shrieked the headline of a double page article in the Chronicle & Echo on October 31, “even in a light-hearted event?”
Intriguing fodder for thought from the clergy you might muse? But frankly it isn't. It's just stupid.
Included within this spurious diatribe festered some of the most fascinating yet risible statements, I’ve had both the joy and misfortune of spluttering my way through for, ooh, at least two days, (the astonishing autocratic and misleading untruths peddled by Alan Johnson and Gordon Brown regarding the reasons for sacking Bristol University's head of Psychopharmacology, Professor David Nutt, exemplified a complete knee-jerk contempt for scientific reasoning and the notion of soberly weighing-up evidence).
Try this for size.
The Chronicle confidently claims that this is the burning question of the week. Said metaphysical quandary has apparently been giving
Gamble... Hmm... With evi-
Sorry, did he just say gamble with evil? Regarding Halloween?
I’d never considered this before for some reason. It had never once occurred, even for a fleeting moment, the myriad of demons or wraiths that could be involuntarily summoned because of a humble game of apple bobbing. Can you dare to envisage the armies of warlocks or shape-shifters that might use the simple carving of a pumpkin as some kind of gateway into our world before unleashing their pernicious fury? How about those beasts and behemoths that could manifest their physical being into our reality just because some devil-may-care teenager decides to buy a Dracula cape from Toys ‘R’ Us?
This is terrifying stuff.
Although, having said that, with a nanosecond of consideration, I’m not sure I quite understand where either the gambling or the evil enter into the equation?
It appears our plucky Reverend is precisely the kind of jamfool who believes that the tumbler's erratic waddling movement across a Ouija board isn’t down to your hilarious prankster mate Jeremy.
Or me.
The church has apparently been busily distributing leaflets to parishioners asking them to consider their responsibilities as parents when it comes to Halloween. Or roughly translated, trying to emotionally play on the vulnerabilities of people who have already been so indoctrinated that they struggle to peer beyond this shameless twaddle. What a waste of precious pamphlet material - they could have been pizza menus.
According to the leaflet: “Concentrating on evil brings fear to the impressionable young minds. For some it is upsetting and causes nightmares. This is often underestimated.”
Er, (snort) kind of (cough), 'scuse me - PTOOEY! - a little like teaching children that if they don’t live a God-fearing, altruistic, guilt-free existence then unfortunately it’s an eternity stretched agonisingly across the lake of fire while a particular horned Prince of Darkness gores excruciatingly at their nether-regions until the end of time. Which incidentally, never, ever, ever, ever ends.
This painful drivel continues: “Christians believe that evil is a real but defeated power. Halloween, however, is about evil triumphant, where it is in the ascendant and is given too much importance. For Christians, Halloween is a distortion of reality. It may also give children a false sense of the power of evil.”
Holy shit.
Forgive me for taking the liberty of informing this feckless outmoded dunderhead that evil is not a hairy, fanged, four-legged phantom; neither is it an unmentionable, stench-ridden monstrosity kept shackled in the attic; and it ain't a bloodcurdling, shadowy miscreation that descends upon unsuspecting wretches who indulge in the odd seasonal pumpkin soup-slurping session, engulfing them in a tornado of cannibalistic zombie dust.
And it most certainly is not defeated.
Here’s what evil is:
Evil is the Islamic extremist who screeches, ‘Allahu Akbar' seconds before detonating his/her bomb-vest, indiscriminately slaughtering whichever innocent victims happen to be standing nearby. Evil is the calculating fiend who swipes a young girl off the street at a bus stop and bundles her into the back of his transit van, only for her to surface again years later as a pile of bones next to a motorway. Evil is the priest who abuses the children left in his trust and destroys their innocence and subsequently their lives. Evil is a former Hitler Youth Pope who staunchly opposes poverty-stricken Africans or Brazilians or Filipinos from using condoms in the midst of an apocalyptic AIDS pandemic.
Evil is a stealthy Shaolin wasp lurking in your trackie b’s.
Ultimately, evil is human.
It is homo sapien – a man or a woman. It is a bipedal, walking, talking, thinking, conscious and sadistic being with no empathy, no sympathy and no remorse. Evil is a person, or persons.
Kids know full well that witches and vampires and ogres and werewolves don't exist because this is regularly pointed out to them. What confuses things is when a bunch of adults tell them with stony-faced sincerity that there is a place called Hell where the landlord is a cloven-hoofed, horned sadist who doesn’t scrimp on the heating.
If you really want to see what strange forms evil can take then you need look no further than the Reverend Peter Breckwoldt himself and his ridiculous superstitious, hypocritical, baseless, mystical, humourless bunkum. I’d cast a horrible spell on this boneheaded, blithering bumblespanner if only such a thing existed. And he’s got a stupid nefarious name with letters that shouldn’t go together. I say don your cape and witches hat and cast this aberration asunder.
Praise the fucking lord for Satan.
666
666.
