The Temple of Blinky the Cat and Other Amusements
This drawing enrages certain people. It is a challenging piece of art which explores the soullessness of modern Evangelical Christianity.
The motif is Evangelical Christianity as a mass-marketed theme park. The solitary male figure dominating the picture is not God, but is instead the Christian CEO in search of profit. He does not read the Bible as much as he reads the bottom line. He is the wizard of big business behind the curtain of holiness. The riders emerging from the tunnel are Christians who have just experienced the mega-church extravaganza on Sunday morning. They are talking about how fun the ride was and how they must ride it again next Sunday. Indeed, they have ridden it every Sunday for years and have gained nothing more profound than an occasional "Voter's Guide." Part of the thrill of the ride is the horror section in which gays, feminists, liberals, Hollywood, the New Age, and public schools jump out in an attempt to kill the souls of the riders. The waving of a Bible serves to repulse these demons so that the Christian riders emerge victorious. The last section of the ride features scenes of a future heaven in which the riders will have a mansion in a neighborhood whose streets are paved with gold. The obligatory "Hell" is also shown. Depicted as a tempestuous Lake of Fire full of screaming sinners, the Hell serves to confirm the correctness of the Christians' decision to be saved.
Having been a "Jesus Person" and Christian activist during the period 1973-1979, Augustine experienced what he considered to be the pure essence of early Christianity, especially at churches such as Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California, and at Melodyland Christian Center in Anaheim, California. In order to prepare himself for Christian ministry, Augustine attended Southern California College, which was renamed Vanguard University in 2000. Vanguard University is the crown jewel in the Assemblies of God college system. Known for its academic rigor and a the high quality of its spiritual life. Augustine graduated with honors in 1980 with a major in English and a minor in Biblical Studies.
Upon graduation, Augustine worked for four years as an assistant technical writer at Hughes Aircraft where he had a secret-level clearance and worked with missiles, radar, and anti-aircraft weaponry. Augustine left Hughes to enter the field of technical sales where he has since remained. He presently sells plasma-generated optical radiation sources, which are key components in lasers, spectrometers, and other scientific instruments.
By the time of his graduation, Augustine had left the Christian church and his faith behind to pursue a path of non-Christian spirituality, which path included a deep and profound study and association with Avatar Adi Da Samraj , the God-Realized Adept whom even Ken Wilber acknowledges as the greatest Realizer of the present age. Augustine also makes this same acknowledgement of Avatar Adi Da Samraj. Indeed, Augustine says, "Avatar Adi Da Samraj taught me virtually everything I know that is profound." It should be emphasized that while the teaching embodied in Psychic Architecture is uniquely Augustine's work, his study as a "formal friend" of Avatar Adi Da Samraj was an absolutely necessary step in preparing him to think and write at the powerful esoteric levels evidenced in Psychic Architecture.
Coincident with his profound study with Avatar Adi Da Samraj, Augustine watched the rise of the "mega-churches" in the 1980's and 1990's. Their rise was based upon the same marketing tools and principles Augustine was working in his career in corporate sales management. Yet these tools seemed so utterly cynical in the hands of the religious profiteers and Evangelical hoodlums, or what James Hillman has so aptly called, "The thugs of virtue." Consider their method in terms of sales techniques:
1) Create a need = You are a sinner before God and will be sent to Hell forever when you die. How can you prevent this?
2) Create a solution = Jesus died for your sins
3) Close the deal = You must accept Jesus into your heart as your personal savior
4) Affirm the buyer's decision = Welcome into the Kingdom of God: You now have life eternal and the peace that comes from knowing Jesus
5) Create a need for additional products = Now that you are saved, you need to regularly attend a Bible-Believing church because the Bible says, "forsake not the gathering together of yourselves."
6) Create a solution = The MegaVangel Church is a Christ-centered, Bible-Believing church whose ministry will help you and your family grow in Jesus Christ.
