What a helluva (hmm!) fuss Rugby player Israel (perfect first name) Folau stirred up with his damnation by Instagram of sinners to hell! It’s amazing how punters take this medieval idea seriously. Okay, I get that some gay people (no initials here) are unhappy about it, but only if they accept this ridiculous clap-trap.
But what about the other sinners mentioned? This caper needs auditing, at least apropos of Orstralia. At the top of his list were Drunks. Is that permanently inebriated folk, or those of us who have occasionally over-tippled? If the former then most people are unaffected, but otherwise it covers 90+% of Australians.
Homosexuals were apparently the most offended by the damnation call-out. But they’ve had plenty of coverage, so let’s look at the other categories.
Thirdly, Adulterers, which means sex outside marriage. Don’t worry, the rest of you come up later. Surveys show that 10% of spouses admit to cheating, which based on latest population estimates amounts to 915,000 people (cheating rate for men is 12% and women 7%). That’s a shite load of adulterers.
Liars is massive. Is that professional liars like politicians, or even us occasional liars (white lies only of course)? Potentially that covers 100% of Australians! And hey, what about Israel himself – he promised not to bring the game of rugby into disrepute, and then he takes Rugby Australia to court. That was a lie.
Okay, here’s a biggie: Fornicators. Don’t reach for the dictionary – it means sex outside marriage. So the rest of you having sex are fornicators. I’m pretty sure the bible did not recognise defacto marriage, so you lot are included too. I dunno how to estimate the total number of fornicators in Oz but it’s way huge.
Full time Thieves is probably not a huge number, but if you nicked some flowers from a neighbouring park you could be a borderline sinner. Let’s just say several hundred thousand thieves in Australia to cover all options.
Then my personal favourite: Atheists. By definition we should be the least concerned with Folau’s folly of phantasmagorical punishment. And we make up 10% of the Australian population, that is 2,473,000 clear thinkers. So Israel: sticks and stones….
Last but definitely not least come Idolaters, which is where it gets interesting. Despite my atheist theology, I’ve done plenty of church tourism, particularly in Europe where they built some great temples to idolatry. Yep, lots of Virgin Mary statues, Jesus statues, not to mention assorted saints, religious relics, etc. Catholics are idolaters – they constitute 22.6% of the Australian population, and if we add say half of the 13.3% Anglicans, it makes a grand total of 7,246,000 Australian idolators, ignoring Buddhists or other minority groups.
When you crunch all those sinner group numbers, you have roughly 90-100% of the Australian population going off to Hell sooner or later. I hope the Devil has enough accommodation for his Australian congregation, so to speak, preferably with river views (no oceans in hell?) and Tuesday night pasta specials at the local club. To give us all a warm welcome!
And come to think of it, is that why we’re Down Under? Thanks Israel for bringing it to our attention. The Devil’s in the detail.
