My God

by Ian Anderson (from Jethro Tull), 1971

v/r 1:
People, what have you done?
Locked Him in His golden cage!
Made Him bend to your religion
And resurrected from the grave...
He is the God of nothing
If that's all that you can see.
You are the God of everything,
He's inside you and me.

[Here, Ian Anderson is the clearest in his Deistic position. He states, "God exists, but you reduce him to only what you can see -- being just as yourself." Check out the song, "Wind Up" from the same release.]

v/r 2:
So lean upon Him gently
And don't call on him to save
you from your social graces,
and the sins you used to waive.
The bloody Church of England,
in chains of history,
requests your earthly presence
at the vicarage for tea.

[Here, Anderson paints two forms of human pettiness -- the overly-religious leaning upon God for saving them from their petty concerns, and the church itself being riddled within by their own petty customs.]

v/r 3:
And the graven image you-know-who,
with his plastic crucifix, (He's got him fixed!)
Confuses me as to who and where and why,
as to how he gets his kicks.
Confessing to the endless sin,
the endless whining sounds.
You'll be praying 'til next Thursday,
to all the Gods that you can count.

[Now, he furthers his claims on the corruption of the clergy, displayed by a "plastic crucifix" (lack of strength or true mettle?) and the suspicion for how sexually they can get off, foced to be celibate. He lastly criticizes the followers once again (or maybe the clergy?) by mocking their whining confessions, never ending... how can we really take them seriously? and claiming that they are really meaningless in God's eyes.]

---

While Anderson has critiqued his own work on the Aqualung album as generally sophomoric and "with a single brush stroke", many still agree on it's legendary status. I am one. Some things are more readily apparent using the vitality of youth to see clearly. This is one. Yes, his lyrics in this case are more than a little bit wandering in subject matter... but it is easily forgiven when one hears with such weary distain that he delivers them.

"He's not the kind (of god) that you have to wind up on Sundays..." Indeed.

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Separating Diamonds from the Dunghill

I'd advise anyone with an internet connection (hint, hint) or a local book retailer nearby to check out the Jefferson Bible. Yes, from THE Thomas Jefferson. Never heard of it you say? Oh, shame, shame!

Jefferson frustrated by the christian bible, concluded that early christians, interested in promoting christianity to the romans, liberally salted the teachings of jesus with the philosophy of the pagan mythologies (god mating with human, miracles, etc), only to make it more pallatable, and in doing so created a perverse hybrid doctrine which the world came to know as christinsanity. Oops. Did I say that? I meant christianity. Erm, sorry!

"The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814

The result of Jefferson's work on this matter, between 1804, and 1820, is the Jefferson Bible. Within, jesus is a great moral teacher who set out without pretensions of divinity.

----

Q1: So you mean, erm... Jefferson WASN'T a CHRISTIAN!?

No, not in the conventional sense now-a-days, and certainly not in the southern baptist, pentecostal and fundamentalist sense.

Q2: Well, I'm confused... wasn't America founded as a christian nation?

"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1, 1802

Q3: Why did Jefferson have such a problem with good 'ol christianity anyways?

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814

"They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion."
--Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Sept. 23, 1800

Q4: Well, don't we need god to be good moral United States citizens?

"If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814

Q5: How could Jefferson see jesus the man as a great teacher, and not the son of god, and part of the holy trinity? Doesn't everyone who believes in god believe this?

"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, 30 July, 1816

B R A V O Mr. Jefferson. B R A V O !!

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