“Please Pass the Ham, Dear”(A pathetic attempt at humor, designed nevertheless to make a point.) Ahyh, March 2000
I once heard radio shock jock Howard Stern talk about the civil rights movement. Now I’m not going to say that I’m the world’s greatest Howard Stern fan, but even though good Christian boys are not supposed to admit this I do occasionally, even fairly regularly, catch him. On this particular day, as he was talking about the civil rights, he brought up a very interesting point. He said the civil rights movement wasn’t really what people think it’s about. The civil rights movement is not about just freedom, equality, equal rights no, no, no! What it’s really about is…so black guys can sleep with white women! Now that may be a bit scandalous, but Howard’s point was that the marches in Memphis, the riots, civil rights legislation by LBJ, the NAACP, the equal rights amendment, the entire purpose of the civil rights legislation was not about being able to buy houses, was not about equal pay for equal work, was not about being able to drink out of the same water fountain or eat off of the same lunch counter as Whitey….. No! The entire purpose, what people really wanted was… the black guys wanted to be able to sleep with white women! Now of course that’s shocking and scandalous and he’s trying deliberately to be so, but nevertheless it got me to thinking… Sometimes what we think the purpose of something is, is not really its actual purpose. Many, many times, for example, in marriage the wife will say “Oh honey, just leave me alone. I need to be alone for a while and have my space.” What she is really saying is, “Dear, if you love me you will cuddle me and comfort me and tell my how much you love me and not let me out of your sight.” When the President of the United States says “I tell you emphatically I never knew that woman”, he meant yes, he had a regular affair with her for several months. I think I have found just such a situation, on a global scale, with the entire Christian Church. You see, Easter is coming up and it has occurred to me that I have uncovered a massive plot: the real reason we go through Easter and all of its ceremonies. And it’s not about salvation or justification or going to the good place when we die….It’s not because we believe that Jesus was really resurrected from the dead…It doesn’t mean that we believe we want to take up our own crosses and follow Him….No, the real purpose of Easter, the real purpose of the entire history of the Christian Church is….so that we can eat pork! Now, just wait a minute don’t let me lose you here. Think about it! On the highest, holiest day of the year in the Christian Church, Easter, what do we do? We cancel Bible studies, and instead have a breakfast. And, as is written in the constitution of every Protestant and Roman Catholic Church in America… pork must be served at that breakfast! Whether it’s the little sausage patties or thick ham steak, or perhaps just sausage links, or maybe mixed in with the greasy omelet… one way or the other pork must be served! It’s a requirement. And we cancel our Bible studies, and we cancel the choir rehearsals, and we cancel everything that might be happening otherwise, so that we can have this breakfast and eat our pork. The kiddies will go out and have their little Easter egg hunt which is, I don’t even have to tell you, entirely pagan. That’s just another indication that it is really not all about God and religion… No, just like the ancient pagans have for four thousand years… as part of the spring ritual we notice that bunnies tend to reproduce a lot….And we notice that chickens come from eggs…. So what do we do? We color the eggs and we have little totem poles dedicated to rabbits because, well, back in those days fertility was not guaranteed. They didn’t know for sure that they would have any chickens….The whole sperm vs. egg thing hadn’t been entirely worked out. So we had to work from mythological and magical perspectives, if you will. Now, as a fact of history, those are the roots of the entire Easter bunny and Easter egg mythologies. And the Church has no problems with those! In some churches somebody will actually dress up as an Easter bunny….. and in every single Protestant Church I’ve ever played the organ at they always have an Easter Egg Hunt for the children on Easter morning! Oh, sometimes the eggs aren’t full of candy… sometimes the Easter Eggs are full of little crosses or whatever….But that’s all just an excuse to try and pretend that we really do care about God and religion…. What we really care about is getting the kids out of our hair, going out chasing the rabbits or the Easter Eggs (it doesn’t matter)… so that we can concentrate on our pork omelets! Now historically this happens actually to be true. It all goes back about 2,000 years to our beloved St. Paul. Paul was a rare bird, he was a Hebrew of Hebrews completely utterly and totally Jewish, and yet, because of his parents and where he was born and a bunch of stuff nobody knows or cares about, he was also a Roman citizen, a Greek Helenized regular guy…..Kinda like an illegal alien who has his full citizenship in America. So what happened was, Paul grew up being a Jew