Jumping back to that God and the Tsunami article for a second, that cyborg Anne Graham Lotz makes another point of Christian “logic” that always has confused me:

…when I look at the cross of Jesus Christ, when God sent his own son to die to take away my sin, I know that God loves me.

I mean, are these people even listening to what they’re saying? They are saying: Such and such cares for me, because such and such intentionally had somebody important to him killed. It all sounds very mafioso, if you look at it strictly from that context. “Well, I know Jimmy loves me because he had Johnny whacked… What? No I don’t really know why, but he said it was so we could be together, and that it would be good for business.”

Maybe God had Jesus killed because they were rival mafia dons, trying to take command of the same turf. It sorta makes sense, since the Old Testament god was a real bastard, but Jesus was all about love and holding hands. Maybe god actually teamed up with another gang leader, the Devil, and had Jesus whacked, but then made up this big cover story about how the whole thing was actually for our benefit. This, to me, sounds much more plausible than the flimsy rationale of “God loved us so much that he let his son die for us.” That just doesn’t make any sense. I mean, that kind of shit would NEVER fly on like CSI: My Nuts, Law & Schmorder or some other fucking retarded cop/lawyer investigation tv show. Am I right or am I right?

Actually, the interesting thing is that this is really very close to the Gnostic interpretation of the Jesus/God face-off. In Gnosticism, the God we call Yahweh isn’t really the true god, and didn’t really create the universe. He’s just arrogant and thinks he did. They call him Ialdabaoth, or the Demiurge. Above and beyond him is Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, and she sort of sends Jesus down to infiltrate, and to teach us how to achieve salvation through gnosis, inner knowledge, the inbreaking of Sophia’s spark. But then Yahweh/Demiurge gets wind of this, and has Jesus whacked, in order to maintain his stranglehold over our plane of existence and keep humanity under his heel. And then he crafts this whole erroneous story about how Jesus’s promised salvation for us is NOT through gnosis, but through this bullshit act of him being fucking murdered, because God “loves” us so much. The idea here being that if the real message of Jesus’s salvation is obscured or changed, then people will never be able to see it, even though its plainly laid out right in front of them. Personally, I think that’s much more interesting and believable version of the story. It opens up a lot more questions and possibilities, which I think is the real key thing for personal spiritual and intellectual development.

Here’s a quote from an original Gnostic text recovered at Nag Hammadi, which supports this description:

When the Aeon Sophia saw the impiety of the Lord Archon [Yahweh] she was filled with anger. Remaining invisible to him, she said, “You are mistaken, Samael (that is, blind god), for there is an immortal Child of Light who has been in existence before you, and who will appear among your modelled forms (plasmata), and that one will trample you in scorn, just as a potter’s clay is pounded down.

PS. Also if you’re into this, check out Philip K. Dick’s novel, “Divine Invasion” for another take on this story of the “true” god secretly invading this earthly realm ruled over by the fake god.