And Then There Were Demons

The world as we knew it had ended. There was no warning. If there were, I had missed it.

The apocalypse was not one of cleansing fire. From where I was, it was a ringing emptiness.

I remember yelling and screaming that it was all a bad dream, and that I wanted things to go back the way they were. But my mind said that it was not a dream.There was no going back.




And I just yelled some more.




Presently I found myself opening the front door.

People were shuffling aimlessly outside. My heart was beating so fast as my body tensed, fight or flight kicking in.



I ran out.




My feet turned to lead.

I didn't get very far until one of them got me.






Then I was dead.






And then, through a haze of surprising half-consciousness, I saw the other undead, shambling my way.

No threat now. We were one.



I saw mothers. And children.
They were moaning.


Then I realized why they moan.

They do not moan because they want to scare the living.

They moan because they do not want to be undead.

The moaning is a cry for help.

But no one listens.

No one can help.




And then there were demons.






A small one was taunting me. Sitting next to my head.

The other - a bigger, silver-blue one - held onto me as it stabbed tines into my side.

Over and over.

Then it leered, and thought - rather than said - that it was going to stab me for all eternity.




Then I woke up.

Friday The Good

"I like things to be story-shaped.

Reality, however, is not story-shaped, and the eruptions of the odd into our lives are not story-shaped, either. They do not end in entirely satisfactory ways. Recounting the strange is like telling one's dreams; one can communicate the events of a dream but not the emotional content, the way that a dream can color one's entire day."

- Neil Gaiman, The Flints of Memory Lane, from Fragile Things

As I spend what's left of Good Friday - a hellish day fraught with sundry miseries, personal fears, and feelings of anger and abandonment - the door to my bedroom has creaked and slowly swung open once again. And yet again, despite my anticipations, there is no head peeking from behind it. No one behind the door in the darkness.

Well. 

No one human, anyway.

It doesn't help that I've been re-reading Gaiman of late, and am clutching his book Fragile Things to my chest astride the laptop I'm now writing this entry on. Not that Gaiman spooks me. I find his stories entertaining and intriguing, more than macabre, although they are most certainly that, as well.

Which is why I wonder why I was just a wee bit...perturbed at this latest trick of the door. There is no draft in the anteroom leading to my bedroom - especially not on this still, sultry night. All the windows are shuttered, and the door to the balcony there is always kept closed. My bedroom door itself tends to get stubbornly stuck when shut, which makes its regular surprise openings even more...quizzical.

And the creaking footsteps I hear upstairs while I am working downstairs in the study have fairly recently evolved into heavy, pounding footsteps just outside my bedroom door. I can actually feel my bed and my floor vibrating to these steps. 


And still, when I look - nothing but darkness.

Oh, yeah. And if my religious aunts are to be believed, God is dead and demons walk the earth freely tonight till He wakes up on Sunday.

Or was that Halloween?

At any rate...just thought it was a curious coincidence to have been reading the following passages from a Gaiman poem, from the same collection of short fictions, shortly before the portal to my personal chambers gingerly opened once again. 

Verses which eerily echo the goings-on in this big empty place, and my usual reactions to them.

The poem's title, fittingly enough, is The Hidden Chambers :

Do not fear the ghosts in this house; they are the least of your worries.

Personally I find the noises they make reassuring,

The creaks and footsteps in the night,

their little tricks of hiding things,

or moving them, I find

endearing, not upsettling.*

It makes the place

feel so much more like home.

Inhabited.

While you are here, of course,

you will hear the ghosts, always a room away,
and you may wake beside me in the night,
knowing that there's a space without a door
knowing that there's a place that's locked
but isn't there.

Hearing them scuffle, echo, thump, and pound.

Boo.



==================

*As per Gaiman, in his introduction:"Upsettling is what Humpty Dumpty called "a portmanteau word," occupying the territory between upsetting and unsettling."

The Omen

So, I woke up the other morning around 3 a.m. and was startled to discover a swarm of black flies clinging to the wall beside the stairwell like a hideous, living curtain of filth.

One doesn't need to be a horror movie fan to picture all sorts of ominous meanings into the scene.

As you know, flies, like politicians, equal evil.


Mysterious swarms of flies signaled the malevolent presence in The Amityville Horror. As well as in Constantine, The Ring, Poltergeist, Drag Me To Hell, and See No Evil, among countless others.

Moreover, Beelzebub was the original Lord of The Flies.

Seth Brundle was just an honourable mention.

