Ahhhh… now I understand!

…sounds like nights in winter and the cold autumn rain before.
…draws focus, comforts, cools, smoothes the edges.
…carried me. There was only the car, “Blue,” and her.
…reminds me. I was…

I didn’t want to know.

Christian mythology interests me at least as much as any other religious mythology. I was raised Lutheran, and at about age 11 or 12 I passed a brief public rote memorization test called “confirmation.” My first decision as an “adult” Christian was to immediately stop participating in the rituals. The belief system seemed to be just one of many forms of superstition, and what’s worse, it never helped me feel good about myself. There were mixed messages about love and hate, inclusion and exclusion, sin, duty, salvation, and damnation. What it was is damn confusing. I have since found out that my experience was far from unique.

Conspicuously absent from my religious education was an explanation of how the Christian bible in its current form came to be; it had ostensibly fallen directly from God’s powerful Caucasian fingers into the rack on the back of the pew. They certainly didn’t tell us about this:

Christianity is an adaptation of Mithraism welded with the Druidic principles of the Culdees, some Egyptian elements (the pre-Christian Book of Revelation was originally called The Mysteries of Osiris and Isis), Greek philosophy and various aspects of Hinduism.

All the doctrine and dogma, the moral code, and the categorization and judgment of huge swaths of the human race had come from this little Swiss Army knife of a religious text pieced together by a 4th century political leader to try to force everyone to get along. (Thankfully in the time since we’ve learned not to support political leaders that hand down religion and morality from the State, right?) The bible was appended, redacted, edited, and rewritten until it satisfied the Catholic church that other politically significant religious sects of the day could be assimilated.

Constantine was the ruling spirit at Nicaea and he ultimately decided upon a new god for them. To involve British factions, he ruled that the name of the great Druid god, Hesus, be joined with the Eastern Saviour-god, Krishna (Krishna is Sanskrit for Christ), and thus Hesus Krishna would be the official name of the new Roman god. A vote was taken and it was with a majority show of hands (161 votes to 157) that both divinities became one God. Following longstanding heathen custom, Constantine used the official gathering and the Roman apotheosis decree to legally deify two deities as one, and did so by democratic consent. A new god was proclaimed and “officially” ratified by Constantine (Acta Concilii Nicaeni, 1618). That purely political act of deification effectively and legally placed Hesus and Krishna among the Roman gods as one individual composite. That abstraction lent Earthly existence to amalgamated doctrines for the Empire’s new religion; and because there was no letter “J” in alphabets until around the ninth century, the name subsequently evolved into “Jesus Christ”.

I had heard that Constantine was a naughty little monkey, but not until today had I read a detailed account of his contribution to modern Christianity. The Nicaean Council was convened on the Summer Solstice in 325 to settle the question of man’s origins and role in the universe by the most divinely inspired means: they voted. A dash of Apollo, a pinch of Krishna, and a smattering of Dionysus… a New Testament was written, a God salad with something tasty for everyone. Fast forward 1600 years and we have the chimera of chakras, vibrations, angels, and extra dimensions from Eastern and pagan religions, metaphysics, and quantum theory known as New Age. Seems it’s not so new after all.

I’ll acknowledge that I’m not interested in expending the effort to independently research the references cited in this article. I’m not a biblical scholar, nor do I want to become one. I’ll leave that to anyone who wants to maintain their belief that the Christian bible is the original and infallible word of God. I will, however, give it just as much weight as any book handed to me without any references by someone who would counter any skepticism with “God wrote this.” If I’m going to base my life around a belief system, I’m going to dig until I’m satisfied that I’ve traced it back as far as I can go. But hey, that’s just me.

I know there are billions of people whose search for truth goes back 2000 years or so and ends with the Christian bible. Are they aware that there’s more to the story than what’s in the book itself? Do they want to know? People approach Christianity in different ways, and I think there’s a lot of value in some of the bible’s messages and stories…as allegory. Hell, I try to follow several principles that were introduced to me by the Christian church. However, there are a lot of people for whom nothing less than literal adherence to the text — even to go so far as to elevate it to historical and scientific fact — will do, and it’s amazing how many of their fellow humans they’re willing to step on to do so. Those that are bound and determined to follow its words strictly to the letter would be well advised to make sure they know who wrote them.

The WaterCone, a dead-simple portable water distiller, could be a way to avoid or mitigate the coming water wars.

This is the first review of a show I’ve been in that I’ve seen.