Guess that movie got my goat

Here is the next page from my book of 300 Drawing Prompts. (The last appeared on May 7.) The prompt for this one was "Rainforest".

Man,

I sure am opinionated about religion. I consider myself an atheist, but I love to puzzle over as many religions as I can get my hands on. (For that word “puzzle” I originally wrote “meditate” but changed it cuz that’s a tricky concept nowadays; people use meditate to denote various things: but if I say that I like to meditate on religion, I only mean that I like to think deeply & intensely about it; and, so far, all the religions I’ve learned about are worth pondering in this fashion, which is why I always say that religion seems to me like a subsection of poetry.) And I have my favorites. But my favorites aren’t really the religions, they’re more the texts that those religions claim to be based on (I like the Hebrew Scriptures best) — the actual religions themselves I tend to hate; in fact, I agree with whoever said “All religions are essentially systems of torment.”

What got me all charged up yesterday is that I watched a long movie about some Christians — I guess they were Jesuits — in Japan. It was a fiction film. And the Japanese authorities were hunting down and torturing anyone who would not renounce their Christian faith. Some form of Buddhism seemed to be the religion that the government was comfortable with people practicing. But I could be wrong about this plot synopsis; so take my gossip with a grain of salt — I’ve never been good at following plots; and I didn’t pay the closest attention to the film; humankind’s infighting turns me off. Group-vs.-group nastiness has the same effect on me as warm beer does on the antagonist of Blue Velvet (1986):

“One thing I can't fuckin’ stand is warm beer. It makes me fuckin’ puke!” —Frank Booth

I myself love warm beer, just for the record. And note that my other favorite anti-hero from my other favorite film, Officer Duke from Wrong Cops (2013), is the farcical child of Blue Velvet’s Frank Booth. Whereas Booth’s manner and tone of speech is terrifying, Duke inherits these traits in an augmented way (should we call it a softened way?) — in Duke, they carry more of a whine than a threat; so the result is hilarious (tho it’s the type of hilarity that is one with amoral candor, so the audience does not laugh aloud at Duke, or, if so, then it’s a laughter that is defensive rather than mirthful). You must admit, there’s a family resemblance.

But back to this other film about the religious fools. (I don’t wanna give its title cuz I didn’t enjoy it: I just wanna purge my reactions to its contents.) I’m only saying that the way people behave when they relinquish their individuality to organizations, whether government agencies or religious cults, so quickly exasperates me that I pull back from attending to the details of their situation and focus solely on the centrally human relations. That’s why I might sound like I only half-watched the film. I truly attended with care, even great care, but my interest zooms out from the factoid particulars and broods over the bigger picture, due to my gnosis that all theological hairsplitting is a mistake. (OK I’ll admit that I’m talking about Martin Scorsese’s Silence (2016) — but please just listen to what I say about it, don’t go see it; I’d urge you instead to re-watch Wrong Cops or Blue Velvet.) My summation, if I were to report about what the film portrays as life’s point, its ultimate thrust, is that it all comes down to the question “Which flag shall you honor?” Your little picture or image of Jesus is one flag, and the literal flag of each government is an alternative. So (the authorities say) denigrate that other flag, so we can have confidence that you’ve embraced our own.

Everyone wants you to promise to be true to their group exclusively. It’s like a jealous husband, this group-disease patriotism.

Or maybe I’m patriotic after all, but I pledge my allegiance unto art; by which I mean the imagination: the Poetic Genius. And I find that the Poetic Genius is compatible with any format, so why does it matter whether you renounce or adhere to any faith or government, etc.? Just get the ceremonial stuff out of the way, and let’s move on to the important act of creating, or relating mind-to-mind. Maybe if there were an organization that forbade ALL speech, ALL human contact whatsoever, then I’d be against it: maybe then I’d hesitate to renounce my “faith”. But they usually leave you a little something to play with. So my stance, swerving slightly from the wise words of the wife of Job (2:9, changing “die” to its antonym) is: Curse God and LIVE. (That is to say: Simply convert to whatever the thugs are hard-selling to you; then, as fast as you can, get back to your art.)

I wonder if I’m explaining this clearly enough. In the movie, the government goons would arrest a posse of Christians and force them to stand, one at a time, before a type of tribunal; and, lying there on the ground, between the plaintiffs and the accused, was a flat image depicting Satan Christ (pardon my bias); and the accused was told to step on the image, and this act would constitute apostasy; and if the accused chose to cling to their Christian beliefs and thus refuse to snub the false idol, they’d be tortured to death.

