Oprah Got Bit By a Poisonous Water Hose!

“Basically, all religions have similarities. They all lead to God.”

 Yeah. And snakes and water hoses have similarities, too.

How can all roads lead to the same thing? Can one go east to get north? This is, frankly, a stupid supposition. How can all actions, all belief systems – monotheism, polytheism, pantheism, panENtheism, universalism, deism, relativism –  yield the same result? Does watering a plant get the same result as burning a plant? Does doing math on a history test bring an “A?” What kind of schizophrenic god would reveal his nature in contradictory ways? That’s like saying, “All people are basically Spiro Agnew.” Who would say that? And more interestingly, what idjit would publicly admit to believing it?

I have heard Madonna, Oprah (“You can’t possibly believe that there is just one path to God!!”), and other notables spout this unthought-out drivel, and their audiences nod numbly, approvingly. How can believing in a religion with NO god — Buddhism — get you to the same destination as one with MILLIONS of them – Mormonism?

Most people aren’t blind, they just have their eyes shut!

I often think that if we could hear the distant wailing throng from across the Divide, everyone would believe, but God said that even if someone came back from the dead, folk still wouldn’t be convinced. People would then probably only feign love and belief to avoid tarnation. There is a universe of evidence as it is. And it is not all locked up in some codebook somewhere. The very sky shouts!

How do you think Miles Davis would feel if they gave a Grammy award for “Kind of Blue” to 50 Cent?!

Or if they said that the album wrote itself? Or that the vibrations that move in all matter and non-matter emanating from the impersonal father Universe coalesced on a sub-atomic level to consummate the harmonic modal progressions that resulted in this aural masterpiece?

But it’s all the same, right?

Oprah Got Halle Berry Pregnant.

 Hear me out…

Guru Oprah says that we are EVOLVING into another species! And that on that basis, marriage is becoming irrelevant. She wonders, “Who can say if they will want the same person in 35 years?” (yet she chastises men who demonstrate her way of thinking by leaving their wives for other women.) This logic doesn’t hold weight when extended to the fullest.

I saw and heard Guru Oprah say this a few years ago when Halle Berry was a guest on her show after Berry’s divorce from singer, Eric Benet. They were on the couch together discussing the fallen state of traditional marriage. That conversation has stayed in my mind since then.

Everyone knows the public parts of  Oprah’s life ; dating, co-habitating with Stedman Graham for years, no children, no desire for marriage. She has gone a long way, I think, towards shaping public opinion on pregnancy and marriage. She specifically told Halle that she “didn’t need to be married to have a baby!” She OBVIOUSLY knows the tremendous influence she has on millions of  people with the success of her show and anything attached to it. She had to have known that her friend, Berry, would take her council to heart. To that extent, she is responsible, just as ANY false teacher is accountable for misleading the student.

Halle was obviously depressed and discouraged about another failed marriage, and I thought it was unfair for Oprah to guide her in the direction of  eschewing the validity of marriage done right and down the path of New Age pagan self-fulfillment. Granted, a person who has sincerely held beliefs can be expected to endorse and promote those views, but it is clear today that unwed pregnancy is NOT the way to go. Babies are not Barbie dolls. And when her relationship inevitably ends… another child will be raised without the everyday presence of a father!

So, with the background music of Guru Oprah playing somwhere in the recesses of her mind, along with the tacit assent of the broader society, Halle, in her forties, unmarried, got pregnant. I thought this was a heck of a coincidence.  And as is the norm today, there is no negative outrage. Only compliments on how glowingly beautiful she is in her expectant state. Fifty years ago, the actress, Ingrid Bergman, lost the major portion of her career for doing the same thing.

No, a person shouldn’t necessarily be shunned, but a measure of SHAME is in order when committing what has been, from day ONE, sin in the eyes of God, whom so many claim to serve. (The laws of Oprah’s god, the Universe may change, but GOD’S law is unbreakable!) I am ashamed before God for the things I do wrong. King David was ashamed (check the Psalms) for his adultery with Bathsheba, and for the murder of her husband, Uriah. Healthy shame has its place. It leads one to repentance and reform. 

