Peace on Earth

By Bart Vogelzang | VANCOUVER ISLAND, B.C., CANADA -- The happy mother, having just left her child a few hours ago, at school for the first day, is shocked when she receives a phone call to come collect her child’s body from the school. With no understanding of what has happened, she races to the school, to find out that her baby has been summarily executed for being left-handed. Nothing else, but the school authorities have accepted that such an evil sign of the Devil needed to be eradicated for the safety of the other children.

Of course the above hasn't happened, but this type of tragedy is only the shortest possible distance from being realized. Religious idiocy, which doesn't have any logic outside its own circular unthinkingness, doesn't need much fear nor instigation to take over the minds and thoughts of the gullible. Truly, if the above scenario had been in regard to some transgender child being killed, in a Third world country, many people living there today would feel it was a justified act, and some of those living here as well.

When you think about it, the greatest intolerance(s) in the world are from the religious. Anyone in the ‘wrong’ sect of a religion is already at risk of attack, and being of a different religion is even more dangerous. Ditto times 10 for being non-religious at all. Being anything outside the ‘norm’ in a particular vicinity causes raised eyebrows, verbal abuse, and even violent reactions from others within their norm. Whether that non-conformity is based on religion, skin colour, body build, medical condition, age, economic status or even a person’s near or distant ancestors, the religious have managed to use those differences to vilify.

Ironically, those religious people ‘who claim to be loving and forgiving’ are generally the worst offenders when it comes to being unforgiving and hate filled. It’s like they need to keep claiming their purity of heart to disguise the cauldron of evil that resides therein. 

So how would Peace on Earth look to such a religious person? 

-All babies with birth defects would die immediately, with help if necessary. 

-Women would do exactly what they are told by any man, including having sex upon demand. If they were to succumb to sex with any man other than their own husband, they would do the right thing and kill themselves, because rape is always the woman’s fault.

-Any child who detects that they are having feelings of attraction and love for their own gender would commit suicide immediately, as would any adult with the same feelings.

-Anyone who doesn't feel the “love of the Lord” deeply, to the point of insisting that everyone must also feel it, will kill himself or herself.

-Anyone with a ‘sign of Satan’, such as gender identity confusion, being left handed, having a strange birthmark or scar, crossed eyes, cleft palate, club feet, any kind of paralysis to part of their body, extra or missing appendages like fingers or toes, hearing defects or vision issues, will do away with themselves ASAP, if it hasn't been done for them.

-Anyone believing in any other religion, or even a different sect, would either convert sincerely, or rid themselves from fouling the earth. Of course almost each religion believes this, so probably 99% of the religious would be wiped out in one gigantic purging, as they all happily go to their gods.

Come to think of it, that’s the kind of religious peace on earth that suits me just fine.