Other Side of a Protest

Oh wow did I ever have fun on Friday. Went to the show at the local music bar, the punk band I'm manager for was headlining and it was the guitarists birthday so spirits were high as was the B.A.C. (blood alcohol content) and then my favorite part happened. a group af about 5-6 people were in front of the bar with signs. It was a christian group that had come to tell us that we were all going to hell for our hedonistic lives. Thats when I opened up my shirt to make sure they could see the t-shirt I had just recieved in the mail from Alternative Tentacles that oh-so-fittingly says Censor Religion. And Im a big guy so its fairly large print. But we had a really interesting conversation. Or maybe ammusing is a better way to put it. I was using techniques that we talk about here at work called motivational interviewing. well to be honest it wasnt a lot of M.I. I basicly just asked him questions while knowing exactly what he was going to respond with. It was almost too easy. there were a couple of my friends standing around watching me talk with the guy, who was very nice, very friendly, and very willfully ignorant. Afterwords one girl said that as soon as she heard me ask what bible he reads and he responded with the King James version she knew exactly where I was going. she laughed pointing out that rather than just hit him with the obvious truth that a book written for a king is going to have propaganda in it I strung it out for 10 minutes getting him to accept every peice of information about how we both agree that modern media is not trust worthy that governments censor and control the media for their own gain all the time. about how man is easily corupted by power. built all of this up and the guy said yes of course to everything, he blamed the devil for most of these atributes but that changes nothing when you get to the fact that he is now putting his entire faith in a book that was not only written thousands of years ago, has been translated and rewritten many times over, from languages that often times do not have exact traslations and finally was rewritten into modern english by king james, now if you were a king and had the chance to revise the single most important book in the world would not the temptation be there to throw in a little propaganda?

I refuse to call our conversation a debate from the grounds that no one was going to disuade the other from their opinion. which I brought up to him, I asked, or probably stated that there was absolutely nothing that I could say to this man that would have convinced him to give up his faith in god, and he has the same chances of winning me over to his side. I also found it interesting that he refused to say what group they were a part of. It was a good time and while there were a few drunk guys that were trying to start fights for the vast majority of people there it was just sorta a joke. they mocked the christians but didnt really care. I wanted to talk with them because I have respect for anyone who is going to try to protest when they know that they are going to be the vast minority. to go straight into the lions den with their beliefs takes balls, even though it was basicly a silly waste of time becuase the chances of actually influencing people who are out at a concert is slim to none, they need to work on their marketing skills for sure but at least they had courage and were able to be in your face so that people had to notice them without really being confrontational. these people were excersising there rights as americans and that is something I support even if I disagree with there side. There were times when I felt like a little bit of an ass because I was just trying to crush his faith by attacking the basis of his beliefs. But really if you start a protest like that you need to expect to be meet with resistance, he was probably more supprised that someone was willing to have a serious discusion than he was by the people who were trying to fight him. this doesnt really fit into the story here but so what flow and order is not really my forte' here, I forot to mention that I also hit him with one of my personal favorite arguments which is that if god does exsist then he is a cruel god with self esteem problems and that if he exsists I wouldnt want to pray to him (or her) any way. If god created all then he created all of the diseases all of the horrible aganising deaths were created from his sick and twisted mind, and he must really love beetles becuase he created over three hundred thousand different types of them. and yet humans seem to think that they are the favorites. ha. ok well thats probably enough bashing on religion for the day.
Jesus walks into a hotel and sets three nails on the counter saying, hey can ya put me up for the night?
i guess i wasnt done yet.
yeah im goin to hell if there is one. go to heaven for the climate, or hell for the company.