Let there be Emma!

OK, I know it’s kinda rash — but I like living dangerously and as much as anything I wanted to keep an eye on what these people are peddling to their younglings: the idea of thousands of teenagers all reading the Bible together sounds kinda scary — and awesome if it works. So I subscribed to the Soul Survivor Bible in One Year blog. Here’s Andy Croft getting carried away by the idea:

Today’s the day it all kicks off and I’m annoyed already. Doesn’t bode well really, does it? Here’s a happy clappy excerpt from Day 1, 1st September: Genesis, Matthew, Psalms, talking about Genesis 1.1 – 2.17:

This passage shows us God designed us the way we are. You’re not a mistake. God said let there be light, and there was light. He said let there be Andy and there was Andy, let there be Emma and there was Emma. Just as God looks at creation and thinks it’s good so too he looks at you and thinks you’re pretty great. We can enjoy his pleasure over us… in the same way we enjoy it when our parents or mates tell us we’re great.

Let there be Emma! Well yes, amen to that; love the affirmation of my being a gay Christian woman: not quite what I’d expected from the Evangelical frontline. Thanks guys. But really? Seriously? God designed us the way we are?? Forgive me if I fall about laughing, because that’s one God with a seriously warped sense of humour at best, if not an outright monster at worst.

So… God  designed us the way we are… God designed us to be susceptible to all kinds of sicknesses and diseases … which God also designed. God designed us with minds that fall apart under stress or trauma. God designed us to go mental at the flick of an invisible inner switch. God designed us to be tasty snacks for crocodiles, mosquitoes and piranhas … which God also designed. God designed us for life on a planet that’s ultimately gonna disappear in an amazing starburst as dear old Sol goes nova a few million years down the line… which we’re ruining in the meantime with our supposedly God-given talents to uproot and destroy, to the point where it’s likely to be uninhabitable long before that amazing starburst….

Yeah, right. Some God.

Wrong, wrong, wrong: #fail. And puh-leeese don’t give me mythology about “the Fall” and “sin” taking down the whole of creation by way of explanation, though I suppose we’ll get that within the next few days *sigh*

Sorry guys, but the universe does not hinge upon the human race. The claim that our mythical Adam & Eve rebelling against God in the Garden of Eden led to the corruption of the entire cosmos is simply breathtaking in its arrogance — like the belief that the Sun revolves around the Earth, only a billion times worse. You have only to open your eyes and look out at the vastness of the universe to begin to realise how puny and insignificant the human race is. We are specks of dust bouncing around on a bigger speck of dust in orbit around another speck of dust, albeit a hot one.

So where does this leave us? It leaves us like bloggers on WordPress, only on a much vaster, incomprehensible level. WordPress is a platform, with themes and widgets and all sorts of lovely-jubbly add-ons, with free hosting for the faithful here at WordPress.com and a standalone version for those who want to go it alone via WordPress.org. And we are invited to perform upon this platform. WordPress sets us free to blog as we will: they provide the platform; we provide the content … and somewhere out there, our readers join the dots and we become an amazing community in our social media matrix.

There are good bloggers and bad bloggers and there are every kind of blogger inbetween. There’s facebook and twitter and youtube and the list grows on and on. Platforms designed for us to dance on.

That’s God, my friends: the Ultimate Platform. Let’s dance!!