Genuflect, Genuflect, Genuflect (from the Vatican Rag by Tom Lehrer)

I have mentioned that I am rereading Daniel Quinn and having finished Ishmael, I am deep into The Story of B. In it the character B (short for Blasphemer) says “And we know that the pious don’t go to church every Sunday because they have forgotten that Jesus loves them but they’ve not forgotten that Jesus loves them. They want to hear it again and again and again and again. They can live without hearing the laws of thermodynamics ten thousand times, but for some reason, they cannot live without hearing the laws of their gods ten thousand times.”

This got me thinking . . . I know, you’re shocked, shocked you tell me.

One of the examples in B’s speech is the Christmas sermons every year, as if we didn’t know the nativity story by heart. Heck, I am an atheist and I can tell you that story, including many of the finer nuances (couldn’t have been in December as shepherds were out in their fields).

I am reminded of the joke of the drill sergeant who has finally had enough and goes ballistic on his charges. “I have been telling you idiots the same thing for years and you still haven’t learned it!” Of course, he gets a new batch of trainees every eight weeks and has to tell each of those groups what he told the others. But the repetition must get to you at some point (as a classroom teacher I felt it, sometimes begging for a new question to be asked).

If we were to consider ministers and parish priests to be teachers, how good would they be? They certainly would be working in the “sage on the stage” model. But if their object was to get us to follow God’s commandments, don’t you think that their first job would be to teach us what those commandments were? Were you ever given a list? Some say they were given a list of the Ten Commandments, but there are over 600 commandments in Christian Bibles. And public polls show that few Christians can even recite the Ten Commandments, let alone any of the other 600. Were you ever given homework to learn these things? Were you ever given a quiz? Was there a test for membership status in your church? There is a tough test just to acquire a driver’s license in my state, and I would think spiritual salvation would kind of be more important than that, no?

A teaching maxim is “repetition is the lifeblood of teaching.” The nativity story and the Great Flood story proves the case. So, why aren’t God’s commandments given the same treatment? Maybe they could do one a week, which would cover the entire 600 every 12 years and then they could start over. I just finished my second pass through of the Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday, which give me a story and a basic principle of Stoicism every day of the year. Is there such a book for God’s Commandments? A quick Amazon.com search showed me a couple of books with “the 613 commandments of god” in their titles, so there is something.

I am going to back off of that side track I just got on and get back to my main question: why aren’t all of this god’s commandments being taught in any way effectively? I think the answer is simple: a less than cursory examination of those commandments would lessen any belief or faith people had. So many of the commandments are nonsensical. So many important things are not there (child abuse is a bad thing, slavery is a bad thing, diseases are not caused by demons, etc. not on the list).

Even the First Commandment brings up awkward questions: “You shall have no other gods before me!” Wait, you said there was only one god, where did these other gods come from? One source says this commandment means “we must put God first.” First, on a list of one?

The sixth Commandment states “Thou shalt not kill” which seems obvious but then Yahweh goes out and orders the Israelites to kill men, women, the elderly, children, babies, unborn children, sheep, goats, pet dogs, everything because they are the “enemy.” Of course later you are taught to forgive your enemies, which is hard to do if they are all dead.

Many things would have to fall by the wayside if God’s Commandments were taken seriously. For one thing, women would have to submit to men . . . in all things. (Okay, we just lost all of the women, except the sadomasochistic ones.) Violations of these commandments invoke punishments that violate the sixth Commandment, in fact the punishment is almost always death. Women would need to be silent in church and not try to teach men anything, no matter how stupid the man is. Well, you know.

If taken seriously, following those commandments would result in very, very (Very!) difficult lives.

In his book “The Year of Living Biblically” the author did just that. I remember him carrying a number of tiny pebbles in his jacket pocket so if he heard somebody blaspheme, he could “stone” them by throwing one of these tiny pebbles at them unobtrusively. Imagine his fate if he went outside, picked up some hefty stones and proceeded to stone his blasphemer “biblically.” He would have been writing from prison, if not the grave.

And church leaders aren’t stupid. They know that serious reading of the Bible leads to apostasy if not atheism. Seriously drawing attention to their believers to the commandments they are supposed to obey would empty their pews even faster than they are now. So, no teaching God’s Commandments and Bible reading homework. They think “We’ll tell you what you need to know. Think of us as animated Cliff Notes. And you don’t even have to take notes as we will repeat this stuff again and again and again and again.

Postscript If I were all that smart I would have figured out how to have “The Vatican Rag” playing in the background as you read this. I am not, so can you just imagine that happening? Here are the lyrics:

THE VATICAN RAG
words and music by Tom Lehrer

First you get down on your knees
Fiddle with your rosaries
Bow your head with great respect
And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect!

Do whatever steps you want if
You have cleared them with the pontiff
Everybody say his own Kyrie eleison
Doin’ the Vatican Rag.

Get in line in that processional
Step into that small confessional
There the guy who’s got religion’ll
Tell you if your sin’s original.

If it is, try playin’ it safer
Drink the wine and chew the wafer
Two, four, six, eight
Time to transubstantiate.

So get down upon your knees
Fiddle with your rosaries
Bow your head with great respect
And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect!

Make a cross on your abdomen
When· in Rome do like a Roman
Ave Maria, gee it’s good to see ya
Gettin’ ecstatic an’
Sorta dramatic an’
Doin’ the Vatican Rag