Sacred Religious Truths to Make You Smile

SACRED RELIGIOUS TRUTHS (We’ve probably all heard or seen that crude bumper-sticker saying, “Shit happens.” Someone—or, more likely, a group of different folks—then wrote it up in the early 1990s as a humor piece involving the different major religions and denominations. There were about a dozen items in the original version, some of them not so funny. One wild and crazy night, in a bizarre channeling of some demented humor angel in a combination with my own knowledge of world religions and new religious movements, many elaborations on the theme burst forth. So, as with a previous humor item, my creations are noted with an asterisk*; a double asterisk** is my elaboration of an already-existing item from the original anonymous version. The newer items on this list were drafted in 1992 by Timothy Conway, Ph.D. [Piled Higher and Deeper]. And if the use of this term “shit” offends your sense of piety—it was, after all, one of those “seven words you can’t say on TV” as immortalized in a famous George Carlin routine from the late 1970s—then please skip over this humor section and go on to the next section. We'll leave it to Freud and his followers to determine whether the following better expresses an “anal retentive” or “anal explosive” psychosexual fixation!)

CONVENTIONAL SAYING:
Shit happens.

ATHEISM:
I don’t believe this shit!

CATHOLICISM:
If shit happens, you deserve it. Say 100 Hail Marys as penance.

PROTESTANTISM:
Let shit happen to someone else.

JUDAISM:
Why does shit always happen to us?

FUNDAMENTALISM:*
If you don’t belieeeve in Jeeeesus, Satan will make terrible shit happen on you, arranged in the sign of the beast: 666.

ISLAM:**
If shit happens, it is the Will of Allah! We pray that no more shit will happen, Inshallah! (God Willing)

CONFUCIANISM:
Kung-fu-tzu say: “shit happen.”

TAOISM:*
Shit spontaneously happens of itself, soft, yielding, one with the Tao.

HINDUISM:
This shit happened before.

NONDUAL VEDANTA:*
This is all a dream. No shit ever really happened.

HATHA YOGA:*
Do not let shit happen when you are standing on your head!

BUDDHISM:*
Whatever shit happens—don’t cling to it. Let it arise and pass away.

MAHAYANA BUDDHISM:*
Emptiness = shit. Shit = emptiness.

TIBETAN BUDDHISM:*
Visualize tantric shit happening 100,000 times.

ZEN BUDDHISM:**
What is the sound of one shit happening? Where were you 1,000 years before the First Big Shit?

GREEK DELPHIC ORACLE:*
Know thy shit. (And Heraclitus warns: don't step in it twice, even if it's not exactly the same shit.)

NATIVE AMERICAN:*
Our medicine power make lot of shit happen for white man.

WICCA PAGANISM:*
Shit is a sacred happening, an offering back to Mother Earth. Let’s make a magic circle of it.

SPIRITUALISM:*
The spirit guides say: “Shit doth happen to us, too. This is why we channel so much of it through you.”

NEW AGE:*
Repeat the affirmation: “I am shitless. I am so beautifully free of shit. Shit cannot happen to me!” (If it does happen, let’s use crystals on it and become prosperous in our abundance!)

COURSE IN MIRACLES:*
It’s your illusory ego that says shit is happening. So—you have a choice: Fear shit or Love shit.

SHIRLEY MACLAINE-ISM:*
In a past life, I made so much cosmic shit happen! (with all my chakras open!)

SCIENTOLOGY:*
For only $60,000, we’ll clear you of all shit happening. Then you can experience L. Ron Hubbard’s very special kind of shit.

UFO CULTS:*
I saw the Space Brothers make the most beautiful, interdimensional shit happen! (plentiful Pleiadian poop)

RASTAFARIAN:**
Shit happen, mon. Roll it up. Smoke it up!

EXISTENTIALISM:*
Shit is a strange and absurd happening. The question is: to be, or not to be, shitty?

PATRIARCHALISM:*
Women are shit.

FEMINISM:*
Men are shit.

THE FINAL TRUTH:*
And God sayeth unto them: “I like shit. Let there be shit.” And S/he saw that it was GOOD.

THE REALLY FINAL TRUTH:*
When we realize Who We Really Are, then shift happens.

* * * * *

GENDER WARS:
The feminist retort to patriarchalism:
“My Goddess gave birth to your God.”

Originally posted on Enlightened Spirituality