Crusading in the name of Art

By Ian Robinson ,Calgary Sun

“And whoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.”

That’s from the Book of Matthew.

Note to younger readers: Not to be confused with the Warner Brothers film The Book of Eli, starring Denzel Washington and featuring the best machete fight ever committed to film.

Plus Mila Kunis demonstrating that no matter how bad the apocalypse gets, tight jeans will give humanity a reason to keep on living. As long as the person wearing those tight jeans is Mila Kunis.

Book of Eli really has nothing to do with this column.

I just really like the movie. Mmmm. Machete fights.

Anyway, for those of you who didn’t get hit with the religion stick when you were little, this part of Matthew features extensive quotes from an itinerant Jewish carpenter who liked to hand out a regular ration of crap to the religious authorities of the day, an unsavoury, self-aggrandizing mob known as Pharisees.

Think of them as city hall.

You know.

Reality challenged dilettantes who loved political power and liked to order other people around while slurping away at the trough. (Insert your own Calgary alderman joke here.)

Jesus didn’t like the Pharisees much. They didn’t like him back and pretty soon he was hanging from a crosstree and the next thing you know, a couple of thousand years have passed and people watching the Calgary Stampede parade are treated to the sight of a bunch of doofuses (doofi?) wearing crusader outfits and praising Jesus, parading without a permit, running in front of this city’s signature event.

This is the handiwork of Calgary street preacher Art Pawlowski, whose ministry seems to consist largely of shouting.

He never met a camera he didn’t like.

Publicity seems to have the same effect on Art that Mila Kunis has on average guys.

Pawlowski is noisy and annoying and likes to pretend that he is a martyr being persecuted by local authorities for being a Christian.

Back when Jesus was lecturing the Pharisees against their greed, the currency of quick and easy fame wasn’t around. No Internet, no TV, no newspapers, no e-mail, no snail mail. The stamp wouldn’t be invented for centuries.

Hell, you wanted to write something down, sometimes you made marks in a chunk of wet clay and had to wait for it to dry and then carry it around.

You could scream in a public place until your throat bled and nobody outside the immediate area would notice.

But chances are, before you could annoy a lot of people, one of those nice Roman centurions would probably come along and deliver a quick kick in the head to generate a blessed silence.

Here in Calgary, our centurions let Art Pawlowski hijack the Stampede parade — so it would be nice if Art gave the martyrdom act a rest.

Dressing up in Halloween outfits out of season and taking his travelling freak show along the parade route didn’t sway a single soul to his cause.

I’m OK with that because I don’t think his cause is Christianity. I think his cause is Art Pawlowski.

He’s a New-Age Pharisee whose treasure is the cheap currency of attention. He’s a Kardashian with a Bible.

Any message the Gospel of Christ has for the modern world is not only lost in the noise of his self-aggrandizing behaviour, it is denigrated because the only conclusion non-Christians can reach after careful study of Pawlowski is this: Religion makes you moonbat crazy.

What this clown does, every time he acts out, is crap on the legacy of every humble person of faith.

They’re the ones who build the schools for poor children hungering for knowledge around the world.

They feed the starving, (something admittedly Pawlowski’s group does) help cure the sick and comfort the dying.

Chances are they’re the ones who back off on the accelerator and let you merge without risking your life on the Deerfoot.

They’re the ones trying to live a life of quiet and simple decency because, like the bumper stickers some of them slap on their cars proclaim, their boss is a Jewish carpenter.

But in a modern culture in which Christians are, at best, considered quaintly misguided, the face of the faith in Calgary is often that of Pawlowski.

That may not be a crime. It may not even be a sin.

But it is a damned shame.

http://www.calgarysun.com/2012/07/13/robinson-crusading-in-the-name-of-art

 

Now that you’ve read from Calgarys propaganda, here’s what really happened. Click on the picture below for complete information.