Buddhist precepts value life. All life. Which is why I catch spiders and take them outside. Why I don't eat meat. Why I care for stray animals and try to help alleviate animal suffering. And why I try to extend kindness to people, even when they may not seem to deserve it.

And let me tell you, sometimes it is very, very difficult to do so.

Pat Robertson died.

And he made it impossible for me to value his life.

I am not going to go all hyperbolic and say that he was "evil incarnate" or anything like that. There are others far more deserving of that label. But he sure preached evil and encouraged others to follow in the evil he preached. Which is why I am not sad that he's gone. The world is a better place without people like this encouraging raw hatred in the name of "Christianity"...

I've studied The Christian Bible more than most Christians ever will. I know this is fact because all too often I run across "Christians" who have no fucking clue what they are talking about. They parrot whatever they've been told to believe and recite passages they memorized... all while attempting to force it into whatever narrative they choose to ascribe to. They want to hate gay people, they pull passages and pervert them to hate on gay people. They want to hate women, they pull passages and pervert them to hate on women. They want to hate foreigners, they pull passages and pervert them to hate on foreigners. Whatever it is they hate, there's a passage somewhere that they point to in order to justify their evil. They neither know nor care about what meaning may be behind what they unleash on the world, and have zero interest in studying to find out if what they say actually means what they claim it does.

All while missing The Big Picture of what Christianity actually is.

I joined a "Bible Study Group for Non-Christians" in 2014. Every year we alternate between New and Old Testaments, trying to put their teachings into context so we can better understand the Christian Worldview and better relate to those who profess to live their lives according to Holy Scripture. Because we are not Christians, we study many different viewpoints from many different Biblical scholars and put a heavy emphasis on historical context. We are not interested in forcing The Bible to fit any narrative, we just want to understand the teachings (some of which are quite beautiful... sorry Bible-haters!).

As you might guess, the study group's goal of understanding Christians... especially modern-day Christians who use their Faith as a weapon... gets more and more difficult with each passing year.

Indeed, when we examine some of the things which are said "in the name of Christian love" we outright wonder if we're reading a different Bible than those who promote such rabid hatred against God's creation.

I mean, on some level I get it. The Bible is far from definitive, no matter how much people will claim otherwise. It's parable. It's allegory. It has meaning which is lost in translation. It is self-contradictory. It's a mish-mash of ideas and perspectives which add a frustrating level of obscurity. All of which contributes to why you cannot pick-and-choose passages and claim that they support your narrative. You instead have to look at The Big Picture of what the Bible stands for and the overall arc of what it's trying to say.

Which ain't easy.

On face value, The Bible is wide open to interpretation. This is why we have so many "factions" of Christianity. Different groups interpret Scripture in different ways. Different groups read in historical context in different ways. Different groups interpret the languages in different ways. And that's all well and good. I have zero problem if somebody wants to interpret The Bible in a way different from what I do. Where I absolutely do have a problem is when the teachings of The Bible are perverted far past any rational interpretation. I have an even bigger problem with people who want to rewrite Scripture to persecute people.

And this is something that Pat Robertson excelled at.

He tossed fundamental Biblical precepts right out the window, honed in on Scripture he could pervert to convince people to send him money or hate gay people or hate women or hate foreigners or hate whomever was on his radar that day. But what's truly shocking is that he claimed that God literally told him to do this. Now, I don't want to go down the whole road of what the Bible teaches us about false prophets, but the fact that anybody could follow his deranged ranting and think that it genuinely came from The Almighty and could in any way be supported by Scripture is just mind-blowing. I cannot for the life of me comprehend how somebody could listen to Pat Robertson then look at their Bible sitting on the nightstand and think "Oh yeah. Pat's right on the money with that one!"

And yet Pat Robertson managed to whip up a vast following.

It would be easy to say "Well, yeah. People want to hate things, and Pat Robertson's hate-filled preaching fell in line with what they want to believe is okay to hate, so they supported him." Except I don't really believe that. Many, many people who fell in with his bullshit were kind, decent, well-meaning people who were taught to hate. They were corrupted to be that way.

Because there's big money to be had in the Hate Game.

And Pat Robertson loved the money.

It bought him mansions. It bought him private jets. It bought him luxury. It brought him fame.

Which, if you've made an even cursory examination of The Bible, should be a huge red flag.

Irony can be so ironic sometimes.

But I digress.

Every time a disaster happened in areas that Pat considered "sinful" (New Orleans, for example) he was very quick to hop on it as "God's wrath again the gays" (or whomever was his current favorite group to hate). And yet when disaster fell upon those Pat considered pious persons, it wasn't God's wrath... it was grave misfortune caused by wicked people and we should pray for them (and send Pat money so he could pray for them, I guess... there seemed to be a fucking price tag attached to everything he did).

It was the boldest form of hypocrisy you'll find, and yet people ate that shit up.

And to me, this will forever be his legacy. Hate and Hypocrisy.

I stopped caring about Pat Robertson after he stopped appearing on The 700 Club or interviews preaching hate. I just didn't care. He was gone from public consciousness, and that was enough. I was not sitting at home every day "wishing for him to die" (or whatever it is I'll be accused of). So the fact that he's finally gone from this earth is neither here nor there. Though, if I'm being honest, I did crack open a beer for breakfast today. I don't consider that to be "celebrating Pat Robertson's death," because he simply didn't matter to me after he disappeared. But I did appreciate the milestone of yet another hateful old bigot being called home to whatever God he worshipped for Judgement.

Because given the horrific levels of hateful persecution Pat Robertson espoused which went against everything The Bible is supposed to stand for, he's no doubt burning in a hell of his own making for all eternity. At least one would certainly hope so. Few things would illustrate "poetic justice" better than Pat Robertson being treated in death the way he treated others in life.