Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Why are there so many blogs about rainbows?

Earlier this week gay marriage was legalized in all fifty US states.  I, for one, am thrilled for all those fine folks who have longed for and fought for equality in life, law, and love.  Marry it up, you lovely people.  I can only hope this is but the beginning of further progress that needs to be made in so many other ways.

But I'm not really here to talk about that.  I'm here to talk about rainbows! 



My Facebook feed has been drowning in rainbows this week and I'm loving it.  But you know who's not loving it?  The folks who equate the rainbow with God's covenant with Noah in the book of Genesis.  They find its appropriation as a symbol for LGBT pride far from appropriate.  They see this beautiful symbol as disgusting and terrible.  I know how they feel because we've got their Godly covenant rainbow on the other hand...


[Just a heads-up, I am about to speak pretty unkindly of this story and of good ol' God himself, so if you aren't ok with reading that kind of thing, click away.]

Story time!
Once upon a time, God makes people.  Poorly.  People break thanks to a design flaw he knowingly built into them, as he knew they would, and as he could have prevented.  He punishes them for his own mistakes rather than forgiving them and fixing them.
After awhile, there are a lot of people but thanks to God not really giving a shit, they get carried away and are all pretty bad for the most part (well, there are children and babies who can't really be considered bad but hey, lump them in with the rest like God did, ok?).  God, in his infinite wisdom decides the best course of action is not one of a multitude of better options like teaching them, giving them a change of heart, rewiring their minds, or just about anything else you can think of because you are smarter than him, but instead opts to just commit global genocide and slaughter the whole lot of them (including those children and babies, don't forget!) and save only a handful.  Oh, and not just have them die quietly and painlessly in their sleep or to just drop dead where they stand, he's going to drown them all.  Because what's killing people if they don't struggle and suffer on their way out?
Also all the animals need to die, too.  Because...because stop asking questions.
Well, except he's gonna cram a pair of each species on a big-ass boat with that handful of decent folks because...well, it's not like he could just create new animals.  Well he could but...stop asking questions.
So, he after he drowns millions of people and animals and they're all thoroughly dead bloated corpses bobbing in the receding waters...he's throws up a rainbow!  Talk about juxtaposition!

"Billy, stop poking that puffy corpse full of hermit crabs and look at the pretty colors!  Please, everyone just stop looking at the mountains of rotting flesh and look at the lovely thing in the sky!  Well, I mean, watch your step though, don't want to get your foot stuck in...whatever or whoever's carcass that is but seriously, try to ignore the horrific stench and look at the thing!"

In Genesis 9:8-17, God tells that handful of folks what the rainbow means: he promises that never again will he be a blithering idiot and drown the entire world with a flood.  Now, he'll still drown parts of the population on a pretty regular basis.  And also earthquakes and other terrible disasters will routinely wipe out decent chunks of the population.  But hey, he won't kill all of us all at once with water!
So every time you see a rainbow, remember how much he loves you and how awesome it is that you're alive (though he might kill you at any moment) and not currently being drowned even though other people might currently be drowning by the thousands but at least they're not the entire human population because he's so great, am I right?

Just think if your dad killed your mother, brothers, and sisters, but not you and then gave you a teddy bear so you'd remember how much he loves you and won't kill you (though he might cut off your hand or gouge out your eye or any number of other forms of non-fatal bodily harm).  "Dear ol', Sweet ol' Dad, whatta guy, I'll always treasure Mr Button-Eyes!"

Rainbows are beautiful.  I find the LGBT rainbow and everything it stands for beautiful.  They see their God's rainbow as beautiful.  I'm just saying I see the rainbow as it relates to God and Noah's ark as a symbol of God's spectacularly shitty problem solving skills, murder on an absolute and global scale, a joke of a promise that essentially means nothing, and 'love' that is anything but.  So I know how you feel, anti-gay Noah rainbow lovers, because I, too, can find a rainbow disgusting and insulting.

Just one man's perspective.  I realize this post was probably pretty pointless because I doubt any of the folks I was talking about actually read it.  But hey, I lose sleep over things that rattle my cage and homophobia and stupid religious stuff are high on the list of things that do that.  Forgive my self-indulgent venting, I guess.

Oh, and if you're a decent Christian who is A-OK with gay marriage and happy to wave the rainbow flag and all that, sorry I crapped on your God and your story about him but if you're wise enough to be cool with the gay stuff, I hope you're wise enough to be cool with a raging atheist on occasion, as well.

But in the end, I think we can all agree: rainbows are pretty.

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