Austinite Worried Heaven Won’t Be as Awesome as Austin

There is a city set upon a hill, a land flowing with craft beer and whisky, a utopia where Teslas abound and where the bodies and the beards are sculpted with an attention to detail that people in cities like Oklahoma City or Topeka or Fresno give to basic human survival. High paying jobs in technology abound for the deserving alphas that swarm to the farmers markets with their dogs, whose lives are immeasurably better than most of the members of the human species.

Twenty-eight year old mega-church attendee and software developer Boone Higgins boasted that Austin is the perfect city. “When I graduated from San Jose State, I was worried that I wouldn't find another place like the Bay Area. I had heard Austin was a sanctuary city for single young semi-Christians, but it turns out that this place is utopia. There is so much to do and see and buy, and there are so few unintelligent or unattractive people, and also virtually no children. I love it!"

As to Austin's reputation for materialism, Boone said, "The people here are rich, but in an authentic distressed-designer-jeans wearing kind of way. They are also environmentally conscious and spend their money in ways that love and respect the planet, like buying overpriced Yeti products. They give a generous minuscule amount to their mega-churches that don't seem to need it. They buy electric vehicles and solar panels and live on the lake, where they can commune with the divine in the simplicity and beauty of nature, sometimes on their boats. They don't build roads so that the trees can give us fresh air and hiking trails, which of course leads to miserable traffic, but who cares? I work in tech and live downtown and telecommute most days."

When asked whether Boone not only didn't want Austin to change, but that perhaps he didn't want to change to learn to appreciate something deeper and truer and better than Austin, like heaven, Boone responded by looking confused for a few seconds, and then sheepishly muttering, "that's deep," and then shuffling away to ponder this over a Thirsty Goat IPA and tacos.

Pastor Raises Un-Obliviousness to Theology in Radical Sermons

Sacramento, California

Local aspiring mega-church pastor Chad Simpson is venturing into some treacherous territory by attempting to raise un-obliviousness to theology at Expedition Church of Sacramento, California.

"Un-obliviousness" is a strange term, and when asked about why he isn't simply trying to "raise awareness" of theology rather than "un-obliviousness," pastor Chad said, "Christians today are like baby lambs, very easily spooked. We didn't want to carry on some sort of aggressively organized campaign to solve the overwhelming ignorance that exists in the church regarding the crucial doctrines of the faith. That would scare them off. We still want them happy in their relationship with Jesus and don't want to change our emotionally comforting and emotionally stimulating services. We are only occasionally, for a few subtle seconds, helping our people see that theological ideas exist out there and that some Christians find them important and even defining of the Christian faith. Think of it as an experiment. We are only taking baby steps here."

The format of this radical step is for the pastor to drop in a key theological term here and there, within the flow of the sermon, as if he were some seminary professor for a few seconds. After the term is presented and loosely tied into the flow of the sermon, the pastor will then quickly return to his normal charismatic storytelling and jokes and self-help and kitschy moralism, using the Bible as a spring board of course.

When asked why he would even bother to do this if the theological content is to be so quickly subsumed into the noise of modern life and the general demand for fluffiness, the pastor replied, "While it is true that our primary mission is evangelical, our pastoral staff wanted to try something different than simple evangelism and service projects and rock style worship. We thought we would spice things up a bit by doing some things to engage the minds of our people. Obviously it is a deep dive when we talk about things like depravity or regeneration or election or the Trinity for a few seconds--appropriately supported by visual graphics of course--but we are committed to helping our people see if the mind and the faith have anything at all to do with each other. Don't get me wrong. We aren't crazy here. We will only do this so long as it doesn't harm the numbers that fuel our tithe revenue. Our goal is modest. If we can help just one Christian become un-oblivious to theology, then that probably is a win."

