If there is a hell, he’s burning in it…in the deepest pit, right along with his buddies like Hitler.

Maybe there is a god…he put an end to Jerry Fallwell’s miserable life.

As for me, I’m planning a HUGE party, with parades in the streets, on the 1st anniversary of his death. I’m hoping to have the Teletubbies and a few of my gay friends sucking and screwing each other on the float, just as an afront to Fallwell. I live in Virginia again, having just moved back from Detroit…(God, what a horrible city). So, I’m going to plan a trip to Fallwell’s grave, maybe on May 15, 2008, to take a shit on his grave.

Jesus suggested– very nearly commanded– that when our neighbor repents, we ought to forgive him, to which I would only add, “if you can. Don’t strain yourself too much, okay?”

Forgiveness of the unrepentant, then, should be viewed as optional. That doesn’t mean one can’t do it. In fact, forgiving someone, even though it may seem quite irrational, may be of great benefit to the one who forgives. In many cases, I’ve noticed, forgiveness seems to do far more for the forgiver than for the forgiven, but this doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing, just that the projected or anticipated results may not be accomplished so easily. In any case, talk of forgiveness of the unrepentant ought never be accompanied by that sometimes-evil word “should.”

I choose not to forgive Falwell for the many evils he did. I choose not to have any opinion whatsoever about what kind of forgiveness God ought to practice on the Irreverend Falwell. That’s God’s business, not mine; “judge not, that ye be not judged.”

Who am I to say how God should judge the man? Or, say, Christopher Columbus, often hailed as a great wonderment, but also a practitioner of genocide? The plain fact is, for all I know, if I’d been in Columbus’ or Falwell’s shoes, I might have behaved just as badly as they did, or worse.

But wherever Falwell is now, he doesn’t need my little forgiveness, and I don’t feel any need to give it him. He’s dead. Let the dead bury their dead. I’d sooner practice forgiveness, and generosity of spirit, or at the very least, some kind of tolerance, toward the persons of a thousand living Falwells, than one dead one.

Lotus in a sea of fire, indeed. I’ve been trying to track down the centuries-old Buddhist poem that inspired that book title, but all I can seem to find on the net are references to the book, not the poem. And that’s what brought me here… We’re in for some very troubling times, and we must stand firm against bigotry, irrational fear, slanders of all kinds, and above all against the many murders they inspire. And know that we are weak, but God is strong, and we too will falter at times. Let us hope that if we fall, we will indeed fall well. Unlike the late pastor of that name, whose death I neither mourn nor praise.

Do not suppose that we have never been warned against this kind of thing. Jesus himself said, “and indeed the day is coming when anybody who kills you will believe he is doing a holy thing for the Lord.” Well, Falwell may never have performed a single act that would qualify as homicide in the eyes of man, but aiding, abetting, and encouraging? What of that?

I will pray with all my might that I do not become, in my own inadvertent way, just as bad as those I would decry. That’s where it all must begin and end: with our potentially harshest critic, the man in the mirror.

Anyway… Where were we in this conversation before we were so rudely interrupted?

The damage is not finished being done yet, Shade. We still have all the other Religious Reich groups to deal with.