Christians are all around us in many forms. Some of them are very self-righteous and will not rest until we heathens are converted. Others are peaceful and kind and sort of like really clean hippies who make brownies and baked goods which are found to be “special” only in the way that they have been baked with Good Christian Love. No, that still is not an herbal kind of love, but believe me, there are those kinds of Christians, too. Christians who won’t let their women dance or wear trousers, Christians who love everyone equally, Christians who hate the gays and the immigrants and those minorities, Christians in politics, Branson, Missouri, bad Christian films. In fact, there are as many kinds of Christians as there are different kinds of personality on earth! Well, all except one. You see, there are just not any creative Christians, apparently. At all.

In their zeal to forward the good message of Jesus Christ, it seems that Christians completely give up their potential for imaginative thoughts. The more cynical of us would say that that is the primary function of religion, to erase creativity because creative thinking would possibly lead to the kind of thinking that makes the thinker think that what they are dedicating their lives to, this blind faith, might be a little stupid. And thinking like that WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.

In these modern times, they cannot simply preach. No. They must market Jesus now. They have to come up with ways to get the young people hip to the Christ. They need slogans, psychological manipulations, products, games, apparel, books, jewelry, motherfucking slap bracelets. They KNOW this. But they just don’t have the wherewithal to create fresh new merchandise to seduce the consumers. So, they blatantly rip off every single thing that some secular product has developed that has been anywhere near popular.

What’s that? Mountain Dew has a logo and a slogan? Rip it off FOR JESUS. Cars are popular amongst the teens? Quick, get every emblem and somehow make it Christian in look. I don’t care if it doesn’t make sense! Just do it! Hasbro made a popular toy? Make a cheap, cheap knockoff of it right away. Mattel has a fun game? Quickly suck all of the fun right out of it, put a picture of some biblical character on it, and resell it as “wholesome for your blonde Christian family.” Yes, a million products are ripped off every year with the same arrogance that the Christians used to rip off all of the pagan religions that they wanted to stamp out of existence.

I know that we are all laughing at the absurdity of this. Christians just aren’t as powerful as they used to be. They can’t just storm a village and force everyone into their religious path. Surely Pepsico and Microsoft won’t stand for this flagrant plagiarism. Lawsuits MUST be on the way. After all, if we made Sneeropoly and replaced all of the properties with in-jokes, we would be sued immediately. In fact, since I just wrote “Sneeropoly” I expect their lawyers will be contacting us by the end of this article. And yet, the Christians are getting away with it a hundred times over! They are warming themselves up to the idea of being a massive force in the part of modern life that has always been so cold and godless. They are getting savvy with all of their copycatting. My worst fears were confirmed the day I found the Christian Dollar Store.

So what’s in a Christian Dollar Store? It’s everything we discussed above, just on a scale where it becomes painfully hilarious.

Plush Faith Monkey

Naturally, I can’t find a picture of this little darling stuffed monkey online during a search of a full single minute — that’s sixty seconds of my life! I obviously did not spend my cash dollar on this item, so I’ll just have Amandoll draw up a rendition. Her seconds are cheap and plentiful.

It is so colorful and wacky, with its long monkey arms and cute little monkey eyes. But what’s this? Why does it have a cross embroidered upon its little monkey chest, over its darling monkey heart? Why, because it is a CHRISTIAN monkey, sillies! And like all Christian things, this monkey is deeply significant in all ways, right down to the colors chosen!

“Yellow face and cross represents God’s perfect light, Black eyes and tail represents our sins, Red head and stomach means Jesus’ blood, Green hands and feet mean a new life, and purple legs mean the crown of life.”

Wow! I guess that means that the vomit I just choked on in my throat is just symbolic of God’s Perfect Light and a little bit of Jesus’ Blood! Of course, I already knew that, deep inside my very soul.

What I didn’t know though is how very resourceful these Christians are. They have made me learn SO MUCH from this very lovable and cuddly monkey that promotes such a serious religious message in such a way that nobody but the fiercest of Christ-obsessed zealots would ever notice. Thank you, Christian Brothers and Sisters, for making me be forever suspicious even of colors now!