There were no open screens on the windows or doors that could've let such a massive number of flies in. Nor were there any visible corpses about that they could be swarming around. Instead, they just clung there, a black mass contrasting with the beige wall, while some of them buzzed around tentatively.

I grabbed a canister of Baygon and began chemical warfare on the foul creatures, watching them fall one by one from the wall.

Then I texted Nena.



"Good morning. Tell me I'm a paranoid,
 superstitious idiot."

"Good morning hahaha. Why? Did you

 walk under a ladder or a black gay cat

 crossed your high-heeled path?"

"Mmm. Early kanina I discovered a
 biblical swarm of flies in the stairwell.
 They weren't there when I crawled home
 at 2 and there are no open screens or
 rotting carcasses. At least none that I
 know of. Or will admit to."

"Ah, may dead and probably decayed

 rat somewhere in the house. For some

 reason the rat didn't smell while rotting

 but now the maggots are now flies and

 have found a way out. Obviously there

 is a hole near your staircase. Thus 

the flies.Other than that,

Vince must be sending you 

his warmest regards."

Then I remembered.

Thanks to some rat poison, we had finally gotten the best of the very smart, very aged, and very disgusting rat that had long been bedeviling our kitchen. But as his final act of vengeance, he had refused to crawl toward the light as the packaging had promised, and instead steadfastly met his doom in between the walls where we could not extricate him.

Thanks, Dora!

The kitchen smelled of that distinct odor of dead rat for a day or so, and after that I had given the matter no more thought.

I love it when Reason trumps Superstition.

Although Vincent is still the devil.

Skyfall

So how was your VD?

Meanwhile, over at Russia...

The sky is falling.

More to the point, a meteorite has reportedly been intercepted by Russian air defense forces, who supposedly blew it up while it was still 20 km in the air.

A series of explosions in the skies of Russia’s Urals region, reportedly caused by a meteorite shower, has sparked panic in three major cities. Witnesses said that houses shuddered, windows were blown out and cellphones have stopped working.

According to unconfirmed reports, the meteorite was intercepted by an air defense unit at the Urzhumka settlement near Chelyabinsk. A missile salvo reportedly blew the meteorite to pieces at an altitude of 20 kilometers.

Did we not learn anything from repeated viewings of Armageddon, Deep Impact, or Independence Day, children?

Blowing up a large incoming object runs the risk of shattering it into smaller objects that may hit even more targets. As the ensuing meteor showers below show:

Interestingly, it's tonight that an asteroid is actually scheduled to be doing a near-Earth fly by.

O,hai!

As per this Slate article:

On Friday, Feb. 15, the Earth is going to get a veryclose shave by an asteroid^*. Called 2012 DA14, this 50 meter (160 foot) rock will pass just over 27,000 kilometers (17,000 miles) from the Earth’s surface. This is closer than our geosynchronous satellites, so this really is a close pass!

But, to be very clear: This asteroid poses no threat to us right now, nor in the foreseeable future. Friday’s miss is just that: a miss. And, in fact, this is a good thing, since any time an asteroid gets close (but misses), we learn a lot, including how to find them, how to track them, and even how to talk about them to the public.

Oh, a miss, eh?


Well, it's not like government agencies never lie to us or anything.

And from what I've read:

At its closest point, 2012 DA14 will be above Sumatra, Indonesia at 2:24 PM EST (19:24 GMT).

Well, howdy, neighbor.

And one more for the road:

Smile!

Interesting how that flash at 0:13 could be the last thing you'll ever see.


Dun dun dun dunnnnnn!

Friday the 26th

I see your terrible ad/On the cinema screen/
And i'm like/ Fahgget you

What makes you go mad?


Looking at a certain abrasive gay "comedian's" mug 40 feet high on the silver screen trying to be the unholy love child of Effie Trinket and Chi Chi LaRue while pimping out Halloween fills me with such inexplicable rage I feel like a kindred spirit to apoplectic homophobes everywhere.

As in my thought balloon bursts with a single thought: "Fagsfagsyoufuckingfags."

Scream, you screaming queen.

Also, getting long impassioned pleas on FB for financial assistance from grips I'm not even close with. Grips to whom I already gave - not lent - a couple thousand bucks, ostensibly for their ailing grandmothers.


Even though I already protested that I'm neither the BVM, Toni Rose Gayda's mother, nor what the great atheist Christopher Hitchens derisively dismissed as "a thieving, fanatical Albanian dwarf," apparently I'm still mistaken for Cielito "Mahal" del Mundo. 


In the interest of public service, let it be known that that's an "L" on my forehead, not a fucking red cross. So call Princess Punzalan's ex-husband or the good Mrs. Villar or any other politician/political wannabe who needs a photo-op for your sob stories, geeeeeez.

Here's your mother of mercy, you (^*#^@%%*(!!!

Oh, hello. Have we met?


I'm Stabby McStabberson.

And yes.



We all go a little mad sometimes.

I'm not crazy. I'm just a little unwell.

Oh, Great! Expectations

A few days ago, my parents marked their Nth wedding anniversary. (Naturally, I would've been blissfully unaware of it had not my sister The Scarlet Witch The Not-Black-Not-Widow Amora The Enchantress  helpfully texted me a knowing reminder.)

"Brother, thou must send thy salutations to thine creators, 

or suffer the consequences once again."

So yay, you crazy lovebirds, w00t w00t, thank you for making me, and legitimately at that (Nine months including June = February = Piscean Rudeboy).


And speaking of legitimacy...


Interestingly, on this day of all days, my ex-sister-in-law caught me online. And out of nowhere, casually let it slip that my nephew, Baldur the Beautiful (who had spent the past year living it up in his own little tower in my stone castle and whom I never wrote about in this blog until now) had knocked up his girlfriend.


I guess it's only fitting that the foul deed was done in the vile vixen's lair in Norway, where he spent last Christmas (at her expense, how portentous) making eggnog and other things, for this smells like the beginning of Ragnarok.

Just another typical family gathering at the Rude Realm.

My initial reaction - aside from dismay - was the same one my ex-housemate Christiane had when her Presbyterian minister husband toppled over with a heart attack in front of the entire congregation one fine Sunday : namely, "Oh, shit."

My next thought was infanticide coupled with nephew-murder.


How dare this brat threaten me with impending grandfuckingfatherhood?!??!?!?


HOW DARE HE, MIRROR?!?!?!?

"WHAT THE FUCK IS THE MEANING OF THIS SHIT?!?!"

*Inhale*


*Exhale*




There.


Not much better. But a little better.




Honestly, I feel like Queen Ravenna in Snow White and The Huntsman. With the advent of each new generation, I feel my own powers waning. I was once the Fair One, and then my nephew was Fairer Still. And now...now this cell-dividing... thing halfway across the world threatens to be The Even Fairer Than He And Thee.

Damn Norwegians and their...things.

A normal person might respond with joy at the tidings of the creation of new life and the continuation of the species.


I, obviously, am not a normal person.


The circumstances of this new addition to the Royal House of Rude are eerily reminiscent of those attendant to the creation of the new creator: not exactly planned, thus not exactly welcome. And of course, with every nascent incarnation of my bloodline, I become more and more obsolete, like a Geocities site running on Netscape powered by AOL. 


Like any creature worth his survival instinct, any perceived threat to my continuity must be dealt with, immediately, definitively, creatively. This must explain the fairly-recent influx of my young lovers.


By their blood (or other bodily fluids) I am regenerated.

Mmm the milky, milky goodness 
of the milk of human kindness.

Regenerators not quite as potent, though, as the white sticky fluids that course through the tumescent appendages of the male members of my family. The legend of our virility is well-deserved. I swear, all my brother needs do is look at a woman and bam! Bitch be preggers.


And now, his crotchspawn dutifully continues the family tradition. 


Color me surprised.


Hell, had I been straight, I'd probably be leaving genetic copies of myself all over creation as well.


The fact that I don't must argue for the existence of a God.


Or equally, against it.


And speaking of deities, I'm not quite sure how Odin aka My Father alias Angry Ruler of All Asgard is going to take this.


Becoming a GREAT grandfather, I mean.


Maybe he should take a hint from the playbook of Cronos, the Great Grandaddy of All Deities.

Om nom nom nom nom nom!

Apocalypse Now?

Mmmm...hmmm!


First day of the sixth month of 2012, and boy, we're still here, aren't we?


Smile!

Having said that, seems like the world might end this year, after all; just not the way the Mayans supposedly pictured it (suck it, Emmerich).


First, last Sunday, we had the uplifting tale of a naked man shot dead for eating off another man's face,*  displaying very 28 Days Later symptoms:




"According to police sources, a road ranger saw a naked man chewing on another man’s face and shouted on his loud speaker for him to back away.Meanwhile, a woman also saw the incident and flagged down a police officer who was in the area.

