Get Thee Behind Me, Christadelphian Signage

In the turmoil around moving house, I’ve neglected my heretical duties these past couple months.  I’ll miss the weekly Christadelphian sermon announcements (the link, just there, goes to a collection of these); this post catches up on our final several weeks’ worth:

5 June 2016

1. How’s that? Does He pretend He’s not home when they ring His heavenly doorbell?
2. Besides, I thought Prince was God’s Witness.
3. {This one is an old joke and I don’t know who deserves credit for it but works here with a bit of word association to make the Jew/Witness connection}:  “My granddad died in the holocaust. Yep, he fell out of a Watchtower at Auschwitz.”

19 June 2016

 

In this 400th anniversary year of Shakespeare, this seemed far too obvious a choice but the soliloquy has some good bits downstream (you know…”shuffle off this mortal coil,” “what dreams may come,” etc).  I would have opted for something you could really put some preaching into, myself, like

“It is an heretic that makes the fire,
Not she which burns in’t.”
–Paulina, Scene III of The Winter’s Tale

But, it isn’t up to me to write the sermon; I am but a humble critic…the play’s the thing.  Still, I can help thinking they’ve missed a Shakespeare opportunity with MacBeth (although the Guilt lecture may have incorporated this one):

 

26 June 2016

Or, why is the US or, for that matter, the UK and France?  Indeed…why is Israel in the Middle East?  Oh, yeah, that’s right…Zionism and the arbitrary demarcations imposed on the region by these powers after the World Wars.  For greater detail, read about partition of the Ottoman Empire and, probably more relevant to the Christadelphians, the British Mandate for Palestine.

3 July 2016

This one was almost too easy. Mosaic law is full of ludicrous and anachronistic rules about food and lending practices and women’s groups will gladly (and correctly) point out the misogynistic ones. To be fair, there are also some very practical things, rare though they are, that have found their way into modern Codes of Regulations. But, I’m here to mock so you have to find those on your own.

You mustn’t commit sodomy with one’s father (Lev. 18:7) nor one’s paternal uncle (Lev. 18:14). You can almost hear the schoolkids as Lev. 18:14 was read out: “so then, Rabbi, it’s okay to commit sodomy with mom’s brother?” “Okay, you little shits, I’m writing this one down as Lev. 18:22…ANY male, is that clear enough?”

Pantomime and Shakespeare (if those aren’t the same thing) become difficult to perform because crossdressing of any sort is banned (Deut. 22:5).

 

Mosaic Law Traffic Sign

 

There are some words of wisdom for Donald Trump, too: The King shall not take an excessive number of wives and he shall not accumulate an excessive quantity of gold and silver (Deut. 17:17).

There is one, grand Holocaust-related irony here represented by the Mosaic law to exterminate the seven Canaanite nations (Deut. 20:17).  Tsk.

 

 

Then, there was Amalek who went to war against Israel (as did many other tribes) during the Exodus. Don’t know off the top of your head who Amalek was? Well, you are instructed to “always remember what Amalek did (Deut. 25:17) and destroy the seed of Amalek (Deut. 25:19)” and this is in no way contradictory to the laws not to take revenge nor bear a grudge (Lev. 19:18).

10 July 2016

“It is easier for a rich man to enter a camel than it is to pass a needle.” –excerpted from the Jeremy Hardy translation of the Bible.

To be serious, Jesus’ use of parables is INCREDIBLY passive aggressive. Take this passage from Mark 4:11-12 (New International Version, a real one this time):

“The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!”

Or: “Ha, ha, ha!  You misunderstood my puzzle so you can burn in Hell for all Eternity!”

17 July 2016

 

Love thy nieghbour?  A small church like this probably thinks that the little things matter (like not being petty about proofreading).  The Official Church is at once more explicit and coy.  Or, maybe this ISN’T a euphemism:

 

 

24 July 2016

 

I won’t wade into an argument with zealots whether the Bible is ‘True’ of ‘False.’ What I will point out is that it is funny; no, more than that: it’s a fucking laugh riot. You know, the plagues of frogs and locusts and Benny Hill style nudity and bear attacks; the book of Job can be a laugh riot read the right way, and the whole Abraham and Isaac debacle is hilarious.  And, there are loads of other bits just tucked away awaiting your merriment.  For instance, these verses from 1 Samuel 21 could be out of a Mel Brooks comedy:

14 Achish said to his servants, “Look at the man! He is insane! Why bring him to me?
15 Am I so short of madmen that you have to bring this fellow here to carry on like this in front of me? Must this man come into my house?”

31 July 2016

 

Hoping for something goofier for the last one ever, all I could think of was Dragnet: