Re: Forgetting the begats & Freedom STILL tastes of reality

["Scott Schrade" <schrade@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I never got the impression in any of John's songs that he ever felt free. 
> Something was always bothering him.  

Boy, you really see things through Christian-colored glasses, don't you?
What in the hell are you talking about?  John wrote witty, sometimes com-
ical, sometimes dark, wonderfully-crafted songs & all you can see is him
struggling with God?!  The Who aren't Stryper, Jon!  OK?

> We can use our sense of humor and drugs and women to make the empty 
> feelings temporarily go away, but the result is always gloomy. 

(Jon's wacky mind:  Humor, drugs, & women = gloomy)  So sorry it didn't
work out for *you,* mate, but some of us doing just fine with humor, drugs,
& women.

> I do not believe that he understood God or God's heart.  

Or perhaps he.....?  JUST DIDN"T GIVE A FUCK?!!

> (I am not being his judge,

Nah, just a little harmless, groundless speculation, that's all.

> I am just giving my limited observations here) 

Always nice to have examples of your "limited" thinking.

> I blame religion for this. 

You know, for someone who dumps on organized religion a lot, Jon, some
of your rambling sermons take me right back to 1977 & the Canton, Ohio 
 Temple Church of God on a Wednesday evening.  Or Sunday morning.  Or 
Sunday evening.  Takes me right back, it does.

You keep trying to pry your personal beliefs away from organized religion
but I fear you aren't strong enough.  Your pick-and-choose spirituality dooms
you to eternal suffering in most religions I'm familiar with, my son.

And not to mention your false idol worship of Pete Townshend, either.  What
are you doing listening to Rock & Roll, anyway?  You've made up your own
religious rules, Jon.  I'm pretty sure your God doesn't care for that.  They 
wouldn't care for it at the Canton, Ohio Temple Church of God where I was
brainwashed, that's for sure.  Luckily, I was able to bust out of that mind-prison.
You see....*I've* got a story about hard times & redemption, too, Jon.  We all 
do.  

> John portrayed a God that just wanted us to dance and do good and be 
> bored.  A God that was against living a fun life.  He could have not been more 
> wrong. 

Your trying to slap some kind of religious gloss on Entwistle's writing career
& it feels forced.  Why do you have to do that?  Your spiritual tunnel-vision
is somewhat disconcerting.

Are saying John was an inferior songwriter to Pete because of his misguided
religious beliefs?  Would the Who have been as well-rounded if John wrote
& "got it" like Pete did?

John's songs were poignant, much-needed little slices of a few of humanities 
darker sides - despair, sickness, weirdness, crime, sarcasm, fear, & resigna-
tion.  Yet many were masterfully underlaced with humor, passivity, wisdom,
&, in the case of "Someone's Coming," sweet, young romance.  Yet all you
see is a gloominess.  How sad that your spiritual hang-ups make you blind to
Entwistle's glory & genius.

> I know that "heaven and hell" was tongue in cheek, but it is ridiculous that 
> many actually think that the "good " people go to heaven and grow feathered 
> wings and play a harp and that the "bad" people go down in the ground and 
> grow a tail and have a fork.  this is just people's imaginations gone wild.  

Again, you're trying desperately to distance yourself from dogmatic, organized
religion but you can't escape the forest, I'm afraid.  "Ha ha," you laugh, "I'm
not silly enough to believe that we grow wings or get issued forks.  How ab-
surd! Ha ha ha!"

But in the meantime you still believe in the basic premise of a Heaven & Hell,
correct?  You want the cob but not the corn.

Maybe Entwistle was delving a little deeper with what you call his "ridiculous-
ness" in the song "Heaven & Hell."  Maybe it wasn't just about the costumes
we get in Heaven & Hell.  Maybe there was a grander ridiculousness.  A grand-
er question.  Wouldn't it be great if we didn't have to worry about Heaven & 
Hell?  Wouldn't it be great if we had eternal life?  Wouldn't it be great if we 
were free from the guilt?  Free from the lies.  Free from feeling the need to be-
lieve in child-like fairy tales.  Free to think freely.  Free-thinkers.  

> The Bible....doesn't even say that the believers are going to heaven. I was 
> really shocked when I first discovered this. 

That's right, Jon.  All that praying & you might not even be on God's little
list.  Good luck, though.  Actually, the well-know verse John 3:16 says "For
God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

But you're right.  In other places the Bible infers that the list of who gets et-
ernal life has already been made up.

Romans 8:30 has "Whom he did predestinate, them he also called...."  And
Romans 8:33 asks "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's *elect?*

The Bible's full of contradictions, Jon.  And horrible things, too.  Horrible
things written by horrible men, in an uneducated age.

And another thing - before you come hunting me down with your AK 47, as
you so Christian-like threatened to do, at least make it worth your while &
wait till I perform an abortion first, will ya'?  Thanks.


- SCHRADE in Akron