My Easter Message
Sometimes life is stranger than fiction. As a holiday rolls around celebrating the resurrection of a Christian prophet, children, who have been up since before sunrise, frolic around in fancy new cloths (covered this year by very warm coats), looking for highly decorated eggs and gifts from the Easter Bunny. You've got to admit, you take a step back and look at for what it is its pretty weird. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan. I grew up in that world and it is sacred to me. I miss decorating the eggs, I miss the chocolate, and I miss standing outdoors surrounded by people all wearing new cloths. No, as a matter of fact, I don't miss it enough to go back. The religious holidays as a whole have been ruined for me by the people who celebrate them.
For instance I submit stuff like this. You have a Mormon church where a group of peaceful Christian non-Mormon types try to have intelligent discourse with a group of people whose religion is exactly the same except for the extra profit. This situation gets crashed by a bunch of wandering profits who are not so much preaching fire and brimstone as bragging "Nah Nah, I'm going to heaven and you aren't!" The wandering preachers are not interested in discourse, they are not interested in brotherhood, they are out and about passing judgment willy nilly. They don't like the Mormons, and they don't like the peaceful Christian discourser's. Their message is "You go to hell, you go to hell and you die, and I'm not. Ha ha! Praise King James." Needless to say this didn't end peacefully.
I have always found it ironic that in a world where the major religions all share the same god, so much can be made over little things.
"Thank you for choosing God how may I take your order?"
"Hi, thanks I'd like to order a single god who created everything, a heaven and a hell."
"Would you like a side of prophet with that?"
Your choices are none, one, two, or three. Technically even if you pick none, you actually get a profit or two free of charge like ketchup on your burger, but the metaphor holds. So most of the world is going to the exact same fast food drive up. They are all getting the same main course and picking their side dishes as they choose. By the time you get back into traffic with your holy happy meal, you're ducking fire from the guy behind you who saw that you picked the onion rings instead of the small fries. Meanwhile there's a guy with a yogurt and diet coke whose about to drop a bomb on the whole damned intersection.
Since I have discovered ebooks, my reading has gone from one book a year with good behavior to reading every moment I can so long as the battery holds out. I read enough strange facts and persistent rumors at work, so for pleasure I read science fiction and fantasy. Its funny, in our world more people have died over the choice of which prophet to follow than anything else, yet in the fantasy novels you can have three people with three completely different religions with absolutely nothing in common and they always get along.
The book I am reading now, three friends, one's family god is a god of sheep herders, one's god was a soldier who died in battle and ascended to godhood because of his valor, the thirds god came from the first living thing. One of them gets hurt, the other two go out of their way help the victim pray to their god, for help. "Please hear my prayer, though I am not one of your followers, my friend is, they have been hurt bad and need you please watch over them."
Meanwhile in reality: "Mix an evangelical Baptist, a crotchety Mormon, Good Friday, and a motorized wheelchair. What do you get? An entry in the police blotter". Leave it to a FARK submitter to sum it up best.
My Easter message? Why can't we all just get along and celebrate our differences? Its because you're stupid isn't it?
