"This here song might offend you some..."

I must say that God used a certain song in the process of waking me up from the fog of five years between high school and college. Why I was putting off college; I don't know; I always knew I would love and need it.

The prophetic song:

"This here song might offend you some
And if you think it does it's because you're dumb..

You're gonna wind up working at a gas station.."

God evidently loves to use Frank Zappa lyric to get lost kids into theKingdom and into college.

Since we all know the church fueled quite a bit of the Holocaust, and that Frank Zappa was often prophetic..

(any questions so far?)..

Let's take on a midrash of that song.

And ask:

Could it be that it's either Pentecost or Holocaust?
Could it be that if we aren't following Jesus, by default we are trusting/following Satan?

Maybe..bottom line..there are really only two responses to Jesus:
we want to kiss him or kill him.
The magi desired to worship Jesus (the Greek word is to prostrate oneself; an related to the verb "to kiss." Herod, on the other hand, set out to kill him.

On the "if you are not set on fire by Pentecost, you light fires of Holocaust" thesis,
consider the great theologian (!) Frank Zappa..

..who may well have embedded in a song on face value about the futility of working at a gas station..anyone is "dumb" who works there; get some education and do something more profound..

OR is the song also (or only) about this same choice: If we are not prayerful and careful, we will naturally fall back on our human ("You, who are evil..." Jesus said) leaning towards murder/wanting to kill Jesus...or Jews.

The gas station is a concentration camp oven, in this interpretation of a deceptively throwaway
song.

Follow the interpretation of the song here.
Much of the debate centers on who is "Many the Camper (who) wants to buy some white."

I am a firm believer in centered and fuzzy sets (or I wouldn't be cataloging Zappa as propheticesque) . But sometimes there is no middle ground, and bounded sets abound (God or mammon, U2 or Gaithers {joke!] etc)
Though few would advocate literally killing Jesus or Jews...even the best of us (even fully converted folk)
commit embryonically what Hugh Ross calls the "blasphemy threshold." We are not in danger of committing the full-blown blaphemy against the Holy Spirit. But when we act in unchecked human wisdom ("human wisdom is demonic", James 3:16)...

we kill Jesus.

Or Jews.

Which is the same thing.

And we wind up working at the gas station of Auschwitz.
And the "camper who wants to buy some white" is sold out to the master race.

We often talk of Paul, who "didn't kill Stephen, but held the coats of those who did."
We don't kill Jews, we just hold the matches for those who light the oven.

Promoting empire, system and Satan.

Killing Christ.
Time for a temple tantrum, for Christ's sake,
as we all default to ant-Christ anti-Semitism.

Just some cozy devotional thoughts for the day.

This ain't Joel Osteen's blog.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

But don't discount the prophetic wherever it shows up...especially in the Zappa.

Rolling Stone magazine had his number:

"Zappa vividly captures the paranoid tension and bleak foreboding of impending holocaust – before slapping you hard on the ass with a delightful slice of elephant-disco slapstick."
link

Why doesn't the church?

Don't answer that.

"Like every other record he ever made,, "Rolling Stone continued. " [ this one] is Frank Zappa's way of saying, 'Yeah, everything is f---ked, but all is not lost.'"

Why can't the church say that.

Frank can answer that.

"It has never mattered to me that thirty million people might think I'm wrong.
The number of people who thought Hitler was right did not make him right.."
-Zappa

Frank Zappa:  Hello?! Hello?! Hello?!

Den Simms:    Here we go. (To Rob & Eric) So what was the thing you had
        said about "Manny the Camper" on the way here?

Frank Zappa:  He wants to buy some white. Manny the camper wants to buy
        some white. Ya wait long enough, all the songs come true.

Eric Buxton:  Who was the original Manny the camper? I know he
        wanted white gas, but who was he?

Frank Zappa:  Just anybody named Manny who had an RV, y'know.

Eric Buxton:  And here he is.

Frank Zappa:  Yeah, I'm sure he has an RV too. It's probably bullet
        proof. One more thing is maybe he'll return to Managua.
        You could go unnoticed in such a place (laughter).
          link

Lyrics:




"This here song might offend you some
And if you think it does it's because you're dumb
That's the way it is where I come from
And if you think that too, let me see your thumb
Show me your thumb that you're really dumb
Hey now, better make a decision
Be a moron and keep your position
You gotta know now all your education
Or else let me know how you're gonna
Wind up working in a gas station
Pumping the gas every night

Manny [in some lyric versions, "Many"] the camper wants to buy some white ....