7) Close the deal = God's Word tells you not to forsake the gathering together of the saints. We believe that it is no accident that God led you to The MegaVangel Church. We believe that God would have this be your new church home.
If the buyer has doubts about joining, then a deacon can always create doubts about the competition: "You're not sure God wants you here? Well, that is a matter between you and God. But we would ask you, Brother Smith, to please pray about this very carefully because if you wind up in the wrong church, you and your family could be led astray into false doctrine. We preach Christ and the Bible at MegaVangel whereas many other churches preach a different Jesus and a different Gospel than what is found in God's Word. You don't want to wind up in a cult believing in a false gospel and worshipping a false Jesus do you? As the man, you are the priest and spiritual head of your family. Your wrong decision could lead your family down the wrong path. Please, let's pray about this right now and ask God to give you guidance."
8) Affirm the Buyer's decision from the pulpit = "Brothers and sisters in Christ, we are so glad to welcome Brother Smith and his family into the family of God here at ABC Baptist. I'm certain that Brother Smith will grow into a fine part of the Body of Christ. I feel the witness of the Holy Spirit that Almighty God has placed Brother Smith here as part of our family for a reason. Let's all give Brother Smith a warm round of applause to welcome him home! He has been lost in the world and now our loving shepherd Jesus has led him back home to be with his family! Praise God! Hallelujah!"
9) Create the need for additional spiritual products such as books, tapes, videos, retreats, and tours to the Holy Land.
10) Insure a residual cash stream by teaching the convert to give 10% of his or her gross income to the church each paycheck. Make this requirement spiritually binding. "Will a man rob God?" the Bible asks. "Well, those who do not tithe are robbing God of that which is rightfully his, for God does command that we give him 10%. Let me ask you this: When you face God after your death, will he find you to have been a faithful giver or a person who robbed him?"
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Particularly noteworthy in the growth of the mega-churches was the integration of computers and television into Christianity. "The Electronic Church" as it has been called, is able to conduct mass fund-raising appeals, to evangelize millions each week, and to organize political action committees by exploiting computers and television. Paradoxically, this same electronic Evangelical church wants a "return to the past" in which Christian values were said to have ruled America. That many of the Founding Fathers owned slaves, that many were Freemasons, a group considered satanic by Evangelicals, is conveniently forgotten in the revisionist history of Evangelical Christendom.
A quick visit to a Christian bookstore will confirm that Christian publishers and record labels have indeed copied the world. Christian rock, rap, and music videos are imitative of successful secular artists. Christianity ceaselessly attacks Hollywood for being evil while copying its cinematic and video production values and marketing practices. Christianity is very profitable for some, and certainly the proliferation of versions of the Bible attest to the fact that niche marketing consumes Christian publishers in search of profit and new markets. Well over one hundred different versions of study Bibles targeted to specific audiences such as women of color, teenagers, and mothers have been published in the past twenty years.
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An interesting aside to our subject is the Christian cartoonist Jack T. Chick. He is the fellow who draws and produces those small and inexpensive black-and-white cartoon tracts you have probably seen at one time or another. Perhaps you have been handed one or picked one up that had been left conspicuously in some public place. As a Jesus Person, Augustine estimates that he distributed well over a thousand "Chick tracts." Chick Publications estimates that it has printed over 500,000,000 Chick tracts in forty years of operation, thus making Jack T. Chick the best selling, and least known, artist in history. That Chick's work is anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-Mason, anti-Islam, anti-gay, anti-feminist, and opposed to everything Mr. Chick deems ungodly is consistent with his image as a born again bigot. That he is a true Christian hero is the subject of debate amongst Christians themselves. Chick satire site is located throughout the internet. The auteur Dwayne Walker has an interesting Chick section at his website, Walkertown.
