Dear God,

What are your thoughts about the Baghavad-Gita? Some critics say that it tells us that war is a good thing, and we should stop protesting it and just accept it.

Is that true? How could the great Hindu inspirational book beloved by the Beatles and Gandhi teach such a thing?

- Karen

Karen,

I can tell you that the point of the Baghavad-Gita is not that war is good. The point is that war is a rotten, terrible thing that people sometimes get caught in the middle of, and they just have to accept that that’s where they are, and deal with things as they are, and not how we might like things to be.

I can tell you that, but it’s a load of shit.

The Baghavad-Gita tells the story of Arjuna, a member of the ruling warrior-king caste. Arjuna specializes in killing people by shooting them full of arrows. He’s the hero of this tale, believe it or not.

You see, Arjuna and his brothers get into a long set of arguments with their cousins, and so the two groups decide to lead their followers, who are obligated to go along for the bloody ride because of the Indian caste system, into a war. It’s Arjuna’s appointed job to start the killing by riding into the space between the two armies and blowing a conch shell.

Arjuna is taken there by his charioteer, a fellow warrior-king named Krishna, who is actually the incarnation of a god, just like Jesus, except with servants and lots of lovers, and the fact that his skin is blue. Everybody loves Krishna.

Well, just as Arjuna is about to blow the conch shell, he has doubts. He realizes that he’s been part of a plan to kill members of his own family, and that many of his brothers are sure to die All of a sudden, it doesn’t sound like such a great idea.

That’s when Krishna tells Arjuna to shape up, get straight, and blow the damn conch shell. It isn’t Arjuna’s job to think for himself. Arjuna was born into his warrior-king caste, and so it’s his job to go to war and tell other people what to do. That’s just how things are, and if Arjuna doesn’t like it, then he should just put it out of his mind, and learn how to trance out while he kills people. That way, he doesn’t have to feel guilty.

Arjuna still has doubts, because Krishna’s plan does kind of sound like bullshit. So, he asks to see Krishna’s true divine form, just so that he can be sure that he’s getting a message of murder from the heavens themselves. So, Krishna reveals his mindblowing divine nature to Arjuna, who falls on his knees, and says “Whoah!”.

Arjuna is now in a much more receptive mood, and so Krishna instructs him that the only thing that matters is to be faithful to the path that’s been set out before him, and to respect the awesome nature of that which is Krishna.

So basically, the lesson of the story is that, so long as you’re following someone more powerful than you, you can do anything, so long as they tell you it’s what you’re supposed to do.

It’s sort of the same as the Just War Theology promoted by my own followers. Never mind your qualms, they say. People more powerful than you have determined that it’s a good thing for you to go and drop bombs on people’s houses, and pump bullets into their bodies, and burn them alive, so don’t worry your head about it. Someone else has determined that it’s all for a good cause.

Onward march! Isn’t it wonderful?

- God

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 9:35 am and is filed under All God's Advice, Theology, Divine Rivals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.