Praise Ponies

Every little girl loves ponies to a certain extent. Especially those damn My Little Ponies. Many a young girl spent hours grooming and… grooming their little plastic multi-colored ponies. I know I did. But there was always something missing from the experience. Something that just seemed vacant from my many times that I tried to make them have sex to create baby ponies. Possibly a large chunk of my frontal lobe. Or maybe according to this fine little toy, though, it seems all I was missing was God’s message.

The Praise Ponies offer you a playing experience just like you experience with your real My Little Ponies, except they are remarkably cheap looking and offer God’s message, delivered by stamping “Love,” “Hope,” and “Joy” on the ponies’ asses, which apparently is supposed to make you stop and think about how much God’s message means to you as you have them mount each other for hot, hot pony sex.

Honestly there’s nothing religious at all about these things. You get the standard Bible verses on the front of the box, which I guess qualifies any sort of product as being Christian. Just as long as it’s got that vague Bible verse plastered somewhere around it. No kids give a fuck, and why should you. Just shut up and comb their damn hair until it falls out.

the Bible Bar

Rarely has anything ever crossed my eyes that actually makes me step back and wonder if what I saw was the real deal or something that my brain has fabricated in real time to slowly make me think I was going mad. The Bible Bar definitely qualifies as one of those moments. When I took it out of the box, at first mistaking it for a what I figured to be a particularly heavy industrial piece of cement, I had to sit there and stare at it for a good minute before things started to sink in.

As you can see, it definitely is a Bible Bar. The package exclaims that it is “Nutrition God’s Way.” And how would this be, since as far as I know God never actually set a nutrition bar diet in stone for his people? As far as I remember he was too busy telling everyone to stone everyone else, so there probably wasn’t too much time to tell everyone what their daily calorie intake should be, or how much trans fat they should include in their meals. All God did was say, “Hey don’t be gluttons because fat shits don’t get into heaven” as far as I can remember from Sunday School. And so it was.

But the Bible Bar definitely says it’s God’s way, so I’m guessing we should at least take its word for it. The bar’s reasoning being that it contains all the ingredients from Deuteronomy 8:8 in the Bible, which includes; Wheat, Barley, Raisins, Honey, Figs, Pomegranates, and Olive Oil. Mmmm! More like Deuteronomy ATE ATE, am I not right?

And while the Bible Bar is indeed being accurate (Yes, I checked) on its ingredients in a Bible Passage that has nothing to do at all with any sort of recipe (it’s referring to a perfect land or some shit), this doesn’t exactly equate to a taste that can be described as palatable. In fact, the taste probably can’t be described as anything other than what it is, which is dried prunes wrapped around a chunk of hay. And not just any chunk of hay, but the most condensed form of wheat and barley you can get wheat and barley into. This would be why I first thought it to be a wrapped piece of cement, because it literally is like an ancient brick that you’d see ancient people building primitive buildings with. I swear there are at least five acres of barley in every bite of the Bible Bar.

The only person I can see liking the Bible Bar would be older people desperate to find new and dangerous ways to empty out their colon, since their bodies have long forgotten how to do so by themselves. And while I can thoroughly recommend the Bible Bar for the task of biblical dumps, I cannot recommend you ever actually eat one of these things for any other reason. God’s way or not.

Overall Ratings:

• Density: You could bring down a woolly mammoth with it
• Ingredients: Wheat, Barley, Raisins, Honey, Figs, Pomegranates, and Olive Oil once and for all conclude we should never listen to the Bible on anything.
• Overall Look: It looks like a solid brick of shit. There is no “cool” factor in holding a Bible Bar. The fact that it’s called a Bible Bar should have told that to you already though.
• Overall Taste: Somehow tastes worse than it looks. Like eating seven boxes of pure wheat in one bite. I had to drink eight glasses of water and brush my teeth three times just to get all the fucking random hay bits out of my mouth.

Conclusion:

It might very well bring you closer to the Lord while eating it, but it will definitely bring you closer to your toilet afterward. Amen.