The officer, who has not been identified, approached and, seeing what was happening, also ordered the naked man to back away. When he continued the assault, the officer shot him, police sources said. The attacker failed to stop after being shot, forcing the officer to continue firing. Witnesses said they heard at least a half dozen shots."

Well, so much for eating lead. Then again, the undead have been known to crave brains: something the police force normally have a short supply of. At any rate, any zombie survivalist worth his shotgun knows only a headshot will take care of the nasty buggers - a double-tap to make sure.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/26/2818832/naked-man-shot-killed-on-macarthur.html#storylink=cpy

And just a scant two days later, the University of Illinois released this ominous tweet:

Digging further, I found this Tumblr page, which very helpfully outlined a timeline of events, from the 5/16 Mysterious Rash Infects High School Students  incidents, to the doctor spitting blood on a highway patrolman after getting arrested for DUI.


And as the blogger notes:

"All in same week and same state…. may God be with you Florida."

Booyah, Sunshine State.


(Not to be outdone, this just in: a Hackensack man has reportedly stabbed his own stomach and hurled his intestines at police. New Jersey, represent!)




If life has an annoying tendency to imitate art, then imgur sure had the jump on us, it seems, via this very convincing (and chilling) image series of how the emerging zombie apocalypse might be televised (or Facebooked, or Tweeted, or Instagrammed, or pick your choice of modern media) :







As a fanboy, I must admit I'm torn over this Resident Evil turn of events. On one hand: zombies, yay! On the other: well, more chances of a horrible end plus the stench of all those putrefying walking undead.


And of course, locally, we have the pickled front act of the Zombie Republic right here:

Did someone eat brains, or just lose them?


Oh, well.


Om, nom, nom, nom, nom!




-------------------------------------
*If you're a ghoulish, rubbernecking Pinoy like I am, you can see the man's bloodied and eaten face here (courtesy of imgur via Reddit.) Don't worry, he survived the attack - barely - except "Eyes Without A Face" by Billy Idol inexplicably comes to mind right now. Obvious warning is obvious: NSFW, NSFL.


'Course, if you're a squeamish do-goodnik, here's kinda-sorta what it looks like:

============================


Edit: As I was writing this, all the power just went out, leaving me illuminated only by the light of my laptop as I lay surrounded by pitch-darkness.


Braiiiiiiiinnnnnnnssssssss...

Rattle and Hum

This being 2012 and this being my first post for this banner year, let's kick it off with some End of the World shit.


Last week, all across Costa Rica a strange sound could be heard that scientists could not ascribe to atmospheric or meteorological phenomena.


A low, booming hum that has, so far, defied a clear and single explanation.

As a matter of fact, this strange sound has increasingly been heard all over the world, particularly during the period from August to September 2011. Knock yourselves out:

Brazil.

Montreal.

Denmark.





Taipei.




Florida, USA

The one above, from the Ukraine, sounds almost...sentient. Like some nasty, humongous, angry monster awakening:

Listen to the monster's bellows. Sounds familiar.

Or aliens.

The Tripods' horns sound awfully familiar - and menacing - as well.

Always the frickin' aliens.

Raise the roof.

Conspiracy theorists and religious nutjobs have ascribed the mysterious hum, respectively, to anything from HAARP to the strumpets trumpets of Judgment Day. 

No, no. The other Judgment Day, Gov.

Others have proposed that it is literally the Call of Cthulhu.

"You called? I was in the shower."

Yet others have posited that it might be the Behemoth and his bff, the Leviathan, come to destroy us once and for all.

B&H, just chillin', y'all.

Bah. If Ghostbusters was to be believed, I thought the Destructor would be a little more...cute and cuddly.

Have I been lied to all this time, Mr. Stay-Puft?

But really - what is this pulsating, rumbling, ominous sound?


It sure ain't Justin Bieber singing "U Smile" 800% slower while the world burns.

Damn you, you Canadian lesbian! Damn you to hell!

On second thought, I take that back.

I have heard the sound of our doom, and its name is Bieber.

Look! Up In The Sky!

Is it a bird?


Is it a plane?


Well, it sure don't look like Superman.

Thanks to sheer and utter boredom, I haven't been keeping tabs on the news lately. Apparently, sometime between Mark Herras' dick-exposure-while-chatting-with-another-guy-on-webcam scandal and the continuing saga of the Kris Vs. James domestic drama, there's been a rash of UFO sightings this past week - the latest happening last Wednesday, October 13, over Noo Yawk.

