Let’s talk religion. First of all, I’m not at all religious anymore. I had a Roman Catholic up bringing which, for a little Maori boy in the 80’s, meant I was afraid of God and I was made aware that ALL of my ancestors were up in heaven watching EVERYTHING-I-WAS-DOING. With that in mind, queue puberty and all the things teenaged Catholic boys do in their spare time and one can see why I’m no longer religious.


Now the Godless people at BoingBoing have dropped this story about foreskins in the bible. And not just the odd foreskin but 200 of them! Dan Kimball’s new blog Wednesday-Weird-Bible-Verse highlights all the weird shit that you can find in the bible.


Obviously, a lot of what is in the bible is based on practical things such as cleanliness and food preparation; or on cultural things like virginity and marriage. But in Dan’s first analysis, we no longer enjoy the cultural context that could possibly make sense of it. That or author 1 Samuel was really fucked up:


Wherefore David arose and went, he and his men, and slew of the Philistines two hundred men; and David brought their foreskins, and they gave them in full tale to the king, that he might be the king's son in law. And Saul gave him Michal his daughter to wife. 1 Samuel 18:27


This is big news to me; somehow the priests, nuns and brothers who shepherded me skipped over this part. It must have been shrouded in secrecy until now—otherwise, how was this passage not passed around in Sunday school to make us cry-laugh? You know, cry-laughing where you’re in a situation where it’s inappropriate to laugh, but you can’t help it and so you end up crying… and then you get slapped by a nun (which, I’m told, is illegal now).


Anyway, this Dan Kimball is some kind of new-aged Californian priest. So he’s a believer (which is cool) but he’s pointing out the weird stuff—I’m not sure how that works! It just goes to show that the bible is full of wisdom and coolness like 200 FORESKINS!


Pious shout outs:


1. Sister Bernadette who was cross-eyed. She thought I was absolutely stupid because whenever she talked to me, I wouldn’t answer. Why? Because I couldn’t tell when she was looking at me. True story.
SB: “Charles; name all the stations of the cross in 60 seconds. GO!”
Me: (meekly) “But my name’s Charles…”
SB: “Y-e-s   C-h-a-r-l-e-s    I   A-M   T-A-L-K-I-N-G   T-O   Y-O-U!”

2. Father C. The way he stared at me. Like STARED AT ME. Like you haven’t seen staring until you saw Father C. staring at me. I’d walk in the room and sometimes it was like I was the only other person in the room. The old scone-eating ladies chewing Father’s ears off would fade out to the violins playing in the background.  Sounds Hollywood, but it was anything butt.