ReligionChurch Jokes

However, the atheist's life was good, he had a well-paying job and a beautiful wife, and his children were healthy and good- natured, whereas the pious man's job was strenuous and his wages were low, his wife was getting fatter every day and his kids wouldn't give him the time of the day.

So one day, deep in prayer as usual, he raised his eyes towards heaven and asked:

"Oh God, I honour you every day, I ask your advice for every problem and confess to you my every sin. Yet my neighbour, who doesn't even believe in you and certainly never prays, seems blessed with every happiness, while I go poor and suffer many an indignity. Why is this?"

And a great voice was heard from above:

"BECAUSE HE DOESN'T BOTHER ME ALL THE TIME!"

"This is Sister Margaret. There's been a terrible mistake!"

She explained the situation, and Saint Peter said he'd get right on it. The next day the nun didn't hear from Saint Peter so she called him again. "Please set this error straight before tomorrow," she begged.

"There's an orgy planned for tonight, and everyone *must* attend!"

"Of course, Sister," he said. "I'll get you out of there right away."

Apparently, her plight slipped his mind, and the following morning Saint Peter received another phone call from hell. He picked up the receiver with tribulations of his heart and started to listen.

He heard the following, "Hey, Pete, this is Maggie. Never mind!"

Obviously, Football is a syndrome of religious rites symbolizing the struggle to preserve the Egg of Life through the rigors of impending winter. The rites begin at the Autumn Equinox and culminate on the first day of the New Year, with great festivals identified with bowls of plenty. The festivals are associated with flowers such as roses; fruits such as oranges; farm crops such as cotton; and even sun-worship and appeasement of great reptiles such as alligators.

In these rites, the Egg of Life is symbolized by what is called "The Oval", an inflated bladder covered with hog skin. The convention of "The Oval" is repeated in the architectural oval-shaped design of the vast outdoor churches in which the services are held every sabbath in every town and city. Also every Sunday in the greater centers of population where an advanced priesthood performs. These enormous churches dominate every college campus; no other edifice compares in size with them, and they bear witness to the high spiritual development of the culture that produced them.

Literally millions of worshipers attend the sabbath services in these open-air churches. Subconsciously, these hordes are seeking an outlet from sexual frustration in anticipation of violent masochism and sadism about to be enacted by a highly trained priesthood of young men. Football obviously arises out of the Oedipus complex. Love of mother dominates the entire ritual. (Notre Dame and Football are synonymous).

The rites are preformed on a green rectangular area orientated to the four directions. The green area, symbolizing Summer, is striped with ominous white lines representing the knifing snows of Winter. The white stripes are repeated in the ceremonial costumes of the four whistling monitors who control the services through a time period divided into four quarters, symbolizing the four Seasons.

The ceremony begins with colorful processions of musicians and semi-nude virgins who move in and out of ritualized patterns. This excites the thousands of worshipers to rise from their seats, shout frenzied poetry in unison and chant ecstatic anthems through which runs the Oedipus theme of willingness to die for the love of mother.

The actual rites, performed by 22 young priests of perfect physique, might appear to the uninitiated as a chaotic conflict concerned only with hurting the Oval by kicking it, then endeavoring to rescue and protect the Egg.

However, the procedure is highly stylized. On each side there are eleven young men wearing colorful and protective costumes. The group in so-called "possession" of the Oval first arrange themselves in an egg-shaped "huddle," as it is called, for a moment of prayerful meditation and whispering of secret numbers to each other.

Then they rearrange themselves with relation to the position of the Egg. In a typical "formation" there are seven priests "on the line," seven being a mystical number associated not, as Jung purists might contend, with the "seven last words" but actually, with sublimation of the "seven deadly sins" into "the seven cardinal principles of education."

The central priest crouches over the Egg, protecting it with his hands, while over his back quarters hovers the "Quarterback." The transposition of "back quarters" to "quarterback" is easily explained by the Adler School. To the layman the curious posture assumed by the "Quarterback," as he hovers over the central priest, immediately suggests the Cretan origins of Mycenaean animal art, but this popular view is untenable. Actually, of course, the "quarter-back" symbolizes the libido, combining two instincts, namely, a) Eros, which strives for even closer union, and b) the instinct for destruction of anything which lies in the path of Eros. Moreover, the "pleasure-pain" excitement of the hysterical worshipers focuses entirely on the actions of the libido-quarter-back. Behind him are three priests representing the male triad.

At a given signal, the Egg is passed by sleight-of-hand to one of the members of the triad who endeavors to move it by bodily force across the white lines of Winter. This procedure up and down the enclosure, continues through the four quarters of the ritual.

At the end of the second quarter, implying the Summer Slostice, the processions of musicians and semi-nude virgins are resumed. After forming themselves into pictograms representing alphabetical and animal fetishes, the virgins perform a most curious rite requiring far more dexterity than the earlier phallic Maypole rituals from which it seems to be derived. Each of the virgins carries a wand of shining metal which she spins on her fingertips, tosses playfully into the air, and with which she interweaves her body in most intricate gyrations.

The virgins perform another important function throughout the entire service. This concerns the mystical rite of "conversion" following success of one of the young priests in carrying the Oval across the last white line of Winter. As the moment of "conversion" approaches, the virgins kneel at the edge of the rectangle, bury their faces in the earth, then raise their arms to heaven in supplication, praying that "the uprights will be split." "Conversion" is indeed a dedicated ceremony.

If God was process oriented, the Book of Genesis might read something like this:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, so God created a small committee. He carefully balanced the committee vis-a-vis race, gender, ethnic origin, and economic status in order to interface pluralism with the holistic concept of self-determination according to adjudicatory guidelines. Even God was impressed, and so ended the first day.

And God said, "Let the committee draw up a mission statement." And behold, the committee decided to prioritize and strategize and God called that process empowerment. And God thought it sounded pretty good. And evening and morning were the second day.

And God said, "Let the committee determine goals and objectives and engage in long-term planning." Unfortunately, a debate about the semantic differences between goals and objectives pre-empted almost all of the third day. Although the question was never satisfactorily resolved, God thought the process was constructive. And evening and morning were the third day.

And God said, "Let there be a retreat in which the committee can envision functional organization and engage in planning by objectives." The committee considered adjustment of priorities and consequential alternatives to program directions, and God saw that this was good. And God thought that it was even worth all of the coffee and donuts that he had to supply. And so ended the fourth day.

And God said, "Let the committee be implemented with long-range planning and strategy." The committee considered guidelines and linkages and structural sensitivities, and alternatives and implemental models. And God saw that this was very democratic. And so would have ended the fifth day, except for the unintentional renewal of the debate about the differences between goals and objectives.

On the sixth day the committee agreed on criteria for adjudicatory assessment and evaluation. This wasn't the agenda that God had planned. He wasn't able to attend, however, because he had to take the afternoon off to create day and night and heaven and earth and seas and plants and stars and trees and seasons and years and sun and moon and birds and fish and animals and human beings.

On the seventh day God rested and the committee submitted its recommendations. It turned out that the recommended forms for things were nearly identical to the way that God had created them; so the committee passed a resolution commending God for his implementation according to the guidelines. There was, however, some opinion expressed that people should have been created in the committee's image.

And God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the committee . . .