Halle should be ashamed of herself for conforming to the culture in such a negative way, and Oprah should be ashamed of herself for advising Berry that marriage is a malleable, transient, ultimately unnecessary state of being. But I’ll bet they’re not!

And on those grounds, I assert that through her ill advice and rather hedonistic example, Guru Oprah got Halle Berry pregnant.

YOU CAN’T WRAP THE POLE AROUND THE SNAKE

If God changed the rules just for you, He would be doing dirt to those condemned all through history. You don’t agree with what you were told the Bible says, or with what you read in it, but you perhaps want to feel “spiritual”, whatever that really means, so you rationalize your desires by changing the properties of God to fit your behavior or thought pattern. You say, and begin to believe, that those fanatic, fundamentalist prudes just took verses out of context in order to oppress and control others.

Only you and those who think like you have the TRUE God. You don’t apply strict hermeneutic principles of interpretation, in fact, you rarely use the Bible at all to find and do God’s will– You and He are TIGHTER than that. He bypasses the Word and speaks to your very heart.
So you develop this world view that lets you get high, or mess around sexually, or think that there is no inherent difference between men and women.

He lets you believe that your countless good deeds will allow you to bypass the normal process of entrance into Heaven. Y’all are tight like that. He knows YOUR heart. The Bible, for you, is no more than a general rule of thumb, having been so irrevocably corrupted by mere men over the centuries.

So, why even bother to read it? It doesn’t matter that what He spoke to YOUR heart was the EXACT opposite of what He told the Muslim, and the Hindu, and the Universalist, and the Jehovah’s Witness, and the Mormon. You say they all are true, and that everyone must find his own path. That is SOOO deep! Wowww!

Never mind the logical absurdity of the whole thing, it works for you, and your life is good right now. Besides, nobody REALLY knows how the whole thing shakes out anyway. We probably will all  just cease to exist when we die, so we should get the most out of life now. You are just playing it safe by putting a chip on every number on the wheel.

Whatever the truth ends up being, though, you KNOW those crazy evangelical pain in the butt repressed know-it-all Christians are the only ones who are DEAD wrong! Any fool can see that!
You and God are TIGHT!
Closer than grits ‘n gravy.
Tighter than a fat man’s shoes, and a ten-year-old Easter suit!
He wouldn’t let you go wrong.

Just one thing, though. You might wanna check just to be sure. I mean, you could leave here now and fall dead. You may have cancer right at this moment, and I would hate to think that someone as thorough as you seem to be might have missed a ‘t’ or an ‘i’.

What kind of God CHANGES? What kind of Supreme Omniscient Being fails to see around a corner or over a hill? Why would He have more than one standard? Why would He call Himself Everything to a Christian and Nothing to a Buddhist? How could He still be God?
Why would He tell some White men that Blacks are cursed and less significant, and tell some Blacks that White folks are devils?
How can He be God and be unable to preserve His Word throughout time?

Why would an infinitely ingenious God leave as the primary means of communication the fragile, inefficient, notoriously unreliable, often darkly wicked human mind? Or the fickle heart which fluctuates like a yo-yo dieter?
Would a true God say one thing about behavior at one point, and then say something else upon further review?
Would a God say “One man, one woman, no ‘co-habitating’, stay sober,” and then change His mind because He now sees that folks’ feelings are getting hurt, and that those views are now “old-fashioned?”
Would a God go out of style?
Would a God truly have a double-standard? One for you, and another for someone else? Wouldn’t His Standard be objective– viewable, knowable from every angle?
I suggest that since you and He are TIGHT you ask Him what and where that Standard is, and for Him to secure IT- and Himself- squarely in the center of your heart.

I say this because I don’t think a god that can be bent and twisted to your will- or my will- is strong or stable enough to do anything for anybody, let alone create a Heaven or an Earth. Let that god crumble amid the ruins.

I’m just looking out for you. Just a little common sense…

Cuz we TIGHT like that.