Smooth operator

Folks living in the Middle East and the Mediterranean are lucky sons of guns! They're blessed enough to live where olives have historically been cultivated and spread. Why does that matter? It matters because olive oil is the awesomest!

It's a magic healing elixir, folks. When consecrated by the power of the Holy Melchizedek Priesthood, it has amazing healing powers.

It transforms people into priests.

It turns you into royalty.

It made Jesus the Oily One way awesomer than all the other Jesuses. (I guess there were olives in the Pre-Existence.)

It guarantees Celestial glory.

And it's edible.

The point is this olive oil is very cool stuff when backed up by the proper magic which is why Mormon men tend to be locked and loaded at all times.

Keep your barrels well oil, brethren.

Heavenly fatherliness #8 - Discipline

According to popular wisdom, a good father waits for privacy to administer discipline.

Does God wait for that private moment to discipline? If we are to believe the scriptures this answer is OF COURSE NOT. Your sins will be shouted from the rooftops, your punishments will be public, your shame will be for all to see. The Father of Humanity doesn't give two shits about your personal pride, dignity, or physical well being. If you don't do what he says, he'll tromp your guts no matter where you are. He's prepared a torture chamber for you if you disobey.

Even excluding his torture chamber, God's disciplinary tactics are really odd. He's extremely indiscriminate in meting out discipline. (It rains on the good and the bad, right?) If God actually dealt out punishment exclusively for wickedness and blessings exclusively for righteousness we might actually be more inclined to do good and be good people because we would all see and seek the immediate rewards God has for us. But He doesn't. Instead God loves to give everyone a hard time regardless of our behavior just to confuse us and make us mad. It almost seems evil.

When it comes to discipline, God's the Biggest Fatherly Fuckup I can think of. The Dude's a total mess. We should probably talk to him about it.

Dear God Father, 
You can take Your vengeance, scourges, and pains of Hell and shove them up Your ass. Straight up Your ass. Now if You want to be a worthwhile dad, I recommend You either develop a better disciplining strategy or lay the fuck off Your children, they're good enough at shitting all over each other and "teaching" each other lessons.
Love,
Your dear Son

*These attributes represent the popular thoughts of Ask Men’s Jullian Marcus, examiner.com’s Tanya Tringali, and Open Talk Magazine’s Glenn Silvestre as per their respective articles on what makes a good father.

Jesus killing things

Remember when Jesus gets pissed off at a fig tree for not having any figs for him to eat so he curses the tree and it dies? Was that not weird? Why would the Son of God, Creator of the Universe, Savior of the World expect a fig tree to have figs in early spring? Why would a perfectly loving demi-god/god-god (however that's all supposed to work) allow his hunger to piss him off enough to curse a tree to death? How un-Christ-like of Jesus!

And previously to this little episode of wrath there was that extremely unsettling moment (maybe the scariest in all the New Testament) when Jesus transfers the legion of demons possessing a dude into a herd of pigs and makes them jump off a cliff. "My name is Legion, for we are many!" has to be the scariest lines spoken by any Bible character, but Jesus' behavior is pretty scary too. Why does he, the Master of the Universe, have to kill anything? Why couldn't he, The Final Judge, just catapult the evil spirits into Outer Darkness? How the hell can the spirits of our brothers and sisters who chose Satan's side exist in a pig's body anyway? Could Jesus send my soul into an animal body if he wanted to? And why, if Legion was able to occupy one human body, did it require a whole herd of pigs? Couldn't Jesus have sent all of the evil spirits into one pig and then sent that one demonic pig toppling over the cliff to his death all by his lonesome thereby saving the swineherd a lot of stress? What happens to those spirits after the pigs die, by the way? Are they supposedly trapped in pig flesh? Are they freed of their fleshy tabernacle to once again roam the earth tormenting the souls of man? Either way I hope Jesus had the decency to fully compensate the swineherd for his huge loss.