Now, can you believe that anyone wouldn’t just stomp on the image? Who cares? You think Jesus or God or the Creator, looking down from heaven, gives two figs about some keepsake? What is God to you, if you think this way?

God is a brutal dictator in the sky whose concerns for outward show and “respectability” are the concerns of a mobster.

It’s funny to me, to consider a self-styled Christian having qualms about stepping on a sentimental picture. I guess I take seriously the passages in the Bible that condemn idolatry. For a soul to respect any image is more of an insult to Endlessness, if my prophets are right. In other words, if you DON’T step on the image, you’re renouncing true faith. Take just three excerpts from one single poet — it’s not hard to find this type of idea in the scriptures:

Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made: And the mean man boweth down... (Isaiah 2:8-9)

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At that day shall a man look to his MAKER [the Poetic Genius]... And he shall not look to the altars, the work of his hands, neither shall respect that which his fingers have made, either the groves, or the images. (Isaiah 17:7-8)

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They have cast their gods into the fire: for they were no gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone: therefore they have destroyed them. (Isaiah 37:19)

Am I making too big of a deal about this image business? I suppose the Christians in the movie would offer some fancy-footwork philosophy explaining the justification for considering the objects that were created by human hands sacred, rather than offensive to the Everlasting.

Yet what’s extra funny is that this notion of human creation being verboten is actually the opposite of my own true love for poetry: so, in a strange way, I’m on the side of the Christians who refused to step on the artworks!

But I wouldn’t go to my martyrdom for the sake of respecting, say, da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. I’d step on the Mona Lisa and renounce oil-painting in a heartbeat, to save my hide (I’d even mustachio poetry); especially if it would get me a government promotion. But lest you think I’m a wimp, I’ll have you know that the one thing I’d never do is harm another person — so if the goons asked me to evict someone from their house, I’d rather be martyred than join that party. I just think that sadism is undistinguished: find something a little more stylish to do with your God-given deviousness.

Incidentally, who cares what anyone believes? It’s more important what people DO. And how could God not know this? Is God really that stupid, that he cares a hoot about what we verbally confess? These foolish Christians up there on the movie screen wanna bring Christ to Asia. Here’s what I say: Despite the fact that Asia may not yet have had the pleasure of being overrun by evangelicals, there are multitudes of Asians acting in accordance with Christ’s gospel every instant, perhaps even the majority inherently enact Jesus’ teachings — and any Asian who is aligned with Christ (even unknowingly and unintentionally) is already a Christian! Whether or not the actual words “Christ” or “Jesus” are used is immaterial. I myself, considered in this light, am probably a Christian — even against my own damned will! & against my own confession: for (as I said at the start) I call myself an atheist, and in my better moods I say I’m even ANTICHRIST; but words don’t matter, in this sense: only action; and since I’m against banksters and the enforcement of debt, and insofar as I’m against sitting in moral judgment of others (etc.), then reluctantly I’m a Christian. Yes, like it or lump it. They’ll drag me into paradise kicking and screaming.

But as soon as I get to heaven, I’m slaying all the angels. Therefore beware, dear God, if you’re listening: Do NOT let Christ save me. It’ll just be bad news and another Biblical Cycle for everyone involved.

By “Biblical Cycle” I mean the recurrence that plays out every time God achieves his oh-so-perfect scenario, with all souls safely & soundly corralled in the pleasure-garden and every being on its best behavior — inevitably one of us inhabitants, usually an animal like Yours Truly, evinces volition, which angers Jehovah and thus re-triggers the sanctified process of eviction-to-restitution. The first biblical book is Genesis, which begins in the garden with tense harmony but then soon falls sinward. Fast-forward a few thousand pages and the final book is Revelation (I’m using the Christian Bible, like a good atheist) whose story ends with humankind restored to the Perfect Garden with Jehovah God. The implication is that the sin-&-fall is bound to RECUR. All that needs to happen is for one of the saved saints to remember she’s free.

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In conclusion, there were lots of funny things about this movie. Its Christians were trying to Christianize Japan, which, as I explained, was presented as Buddhist at that time. I still can’t stop laughing (perhaps the film, whose tenor was one of gloomy moody brooding, actually was a humor piece, tho subtle) — for I take this truth to be self-evident: that Christ himself was a practicing Buddhist.