Two Penn’orth: CU takes the biscuit

I stumble out of Top B, engine fueled with cheap vodka, I’m happy, energetic, discursive…but what’s this? Biscuits, tea, coffee, even water! I’m engulfed by an army of Christian crusaders seeking and destroying the alcoholic blood content of pissed Maths and Physics students. Someone’s drunk, on the deck like a marine on a WWII Normandy beach wailing for a medic…but… a Christian Samaritan is on hand: “This man needs 50ml of Nescafe and an injection of Jesus STAT!”

My beef with Warwick Christian Union isn’t that they judge, but that they pretend not to. If I stand outside an abortion clinic, dressed as a foetus with “God’s shame” across my chest, it’s a judgment; I can’t claim, “I’m not judging, I’m spreading the word of the Lord”. God’s “divine words” are also judgments and become yours by association, don’t escape responsibility deferring to your deity; you are his child after all. Judge and tell me you’re doing so. Then we debate the validity of your judgment.

Many disagree with me (a crowd at Top B did). “You don’t believe in selfless acts?” – “Yes” I said, “I believe in them, I just don’t see one”. The CU claim in their mission statement: “the hot chocolate project is all about serving students on campus” . However, “the best way … we serve others is by sharing with them the good news – that Jesus is alive and that he loves them and … wants them to know him!”

It’s not the act of giving a biscuit, but the fact that the biscuit is full of Jesus-y dogma. Yes we drink, fornicate, dance to blasphemous music: if you disprove of this behaviour don’t give me a biscuit, tell me directly why. Instead it’s like moral bribery.

One of our newly elected Sabbs attributed his victory to “giving out free tea and coffee”. I couldn’t help but see a striking similarity. Maybe they should join forces and spread a fusion espresso, of political/religious doctrine, but there could be a legal dispute over who pioneered the tactic first.

To the apologists: don’t be naïve, there’s an agenda here beyond refreshment and sustenance. I’m not advocating a response like an atheist group in America, that traded in bibles for Hustler. In a world where big time Atheist Dawkins rocks the No.1 spot of Tesco’s book chart, it’s too easy to mock Christianity. There’s nothing more irritating than recycled, regurgitated atheistic sanctimony, dragged out like a dodgy old coat to exhibit an individual’s intellectual superiority.

However, let’s challenge this patronising religious imposition dressed up as benevolent selflessness. Or, as my friend Lucy said to the above argument: “I don’t care about that, I just love biscuits.”