Well, I've begun to live without potable water -- that's not the subject of today's Rambling. Likely it'll make it onto the page sooner or later, but for now I'm just feeling excessively wry that our city can't even keep one of the Essential Services of civilization running.
No, today's rambling deals with another subject and it's a subject that those of you who have low tolerances for other people's faiths might want to bow out of. In fact, if you're that sort of person, you might want to bow out of this site entirely, since there's very little room for intolerance on my pages.
Are they gone yet? Good. Very good. Break out the salsa and chips, we're going to have a fiesta! Er, no, wait, we were talking about religion, weren't we?
I have a fairly robust religious outlook -- my personal believe is that the Godhead (whomsoever it is) is (by faith) perfect, and thus any Human (and thus flawed) religion will be inherently incorrect in some fashion in attempting to capture the meaning of the Deus. Ergo, there's no need to fight about who's righter, simply because you're already wrong. Rather than using this as a tool by which to abandon faith, I believe it's a permission to allow one's self to pursue whatever faith is most comfortable to the person in their quest to make the Godhead (however they configure it) a part of their lives. This isn't as wishy-washy as it sounds, honest Injun, because in in the end you still need to wrestle with the Deus (I personally believe in two falls out of three) for all of your life to get a grasp on what's important to your own faith-life.
Where am I going with all of this? I was just reading the final book in the
Hyperion quartet (read Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion
, Endymion and Rise of Endymion and then weep when you are finished, for you will never read the likes of them again) when a few thoughts struck me about Messiahs.
Yes, Messiahs. Hold on tight, and if you're not comfortable with this topic, bail now. However, I won't tell you to scat from my site -- if you've read this far, you're likely an open-minded person who just has certain topics set you on Uncomfortable. That I can utterly deal with.
One of the realizations I've come to of late is that a lot of my personal problems stem from a degree of perfectionism that's only been on the rise with me. Now I'm not going to get into my feelings on the Bible. I'm also not going to get into my feelings on Christ. That's for a whole 'nother Blog. Right now I'm going to talk about Christ as Messiah from the standpoint of someone examining the character portrayed, rather than from faith or personal convictions. Wishy-washy? No, not really. Bringing 'I Believe' into this would disrupt the point I'm making (so get to it already, Frob!).
In the Bible, Jesus (alias the Son of God, alias the Son of Man, alias Skippy) was a darned good person. He taught, he had the answers, he kicked butt at the temple, and he took a Crossing for humanity. True he lacks market appeal today, as he didn't own an AK-47 nor did he possess the attitude to use it, but still for my money he was a pretty cool frood. But you know what the problem could have been? This guy was just too perfect. I mean come on, when you're trying to control your temper over being cut off in traffic and he's accepting a crown of thorns, you feel a tiny bit inadequate, don't you?
So maybe this is why he gathered twelve Average Joes along with him. Take a look at them sometime, especially Simon -- they're really the guys you'd expect to find out in the pub knocking back Miller Lights and shooting pool. And yes, they followed him around, and we often paint them as saints and thus outside of our pitiful mortal reaching but... let's face facts. They fscked up pretty bad sometimes. How often did they have to get rebuked for turning back kiddies who wanted to sit on Skippy's lap? How often did they doubt, forget something important, make assumptions or lose their temper? I really don't think we should look at them in the way my Church has often painted them: as something much grander than the rest of us slobs. Christ likely had these guys around to teach and also to show us 'gosh guys, I kind of realise you're all flawed. That's how you're made. But, see, it's okay to be'. They give us permission to strive to be like our Ideal (which may or may not be like Christ -- that's up to each of us), but they also give us permission to fall short of that ideal.
So maybe it's time to let go a bit. Who knows? Personally I'm glad that those slobs made it into the New Testament. They sound like my kind of guys.
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