Mad mullahs have more fun than bashful bishops (Or: Hell has no fury…)
It’s a bit sad, really. Mad mullahs and insane Jihadis can burn off their raging energy by calling for the death of all infidels or actually go out and try to blow themselves and others up. In other words, Al Jazeera television won’t need to find a Muslim Oprah or Imam Phil to help millions of poor repressed fanatics to find ways to express themselves.
When you believe going out with a bang will buy you a first class ticket on the real Virgin Airlines, there’s only one likely reply to Dr Phil’s rather obnoxious question, ‘And is this working for you?’ Which would be, ‘Hell, yes! Bring on those 72 babes!’
Most Christians don’t have it that easy. When you’re Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the only bombs you’re allowed to throw are verbal ones – like his last mad idea to have Sharia law in England. However, while that statement did raise some furious eyebrows, saying outrageously stupid things is hardly as satisfactory as blowing stuff up – and it’s unlikely to get you a ticket on Virgin flight 72 either.
Still, as a Christian prelate you try to get your kicks when and where you find them – even though it must be bitter to realize that a stupid cartoon makes bigger headlines than your own inane comments.
That didn’t stop a retired Norwegian bishop from making a fool of himself in a Christian daily newspaper, of course:
A THEOLOGIAN putting together a new Norwegian translation of the Old Testament has called for the word “hell” to be edited out of the Bible.
Odd Bondevik, a retired bishop, raised the question in Vart Land, a Christian daily newspaper, in January. Now it has become a burning topic.
The world “hell”, Bondevik says, has been “banalised” by overuse and its meaning has shifted from the biblical sense of eternal flames, damnation and torment.
Bondevik, 67, suggests an alternative: Gehenna, a Hebrew synonym for the place of burning and perpetual despair, though one mark against it is that Gehenna is already the name of a Norwegian “black metal” band.
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