EDGE on the Net

As is custom on solitary Sunday nights, my thoughts turned to mankind and the nature of evil. I sipped the last of my brandy, placed a book marker in "Lady Chatterley’s Lover," and peered out the library window, into the depths of darkness. Only my mauve-tinted smoking jacket seemed to have color. War, famine, hatred, the rising cost of Randy Blue; human misery loomed like London fog. Was there nothing I could do to stop The Abyss? Or, at the very least, to prevent a remake of the film.

Determined to find an answer, I scattered the evening papers on the floor. It would be dawn by the time I finished them, my eyes red from lack of sleep, my body fatigued from exhaustion. I’d had a similar reaction after a night contemplating the meaning of Dante -- "Dante’s Cove," that is, Season One.

At first the stories seemed oddly repetitive, so I skipped Maureen Dowd and moved on to front-page news. Never before had I read such evil. A Republican Congressman nicknamed Joe (Jesus, Mary, and now another Joe the Plumber) debased the halls of justice by heckling the President of the United States during a prime-time speech.

I couldn’t imagine anything more unpatriotic -- and more British -- until I read that the South Carolina Congressman lied when he said the President was lying, had a history of lying, and served in a state with a lying Republican wife-cheating Governor. The only thing he didn’t lie about was his belief that prayer should be enforced in public schools. Perhaps God put Southern states in the hottest region of the country so that heathens could get used to extreme heat.

That was the tip of the immoral iceberg. A pastor in Arizona, Steven Anderson, delivered a "Why I Hate Barack Obama" sermon, and later said "I am going to pray that he dies and goes to hell." Anderson wouldn’t pull the trigger himself, he added, but Satan is his co-pilot. A disciple named Chris Broughton attended the "Hate" sermon, and the next day took an assault rifle and a handgun to Barack’s rally. I screamed almost as loud as Chris Rockway did the first time he bottomed for a video, yet I had to read on.

God and guns, I soon learned, were the new crack. A church in Louisville, Kentucky, celebrated Independence Day by inviting the flock to bring weapons to sermons. I made a mental note to duck next time I stepped into a house of worship for solace, and kept reading. The pastor said it was a way of celebrating the Fourth of July, Love American God-style. An abortion doctor was killed in his own church in Wichita, Kansas, by a man who’d been praying for his death. That convicted sex-offender in Antioch, California, who kidnapped and raped an 11-year-old girl for 18 years used to cheerily tell passers-by that "Jesus Loves You." He also kept a church in the basement.

In Virginia, the former Dean of Pat Robertson’s Regent University, Stephen Lee McPherson, and his wife, Melina, pleaded guilty to taking indecent liberties with minors, three sisters who the McPherson’s served as House Parents to at Hope Haven’s Children’s Home. God’s word, they said, justified the molestation. Yes, Virginia, there is a sexual abuse clause. As for Old Saint Nick, "Santa Claus will take you to hell," is one of the slogans, along with "God Hates Fags," propagated by the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas. I shuddered at the thought that the church hated every person in my video-library collection, unless, of course, you believe what Cody Cummings says about his sexuality.

Stupidity’s on a pedestal too. MSNBC commentator Pat Robertson, who once said "Our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity and that is the truth that makes men free," believes that Global Warming is a conspiracy, and lifetime NRA member Sarah Palin’s "Death Panels," unfortunately, do not refer to her former church’s view that Alaska is where people will seek refuge when God murders the rest of us.

The blog "I Love Guns, Jesus, and Sarah Palin" states that "God Himself" has chosen the ex-governor to be our next president, in part because she has "never lied about anything in her whole entire life. She is much too pretty for that." More important, it continues, "These Ivey [their spelling] Leaguers have no idea what us people of average intelligence in ’Real America’ care about. They want to take our guns and ban religion forever. Well, I say, ’Hell no, we and our guns won’t go.’"

I was beginning to think it was time to build another Noah’s Arc (they need to start that show from scratch), when I read enlightening news from at least one religious conservative. This month’s "How to Take Back America" conference in St. Louis is organized by Phyllis Schlafly, who said of the 20th Century’s Supreme Court social issues, "Out went the Ten Commandments, in came condoms. Out went the Cross and pictures of Christ, in came drawings of apes pretending to walk like humans. Out went Adam and Eve, in came Heather Has Two Mommies. Out went Easter, in came Earth Day. Out went teachings against homosexuality, in came teachings in favor of homosexuality."

Finally, I thought, a Christian has the good sense to write about the great achievements of the last millennium. Unfortunately, even that spark of hope turned out to be false, as my housekeeper informed me that Schlafly is the woman who once said "the atomic bomb is a marvelous gift that was given to our country by a wise God."

By the dawn’s early light, I had my answer. The one thing all these evil-doers had in common was something called the Bible, which they all professed to read, study, and live by. Many said it gave them permission to kill, and that people who didn’t obey its words would be burned to death, on purpose. Its passages, when repeated, instructed them to rape and murder and (plastered on White House briefings) massacre. They taught it to innocent women and children, and the Pope now suggests prayers from it as an aphrodisiac. It was a cult, I knew, even worse than church, which only provides refuge for pedophiles and grants asylum to adulterers. I had to stop it before it stopped us.

I unchained my housekeeper, dressed him, and gave him a brand-new job. He gathered the members of the local "Harry Potter" book club, grabbed every person he could find reading "Tom Sawyer" or "The Catcher in the Rye," and together we stormed the streets with High Tea Parties and Lifetime TV Panels. I spoke of the dangers of Social Studies and Burper Babies and how, were this Bible Reading to continue, we were on our way to becoming a Fascist Nation, forced to ration our health, spell badly, and take instructions from the ultimate Communist Manifesto, Liza Minnelli’s "Mein Herr."

Some naysayers said I should read the book first, and the sequel, but I knew better. They said its wisdom had been tarnished by modern society. I wasn’t about to fall for that, especially as no one could agree on who’d written the damn thing, Kevin James or Steve Guttenberg. "It Lies" was spray-painted on every copy -- we even found the contraband in hotel rooms, where most fornicating Christians meet -- and they were tossed onto the Streets of Philadelphia. I’d wanted to throw them in the water, but Bruce Springsteen wouldn’t change his lyrics. The Liberty Bell rang of its own accord, and justice prevailed throughout the land. A massive parade started and only Kirk Cameron was left behind.

That night I went home and sat in my favorite armchair, my housekeeper beneath me. We talked about all we’d been blessed with and how hopeful we were for the future of our country. After he retired to his bedpost, I turned on a candle, picked up "The Satanic Versus," and reflected on how lucky I was to live in a warm, wonderful, secular house, address 14 Paradise Place, c/o Heaven on Earth.