Part One: Gentle Gentile’s Genitals

I’ll tell you the truth. According to priests, my birth wasn’t really anything special. I have to confess, my mother wasn’t even a virgin.

Like most babies, I had no visible halo. I wasn’t born in a manger, but in a hospital in Salt Lake City with a bunch of other burbling infants. I didn’t look anything like a little angel, unless little angels are cross-eyed hams who can’t control the release time of various body fluids when held above the facial area.

It seemed from the start that I was just another human being. I brought no great ideas about God to share with the universe, and I still don’t have any. In fact, in the beginning I had no ideas at all. I greeted strangers not with salvation, but with salivation.

I exhibited no signs of Divine origin, though I would frequently discover exciting new bodily sounds and scents, and would attempt to point them out victoriously to Mom. Though I found these feats to be magical, she was rarely impressed, and never even once considered my astonishing performances to be Miracles. To my disappointment I was never brought any gold, myrrh or frankincense (though someone may have lit some incense).

Sadly, reality eventually hits us normal babies hard. I look back on my infant-hood as being unimpressive in comparison with the multicolored glass pictures of divine offspring, filtering through rays of warm dawn light, where the baby glows blissfully and everything’s soft and perfect. Honestly, it’s not really fair to babies to have that kind of standard to live up to. You can only be so cute without glowing. You can imagine the disappointment of nice old ladies who see a normal baby like me and sigh, “He’s cute, but he’s just not glowy enough.”

If you think about it the story of Christmas really bums out the rest of us. We’re just not that precious; one kid gets to be the child of God and the rest of us are just dirty earth babies, completely and non-metaphorically full of shit.

* * * * *

It’s not all tidings of good will and joy to the world in reality. I had an especially hard time impressing the clergy. They stared at me intensely, like aborigines would stare at a Prius. The bravest one might duck in and poke me lightly, but then they’d all jump back, yammering cautiously in tongues and splish-splashing sacrament water all over everything just to be safe. Was it too soon for the Brethren to baptize this lump of unholy flesh?

I have a theory that a slimy, chubby little being with a glazed gaze actually scares priests a little. In the same way that Mom had trouble communicating important information to me, such as “Stop gnawing on the cat’s face,” pious men of all stripes were unable to convey their important holy messages either.

None of it had any effect. I still to this day take pride in my bodily functions, and still occasionally feel the need to point them out to Mom (she rarely answers the phone anymore). I assume that as an infant I was equally unimpressed by them, which I think is the reason institutional priests should have a natural fear of babies. Considering that very young children are basically mindless suckling blobs, the spiritual toolkit of the church that has the effectiveness of a wet moth. Unless the priest’s hat is shiny and pointy enough (really grabbing the baby’s attention) he’s just another incoherent geometric shape. Dangle a silver jeweled pendant of Christ above them and babies just see something shiny and probably digestible. You can recite reams of holy gibberish to a baby or threaten it with hellfire and damnation, and it just burbles back at you adorably.

Babies can’t tell the difference between Jesus and Chips Ahoy. We are a sort of inherent evil in the world, since we’re all born without any proper ideas about religion or anything else: little heathens, little Atheists. So it’s important for the Authorities to get right to it and rescue us from our slobbery state. As it happened, the conversation the priests had while gathering around me went something like this:

“That child,” the bishop said, taking a deep breath and getting out of the way what everyone was secretly thinking, “is too fat.”

The priests nodded their heads solemnly. The bishop reiterated, “Oh yea Lord, bless Your little contribution to the obesity epidemic.” The rest of the holy heads mumbled in agreement, bobbed up and down. But then, having the obvious out of the way, they got down to the Lord’s business. The bishop’s voice donned the wise resonance of an ancient, echoing throughout the hospital with Divine authority. He spoke slowly and prayerfully.

“Dear Lord in Heaven, please bless this fat little bastard. Oh Christ, how I can smell the Sin upon him.”

Or something like that. Truth be told, I wasn’t listening, as much as I was burbling. Indeed I was creating many a smell in those days, but I don’t think Sin was one of them. The clergy disagreed, and promptly declared that this bubbling lump was in a critical Alpha-and-Omega-level need of further blessings (and possibly just a smidgen of genital reconstruction so that I really got the message).

In the early days, it is crucial to eliminate the Sin from the infant, and not just me. I was not among a specific bunch of babies that had been prideful, murderous, coveting each others’ asses, committing mass adultery, kidnapping Elizabeth Smart and working the Sabbath that weekend. My hospital did not have some especially evil room of rowdy devil-horned mistakes appearing exactly nine months after a Satanist biker gang collided with an all-female Iron Maiden cover band during a red full moon at the Halloween omelet bar of a Motel Six in Salem, Massachusetts. Not even close—actually, as every good Christian knows, all babies in the entire world are born sinners. And not even for enjoying a good tit now and then.

You’ve heard the story. Years ago, according to the unquestionable historical accuracy of theologians, a talking snake managed to swindle Eve into persuading Adam to take a big sin-ewy bite out of a magical apple (well, the Bible really only specifies “fruit,” and I personally believe that it may have been a banana) and that chewing this bite was the one thing that would really get you seriously chewed out. The metaphorical message from this story is that, when your land-Lord is omnipotent and suffers from frequent bouts of murderous rage, you should always obey the house rules.

So for that mistake, Adam and his soon-to-be-smokin’-hot wife were banished from the Garden of Eden. More gregariously, Adam’s progeny were to be stained with Sin from birth (as if hundreds of years of incestuous inbreeding, hunger, lack of dental insurance, the invention of free labor by force and severe sand-in-the-asscrack weren’t bad enough). However, on the upside, the evolution of Victoria’s secret was underway.

