“I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumors
But I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor
And when I die I expect to find him laughing”
I don’t remember when this song came out, because, contrary to general belief, I was pretty young in 1984. But in later years, I learnt and read about the commotion that was caused by it. And, even though I wasn’t really in the epicenter of things, in order to have a clear view of the reactions, I can see them in front of my eyes as clear as the skies in a Greek August morning.
“An abomination” they must have called it. “A direct insult to God”, or “proof that this generation will be the last one, because God’s anger will smite us with fire and sulfur. And it will be the result of thoughts and provocations like this song”.
I loved this song from the very first time I heard it. Or, to be more exact, from the very first time I read it, since I read the lyrics in the notebook of a classmate of mine. It depicts, with accuracy that shocks me, the feelings and the thoughts that go through one’s head when life happens.
When a 28 year-old girl dies a few months before a cure to the illness that has been torturing her, her whole life, or a medicine to prolong and better her life is found. When a 17-year-old boy dies on the asphalt, killed by a car that shouldn’t be driven, by a 19-year-old boy who, before starting the car, thought to himself: “I don’t really want to go, I’d rather stay at home. But I’ll go now that I’m in the car”.
The song tells the story of a 16-year-old girl, who wants to die and tries to commit suicide, by slashing her wrists. God takes pity on her and she doesn’t succeed. Two years later, the girl is a happy person. She finds her lost love for life and also finds Jesus. But that doesn't last long, since a car hits her and sends her to the hospital on life support. A while later she dies.
“I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumors
But I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor
And when I die I expect to find him laughing”
I find it so ironic that people – humans, people like us – take it upon their hands to interpret other people’s actions, other people’s thoughts, and their beliefs and their words. And they take it upon themselves to interpret God’s will, and how God – any God, this is not an attack on Christians – would interpret something, and if He would take offense and be angry.
I remember when Harry Potter was first published, how all the Church people gathered in various places of the planet and started big fires burning the books. That took us all back to the time when the Nazis burned books and, along with the books, free thought and expression. Or even further back, when they would burn “witches”, women who used their heads, or helped their fellow men, or were simply a bit more beautiful than the establishment could handle.
I wonder if these people know how they are insulting God themselves. If this is the God we think it is, then I doubt he wouldn’t mind people talking trash about other people’s free thoughts. I doubt that he wouldn’t mind the hate that is born when someone goes out and publicly accuses someone else of even the smallest thing. I doubt he wouldn’t mind the blocking free transmission of ideas, because some preacher or priest or simply some self-righteous self-proclaimed savior of the world has so decided.
But, most of all, I wonder if these people know how they are insulting their own intelligence. I know they are insulting ours, and, unfortunately, they are right to think of a fairly large part of the population as idiots – or, strike out the word “idiots”, I’ll just call them “people who have decided not to use their brain, but to only use other people’s brain, in order to not waste calories”. If, when they say something, people jump right on that wagon and agree, then why not say something all the time and serve their personal interests and goals? But in doing so, they are also insulting their intelligence. Being the leader of a group of morons does not say much about you, does it? Go out there and do something great for your generation, you coward. Don’t just try to manipulate others. Greatness doesn’t work that way.
I was going to say that we have lost our humanity. But, come to think of it, I don’t know where the word “humanity” came from, because there aren’t all that many examples of it existing in our history books. Maybe it was simply a goal that was set ages ago. I just hope one day we find it.
