when i was in college — even when i was in the college of creative studies, a place advertised as being an oasis for free thinking and out of the box ideas — i wasn’t always loved by my teachers.
i had one guy who taught a bible as literature class. he didnt like me. not one bit. which was sad because i liked him and that bible class was part of the reason that i have read the bible 4-5 times now all the way through.
in the end of the bible [spoiler alert], the world goes to shit. theres locust the size of horses, riding horses, fucking shit up, plagues, terrible things. for some reason in my minds eye theres molten lava everywhere.
certainly not an environment where you could get good cell phone reception or high internet speeds.
so in class we were reading Matthew 5. and in my paper (only papers in this class, no tests, hallelujah) i ask, “why is Matthew saying the meek are going to be rewarded with the Earth. does someone really aspire to get a gift that will be fucked up to shit with locust riding locusts roaming about and other creatures like this one that “rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth the mouth of a lion.”
if a cockroach rises up from the sink drain my girlfriend freaks out, why would anyone, let alone the meek, want to inherit The Earth, if this is what it’s future includes, i asked.
well my teacher got pissed. i’ll never forget what he wrote. “i have seen this. this is journalism.” an odd thing to write since he often contributed to the local free weekly. he was clearly trying to insult me but in such a bizarre way. he knew i wrote for the college paper. i was in it almost every day. sometimes twice a day.
this was a bible as literature class. when discussing traditional literature in a class like that, it would be no crime to talk about the end of the novel in relation to its middle. it was weird that he was so offended that i would talk about Revelation where the good people ascended to heaven and the bad people went to Hell, and Earth, this place God and Jesus and the prophets said to ignore, turned into a hellscape?
so anyway, yes the world is changing rapidly. right before our attention deficit addled eyes.
we are binge watching the season finale wondering who will remain standing for the inevitable spin offs.
perhaps what i wrote in the paper that truly upset him was
fuck the meek.
the bible isn’t about a bunch of meeks whining about this, being victimized by that, curling up and dying when shitty shit gets in their way.
this is a collection of stories about how when everyone laughed at noah he kept building that ginormous ark, when joseph got thrown in the pit and sold into slavery he persevered and became the most powerful man in egypt and ended jewish slavery. these are the stories of the strong.
maybe God is saying don’t be meek, for if you do, you will wind up owning this shit palace.
the oft repeated theme of the Good Book is what you see here is fine, but it’s not IT.
yours is the treasure of Heaven.
we were a planet that didn’t exercise enough, plan for disasters, or give a shit about the environment
and look at everyone now: insisting on going outside to hike, stocking up for the oncoming doom, and noticing how much of a stain we put on mother nature.
this is the way it was supposed to end.
televised, blogged, live streamed and tic tok’ed.
but until the locust come,
chill.
if a cockroach rises up from the sink drain my girlfriend freaks out, why would anyone, let alone the meek, want to inherit The Earth, if this is what it’s future includes, i asked.
if the Future is around still to read this,
she said, oh i feel good.
– Everything will be cancelled