While far less sensational than apocalyptic-themed Christian movies and books which earn millions of dollars in profit and generate immense publicity, Jesus also uses the humble ten cent Chick tract to reach the unsaved wherever they may be. Chick tracts can be found in public toilets, laundromats, phone booths, parks, bulletin boards, and any other places or situations into which a small cartoon tract can insert itself.
Whereas Jesus once threw the money-changers out of the temple, it now appears that he needs legions of MBA's, financiers, marketing people, and publicists to manage the various profitable activities of the Kingdom of God -- most of which are tax-exempt. Ironically, these Christian profiteers blithely rip off the highly successful artistic techniques, business practices, and marketing expertise of a world they denounce as evil. This is having your cake and eating it too. Of course, if this strategy fails, Jesus always has resort to Mr. Jack T. Chick, his unfailing and dutiful servant who has hewn down entire forests that the world might find salvation in a ten cent "chicklet."
The renowned Miss Poppy Dixon has a very fascinating site devoted to the exploration of Evangelical Christianity and its often hostile relationship to contemporary culture. Adult Christianity gives us a biting, and often wickedly funny, look into modern Christianity's frequent forays into the absurd, the criminal, and the pursuit of money. Christianity has strayed from the purity of its roots and the drawing above is as much a satire as an indictment. Of particular note is her essay on a Catholic book for boys written in the 1960's. Entitled, Let's Take the Hard Road, the book, were it read with insight at the time, was a chilling portent of the criminal revelations which lay in the future of Catholicism.
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The winged cat in the top left of the drawing represents the Christian apocalyptic motif and speaks to the belief that Jesus will appear in the skies as a "thief in the night" to Rapture his children back to heaven. A cat is silent as it creeps on its paws. A winged cat would be undetectable as it glided to earth. Jesus will return to earth silently and without warning according to the Bible. Yet Jesus must have foreseen the commercialized, crass, and even criminal version of Christianity which exists today, for in Luke 18:8b he asked, "However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"
Blinky the Cat, a metaphor for a church unaware of its own failings and absurdities, suggests that Jesus will not find faith when he returns. Blinky is represented as the whiskered cat at the lower left of the drawing. Blinky is preceded by four pyramids which serve to demonstrate how the ancient religious mysteries have been made absurd by a mass-marketed church that sells smiles and band-aids in lieu of truth. The four leaping blind mice above Blinky are the blind leading the blind in a church that is concerned with spectacle for its own sake.
The world has lost its sacredness and so has Christianity. It is all a theme park designed by governments and multinational corporations whose purpose is to separate us from our money and build invincible power structures. We have traded our souls for bread and circuses. Yet we feel this loss keenly and seek to remedy it. The world can clearly see its failings and this is why the so-called "Oprahization" of our culture has occurred as we seek healing. Given the hard line stance of Christianity and its fascist will to destroy our human freedoms, I will take Oprah any day.
Can Christianity see its failings? Can it remember the Lord Jesus' admonition to forgive, to turn the other cheek, and to pray for one's enemies? Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christianity cannot and that is why these groups have become militant, aggressive, shrill, and hell-bent to "take back" an America which they never owned in the first place. They have traded the purity of salvation for the brutal pursuit of power in the belief that their power will force America to become a "Christian nation." Yet how does putting a gun to someone's head make them a Christian? How does enforcing Christian principles by law make American a Christian nation? Under such a religious regime, America would be ruled by brutal religious fascists who think they are doing God's will much in the same way the Islamic dictatorship of Iran considers itself to be doing God's will.
America belongs to all her people and not just to those for whom Jesus and the GOP have, tragically for human rights, become synonymous. The modern Christian Pharisees, as exemplified by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, have utterly forgotten that America was founded upon freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and the right to worship God according to the dictates of one's own conscience. Jesus has no desire to sit upon the throne of America which the Evangelicals are trying to create for him. Jesus himself said, "My Kingdom is not of this earth," thereby indicating that he was not seeking a temporal political office, Lordship over the Roman Empire, or even a future coronation as the King of America.