Christians All

Something I've been thinking about for a while now...  

Here's the thing: we're all Christians without realizing it.

First up, the idea of an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient god is in itself a Judaeo-Christian-Islamic construct. Yes, I know both the Vaishnav and the Shaiva sects of hinduism have their own 'flavor' of monotheism, but come on - that's about a 22% slice of hindu philosophy. That Christians chose to steal from the Greeks and make Jehovah looks like Zeus (with the buff body and white hair and Gandalf beard as seen in Michaelangelo's work) is beside the point... heck, even Morgan Freeman (and Amitabh Bachchan in the misbegotten ripoff using said ripoff) have to dress up like a post-modern chic avatar of Zeus when playing the character.

Secondly, let's talk about swearing... I'm sure you knew that a lot of substitution swear words we use are "minced oaths"; meaning they are Christian oaths that have been... phonetically sterilized. Kind of like a poor doggie that got snip-snipped.

"Egad" says Mr Lodge of Riverdale... which stands for "By God".
"Zounds!" yells Jughead... which stands for  's wounds... God's Wounds... referring to that poor Hesoos guy and what he went through three days before Easter on a little hill...
"ods bodikins" goes the stiff upper lipped British refrain... meaning "by God's little body
Besides all these, you probably already knew that "Gosh", "Darn", "Gee" and "Heck" stand for God, Damn, Jesus, and Hell respectively?

Which brings me to hell... and heaven, and purgatory.

First of all, the Christian conception of the three is not in the Bible. No, credit for this wondrous creation goes to a Mr Dante Alighieri, who wrote the "Divine Comedy" and to a lesser degree, to a Mr John Milton, author of "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained". You see before then, no one really associated Hell with fire (or even punishment necessarily). For Judaism, it was sufficient punishment for bad deeds to be sent to Purgatory after death and being denied the presence of God.

But I digress... my point is this: the very common Indian expostulating a vehement "go to hell" is using a Christian concept. The Hindu concept is that you get recycled, and the form you take in your next life depends on your karma quotient in the current life. A judge does do a balancing of good deeds and bad, but you get the result right away, not on Judgment Day. If you're lucky, you get moksha or mukti from this tiresome cycle... and few variants of Hinduism that I know of believe you join Zeus in heaven as a prize for good deeds (I may simply be under-informed).

"Narka lok" as the Hindu version of "hell" (more appropriately, the Indian version of Hades, which the Christians ripped off to build hell) is not the final destination for evil-doers. It is more appropriately a penitentiary, where one does penance. Yes, it does involve boiling oil and fire and brimstone in some variants, but one wonders if this was a case of the ancient world being a much smaller place than we think.

My point is this... Popular culture around the world is (not surprisingly) infused with elements from the three dominant world religions. I'm not saying that is a bad thing... nor am I recommending a Taliban-esque ban on cursing like a Christian or believing in Christian tenets - in the end when it comes to belief most of us are mongrels.

What I'm saying is I find it extremely interesting how we drink in things subconsciously when otherwise we are vehement about being teetotallers. That's all.