This looks like some Independence Day shit.

Remember how those humongous alien crafts in that movie suddenly appeared over some major cities all over the world?

San Francisco, USA

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Montreal, Canada

Qinling, China

Considering how shitty things have been of late, I, for one, welcome our alien overlords.

Oh. 

And happy payday weekend.

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!!!!

Lady Gaga Mistaken For Russian Hooker

Now what could ever have given them that idea?

Hell and Condomnation

Mmm, so what else is new?

The RCC once again displays its irrelevance and stupidity yadda yadda yadda.

The erudite Gibbs and the ever-thoughtful McVie have already weighed in on this latest bout of addlepated bullshit, so if you haven't yet, do read their comprehensive takes on the matter.

As for me, while teabagging the clergy always gives me multiple orgasms, in this case methinks I'll refrain from posting a lengthy diatribe about how I really feel about grumpy old geezers in robes telling me what I can or cannot do. Instead, I'll let this video, which I've been saving for just such an occasion, do the talking :

WWJD, indeed.

And Now For A Little Dogstyle

I thought we could use a little palate cleanser from the God Vs. Gaga and Xtreme Ministries double-nutter , so here's a little cuteness overload for you.

Kawaii, kawaii!!!

And since I wouldn't be me if there wasn't some sinister twist in the offing, here's SOME MORE doggies exercising:

Well? What are you gaping at? Get off your butts, you lazy mutts! Summer's coming, so you gotta get your freak on, bitchez.

You laughing hyenas.

Oh, Christ

Behold the power of Christ, you puny mortals!

The Lord - He doth work in mysterious ways, doesn't He?

Anyyyyyywaaaayyy...just a day after I posted that fundamentalist crackheadedness that was God Vs. Gaga, I came across this item in the New York Times :

"Flock Is Now A Fight Team In Some Ministries"

To wit, the article features how more and more American ministries are resorting to rather, uhhhhh....unorthodox ways to attract people - specifically young men - into coming in to hear the Good News.

Like Xtreme Ministries (I kid you not), a small church near Nashville that doubles as a mixed-martial arts club. It was founded and is led by Pastor John Renken, 42, who also doubles as its coach.

The school's motto? "Where Feet, Fist, and Faith Collide."

If Michael Bay directed "The Passion of the Christ."

"Mr. Renken’s ministry is one of a small but growing number of evangelical churches that have embraced mixed martial arts — a sport with a reputation for violence and blood that combines kickboxing, wrestling and other fighting styles — to reach and convert young men, whose church attendance has been persistently low. Mixed martial arts events have drawn millions of television viewers, and one was the top pay-per-view event in 2009."

"Recruitment efforts at the churches, which are predominantly white, involve fight night television viewing parties and lecture series that use ultimate fighting to explain how Christ fought for what he believed in. Other ministers go further, hosting or participating in live events.

The goal, these pastors say, is to inject some machismo into their ministries — and into the image of Jesus — in the hope of making Christianity more appealing. “Compassion and love — we agree with all that stuff, too,” said Brandon Beals, 37, the lead pastor at Canyon Creek Church outside of Seattle. “But what led me to find Christ was that Jesus was a fighter.”

The Macho Messiah

"The outreach is part of a larger and more longstanding effort on the part of some ministers who fear that their churches have become too feminized, promoting kindness and compassion at the expense of strength and responsibility."

"Too feminized?" 

Ok, fine. Even I find this a little too gay.

Oh, I get it. Promoting "kindness and compassion" instead of "strength and responsibility" probably makes Jesus a bit of a wuss. Hence, the 'roiding up of the Christ. He is, after all, not just God's son, but the Son of Man, as well.

And let's face it. You can't battle the forces of Hordak evil if you're not built tough yourself, now can you?

I guess some people just can't accept Jesus into their lives if he comes across as a long-haired hippie pushover.

Moving on, the article says:

"These pastors say the marriage of faith and fighting is intended to promote Christian values, quoting verses like “fight the good fight of faith” from Timothy 6:12. Several put the number of churches taking up mixed martial arts at roughly 700 of an estimated 115,000 white evangelical churches in America. The sport is seen as a legitimate outreach tool by the youth ministry affiliate of the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents more than 45,000 churches."

Defending the faith with tough love.

To be sure, not everyone is keen on selling Jesus as Rambo: The Gung-Ho God.

