Long-time public radio celebrity Garrison Keillor, who fancies himself a satirist of the highest order, has decided that because Donald Trump was elected and Christians should have known better, Keillor is giving up Christianity.
Writing in The Washington Post, the distraught Keillor commences his bewailing with what he feels is an accurate description of the president-elect:
Boy President heads for Washington to be sworn into office, pumping his fist, mooning the media, giving the stinky finger to whomever irks him, doing his end-zone dance, promising to build the wall, cut taxes, create jobs, provide great health insurance for EVERYONE and send his son-in-law to the Middle East to solve that little problem . . .
Then he laments:
So I’ve been shopping around for a new religion to see me through the next four years. Too many of my fellow Christians voted for selfishness and for degradation of the beautiful world God created. I guess they figured that by the time the planet was a smoky wasteland, they’d be nice and comfy in heaven, so wotthehell. Anyhow, I’m looking around for other options.
Gee, Garrison, it’s not as though Christians are forcing you to stay. It’s not as though those gun-totin’ – oops, sorry, didn’t mean to mention guns.
Keillor continues that “Buddhism involves way too much sitting still for my taste . . . Hinduism includes sacred cows, and my experience with cattle makes it impossible for me to revere them.”
Then he equates Judaism with Islam, writing, as any contrite former Christian would: “Islam is great and so is Judaism but they’re so complicated! You can’t just walk into a temple and listen to a holy person and burst into tears and throw yourself down on the floor, as you can with Christianity, and say, ‘I believe!’ and get dunked in water and, shazam, you’re in.”
Yup, that Christianity sure is a durned easy way to the Good Life Upstairs, requiring nothing but a simple statement of faith. It’s kind of odd that Christians revere the Ten Commandments, though.
With what does Keillor choose to comfort himself? “Confucianism, accepting the sacredness of confusion. Life is messy and it always has been.”
Of course, Confucius also said, “Nine things there are of which the superior man should be mindful: to be clear in vision, quick in hearing, genial in expression, respectful in demeanor, true in word, serious in duty, inquiring in doubt, firmly self-controlled in anger, just and fair when the way to success opens out before him.”
The geniality of expression, respectfulness in demeanor, and self-control in anger somehow were missing from Keillor’s initial diatribe tarteting Trump.
Perhaps it’s because Keillor is not a superior man.
Perhaps he should be a better Christian, or at least, be better off as a Christian.