Jesus Dommed Me... and I Liked It

I like to think of myself as a responsible grown-up. I eat my vegetables, pay my bills on time and keep my promises. But the Internet, she is pied piper designed to lead us respectable adults astray into a Never-Never Land of juvenalia and labored, mixed metaphors. So, when I stumbled across today's entry, I couldn't help but make it into fodder for an increasingly childish barrage of giggling misinterpretations. But that's what you get when you make a website called BibleLife.org/Bondage.

I'll admit, this website is a bit of a crossover for Net Insanity. I found it while scavenging for material a few weeks ago for the Craigslist Files. The folks who run the sexiest little Christ-site on the Web, Kent and Marti Rieske, have recently launched a massive craigslist campaign to promote their ministry. Wait, let's try that again. Ahem, their ministry. Damn it, Internet! One last time. Their MINISTRY! Right. Good. This basically consists of making long, rambling posts in the less rigorously policed sections of craigslist, i.e. General Community, with links to various pages in the Bible Life cluster. Most of these pages are pretty generic finger-wagging and proselytizing, but the Bondage page really stands out for its unintentional hilarity.

Like the majority of people with sense enough not to walk barefoot in the winter or eat paint 'cuz it's purdy, I'm not much impressed or swayed in my beliefs by the ponderous paragraphs one usually finds in Christian missionary material. But I can tell you, without a doubt, that Bible Life's Bondage page has never made being a servant of Christ sound so hot. To quote the top of their page,

"The modern Christian churches use brainwashing, mind control, indoctrination, oppression, coercion, intimidation, legalism, false teaching, guilt, shame, peer pressure and other bondage techniques to control members..."

With language like that, I can imagine the Church could get a lot of people to control their members. Most churches are satisfied if you throw a fiver in the collection plate. To get a menu like that in a secular establishment one would have to shell out at least $150 and I'm pretty sure half of that stuff is technically illegal in most states.

Alas, the hardcore smut care of Bible Life Ministries quickly devolves into more familiar territory by the halfway point down the page. Eager to hear about some more of the Church's bondage techniques, maybe some breath-play or Auto-Scarfing with the Shroud of Turin, I sallied forth only to find some run-of-the-mill anti-semitism and hypocrisy. According to Bible Life, the Church teaching the Ten Commandments to their congregants is nothing but blasphemous Judaizing. You heard 'em, folks. Jesus says it's ok to murder people, steal whatever you want and screw your neighbor's wife, just as long as you don't tithe to the Church. No sir, that business is strictly for them there greedy Jews.

Because apparently nature abhors the unpredictable, Bible Life punctuates its long missive against Church greed with a request that you, yup, send them money. They chastise organized religion for charging people for actual services, but apparently it's Jesus-kosher to take credit card numbers from strangers on the Internet in exchange for absolutely nothing, unless you count the red-text message "Thank you, and may God bless you mightily", which they give for free anyway. Can we please go back to talking about Bondage Preachers and Pastoral Submission? That was all pretty sexy until you killed the mood, Mr. and Mrs. Rieske.