and, of course, was not able to eat pork. Now that goes back another 1,000 years or so before Paul.. You see Yahweh didn’t want the Jews to eat pork. Now for Yahweh this was a good thing….God actually happens to be a lot kinder and more loving than people think He is. He told people not to eat pork because, we found out about 3,000 years later, that there were all kinds of things like trichinosis and botulism and horrible diseases that can live very happily in pork…And if it doesn’t get cooked just right and the animal doesn’t happen to get killed just right the people can get this diseases very easily and die! Even in modern America, with all of our fancy kitchen appliances and Cuzinarts and our special USDA services people die every day from little bugs they pickup from improperly cooked pork. So, going back again 3,000 years, Yahweh knew that if these poor Jews were continuing to try and figure out some way to eat this pig that they would cause themselves more harm than good. He said “Just leave it alone.” For a thousand years before St. Paul the Jews aren’t able, and are forbidden by the Holy Scripture, to eat pig in any way shape or form. Ironically, what happened, and what still happens to this day, is that the Jews would raise the best pigs because they would be in the most healthy conditions, the cleanest farms, the cleanest pastures and they would sell them to the Greeks who would then go ahead and have their festivals. Now what the Greeks did with the pigs was really quite something…. I mean, you had your BBQ pork ribs, you had your sausage, you had your pepperoni and sausage pizzas, you had shish-kebabs…. you name it, you had it. The Greeks were biting in to these nice thick quarter-pound juicy stuffed pork chops and St. Paul is sitting there as a Jew looking at that going…..“Dang that looks good!” So he had this problem: one part of his heritage (because he was a Jew of Jews, a Hebrew of Hebrews, he says so himself in the Holy Scripture….) this part of his heritage said he could not possibly touch that pork! And yet…. he had his citizenship papers, he filled out his census, and he filed his Roman taxes, and dang it!….he wanted that sausage pizza! So, what’s a guy to do? Well, to make a long story short, he finds out about this Jesus guy who had been strung up by the Romans and he heard some of the people were talking about this guy still being alive. Lo and behold Paul has a vision that this guy Jesus is still around and Jesus is there to “fulfill” (meaning get rid of) the Jewish law…Meaning that those who now have faith in Jesus are redeemed and saved and all that religious stuff , but what that really meant was the people who believe in Jesus could eat pork! So the first thing Paul did was he went out and had himself a stripped BBQ pork sandwich and boy it tasted good! (You won’t find that in the Bible, but in what we call Apostolic sources you’ll find that listed. Trust me…it’s there…..Well, OK, I’m lying….but it makes for a good story.) So St. Paul had found the magic key: Through believing in Jesus he could claim his Jewish heritage (the parts he wanted to keep) and he could be a part of the entire Greco Roman world (where his regular citizenship was), and what this really meant, what it all boils down to, the actual, final, tactile, living, daily difference was… St. Paul could chomp into that pork chop and not have any guilt or fear. So, as you look at it down the years, we find that the Christian church has methodically and carefully carried out this revolt against the Jews. I mean, look at the Jews today in the year 2000… Their highest, holiest day is Yom Kippur, the day of atonement…this one day where they all come together as one race, one people, to atone for their sins and to make right with Yahweh. And what do they do? They sit around all day long, not eating a thing, and reading the Bible all day! Now who wants anything to do with that? We Christians celebrate our freedom because we are redeemed in Christ!…And what do we do for our high holy day Easter? We cancel Bible studies, we whip-up the pork sausage omelets or whatever way you want to serve it, and we celebrate our freedom to not have to be one of those dang Jews!! That, my friends, is what Christendom and the Bible and the saints are all about: not having to give up eating for a day like the Jews do, and being able to chomp down onto them pork spareribs! All across the land, in thousands of churches, millions of Christian churches, it is written into their constitution: Upon the holy day of Easter thou shall cancel all Bible studies, thou shall have Easter egg hunts for the kiddies, and thou shall serve pork for breakfast, that we might celebrate our Lord and let Him know that we are Christians, and not pagan Jews. It’s actually written in their constitutions! I’ve seen it. Trust me. So after Easter Services all across the land the faithful can go home with their wives and their families and say, “Mabel, that service was so inspiring, I believe I’ll have me a BLT! And darling, please let me know what time the children will be here, cause I want to make sure I got the ham warmed up in the oven”. Happy Easter. |
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