Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," still stewing in self-pity in the wake of another ruptured Rapture. Damn it! I have five loads of laundry to fold tonight! If anything makes fighting with zombies seem appealing, it's that.
Back in the Middle Ages, there was a small sect of Christians in southern France who were known as the Cathars. They were very peaceful and not terribly numerous, but as their numbers (and their wealth) grew, they earned the wrath of the pope, who called for them to be exterminated.
The Cathars were rounded up and burnt at the stake. Finally their remnants gathered inside a castle, along with a few sympathetic local Christians who didn't like the way the Cathars were being treated.
The Crusader general who besieged the castle ordered that everyone inside should be slaughtered. When some of his soldiers protested that not everyone inside was a Cathar, the general replied, "Kill them all. God will know His own."
This brutal story comes across almost a thousand years of history, but it poses a question that Christians ought to take up with their busy god. The question is this: When Judgment Day really comes (if it does), won't more people curse You than bless You?
Every day, somewhere in the world, there's a terrible localized catastrophe. Look at our own nation in the middle of tornado season. Look at Japan. People get killed by the hour in what we wrongly term "acts of god." I say wrongly, because we know that no truly loving Higher Power would ever swoop down and wantonly destroy in such a willy-nilly way.
If a worldwide catastrophe occurred that could be directly traced to a specific deity, would you want to worship such a deity? Any kind of global cataclysm would wipe out millions and millions of little kids and elderly, millions and millions of really nice people who just happened to follow different religious Paths.
We don't think much of Stalin and Hitler, do we? And yet, every description I've ever heard of Rapture paints a scenario that would make every ruthless dictator who ever lived look like a pansy ass. Compared to a God we should worship. Go figure.
I can't imagine that seeing my daughters, my cats, and my parrot scorched in a fire would make me wish I had praised and worshiped the deity doing the dirty deed. I would pretty much see that deity as a playground bully writ large, gathering His posse to His side. Who wants to be part of that?
Fortunately, I am of the belief that there are many Paths, known and lost to time, that do not concern themselves at all with the Rapture, and those who walk these Paths will be immune to Horsemen, Great Beasts, and zombies. Only Christians face the reckoning of Rapture, and if it ever comes to them ... wow. They will defect from the busy god in droves. Who would blame them either?
God will know His own. As for the rest, find some new gods! Not all deities threaten to unleash worldwide havoc. Some of them are quite content to join you for a walk in the woods.
The word of the bored gods for the people of the bored gods. Thanks be to the bored gods.
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