More analysis of the lyrics of the Rush CD Snakes and Arrows .

One day last week, I could not get to sleep for I was so wound up, anxious, and very uptight just thinking about some preliminary bloodwork tests I had to get done before my ear surgery later on this month (medical related stuf really makes me anxious and hyper tense). So to try to get to sleep and realizing that I had already formed my disagreements with Jason Smith on ESPN Radio’s AllNight, I decided to get up and goto the living room and watch infomercial television. However, I came across one of the ‘controversial’ televangelists that frequent BET overnight programming and decided to listen to what he had to say about getting rich.

Hearing the ‘icon infomercial’, the secret separating life from death, wealth from poverty, blessing from cursing, etc was all in the power of you and what you would do with the $1000.00 you had just laying around and doing nothing. I began to think very heavily about this Rush song:

“The Larger Bowl”

(a pantoum)

if we’re so much the same like I always hear
why such different fortunes and fates?
some of us live in a cloud of fear
some live behind iron gates

why such different fortunes and fates?
some are blessed and some are cursed
some live behind iron gates
while others only see the worst

some are blessed and some are cursed
the golden one or scarred from birth
while others only see the worst
such a lot of pain on the earth

the golden one or scarred from birth
somethings can never be changed
such a lot of pain on this earth
It’s somehow so badly arranged

somethings can never be changed
some reasons will never come clear
it’s somehow so badly arranged
if we’re so much the same like I always hear

I guess the African children are starving because of the ‘curse of Ham’.
I guess Hurricane Katrina happened because of disagreeing with a televangelist.
I guess 9-11-01 happened because we lacked faith (or eight years of Clinton per some ‘theopoliticians’).
I guess the Oklahoma City Courthouse bombing happened because of secret sin.
I guess Columbine happened because we did not send in enough money.
I guess the Virginia Tech massacre happened because we did not pray hard enough.
I guess people die of incurable diseases because they lacked faith.
I guess people lose their electricity because they didn’t sow per a Bible Verse formula to claim a Bible verse.
I guess people get laid off from their jobs because we did not pay our tithes.

If you used their logic directly, that is the answers they give. All those answers are unsatisfactory and not-acceptable.

But all the problems of human suffering did not have to happen, but came about because of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit and later on Babel.

We claim we’re free but at the same time are bound by the ’spiritual superstitions’ we can not shake off. We physically will not step on a sidewalk crack fearing we will break our mother’s back. We spiritually give into the ‘gospel guilt’ because we will not ’see God meet the need’ if we do not ’sow the seed’. We physically try not to break a mirror fearing seven years of bad luck. We spiritually refuse to speak out against a blatant and obvious false prophet because we fear a ten generation curse. We claim victory over destinies and fates but live bound up behind legalisms, prison walls, and iron gates of idolatry of self-exalting ’spiritual superstars’ to the point of near godhood.

Mega-blessed or hyper-cursed
Anointed one or ‘marked’ decades before birth
Scare prophets are wishing for the worse
Such pain, sickness, desperation, and despair on the earth.

Super-wealthy or generationally cursed
Chosen one or pre-mature birth
Raising low self esteem to feel more tersed
Working to steadily increase their personal girth

Lately in the past two months, I have been thinking on this latter half of this scripture found in Mather 5:45:

…for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

If our answers of tragedies occurring are due to failing to send a televangelist money, etc. One would think that you would see the sun be ‘dark’ on sinners and bright on the ‘Christians’ who sent in money and vice versa in reference to rain. Job explains all of the issues of human suffering well with Job’s three friends being more like word of faith teachers and televangelists. Pain and suffering is the natural consequences of the moral evil in the world. We Christians really want to believe that we are in some kind of exclusive club and only we should be or can be blessed and I really believe that we actually look forward with glee to see ones have bad days to equate them as the ‘cursed’ to both raise our low self-esteem and to pious us more because we are ‘not like them’.

We all have pain. We all suffer. We all have sun. We all experience rain. We all experience sickness, health, poorer, rich, life, and death. Like the ‘theopoliticians’ who think that electing the right candidates will get us laws pass designed to eliminate sin instead of learning how to be victorious and overcome sin; it appears we are ‘theoconsultants’ who believe that if we just read the Bible some more, give some more money, cross our ‘t’ and dot the ‘i’, drink some miracle spring water, confess some more sin, send in our offering with the green prayer cloth, that we can become mega wealthy and mega anointed and buy our way out of and eliminate human pain and suffering instead of using the unadulterated story called the Bible and learn from those in the faith that walked through pain and suffering and saw how they walked through it when they really wanted God to come down and eliminate it.

“…….my grace is sufficent enough for thee.”

And when the ‘theoconsultanting’ fails, we do like Scott Adams wrote in his book The Dilbert Principle where we find another ‘theoconsultant’ who convinces us that the first ‘theoconsultant’ was wrong and the way out is to pay out more money, time, and resources to this ‘theoconsultant’ to rectify the faith turned formula that the first ‘theoconsultant’ did wrong by applying his own faith turned formula.

Faith is not Formulamatic
Fate is not Formulamatic

When the answers were all along in the Bible.