I don't want to make a habit of picking on poor Justyna, but after thinking quite a bit about her infamous comments from last week and the big debate over religion that they spawned, I need to throw out a question:
Are her beliefs really all that crazy?
Actually, I should probably clarify that: Of course they're crazy -- but are they any crazier than anyone else's religious beliefs?
After digging through some of the links provided by readers and doing a little research on my own, it looks like Justyna has bought wholly into something called the World Mission Society Church of God. It's a group that was founded back in 1964 by a Korean guy named Ahn Sahng-Hong. I'd run down the individual beliefs of the church's followers, but honestly it makes my head hurt just trying to make heads or tails of the nonsense they subscribe to. Suffice it to say, the World Mission Society Church espouses your average quasi-end times rhetoric and believes that Ahn Sahng-Hong and his successor, someone named Zang Gil-Jah, are the second coming of Christ and the Biblically heralded "New Jerusalem Mother," respectively.
Oh yeah, it's also a cult -- and a careful examination of Justyna's comments makes it clear that it's dug its claws into her pretty deeply. In three short months, she's become an expert on the Bible, or at least her new church's interpretation of it, which includes mumbo-jumbo aplenty on the importance of distinguishing between the "real Sabbath" of Saturday and the more popular man-made counterfeit; she's apparently stopped talking to a lot of her old friends (and I'd imagine they've stopped talking to her in an effort to avoid being preached to 24/7); she tries very hard to convince others to join her for "Bible study"; and she refers to her "pre-enlightened" self in the third person, as if that old tellurian label is something to be ashamed of in the wake of her spiritual rebirth -- Christ Ahn Sahng-Hong be praised.
Obviously, this stuff is relentlessly ridiculous, and most legitimate churches have already said so.
Here's the thing, though: What the hell is a legitimate church?
Sure, the teachings of the World Mission folks are on the fringes, to say the least. But it's astonishing the inadvertent tolerance we as a global society have developed for the fantastical, which makes it laughable that there's an unacceptable level of crazy among people who believe in notions that, at face value, would all seem impossible. Seriously, is the idea of some Korean guy being the second coming of Jesus insane when the entire idea of Jesus as described in the Bible -- the born-of-a-virgin, miracle-performing, died-on-the-cross and rose-from-the-dead the-savior-of-mankind -- is itself completely fucking lunatic? I'd actually argue that a belief in one possibility allows for the other: If you're willing to believe there was a Jesus Christ at all, then it should open the door to believe just about anything -- and denying so is intellectually dishonest. The truth is that modern Christianity (like Judaism, Islam, etc.) is a case of history being written by the winners. The basic tenets of it were forged long ago, haven't changed much since and, through worldwide acceptance, have been legitimized -- becoming little more than our culture's "democratically elected" hallucinations.
But the fact remains that irrational is irrational, no matter how many people claim otherwise.
Case in point: On March 26th, 1997, the bodies of 39 men and women were found on a San Diego estate; they were members of the Heaven's Gate cult, and they believed that by dying, their spirits would be transported to a UFO behind the Hale Bopp comet.
These people were swiftly dismissed as being completely off their fucking rocker.
Even by millions who, four days later, went to church and celebrated Jesus Christ's resurrection and ascension into heaven to be seated at the right hand of his father, God.
Irony, thy name is...
No comments:
Post a Comment