| By Brian Elroy McKinley |
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I feel like a prophet. I was minding my own business one day,
and God (pronounced "gaaawad") blinded me with light. And when the light
disappeared, I clearly saw a vision of the scroll that contained the
missing Eleventh Commandment. It was so clear. And it was only a few feet
away.
Actually the light was the sun reflecting off the rear window of the BMW stopped in front of me, and my vision was the bumper sticker I came millimeters away from hitting. But I knew it was a revelation nonetheless. Why right there, divinely places before my fear-opened eyes, were the words, "Find God and Find Happiness." With the fear of God (or perhaps death) in my mind and the palpitations in my heart, I sough with vim and vigor to obtain the sacred scroll. My fists shaking in a righteous fervor, my mouth speaking in vivid tongues, I sought to chase down the scroll bearer, hoping to once again glimpse the divine words and see if the driver could interpret my oral utterances. But my Buddhist-made Subaru was little challenge for a happy BMW owner who obviously had a God (and a German-made car) with more horsepower on his side. Still, the words stuck with me; they were burned into my retinas. I could see them in all their vivid glory. Five simple words that clearly stated the meaning of life. Five words that surely were the Eleventh Commandment, the missing scripture that must have gotten lost when Moses broke the original tablets. Of course, I knew it was only a paraphrased version. And I knew that by piercing my vision and straining my heart with the sudden appearance of the bumper sticker (and the rest of the car), God was asking me to reconstruct the original text so all the world would know what it's been missing. I sought much help in reconstructing the commandment. I studied under the experts -- you know, those theologians so advanced that they get their own T.V. shows. These are men and women with amazing ability to extrapolate vast, but surely divine, interpretations of minute biblical passages. They are able to unlock the true mysteries of salvation and free enterprise otherwise hidden from the masses who must take the scriptures at their face value. Through their teachings I began to understand the fine are of non- contextual analysis. I sought help from a program designed to free us prophets from the limitations of the mere 66 books we currently have in the Bible (unless you're a Catholic whose Bible has 73 books or an Eastern Orthodox with 71 books or a Western Superorthodox who only has a couple of verses taken out of context). I was divinely led to find this program while meditating in front of the tube and switching the catechisms of cable TV. It was on channel 52 and was named after some magical number. I watched and listened. I studied hard to learn the amazing technique of expanding the meaning of scripture without visible adding a single word. I also learned there are secret books within the Bible that are hidden from most of us; they can only be ascertained when we learn to read between the lines of existing scripture -- between the commas, quotation marks and periods as well. There's First and Second Stipulations; there's the Book of Indoctrinations; there's Homophobo-rations, Killthesinnernations and First and Second Verbalflatuations. With this great learning, and with the help of the many preachers I've known who insist on speaking in 300-year-old English because that's obviously the way God speaks, I succeeded in translating the five-word vision imbedded in my psyche (which is much better than where it could have been imbedded). What "Find God and Find Happiness" really means is: Thou shalt studieth the Bible in ordereth to best interpret whateth God willeth for thine pitifuleth life, and if thou faileth to accurately understandeth and followeth the correct interpretation, thou willeth remaineth miserable. Granted, I may have one too many "eths" in there, but I think the meaning is clear. If we want to be happy, we must be able to correctly understand God's will for our lives in every circumstance where it is critical, and then we must follow it. For if we do not find God's will and follow it, our lives will be relegated to a sorry existence. Our lives will be empty and meaningless, mere shadows of what they could be if only we were diligent enough to ascertain God's will in every critical decision. But isn't it just like God to have already revealed this revelation to His followers before giving me, the prophet, the actual words. I mean, I went through all that time and worked hard to understand how all those tele- evangelists got their extraordinary interpretations of scripture, and I when I finally am able to correctly interpret this Eleventh Commandment, I realize that many Christians are already obeying it. Many believers are already trying to figure out what things in their lives displease God enough to make Him withhold happiness from them. Actually, it seems the spirit of this Eleventh Commandment is an innate part of our soul. It certainly is an innate part of many of our families. You know the ones... where the parents withhold affection until the child has successfully figured out what it is doing that offends them. Sure the parents have laid down certain rules that the child knows it should follow. But in the day-to-day choices the child makes, there are no set guidelines; rather the child must look for a sign of whether or not its actions are correct enough to receive affection. The child must become diligent to seek daily its parents' will in order to gain the parental blessing it so desires. The general guidelines of loving its parents and following the overall rules is simply not enough. A mistake in interpreting each parent's specific will most certainly invites parental wrath. As in the family above, the truth of this Eleventh Commandment can easily be seen in the lives of many Christians. They are not content to know that God loves them. They are not content to live according to the general rules laid out in the other Ten Commandments (well nine... I'm sure through some other prophet such as I, God invalidated the one about the Sabbath). They are not content to seek God as a parent who blesses them unconditionally. Instead they seek His daily will in each decision of their lives, hoping they have been diligent and intelligent enough to correctly interpret what that is so God will make them happy. They understand that unless they know and follow God's will in each area of their lives, they cannot possibly please God enough to obtain His blessing. And they know that if they are not happy, it must be because they have not adequately studied and interpreted God's will.
But I can't be upset with God for revealing to me a commandment that
many
already follow. As God's servant, I just want people to be happy. The fact
that many are already seeking what they must do in order to gain that joy
from God only serves to please me. I'm not one to complain. Rather, I'm
pleased that God has used my term as a prophet to validate a practice
already held as sacred by so many Christians. And knowing that I have
played such an integral role in proving that God's heart is not with the
miserable or downtrodden but rather with those worthy enough to receive His
blessing has made my life complete. I will return to my normal (happy) life
and my Subaru and hope that perhaps someday God will once again call on my
prophetic abilities (enhanced by my impeccable research) to validate other
Christian beliefs that only heretics and unhappy people would reject.
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| Related Writings
Terrorism as a Means of Self-actualization |
Email: el@elroy.com