Local pastor thinks Obama is the Antichrist?

One of my many bad habits is reading the Shepherd's Corner column in the Fitchburg Pride. Often it's the only thing I'll actually bother to read in the Pride, because it's such a good source of hilarity.

In this almost-weekly feature, we get words of "wisdom" from various community ministers/pastors/priests/whatever. Oddly, I haven't been asked to contribute yet despite the fact that I am an ordained Reverend, and a devoted Pastafarian.

I blame prejudice.

Some of my fellow religious leaders are pretty good, though. Well, one is. I have no complaints with the Unitarian lady. Most of the others are various levels of crazy. Some are just a little crazy, with their bible-quotin' and all. Others are quite crazy.

Into this latter category is where I'm putting Pastor Steve Mayo, the guy behind this odd column. Allow me to quote a bit:

Over the last few weeks, and especially since the election, President elect Barack Obama has been labeled everything from the Messiah to the Antichrist as people try to make sense of what happened on Nov. 4. Is he the great American hope who will make every wrong right in the world, judgment on America for its apostasy, or somewhere in between?

Umm... wow. Where to even start?

Pastor Crazypants is right that some lunatics call Obama the Antichrist, and actually are serious about it. But "the Messiah"? Huh?

The only people who I've ever heard use the term "Messiah" when talking about Obama are right-wing assholes. They're not using that word because they believe he's a messiah, they're using it to make fun of people who are just too deeply into Obama. In fairness, there are a fair number of people who are too into Obama, and they deserve to be made fun of.

Regardless, I don't think there's an Obama supporter out there who thinks of him as the "Messiah" in a religious sense. It's a figure of speech, Pastor!

Also, "judgment on America for its apostasy"???

Apostasy is basically leaving one's religion. America has never had a religion to leave. It's a secular state, and has never been a "Christian nation", no matter what lies you've been told.

It's creepy to talk about apostasy in this manner. It brings to mind Islamic theocracies, where apostasy is often punishable by death. I wonder what "judgment" this pastor thinks America has earned.

Okay, that first paragraph was pretty dumb. But maybe Pastor Steve will now redeem himself by saying how the people saying these things are stupid!

Those who think of him as the Messiah need to think again. Those who think that just moving our country to one political party or the other will solve our problems need to look back at history to see just how false that statement is. Having one party in control of every branch of government has never brought about a utopian United States.

Argh!

Okay, ignore for a moment the fact that nobody actually thinks of Obama as "the Messiah." Why are only those people (who don't exist in the first place) taken to task? What about the nutballs who call him the Antichrist? You don't have any problem with them?

Apparently not, because at no point are they mentioned again. I can only assume that Pastor Steve endorses the view that Obama is the Antichrist.

I do enjoy Pastor Steve's views on one-party government being a bad thing, though. He's quite right that it's "never brought about a utopian United States." Of course, neither has two-party rule. Or anything else. But hell, I can't argue with the facts!

The rest of his column is also wonderfully crazy and idiotic. This is a man who's not at all in touch with reality. For instance:

W blame an outgoing president for our inabilitto see that we are gettininto mortg we
cannot afford and buying things we cannot pay for.

Put a bigass [Sic] after that whole thing.

What it's attempting to convey appears to be that people blame Bush for their own overspending. The jerks!

Except they don't. They might blame Bush for the culture of excessive deregulation that led to banks going all willy-nilly offering mortgages to people they knew couldn't pay for them. That's a very different thing.

What other crap can this guy spew?

We murder and call it choice. Lust is confused with love. We as a society are turning around. Instead of addressing the issues at hand, we are trying to free our conscience and make everything acceptable. I have heard it said regarding different sins that, "I was born this way."

I would very much like to know what "different sins" he's heard people say "I was born this way" about. I mean besides homosexuality, which is obviously what he's referring to. Perhaps he'll tell us?

We were all born this way. We are all born sinful. Left unchecked, we will run towards sin and away from God. We often prefer to create a god in our own image, rather than obeying the Lord "who was, and is, and is to come" (Rev. 4:8).

So we're all gay? How am I going to break this to my wife?

Pastor Everyone-is-gay then goes on to ask a very important question.

Where do you stand? Are you going to look to a man to solve our problems, or are you going to look to God? If we don't turn back to God, then even help with the best of intentions isn't going to make a difference.

Well, I can't speak for anyone else here, but I'll give an answer.

I'm going to look not to "a man" to solve our problems, but to multiple men and women. Because the only way problems ever get solved is when people get off their asses (or knees) and do something about them.

God isn't going to fix the economy, God isn't going to stop the war, God isn't going to make sure you have a merry Christmas. God's going to do what God has always done: absolutely nothing.

What is this pathetic form of defeatism practiced by some Christians? If you want a better world, get out there and do something about it. Every minute you spend praying to your god is a minute you're not doing something to improve the world. Yes, you can do both if you really want. But why waste time?

Apparently Pastor Steve just wants you to sit around praying and filling up his collection tin instead of working to improve the world. No thanks!

I was wondering if all Pastor Give-up's sermons are this bad, so I went to his church's website. As it turns out, it's the filthiest thing I've ever seen in my life!

Let's say you want to listen to some of Pastor Steve's inspiring thoughts about giving up on the world. So you go to the Sermons page. Being concerned about computer security, you have Javascript disabled in your browser (perhaps via the NoScript Firefox extension). You're treated to this!

(click to embiggen)
Now, that "Importance of Godly Women" sermon sounds okay, at first.

But how could it possibly compare to "duck hot gay love sex", whatever that is? What do they really sell in "celebrity sex stores"? Why are they saying that "scotland sucks"? These could be interesting sermons too!

Perhaps I should try another page. Hey, that "Megawatt Youth Ministries" thing sounds exciting too!

Wow, it sure is! Corn wives rule!

Virtually every page on the site is like this. A little bit of churchy stuff up top, then tons of links to places you really shouldn't visit taking up the rest of the page.

I was going to send a nice email to Pastor Steve alerting him that the site has been compromised by spammers and that they'll need to have somebody clean it up.

But then I thought back to Pastor Steve's advice. If we rely on humans for website security, we won't get anywhere!

So instead of alerting him to the problem, which would probably result in a sinful human having to clean things up, I'm just going to pray to God that He will use his magic to fix the site and get rid of all the suspicious links to "squirting chicks" and "hentai cat girl galleries".

I figure it should be pretty easy for him, being God and all. And it's the way Pastor Steve would want it.



[Update] - I removed the links to the site. There's obfuscated Javascript involved, and just in case it's up to something nastier than link farming I don't want to send people there and get them infected.

If you really want to see the site, it's at http://www.elmstcc.org. I don't recommend visiting unless you disable Javascript first, though. You wouldn't see the fun stuff with it on anyway.

Also, God has apparently not gotten around to fixing it, so I did alert the contact address on the site. I guess we humans will just have to fix our own problems, again.