Bringing Jeebus To New Media

While working on the other blog today, I noticed something interesting in the ads served up by my connection to Google AdSense.Um, Yeah. I figured it was some sort of site like mine, which is sly and rather critical of the Right Wingnuts. Instead, I find the opposite. Welcome to Sermonade: Bringing new media to a pulpit near you.

So they finally figured out how to snare the kids. It's common knowledge that, since the dawn of the medium, television has been the great babysitter, entertainer, and part-time educator (if kids are smart enough to flip off of Yu-Gi-Oh! for a few mintues to watch something cool on Discovery) of legions of kids. Hell, there's an entire TV Generaion, and the offshoot MTV Generation to boot! They were glued to their sets, and that has carried over to their own kids. Now more than ever, kids are bombarded by media imagery: Crystal clear digital audio and video are only the next step as the Internet Generation takes over.

Kids like the fast moving images. Kids like the flair of slick animation, and the sense of cool they get from doing full motion video on their computers. They eat up anything the media throws at them. Just look at the Kidz Bop! CDs, Bratz, Pokèmon... All of it crap, but all of it generates billions of dollars for their respective trademark and copyright holders.

And now, religion is getting into the game. Gone are the traditions of the past (thank whoever, some of those are so dated it's not funny -- hello Catholics!), and God is moving into the 21st centry. If you ask me, that's just further proof that God is a figment of the Human imagination. He keeps evolving to suit the needs of the Church (those who control the flow of God) in parallel with the evolution of Society.

Look. There's really no need to "spread the word." That's part of the reason history - and yes, modern times - is so peppered with conflict and drama. Religion is still the leading cause of war and death throughout history; It even beats smoking. It inspired three invasions of Palestine (dubbed "The Holy Land" thanks to some scribblings in a 2,000 year old storybook), including one attempted by children that ended in disaster before they ever left Europe. It has cause a radical faction of Islam to fly planes into buildings, killing thousands. It has caused such a rift in American political and social structure that people are bombing abortion clinics and starting extreme fundamental incursion attempts aimed at our modern laws.

Don't even begin to tell me that God is the answer. The way and the truth and the life. It's more like the myth, the falsehood, and the lie. And look what its making you do. Spread the virus and cause the pain. It's that conflict that drives the worlds problems these days. Spreading the virus simply prolongs the war, and I don't mean just the war in Iraq.

Filling kids minds with this stuff makes this all the more sick. You want your kids to be so pure, so innocent and oblivious to the world for as long as you can. You shield them from the "bad images and words" and stifle their development as individuals and human beings. And then you brainwash them by telling them that this fairy tale bullshit is the absolute truth. Who are they to question their parents? They adopt the parents' belief system instead of figuring out their own on their own time.

Look. I'm all for freedom of religion. If you want to believe, believe. But please, do it as an individual. Not everyone wants to share your faith, your message, and the pseudo-sense of joy that you get from thinking that there's this wonderful happy place your soul goes when you die. Some people have conflicting opinions, and you've just got to learn to deal with that. And for God's sake (Ha) please: Leave the kids out of it.

You want them to be truely innocent? Then don't pass on to them the blood on your hands, passed down to you through the generations of hell and damnation that Religion has brought upon the face of this planet.