Friday, December 12, 2014

The Runaway Train

     RE:ligion! John Fogarty once wrote, "What you burn in your crazy mind." When the human psyche considers the universe, the meaning of life, the certainty of death and then afterlife it all becomes overwhelming.  Life is like being on a runaway train. You know how it's going to end and as that end gets nearer and nearer the choices become fewer and fewer. When the human mind tries to cope with such things religion is born. 

     Theology is man's feeble attempt to explain the unexplainable. When you look at the world we live in, and see all the injustice, and pain, you try to sort it out. You are trying to understand the path of the runaway train. Everyone, and I do mean everyone believes that their lives are influenced by something unseen. The theist posits a "God." The atheist holds to natural order, but whichever, all must reconcile their lives with the runaway train. We are born on the runaway train. It is not a choice. 

     Religion is a roadmap to help us manuveur down the tracks to the inevitable destination. We will all arrive. Just like we had no choice when handed the ticket, we will have no choice when the train pulls up at its final destination. When religion serves the coffee, explains the trip, and helps the train slow and stop in an orderly fashion it has succeeded. When religion makes the train jump the tracks, head into someone else's train, and destroy a lot of lives, it is no longer religion, it is chaos!

     This brings us to Radical Islam. Islam, by definition means, "Submission." Very simply put it is obeying what you think God wants you to do. The human mind loves complete circles. That's why you get a song stuck in your head. You know a piece of the song, and your brain is searching for the logical conclusion. When you arrive at it, the circle completes, and the song goes away. Songwriters strive to make simple circles. Islam was such a simple circle. 

     Islam is a very simple concept. Pray five times a day, don't eat any ham, and pay your bills. But, you know, there's always some guy in the back of the train  who just doesn't think that's enough. The train isn't going fast enough. People aren't sitting in the right seats, the engineer simple won't listen. What started out as the quiet urging of God's voice, telling that guy to sit as calmly as he can and enjoy the ride becomes a shout telling him that he, and only he can direct not only that train, but all the other trains no matter what track they may be on. 

     Bear in mind that most people on the Islam Express take their ride for what it is and only want the train to stay on the tracks no matter what speed it is going. These people are submissive. The radical passenger is not. He convinces himself that if he can just derail the train, and crash it into other trains that even if all the trains are not heading in his direction, at least he will destroy everything and THAT is what "God" told him to do! 

     The sad part is that all the people on the Islam Express will pay for this man's ticket. From the little clerk at the Quickie Mart, who always stocks his shelves with requests from his customers to the Executive in some high rise who hasn't seen a Mosque in years. As the train leaves the tracks passengers in other trains will look through its windows and all they will see is the shouting man. 

     Saint Thomas More had a legal axiom. If someone were to rise up with a dagger and stab a man, and there were one hundred men in the room who did nothing to stop him we could only surmise that the one hundred had concented to the action. However, human nature drives us to not be involved. The simple fact is all the people on all the other trains will try to survive, and if the Islam Express must crash and burn then the natural law demands that will occur.
  
     Is this right? Well, no. Can we change this? Right after I teach my Pit Bull how to meow. The rise of Radical Islam, and its eventual destruction are inevitable. When the fire dies down, and the bodies are counted from among the passengers the other trains will proceed. You know, God does have a sense of humor. He picks the engineers for the runaway trains, and to make His point they are usually a paradox. The engineer of one such train is Angela Box. You see, she is the exact opposite of everything Radical Islam rails against. Pretty little blonde with no veil. God does things like that. He deals us the unexpected. Kinda like that Jewish kid way back that knocked that giant guy  in the head with a rock. I think that boy was the first Texan!

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