Michael Moore's Good Friday - Passover

I've never quite figured out why they call it "Good Friday." I mean, for Christ's sake, a guy got nailed to death on a cross! Actually it was THREE guys on that hill in Jerusalem -- the other two being petty thieves who apparently had run afoul of Rome's three-strikes-and-you're-out policy. Maybe someone came up with the term "Good Friday" to try and put a positive spin on things, realizing it's hard to attract converts to your religion with such a downer image of its leader being executed. I've often wondered why the Catholic Church doesn't use Jesus rolling back the stone and rising from the dead as its chief icon, something we'd all like to be able to do someday. Instead, we get his corpse hammered into wood and hung above every altar. It's like the Democrats deciding to replace the donkey as their symbol with JFK's brains being blown out the back of his head. Who'd vote for the candidate with that image next to his or her name on the ballot?

I am being evicted today, Good Friday, from my office. I had just one week left to edit my film, but the landlord -- heartless bastard! -- is having me tossed out for non-payment of rent. Back in October, my publisher, HarperCollins, was supposed to pay me for the work I did in writing "Stupid White Men." Citing "the tragic events of 9-11" (a mantra that seems to have been repeated by every business in America as they've shamelessly used the dead of that day to justify their obscene layoffs and cutbacks) the publisher claimed they did not have to pay me until the book was "published." I said, "What do you call 50,000 copies of this very book that have already been printed and are now sitting in your warehouse?" They said, "We call that printing 50,000 copies of a book that's now sitting in a warehouse, but not yet 'published.'"

Well, once you head down the road trying to fight that kind of logic, you are lost in a vortex from which you may never return. So, the book didn't really "exist" (and it sat in "nonexistence" in that warehouse for another 4 months). Meanwhile, I had no paycheck. Now, I don't want to bore you with my financial situation, and I certainly don't want you feeling sorry for me. I have done better than I have ever dreamed of with my high school education, and I'm sure most of you could fill both my ears with what it takes for YOU just to make it through the week. My current problems were compounded by the fact that I had decided to spend the bulk of 2001 making the documentary film that I am now finishing. I got my last paycheck for this film 12 months ago, so I was counting on the fee for the book to get me through the rest of 2001.

When that didn't happen (as most of you know, the publisher wanted me to "tone down" the stuff about Bush in the book, and I wouldn't, so there was a standoff until they finally backed down), things began to fall apart. After I had already gone a few months without being able to pay the office rent where our edit room was located, the landlord went to court and got an order -- to have the sheriff toss me out on the curb! Suddenly, visions of Deputy Fred from "Roger & Me" were dancing in my head! Well, I negotiated with the landlord to give me a little more time, and the angels from Salter Street Films in Canada (who have backed this documentary from the start) agreed to pay some of the rent. But the landlord would only accept the money on the condition that we leave the premises on Easter weekend.

And, thus, here I am, using the last computer still hooked up to electricity, writing you this letter. I can't get past either the irony or the yin/yang of this moment: I've got the number one bestselling book in the country -- and the landlord has just cut my off my electricity in the middle of this sentence! I don't even know if the computer has backed-up this letter! Agggghhh!!...

Okay, I've returned from my encounter with the landlord in the hallway and the lights are back on. How surreal is this? Now comes a message from the publisher that the book goes on sale in the U.K. and Ireland this week, and they've also just sold the rights for the book in China, Japan, Korea, France, Germany, and... THE LINE JUST WENT DEAD! The phone company has disconnected our phone lines. AARRRGGHH!!...

Okay, the phones are back up. And, lucky for me, just in time, because the guy who does our taxes is calling to tell me that our tax returns are all filled out... "But there's just one little problem -- you have no money in the bank to pay your taxes!" he says.

"You know that home improvement loan you got to fix up your apartment? We'll have to borrow that money from the bank instead to pay your taxes!" Waahhhggggghhh!!!

What is next? Please, Supreme Being in Charge Up There -- I GET IT!: "You wanna sell 400,000 books? A pound-and-a-half of flesh, sonny boy!"

