A Book, A Revelation

The safest place for a secret is between the covers of a book. If that old saying is true, then the New Testament amounts to a highly classified document. Right battles left, faith fights reason, and the source of it all remains eerily untouched.

Normally, I'd be content to let the folly proceed (since it will anyway), but there are moments when a little noisemaking is only responsible, and this, the sealing of a so-called faith-based administration, is one of them. It's time to rescue a perfectly good book-indeed, the Good Book-from invisibility.

The worst blunders come, predictably, from the Christian conservatives. I don't mean their encroachments on government, primarily. I mean the mistakes they make on their own terms. Give me time, and I'll lay out a different world, brimming with awe and designs in the fire. For now, we can start with the no-brainers.

Family values, for instance. From time to time, you may see churchgoers gathered in cheerful groups comprised of father, mother, children. Either these people are strangers pretending to be related, or they haven't read Matthew 10:36: "And a man's foes shall be they of his own household." The point is repeated throughout the Gospels, lest anyone miss it, and even then Jesus feels compelled to underscore it by disowning his own mother.

The same disconnect goes for the Biblical injunction on prayer. Jesus specifically tells his disciples to pray alone, where no one can see them. Yet here we find Bush, opening his second term with a heavily advertised prayer meeting. Does he feel so alone already that he can't tell the difference? Listen up: If you're praying correctly, no one will ever know it.

A little page turning brings us to another shocker. The next time you hear someone talking about the Apocalypse, you might direct them to Luke 21:32 (among others): "Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled." In other words, the end times were over about 2000 years ago. There is no second Second Coming coming.

Do I throw sucker punches? So be it. The day is passed when free-thinking humans could roll their eyes at the legislative rope-a-dopes of the fundamentalists. These goons are coming at you, and they're using the gloves that should be yours.

If you speak English, or have ever been hit on the head by someone who does, you have some relation to the Bible. Then again, why not? It's far from a dogmatic book, and rarely a dull one. Between the heroics of Oscar Romero and the hermeneutics of Ornette Coleman, the wit of G.K. Chesterton and the worldliness of Dante Alighieri, it's easily the noblest piece of nonsense in the Western tradition. It's also the best ally of the intelligent for defeating the small-mindedness that passes for faith these days.

So: Consider the battle joined.