satannica: information on all things satanic.

i am beginning my first satannica post with one of our favorite satanists. matt benton.

if you havent already read the controversy, it’s pretty apparent this satanist is quite fond of evolution, a clear opposition to the bible and all of us well-bred southern baptists and real americans. he cannot possibly believe the bible because of this, and i am pretty sure he’s not only a satanist, but he is in fact the anti-christ. barack obama better step it up, because he has close competition.

this is further proof of matt’s satanism. in this very frightening photo, matt is, believe it or not, channeling demons.

not pictured: jeff roberts. he asked that i’d protect his anonymity, and, although i feel i should respect that, satanists arent very deserving of respect. if i felt they were, then i’d be giving satan an inch. and we all know what he does with an inch.

i never write in this thing. usually when i think to, i have not even a wrinkle of a topic in my head. for some reason that sounds really gross.

so i guess ill just be honest with the few people that actually read this. im having a lot of issues with God and faith lately. i’ve come to severely dislike church in general and the way it’s put together. i dont really respect or support the idea of a pastor. one person standing up there imbuing his fantastic holiness on all his little “children”. it kind of makes me sick. maybe i just have an unhealthy obsession with wanting to speak my mind about things, but i absolutely hate feeling completely uninvolved in every church service im in. i feel so much like i want to just stand up and argue points that are made. and i want to raise my hand and be able to ask what the heck certain things mean. thank goodness for andy actually allowing me to do that so many times in the past, but i cant find that elsewhere.

i just feel like i want to branch out. i dont want to be expected to go to church because it will look nice to other people if i do. i just simply cannot support a system i only halfway believe in. i believe the people have entirely good intentions and do sincerely love God, but somehow i dont feel like i’m growing closer to truth that way. and maybe that’s selfishness. maybe i should allow church to surprise me. be a trooper and hope things change. but i just dont want to.

it’s also not only church that i’ve had issues with. it’s the foundation of our supposed connectedness with God himself. why in the world do we believe God speaks to us all the time? i so badly want to think he does, but i dont have any reason to believe it at this point. i’ve always thought that if i truly perceived God as he is, in whatever tiny fraction i might be able to understand, then i would love who he is entirely. so i’m wondering if my ideas of God and my interpretations of the bible have been flawed this whole time. i mean, i just cant get around the idea of God speaking to us. i really cant. i’ve asked the same questions repeatedly, and no answers seem to make sense to me. maybe i’m just being thickheaded, but people have told me that God leaves “impressions” on them, or that God’s voice is small and quiet and you have to be properly attuned to hear him. i hate to say it, but that sounds like a load of crap to me. it sounds so easily identifiable with a plethora of other things. it seems all psychological. and i dont want God’s words to be psychological. i dont want him to be something i can second-guess like that. i hate to sound like a complete douchebag, which im fully aware is the case, but understand i want to get around this. i want answers more than i want anything else.

i have come to realize that when Jesus prayed he wasnt concerned with what “God laid on his heart.” he never mentioned an “impression” or anything like that in the context of the bible. and that seems important enough to mention.

i dont know. i could keep going all day. i just feel like faith has been completely watered down as it is today, and its disgusting. i dont want to subscribe to watered down, easy religion. i want it to be more than singing songs about Jesus being my best friend. i want to be relatively interested in it when im leaving church, rather than completely bored. i’m especially lacking in respect for other christians as well. it’s awful to feel that way and even worse to admit it, but i feel so ridiculously awkward in a group of christians. i dont halfway agree with the crap they spew out of their mouths most of the time, and i feel like some sort of cynical, j.d. salinger obsessed half-follower of a faith i dont even know how to articulate. maybe i just want to relate to more than just a few people on this matter. and sometimes that’s even rare. i just dont like feeling rebellious or different about something so incredibly powerful and important. i want to swim downstream for once.

i dont quite know how to conclude this as i am not matt who happens to be the king of introductions and conclusions, so i guess if anyone has anything relatively helpful or even contradictory, please, please dont keep it to yourself.

blog in the round: tarot cards

i was kind of excited to learn about tarot cards as i joined in on blog in the round this week, but now im kind of dreading it. i looked up tarot cards and readings on wikipedia, and realized, tarot cards are incredibly boring to read about, so im just going to go by what i know.

one time i got a tarot card reading from my friend who happened to have a deck. (i feel really stupid saying that, as all that abstract, arcane stuff just kind of annoys me.) i got three signs, two of which i dont remember (had quite an effect on me and my life, eh?), while the third was some symbol of death, or coming danger. to be perfectly honest, i think tarot cards cannot possibly carry a wide variety of symbolic meaning if one card alone can be so vague.

tarot cards are basically like that guy on tv who says, “okay, i’m thinking of someone with lung cancer…” to an audience, who then search their minds for someone who has died from lung cancer (just about everyone can think of at least one person), while he narrows it down to male, um – smoker, gray hair, drove a truck, whatever, and one person usually jumps up and says THAT WAS MY FATHER!!! or whatever. they think he’s a genius for taking something vague and narrowing it down.

basically, a card that symbolizes danger in my life could mean anything. maybe it was talking about when i stubbed my toe on the sidewalk, or it could have been talking about a test im going to take. im going to continue to think of it as just a card with a picture on it randomly chosen from a deck my friend had in her bedroom, because frankly, it brought no clear insight in to my life, and i wont take any precautionary action because of it. yep, im walking on the sidewalk barefoot again.

if you happen to be a tarot reader, please impress me with, “you are going to die on this exact date,” or i’m just not interested. and neither is the rest of the world.