The credit card company has now called because they have cut off our card. But, wait, we paid THAT bill! People in our building have heard we are moving and are stopping by to see if they can pick over our furniture and equipment at fire sale prices. I see my desk being hauled away one minute... then I see someone trying to walk off with our Ficus tree that we ran for Congress in 2000... and now some stranger is swiping the third reel of our film! SOMEBODY STOP HIM!

The phones, though, are still working. I know this to be a fact because on the phone is the lawyer helping us avoid yet another court appearance. The British TV network, Channel Four (the people who produced the first season of "The Awful Truth"), have not paid one of their bills here in New York, and it is now way overdue. The guy wants to be paid -- he should be! -- but he hasn't sued Channel Four for the money. He has come after us! And why not? Why go 4,000 miles across an ocean to try and collect when the Channel Four employee whose name is on the bill -- mine! -- is just down the street from you?! So, just days short of completing my documentary, I have now had to sell off half our edit equipment to pay off the creditor whom Channel Four failed to pay. MOMMMYYYY!!!

Does it get worse? Of course it does! And this time, the news is tragic. My wife and I have had four deaths in our extended family in the past four months -- and now word comes today, Good Friday, that an in-law has had a horrible accident in Michigan and is in critical condition. He was in Michigan to attend his mother's funeral, just four days ago... she was a wonderful woman whose simple presence brought happiness to all around her. I can still remember Maryann decorating the church for us the night before our wedding, an inner-city church that had seen its day and not many weddings of late. She had transformed it into a beautiful place for my wife and I. Now her son lays unconscious in a hospital fighting for his life.

The TV is on, blaring in the background... suicide bombers strike again in all their horror and a former butcher-now-prime minister appears ready to slaughter as many people as he can, their blood on their doorsteps will not protect them, no angel will pass over to spare them... and my wife is on the phone with her sister who is telling her this bad news about the accident and it all just becomes too much to handle... my petty problems are reduced to the significance they deserve, and I quietly go into the other room and start to cry. After a few moments, I suck it in and get back to work boxing up my belongings, listening to a producer tell me why "10 minutes HAS to come out of the film" (it won't), and talking to my daughter who, out of the blue, just wanted to thank me for working so hard so she can go to college.

So going in a mere three hours would be miraculously brief.

Yeah, lucky Jesus.

Thanks for multi-billionth attempt to minimalize and dismiss the cruxification of Christ. It has as much chance for success as the other billions before you who foolishly believed they had an original thought and would be able to dismiss Christianity once and for all.

The point always missed in these sniffy little dismissals is that Christ's cruxification wasn't about his physical suffering or how long he hung there. That aspect of the torture simply made the suffering visible and obvious to men. Humanity wasn't saved by Christ's bruises, cuts or even his physical death but by his separation from the Father, God, as his propitiation for the sin of mankind. That is what saves us.

The resurrection showed not only Christ's victory over Satan's biggest weapon (physical death) but was a guarantee for mankind that as He was victorious over death, so would those who followed Him be victorious and united with Him in heaven.

You can dismiss Christ or even mock Him, (not advised) but at least get the point of the cruxification correct while you make attempts to tear down Christ and Christianity.

If Christ being nailed to a cross isn't that big of a deal, don't complain when someone says, "It wasn't that big of a deal."

Nice try. You mock Christ when you mock His followers and pretend it's only humans that you sneer at but oh, no, never God. Go sell that somewhere else, it doesn't play here. You do the same as Michael Moore, only with less frat-boy humor.

The fact that God allowed Himself to be tortured and hung on that cross you so readily dismiss as unimportant is what makes it a 'big deal'. Humans could not see Christ's separation from the father but they could see - and understand - physical and emotional suffering and death, which they did as Christ hung and died on the cross...for mankind's sins, including yours, believe it - or not.

You mock Christ when you mock His followers

Thus making my point for me.

You wish.

Pretending that all Christians are frauds but yet trying to say out the other side of your mouth that you respect God is hypocrisy on stilts. You fool no one. You do mock Christ.

This is an excellent example of the familiar agnostic game of attempting to acknowledge an unknowable God but calling all of his followers, Christ, the bible and everything Christian wrong, fake or otherwise not of God while claiming you only contest with men, not God. Nonsense.

