselves that, right?
Well... based on what we know abou the guy, my guess is he'd utter a lot of platitudes, intentionally confuse people, piss off basically everybody, and then die.

But honestly, what would he do in most situations?  Would he pirate MP3s?  Would he drive 5 mph hour the speed limit?  Would he make pizza sauce himself or buy it canned?
Basically, all I can say is, I have no friggin' clue, and as far as I can tell, neither do you.
The guy has been dead now for a couple millenia, and all we have are inconsistent accounts of dubious authorship that were written, as near as we can tell, about a century after the purported events took place.

Okay, so I know it's supposed to be "Christ lives," right?  But does he really?  I mean, how many people that died 2000 years ago are alive now?  There are exactly zero documented cases.


In church, someone talked on Sunday about how meek and kind and forgiving and understanding Jesus is.  Right?  Well, except for him killing random fig trees out of spite (it was symbolic, right?  Oh, wait, then why kill the poor tree instead of giving another cryptic parable about a tree?).  And being really, really mean to most of the people around him.  Saying downright mean and dissmissive things to his mom, family and friends.  How about racism?

Like seriously.  Jesus said some things that are salve for the soul or wise or cool, but he also said a bunch of inconsistent, unkind, and nonsensical things.  If, that is, we trust the record at all.


So, clearly, I'm the worst blasphemer ever, but I just don't get it.  I don't even know why I'd need a savior... not that I don't make mistakes, but I can't understand how god can be such a wacko that he can't figure out a way to forgive people without throwing his son out to die at the hands of "his" people.  And great job, by the waty, on those people.  Seems like nothing you told them made any difference, god.


Maybe there's a god.  Maybe there's a Christ.  Maybe I'm going to rot in hell, and all the evangelicals out there will happily dance upon my grave just before being raptured up to paradise.
But in that case, god is insane.  He makes no sense at all.  Have fun in heaven with your psychotic overlord.


A few days ago, the Provo Tabernacle burned to the ground.  Except for the severely-damaged outside walls, the thing is just gone.  But, there's a painting inside where everything except the picture of Jesus in the middle is burned.
"A Miracle!" they call it.  Clearly, all pictures of Jesus are fireproof.  We should just build all our houses out of pictures of him, then fire would never be a problem!
So... what I'm thinking is, if god was intent on performing a miracle that night, couldn't he have just put out the fire?  It would have saved the church a bundle, Provo a lot of hassle, and would have prevented the destruction of a beautiful historic building. 

Seriously, do people really believe it when they say every single slightly-good thing is a tender mercy of god, and every horrible thing is, of course, god's will?  Thanks god, for the mostly-burnt painting.  Maybe next you can work on saving the starving orphans of the world, or maybe the polar bears.  I'd trade the damn painting for the polar bears.

I got terrible grades this semester.  I'm sure some would attribute it to my utter rejection on god, recently.  But you know, if prayer really worked, you'd expect the devoutly religious to have consistently higher test scores.  Plently of failing students at BYU are perfect Mormons, and plently of straight-A students everywhere find the idea of a personal god laughable.
Anecdotes are not data.  Your friend may have prayed and gotten her wish of a smooth day at work on the same day that many, many people prayed for a dying loved one, and the loved one died.

Game over.  Thanks for playing.