Made it through Easter, especially challenging as I attended
a Baptist church service in a small Texas town.
Preacher had no college and no seminary but he clearly had his own
theology, quasi Christian, mostly red-neck.
I squirmed.
But I spent my time ignoring his sermon by reading Biblical
passages about the Transfiguration and Ascension. I have read all that before, but it was
somehow even more enlightening while sitting among the cult members who were intent on the message and nodding their heads with an occasional "amen.." No evidence of though processes, no hands raised with questions, just blank stares.
The transfiguration occurred somewhere in the middle of
Jesus so-called ministry. He is visited
by Elijah and Moses who descend from heaven and Jesus starts to glow. Really scary stuff. But it points out several things. Folks at that time still believed heaven was
up and hell was down. Had to be that way
because the earth was flat and the center of the universe. Of course we cannot find such places as
heaven and hell, but that does not matter to these 1st century
Bronze Age theologians who still do up and down.
More difficult to understand is the presence of Elijah and
Moses, two Old Testament heroes. They
glowed too. They descended from
heaven. Unlike Trump they were
transparent. Other than believing
anything like this could ever actually happen, it raises a serious theological
question for me. So, how did Moses and
Elijah earn their spots in heaven? What
process allowed them to die and go to heaven?
Clearly, there were souls in heaven before the death and resurrection of
Jesus. If that is true, why did Jesus
come, die and rise? Why not stay with
whatever system was in place pre-Jesus?
Sure could have saved a lot of heart ache while God killed his son and
Jesus committed suicide. In other words,
even if I buy the Biblical story the whole Jesus story seems pointless. People were getting saved pre-Jesus.
The Ascension seems like so much more smoke and
mirrors. Again, Jesus glows, goes
transparent and floats up. Up is
heaven. Ha. A modern human witnessing such events would
likely need therapy until they died, or would end up in the same group as the
UFO abductees. Quasi-Quacks. Rising from the dead is a ridiculous
stretch. Rising from earth to heaven is beyond
belief. The belief works because no
disciple had a telescope to track where Jesus went, there was no radar, no
Hubble, and there were no jets to scramble.
It was magic. Miracles are magic
until they can be explained, unless the event never happened. Believing something to be true does not make
it true.
This adds additional fodder for thought about why the Jesus
story was told when it was told. I
imagine a 2019 birth. Verifying the
virginity of Mary. Taking DNA samples of
god. Checking to see if angels show up
on radar while singing and talking to shepherds, how a star hovered over a city
without boiling the entire planet to a crisp, etc., etc. If Jesus began his ministry today we would
have cell phone videos of every miracle he supposedly worked and they could be
debunked. Same with the resurrection,
transfiguration, and ascension. If there
is an all knowing god he would have to stage this story before there were any
tools of science to analyze the events. Fortunately, those who blessed the New Testament 400 years after Jesus could make the story read however they wanted because we had no way to challenge. Now, it seems as real to me as the Greek and Roman gods working miracles. Poppycock and Balderdash.
Probably not a good thing for me to go to church anymore.
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