Christians are followers of Christ, basing their belief on the bible, the Word of God. Trying to separate them is clever but disingenuous. If you reject the bible and Christianity then you reject Christ and trying to dismiss or mock God while pretending to be 'only' challenging men is cowardly and dishonest but quite standard in these debates.

If you want to discuss Christianity then you have to discuss Christ and the cross. Harping about what you don't like about Christians or some aspect of some religious observation doesn't cut it. Get real or get off it.

One can reject silly superstitions (the world was made in six days, etc.) without "rejecting Christ." One can fail to acknowledge Christ without "rejecting Christ

Still at it I see.

You're wasting my time with your attempts to play sophistical agnostic games. Finding everything that Christianity is based on (i.e. The Bible) at fault, wrong or - in your individual opinion - untrue but pretending to not be 'denying' Christ is an ancient ploy used by those who won't have the conviction of their unbelief to simply deny God or Christ but assume that by rejecting everything associated with Christianity, which bases itself on the very name of Christ and is based entirely on the bible, will somehow let you have it both ways. No, it won't.
Your transparent non-belief of the divinity and very nature of God in Christ is obvious, you just won't admit it and keep trying to claim that rejecting Christianity has nothing to do with rejecting Christ. That concept is just absurd. Give it up.

...a Christian can reject the sillier notions in the Bible and remain a Christian. Whether YOU happen to like it or not.

There you go again. Characterizing Christianity as a man-made 'religion' and trying to say the bible is just silly - except for the parts that YOU deem worthy...but you 'don't reject Christ'. Nooooo. Oh boy.

This is so lame that I'm not wasting any more time on a person who is clearly attempting to make his own 'God', picking and choosing what he likes in scripture and running away from the basics of the bible and calling them silly or 'fundamentalist' or anything other than truth. Spending a lot of time finding fault with Christians who oppose this selective and mostly negative 'understanding' of God's Word, too.

Have it your way but this debate is pointless so I'll not respond again but I'll read whatever you may choose to post on the subject. Life is too short and precious to waste it attempting to convince those who have no intention of changing a convenient and comfortable 'belief system', as Al Gore might put it. Make your own God, your own bible, your own heaven - and reap the consequences. You've made your choice, I - and others - make our choice. God is supreme.

Hey, if you want to take the more ridiculous elements of the Bible* and claim them as "the basics..." well, I guess that's up to you.

Well you're just too smart and wise for God to fool. You're on to us. YOU are your own God! A little human being, in control! That 'fake' God can't pass off any miracles on you, can he? You know so much more. </sarcasm

If you can't grasp spirituality and things far beyond yourself, they can't possibly be real or true. Nooooo. Can't be. YOU decide what's real and true and we're all fools when we don't share your manifest wisdom of everything spiritual, that about it?

Please. Go somewhere else and wallow in your 'agnostisism' and spout all the tired cliches and overused excuses for non-belief, calling God's Word a lie and God a fraud in the process. You look as ridiculous as you think Christians are and I leave you to your empty and ultimately tragic but inevitable fate.

I don't waste my time with those who spew the kind of anti-Christian bilge you have in this thread. You have your little cocoon of unbelief all knit the way you prefer it, and you're welcome to it. Discussion is pointless with those who dismiss God and His works as a lie and a fraud while you, a mere human, so smug in your assumed knowledge of all that God is and has done, breathe the air your very creator provides for you and when He decides you've breathed long enough, you'll stop, and all your assumed wisdom and knowledge will not buy you one second more of the life you wasted with your dismissal of God's truth, replaced with a mere human being's thoughts that simply reject scripture as what it claims to be - The Word of God - God's instruction manual to his creation, and instead replace it with your own inflated ideas of truth, while mocking the bible and Christians who simply wish to follow Christ, as He asked us to do.

Post what you will. I'll not visit this thread again, it's too sad to read yet another diatribe from a God-rejecting, Christian-mocking 'agnostic' (an atheist who won't admit it) hiding his dismissal of God and all He stands for under the pose of his assumed superior knowledge and intellect. Go in peace, and I hope your ego will some day deflate enough for you to seek the truth of God in His Word, instead of in your own closed-off mind.

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