Saturday, April 10, 2004

I'm departing grossly,

for sure, from the beliefs of my co-blogger, Kyle; and certainly from the baseline of this blog, but I gotta say this to conform to its title, All That Arises.

What arises for me with all the attention, during the Easter weekend, to the life and death of Jesus is that the Christian recounting of these events is just a centuries-long historical spin of a dramatic event in Jerusalem long before we had videos and Internet and similar fact-establishing technologies. Maybe there was a guy who was killed after the Jewish Passover. Maybe, even, he was crucified. But whatever happened to him wasn't written by eye-witnesses, wasn't even based on eye-witness accounts. The earliest published accounts weren't written until more than thirty years after the fact. More than a generation, without video, without the Internet or even movie newsreals to perpetuate the events.
But did Jesus arise from the dead? Was he the "son of God"? Is there a God? Did God have a son? Did He send His son to earth to become crucified, to turn water to wine, to hang out with fishermen? Did Jesus hang out with a prostitute; did she wash his feet?
To me, all of this is fable. Fine fable, to be sure, but not more likely to be true than the fable of Islam or of Judaism or, for that matter, of Moonie-ism. I understand the concept of faith, but I don't for a moment believe that faith is fact, and therefore find it to be more malleable, susceptible to disbelief and disobedience.
So why are we presently at war over beliefs? Because we're stupid, base and ugly of spirit.
I have much more to say on this subject--a lifetime of it--but will close now because so did Good Friday. Jesus is dead, some say, and so I'll be silent. Out of respect for the living, not belief in the dead.

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