EASTER 2010

No matter how many bible scholars/thumpers you pack into a church, temple, cathedral or living room (after you’ve dared to answer the door), or how many times we read the Book ourselves, there will be no acceptable answer to a key conundrum.    

How did it happen that the immense differences in character attributed to God of the Old Testament versus His Son Jesus Christ of the New Testament, be part of the same Bible?  One would never have guessed that these two were even related, based on their words and actions.  Most often, after depleting all arguments by learned men and women attempting to rationalize the Old Testament accounts of the slaughter of thousands of men, women and children by God’s people versus the “turn the other cheek”, loving mantra of Jesus, God’s Son, the answers always come down to a matter of personal FAITH because no one has a decent answer.   

On T.V. last night we watched Charlton Heston as Moses getting his people freed from Egypt.  The final event that convinced the Pharaoh to release the 600,000+ Children of Israel was the Passover event.  On that night God killed all Egyptian first born children, including Pharaoh’s.  These were innocents killed by God, which is difficult for many to fathom and we won’t try here.  The Egyptian king had had the same plan but it was supposed to be the Israelite babies who were to be killed by Pharaoh’s soldiers.  This Egyptian king didn’t realize Who he was dealing with and his plan backfired.   

As we know, the thing that makes God the angriest is worshipping false gods and there was plenty of that going on in Egypt.  Today, Easter Sunday 2010, while pondering Jesus being tortured to a slow, horrible death nailed to a cross, a thought occurred about what He’d said before dying; “Forgive Them Father For They Know Not What They Do.”  Knowing what extreme violence His Father was capable of, Jesus must have been genuinely afraid of what His Dad would do to the stupid earthlings who caused so much pain and degradation to his Father’s only Earthly (begotten) Son.  Jesus knew what a badass His Dad was, especially when He got really mad!  The violence and mayhem directed by God against the enemies of the Chosen People in the Old Testament would be considered war atrocities today.   (Jesus outside tomb by ameronski)

Luckily for us, Jesus thought humans were worth saving.  He had come to this conclusion, while living amongst us. He came to believe we had enough love, kindness and potential for greatness in our hearts to make His martyr’s death worthwhile.  Interestingly, archaeologists seem to be continually discovering evidence of previous catastrophic civilization-ending events that perhaps are records of how earlier civilizations acted up so badly that “you-know-who” said “the hell with it”, wiped us out and started over.  Anger issues? Oh yeah.

Puzzling to some is that since Calvary, the way in which mankind has treated the Earth and its fellow human beings; why building an Ark or finding a very high mountain cave has not become necessary---yet.