Tuesday, 16 October 2007

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  BEAUTIFUL DOWNTOWN BURBANK

  NBC has decided to leave its facilities in beautiful downtown Burbank and relocate their offices and studios to the Universal Studios lot in Universal City.  This news cannot be good for beautiful downtown Burbank.  After all, it was Johnny Carson and the Tonight Show that put Burbank on the map.  Without NBC, Burbank will have nothing, and it might degenerate into a downtrodden, dungy slum of the San Fernando Valley.   But that’s okay as long as I have the Romancing the Bean coffee house downstairs from me.  Filled with rock stars, yuppies, and hippies who look like Jesus, that bastion of caffeine culture has inspired some of the most nonsensical bullshit I’ve ever pounded into my word processor.  I don’t know why, but maybe there is something about coffee that makes me type at the speed of 1000 words per minute.  How should I know?  I’m not Juan Valdez.

  I was at Romancing the Bean the other day with my friend Charley.  We were friends from elementary school back in Cerritos, and we sparsely kept in touch throughout high school, college, and beyond.  This was my first time seeing her in years, and since that time she has popped out two kids.  When I saw her I was thoroughly delighted that she was still in fantastic shape after two pregnancies.  I pointed out that fact to her, along with the fact that everyone else we knew from high school who had kids was now hopelessly overweight (deuce…deuce and a half…).  Not one to deny the truth, she was pleasantly flattered by my compliment.

  Charley has the distinct honor of being the very first hardcore Christian I’ve ever known.  While we were growing up, our families both attended the same Catholic parish, but her family was the one that was always the first one there for Sunday morning mass, and they always sat in the front row.  Their family was actively involved in the parish; both parents served as Eucharistic ministers and worked in the sacristy, and Charley and her sister were both involved in the youth ministry.  Their family even had dinner with the pastor on weeknights (!).  Because of all this, Charley has always been the benchmark for what I perceived a model Catholic Christian should be, although she is NOT a charismatic, evangelical Bible banger.  On the contrary, she is quite intelligent.  She can school anyone on Bible verses and Christian philosophy, but she also understands Church history and the social and political forces behind it.  I never really saw her as someone who practices blind faith, and I suppose that’s why I never have really found myself at odds with her.

  While we were enjoying the cool autumn evening outside of Romancing the Bean in beautiful downtown Burbank, we got into a quasi-philosophical discussion about how the Smurfs cartoon series was not emblematic of UCLA football recruiting.  (I have always found our level of discourse fascinating.)  Logically, this evolved into a conversation about religion and science, and one thing led to another, and I ultimately asked her an existential question that I’ve wanted to ask her for a long time.  I said, “Let’s say that it is proven that God, in fact, exists.  Whether this is proven scientifically, or God himself comes down from heaven and proves his existence by saying, ‘Hey, I’m for real!’ is inconsequential.  Let’s just say that, by some reason or another, one day it is universally accepted that God is real, and no one on Earth denies this fact.  Considering that, how would that impact your spirituality?”  Charley answered with certainty and confidence, as if she had fielded this question before.  She said, “This would be terrible because Christianity is based on faith.  If it was proven that God was real, then there would be no reason to have faith.”  This answer sent shockwaves through my psyche.

  This made me realize something that I’ve never realized before.  While Christians will never deny the existence of God, they will never want to prove God’s existence.  The fundamental aspect of their spirituality is to believe that there is some greater good out there, and to realize this greater entity is to deny the ability to believe.  This isn’t exclusive to Christianity; it applies to any religion where faith in a deity is its fundamental tenet.  When Jesus Christ was alive back around the year 0 and when he was telling everyone that he was God, he was ridiculed, berated, humiliated, and executed.  He wasn’t treated like this for being blasphemous; he was treated like this because he was challenging everyone’s faith.  The Jews believed in the coming of the Messiah, and not the Messiah himself.  When they were faced with the possibility that the Messiah was real, they rejected it because accepting it would mean to abolish their faith.  This behavior is even present today.  My personal spirituality entails the belief that God is a state of mind, and we are capable of god-like behavior.  I don’t necessarily strut around beautiful downtown Burbank like a rooster and confidently proclaim to everyone that I am God, but I do believe that mentality is divine.  But whenever I tell people that I am God, people (particularly Christians) get kind of pissed off.   If I pressed the issue, I would probably be berated, ridiculed, humiliated, and possibly executed, but the ironic thing is that this is exactly how humans like to treat the supposed God that they have so much faith in.  The world will never prove the existence of God if it doesn’t want to.  God will never exist as long as religion exists.

  I know that this is purely conjecture because I could never “prove” that I am God.  However, if God were to ultimately prove His existence by, say, visiting beautiful downtown Burbank, and appearing on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and matter-of-factly proclaim and prove his existence once and for all, I fear that Christians may commit suicide because their faith and entire reason for existing would seem worthless.  Is there any spirituality beyond faith?

  I like to think that there is.  From Jesus Christ to me, the Universe always seems to make things equal.

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