Of course, we need not question the morality behind such behavior on Old Testament God’s part. The Lord of the Old Testament is like one of those managers who has a sign that says: “File Complaints Here” and hangs it above the toilet. Like a drunken Irish-Catholic father, He’s an all-powerful, all-knowing being, and frankly He can do what He damn well pleases. And stay the hell away from His apples.

So if He wants to stain everybody’s kids with Sin, you better just sit down, shut up and behold the staining. But you can’t blame the Lord. Be honest: if you were all-powerful, admit it. Sometimes you’d probably pop the knuckles in the old lightning finger and get down to business too. I’m assuming you’ve seen as many 80′s action movies as I have (and God’s omnipotent, so He has watched them all upon his never-ending sofa) so the subconscious craving for random destruction and occasional ass-kickings-for-good-measure is there. There comes a time when fire and brimstone and baby sins are the most benevolent way of doing things. We can all agree that it’s much easier to heap blame for someone’s mistake on their great-great-great-great (etc) grandchildren, or to later sacrifice one of your own and just call the whole thing even.

Regardless, Lord knows we should not be fooled by the adorableness of the very young human. The infant’s main exports are the three S’s: Slime, Screaming and Sin. This is a logical procession, considering that most people who are ejecting high volumes of Slime at astonishing rates while Screaming are probably committing a Sin as well. The priests are prepared, and by “prepared,” I mean ready to rock. The very first precious divine experience in life some priests want you to have is watching someone withdraw a tiny pair of razor-sharp scissors and mutilate your reproductive organ. If you’re lucky enough to be Orthodox Jewish, old men may suck the blood off your infant genitals with their mouths.

Really. Would I make that up? It’s what the Talmud (ancient Jewish book of rules) says is the right way to go about things. The act, called Metzitzah b’peh, is performed over 2,000 times a year, and has been responsible not only for giving infants a divine welcome to the universe, but for giving them Herpes, brain damage and occasionally sending them directly back to Heaven (Newman, Andy. “City Questions Circumcision Ritual After Baby Dies” New York Times August 2005). In early times this bizarre religious ritual was considered a way of preventing surgical complications; but in these days, the only defense Orthodox Jews have is that it’s part of the covenant with their God. Of course, it is among the directions to Moses; who are we to argue with the guy who received the Ten Commandments and the book used to swear in American courtrooms in the same breath?

Now hold on a second. Take a deep breath, close your eyes, lay back and imagine a group of men surrounding you, piously fondling your privates as you cry helplessly and then, well—let’s just say it’s no bedtime lullaby.

If man could invent any greater terror than genital butchering enjoined with the diseased mouths of old men (without having been given a choice) I don’t even want to know about it. But this is real. It happens today, and it’s rarely challenged due to an iron wall of Religious Correctness (which I will discuss later). Among the majority of Americans, circumcision itself is amazingly acceptable (even admirable!) and widely taken for granted for its supernatural powers.

“Circumsize that baby! It’s good for you! Everyone’s doing it! Women love it!”

So we all go about butchering our babies’ penises just because—well, come to think of it, nobody at the hospital can really give you a full explanation anymore. But you Damn well better do it because God’s got his list of penises and he’s checking it twice (and stay the hell away from His apples too). The unbelievers really come off relieved on this one. Doctors are a bit more gentle to the genitals of Gentiles.

Not that I’m disregarding the good arguments in the debate about the health benefits of circumcision; people at risk of HIV and various urinary diseases in third-world countries can use all the help they can get, and even Metzitzah b’peh may have had medical benefits thousands of years ago. But in modern America? If a fetus has the right to live, as is so frequently argued by the pious, I would point out that in this day of medical technology he certainly has the right to live in one piece.

It brings to mind the period of history when women in Asia would break the bones of their feet and strap them tightly in tiny shoes to look as if wearing high-heels, in order to impress male suitors (known as “Foot-Binding,” but also to some history scholars as “Bat-shit Crazy”). These types of bizarre rituals make us wonder at the magnificent powers that culture and myth can have over us. At some point, doesn’t someone stand up (or, if their feet are bound, attempt to stand up) and say, “Wait a minute. Is this kind of thing really necessary?”

Religion sometimes presents great cognitive dissonance in its particularities. If a grubby street-prophet clothed in nothing but a potato bag and a Burger King crown were to run out of an alleyway and inform you that God wants him to cut up your genitals, I doubt you’d delightedly rip off your pants, and say, “Okay! If God says so, let’s do it!” But when thousands of people have cemented such an idea as a cultural norm, thanks to subconscious historical mythology, it seems restricted from placement under the chop-saw of logical evaluation, which usually dictates important issues in our lives.

I’m not saying that there are no good arguments out there in favor of faith—in fact, there are brains much bulgier and juicier than mine that favor religion, and some of their philosophical arguments are exceedingly powerful. But consider this an irreverent investigation into the many levels on which I find supernatural beliefs, faith in an afterlife, and religious behavior wildly fascinating. Read on as I explain why I personally choose not to participate in any of it.

But back to my story. As a baby I didn’t understand what was going on, or what was planned for me. I hardly knew anything about Theology, Metaphysics or any Importantly Capitalized Arguments and had little defense against anyone with a blade. At that age, had my parents told me about why God and Jesus wanted the doctor to cut me up, they may as well have been speaking goo-goo gibberish and blowing bubbles—it all sounded the same.

And it still does.