"Nondenominational evangelical churches have a long history of using popular culture — rock music, skateboarding and even yoga — to reach new followers. Yet even among more experimental sects, mixed martial arts has critics.

'What you attract people to Christ with is also what you need to get people to stay,' said Eugene Cho, 39, a pastor at Quest Church, an evangelical congregation in Seattle. 'I don’t live for the Jesus who eats red meat, drinks beer and beats on other men.' ”

Jesus not only loves you, he pwns you, too!

While I acknowledge that there are many paths to salvation, I'm just unsure whether these guys are taking things - once again - too literally here.

"Over the past year and a half, a subculture has evolved, with Christian mixed martial arts clothing brands like Jesus Didn’t Tap (in the sport, “tap” means to give up) and Christian social networking Web sites like Anointedfighter.com."

"Men ages 18 to 34 are absent from churches, some pastors said, because churches have become more amenable to women and children. 'We grew up in a church that had pastel pews,' said Tom Skiles, 37, the pastor of Spirit of St. Louis Church in Arnold, Mo. 'The men fell asleep.' ”

"In focusing on the toughness of Christ, evangelical leaders are harking back to a similar movement in the early 1900s, historians say, when women began entering the work force. Proponents of this so-called muscular Christianity advocated weight lifting as a way for Christians to express their masculinity."

 

Eat his body, drink his - whoooooooops. Wrong Jesus.

As a child, I often wondered:  if God was love, why was He always so angry? Unlike the serene Buddha (who isn't technically a god, okay) or the smiling Hindu deities (with the exception of Kali, Durga, and the more bloodthirsty members of their pantheon), one would be hard-pressed to find a depiction of a happy, smiling God in Judaeo-Christian iconography. 

 

God the Father was always so stern, so forbidding, so...distant. A god that inspired more fear than love - just like my own father. Then again:

“The man should be the overall leader of the household,” said Ryan Dobson, 39, a pastor and fan of mixed martial arts who is the son of James C. Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, a prominent evangelical group. “We’ve raised a generation of little boys.” 

The Old Testament, particularly, was ruled by this ever-furious, vengeful Father, ready to smite anyone down if they so much as said the wrong thing, looked back at Sodom & Gomorrah, or heaven forbid, looked anything like Lady Gaga. 

Once more,with feeling.

On the other hand, the New Testament has always struck me as God's New Deal with mankind. At the risk of oversimplifying, it's as though after raining fire, the Great Flood, and 7 kinds of herbs and spices and pestilence upon mankind, God realized that His children were still not drawing nearer to Him. Hence, He must've adopted a new tack, and brought Jesus into the picture. If the Father Figure didn't work, maybe the Big Brother-figure would.

Res ipsa loquitur.

The Messiah came down to spread a new and simpler gospel: "Love one another as I have loved you." A gospel I believe encapsulated the essence of Christianity far more beautifully than the earlier, sterner Commandments set firmly in stone. 

This new and gentler God spread His word through acts and service: sermons and talks, healing the sick, raising the dead, the occasional turning of water into wine (whenever He wasn't walking across it, that is). A far cry from the previous Almighty Administration's scorched-earth policy. It was this God, who actually lived among His beloved, practicing what He preached, with kindness and compassion, that I wanted to follow. Not out of fear of eternal damnation, but yes - out of love. JC was, if my childhood hymns were to be believed, not just my Lord. He was also my friend.

The Buddy Christ.

Sure, He could be given to righteous anger (as when He whipped the merchants out of the temple), but on the whole, Jesus wasn't as temperamental or given to hurling bolts from on high as the Father. He was, after all, the Lamb of God, not His henchman. But His strength was of a quieter kind. Not the blustery, show-off kind involving the massive destruction of cities, the gnashing of teeth, and the lamentations of women.

No, Jesus' strength was the kind that didn't need bombast because His strength came from deep within. Truly, this God made Man was the Rock of Ages.

 

I guess that's why benighted rednecks who believe more in Might rather than Right have a hard time accepting that a pacifist Messiah spreading a gospel of peace and love could vanquish evil  and save souls. The very idea that LOVE could conquer all must've sent the single brain cell left in their heads rattling like a dried bean in a tin can.

“ 'This whole generation is raised on the idea that they’re in a culture war for the heart and soul of America,' said Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University.  "

Hence, we now have Bloodsport Jesus.

 So much for the Prince of Peace.

Heaven help us.