The Night of the MYF Bombshell/The Novel/The Movie

As far as that resurrection thing how about the Occamesque solution of tossing out the book of Revelations?   It just barely got into the bible about 1600 years ago by a bunch of guys who knew less about their history than we do now.  I don't think it says anywhere in the bible that you can't throw books out of the bible.  Now that I think about it does the bible ever reference itself?

That would make a nice short story, the bomb dropped at the MYF meeting, young idealistic mouths opened wide with shock, and the young preacher suddenly not so sure that he is sure of what he is talking about and heading back to the halls of academe, and the butcher's son heading to the northwoods to have a place to do some deep thinking.  Okay that last part is patently false, but I want a little poetic license here.

It, the bomb dropping, could come at the beginning or the end of the novel, I've decided it should be a novel.  I like it in flashback with the preacher now preaching in some big fancy downtown church and the butcher's son in some cabin deep in the woods, and narrating inbetween would be the beautiful girl who the butcher's son was set to marry before he took off in the middle of the night without a word to anyone, and who had a little hanky panky, or maybe just thought of having some hanky panky, with the preacher.  I'm thinking they will want to make a movie out of this best selling novel, and we're going to need a little sex interest and some bombshell starlet to make a splash at the theaters.  Hmmm.  I wonder if we can add in the story of Salome and John.  Maybe Salome was a little MYF hottie who the butcher's son had succumbed to in a misguided moment of passion, and maybe the preacher had chided her for wearing her skirts too short and she had run to her uncle who was some bigwig in the congregation.

But I digress I suppose.  So the rev's bombshell was that Revelation resurrection thing?  Doesn't seem all that shocking to me,  The bad still get punished and the good still get rewarded, just a little more complicated path is all.  Though it still sticks in my craw about those snooty Elects living by themselves in heaven.  Were they afraid that if they let the sheep in there that the sheep would soon be taking it over?

I think Occam would be happier with the explanation that the Israelites were just Canaanites who got religion rather than that they were guys who went to Egypt and back and maybe hightailed it across the Red Sea ahead of Pharaoh's chariots and the whole thing somehow involved the poorly understood late bronze age breakdown.

I only remember once that those trays of grape juice and torn up bread came out.  I'm sure it never happened in the early days when I was racking up my five years of perfect attendance.  Of course my attendance was spotty after about the age of twelve, and a couple years later I lost my faith but I was too young to run off to the northwoods, and surely not cool enough to lose myself in the charms of some vengeful MYF hottie.

How does the congregation know who to pick for their next preacher?  Well I guess there are schools churning out new ones every June, and I reckon they sign up for so many years so that when their contract is up they toss their hats in the ring. 

You know I think morality preceded religion.  There are some fine distinctions in Deism that I don't quite understand.  I do understand that you are pretty sure that God, I think you still call Him God, wants you to conserve the land.  But I guess another deist could be equally sure that God wanted for the land to be covered with interstates and Wal Marts.