Raybon Kan: The gospel according to Brian

Brian Tamaki doesn't like criticism of his style, but entitles himself to criticise how others express love. Picture / Sarah Ivey

CNN this week had a discussion where the screen read: "Alt-Right Founder Questions If Jews Are People."

Jews: People? Or Not?

This was a topic apparently up for debate. On a news channel.

Meanwhile in New Zealand, last week we had a debate whether gay people cause earthquakes. This got broadcast. Did we seriously just have a debate whether homosexuality causes earthquakes? Last week? This century?

It wasn't that long ago - 1986 - that homosexuality was a criminal offence in New Zealand. It took a lot of campaigning to change that law.

The part of the Bible that Tamaki chooses to take as Gospel is Leviticus, not the bit about it being easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

His answer on radio when asked about his lavish lifestyle: "Get a life."
Yet while he'd prefer others not criticise his style, he entitles himself to criticise how others express love.

Tamaki's approach has made him rich, his church untaxed. Despite the eftpos terminals, his promises stand outside the realm of the Fair Trading Act or the Commerce Commission.

So let's try put some logic into his theologic.
If gay activity is the trigger which sets God right off, then homosexuality in Wellington is focused in two areas: inner-city apartments, above the seventh floor (the floor of the beast); and the National Archive, home of the Treaty.

The National Archive must be the architectural version of Grinder. I can only hope the Treaty is behind perspex.

And let's not even imagine what orgy must have been happening on State Highway One between Kaikoura and Christchurch.

If the National Archive is sinful, what's happening at Fukushima nuclear power plant? Is Freddie Mercury working there?

What we need in this day and age isn't a conversation about Christ and God. What we need is a conversation about causation and correlation. Or basic physics.

Why, for example, is God so cool about homosexuality when it occurs away from faultlines? Perhaps if the Richter Scale were alphabetical, God could spell out his messages more clearly. Like a keyboard, God could write to us.

When God strands a troupe of photogenic cows, he could say: that was for the industrial farming.

When God obliterates a state highway, he could say: that was for the carbon emissions.
And when God red-zones an apartment building, he could say: that's because you millennials didn't enter the kingdom of KiwiSaver.

Imagine if Brian Tamaki were a weatherman.

"And in Wellington, we're expecting a high of 22, but tomorrow, strong southerlies gusting to 80kmh. Obviously a cold front of illicit man-lying-with-man is approaching from the east, and I don't mean flat-sharing. Saturday will be fine and 28 deg C, so sodomy will be clearing by about midnight on Friday."

"Mild adultery and divorce coming from the Tasman Sea, and a high-pressure system of extra-marital lust is swirling from the Hutt. Low-lying coastal areas should look out for occasional high gusts of homosexuality. Look out for pestilence on those roads, and have a great weekend."

This time Kaikoura seems to be especially targeted, so maybe God has an issue about shellfish. Is this a kosher thing? Maybe it's a sign that the Old Testament is as far as we're meant to read.

Or was it the sex angle? Did God raise the seafloor in Kaikoura, because we sinful humans have been using seafood as an aphrodisiac?

Or - is it just that God doesn't like whales? Remember what a whale did to Jonah? Do you think God forgets? How dare we worship and venerate whales?

So many things we do are unnatural, against God's design.

Like, as done in Wellington, reclaiming land. If God designed Lambton Quay to be the coastline of Wellington, who are we to play God and move our hemlines from his will?
Indeed, who are we to build upwards and make unnatural inner-city buildings taller than a tree?

Religion, obviously, is narcissism. Do we really think the creator of the universe is micro-managing to this level?

Look up in the sky at night. Look at the stars, each one probably bigger than our sun.
Some dots of light are entire galaxies, bigger than our own Milky Way.

Yet, we're supposed to believe that God takes his eye off the rest of the universe, and has one of his Earth seizures, when certain animals on our planet, touch one another in ways that Brian Tamaki disapproves of?

Brian Tamaki should stick to what he knows about.

@RaybonKan
www.raybonkan.com