Man With Metaphysical Dysphoria Identifies as The Concept of 3.141

Los Angeles, California

Discrimination against those human beings who don’t feel like human beings is a serious and growing problem, say experts. One such case is the story of Pi, who came out recently as the number 3.141. When asked why he carries his decimal point to the third place rather than the second, he said simply that he was "offended that we would assume his decimal position, and that he was non-binary.” Obviously!

“Being homo sapiens is a biological fact, but the concept of ‘humanity’ is a social construct," Pi insisted. It appears that Pi and his disciples have seen some ridiculous, fatuous, obviously disanalagous connection between the idea that gender identity is unrelated to physiological and genetic strictures and their own position that physiological and genetic strictures like homo sapiens have little to do with how we define "humanity."

When asked if he meant to be wholly conceptual and abstract, like numbers, in which case presumably he would lose his human characteristics, like motion, speech, interaction, etc, he insisted that we were again, "imposing the binary categorizations” of "number" and "humanity" on him, and that, as stated before, he was "non-binary." In short, he is both a number and a human, as he defines himself. In fact, Pi envisions a world where there are no foolish categories, like a right way to be human and the like. When we asked him if his views on these things are right and that others who hold to binaries are thinking wrongly, which of course would be an obvious contradiction, he only responded by disappearing into the silence of his purely rational numerical self. 

Progressive Church to Have Vegan, Pescatarian, Gluten-Free Pot-Luck

Bolder, Colorado

In an effort to more fully reverence the planet and create sustainable pot-lucking practices, Infinite Sustainability Church of Bolder, Colorado recently held its first "Mother Earth Potluck."

After the service, in which congregants praised various deities in various languages in various ways, like some great jazz concert to every imagined deity, including a group vowing silence in reverence to the "unknown god," the community of Infinite Sustainability joined together in feasting and pharmaceuticals. There were many dishes for the community to enjoy, but some of the favorites were:

1. Lentils on a bed of grass and julienned Lebanese cedar. This was paired with a mulled hemp wine.

2. A mini pot of CBD infused compost with succulent earthworms.

3. For the pescatarians, a live minnow stew in a seawater broth with picked kelp.

4. And for dessert, the curdled secretions of the Himalayan mountain goat, sprinkled with candied crickets over a gluten free mound of organic coconut flour.

One of the community members, Zoe Earthrider Smith, said of the event, "It is beautiful to see so many people of different races and sexual identities and religions come together to the glory and beauty and pleasure of Mother Gaia.”

Unfortunately, one of the vegans inadvertently partook of the fish stew and had to be ceremonially purged, which is something like a biological exorcism too frightening to describe here.

All in all, the event was an enormous success, so much so that planners are already excited about next month's potluck, in which they hope to double the attendance to twelve.

Man With Species Dysphoria Identifies as Endangered Sea Otter

Carmel, California

A teen formerly known as Jude Butler has announced, via social media, that he is a lovable but endangered pacific sea otter. Such an announcement would have been received in less enlightened ages past (like 20 years ago) as controversial, but now we know that this demonstration of violence against reality is only adorable.

"It all started when I was young and would always eat on my back using my torso as a table," said Jude. "To her credit my mom never demeaned me, never thought I might be confused. She just thought that I might be experimenting, that perhaps I didn’t feel inside what my genetics indicated I should feel. And I certainly didn’t! I knew inside that I was a sea otter and not a planet polluting homo sapien!” 

Since the pacific sea otter is an endangered species, and since California is an open minded and groundbreaking progressive state, the Monterrey Bay Aquarium has agreed to house and feed “Whiskers” (formerly Jude Butler) and to protect him from natural threats like conservatives or religious people or the tyranny of his own biology.

As of today, Whiskers has begun his state funded full transition into a sea otter. The process is said to require multiple stages and multiple operations, but has begun with otter fur implants and various dental procedures to enable Whiskers to eat live sea urchin.

Local Megachurch Experiments With Multiple End Times for Services

Dallas, Texas

Escalade Church of Dallas recently announced that it would experiment with various end times for its 3 services on its 6 campuses.

The martyrs may look down on Christians in America with disgust for not being able stay until the end of a simple church service, one hour out of 168 each week (which of course ends up being longer than an hour, which is why this program was developed in the first place), but the martyrs also don’t understand about the church parking lot. Escalade Church is confident it has solved this major customer service issue.

The new system will involve color coding in the seats. Blue chairs near the front are for those truly committed to staying for the whole long hugely demanding hour, or more. Red chairs in the back are for those who elect to leave during the prayer prior to the last worship set, which is a full 10 minutes prior to the final dismissal. Green chairs in the middle are for those who elect to leave at the beginning of the second song of the last worship set.

Church spokesperson Amber Bishop provided the elegant rationale for this groundbreaking innovation:

"This is a win/win for all involved! Congregants who wish to spend ten or fifteen minutes more at church are freed from the distraction of the heathens leaving for the best seats at the buffet or the sports bar, and the staggered dismissal program mitigates traffic in our already packed parking garages. Our pastors will be able to gauge the spiritual maturity of the congregants by their tier of seating, which also means that various discipleship programs can be developed to inspire those in the green and red seats to sacrifice 10 or 15 more minutes each week in deeper commitment, which is exactly what Jesus meant by 'taking up our crosses and following Him.'"

We asked Amber about all the late arrivals equipped with Starbucks cups who also wanted to be seated in the red section, to which a pensive Amber replied, "That is a great question. Hmm.... We need to have an optics meeting about that as a staff, but perhaps we can have staggered starting times as well. It is just a thought. But obviously we will need better coffee if we hope to have people actually worship the God of the universe on time."

Man Who Claims Humans Make Up Morality Morally Outraged by Christians

Saratoga, CA

Podcaster, Blogger, YouTuber, Entrepeneur, Motivational Speaker, Social Media Influencer, Lifestyle Expert, and public intellectual Tad Ryerson went viral recently, again. In a Ted Talk shared more than that cat video where the cat grabs the cord to the ceiling fan and is flung into the wall, Tad charismatically asserted that Christian morality is curiously inferior and "only another subjective view" of how to organize human communities.

In a passionate Jeremiad against Christian morality, Tad argued, "Christians pass themselves off as moral paragons, but their nationalism, homophobia, environmental obliviousness, and dark-ages sexual ethics are utterly ruining the spirit of equanimity and generosity required to sustain a forward-thinking and cosmopolitan society."

He continued, "The reason Christians can't see the inferiority of their view is that they think they are correct and have been running rough shod over various cultures since the inception of Christianity. If they could see that, in a diverse world, morality is ever evolving, ever changing, as we evolve and change, then they wouldn't be on the wrong side of history, stuck in the dark ages. They would help us advance women's rights, LGBTQ rights, and do other things that align with our superior morality."

We made contact with Dr. Ryerson (his doctoral degree is an honorary doctorate from George Fox University in Portland) and asked him about what he thinks of Muslim morality in America?

In reply, he wrote, "That is a great example of what I'm talking about in my Ted Talk that was shared a few million times and received with thunderous applause and which I am now sharing in a nation wide tour of college campuses. Hegemonic Christians in America are behind all this dreadful intolerance of Muslims. Muslims should be free to express their moral views as freely as anyone. They enrich the conversation. It is unfair to simply shut them down, as Christians no doubt would have us do."

Of course, we had to press a bit, and wanted to know how Dr. Ryerson could hold that the absolutist claims of Muslims in America on these topics are to be graciously heard and seen as equal to other views and that the Christian view is "inferior" and should be silenced through evolutionary "advancement" and even legislation. It seemed to us that there were at least two layers of contradiction in Dr. Ryerson's arguments.

Unfortunately Dr. Ryerson had to end our discussion, saying abruptly that he has chosen to take a different line with racists who are not "global thinkers" and wish only to "put people into oversimple compartments for ease of judgment," and also that he had to finish his research on activating chakras through CrossFit and developing these ideas into a new wellness program.