Happy Ostara!

It was only a matter of time...

As anyone who has roleplayed with me recently can tell you, religion and the whole "good vs evil" thing has been a common theme with me in the last year or so. Sean has lent me a book "Kushiel's Dagger" that has given me a lot to think about this morning.

The book is written with a little known offshoot of the Christian mythos as it's foundation. (No wait! Come back!) As it IS a mythos, it has very little to do with reality...But I'll come back to that.

So the story is as follows: After they removed Jesus from the cross, the Magdalene (no, not his mother..The other Mary) sat next to Jesus's body and wept tears of blood. From these tears was born a son of Jesus, Elua. But everyone was too busy morning the death of his father to notice him. Up in heaven, God was busy as well, but a group of angels noticed him and decided to go awol and help him out. This group wandered Europe and Asia, and had many adventures that don't fit in with modern Christian ethics. Finally when they came to an area of what is now France, they decided to stop and settle down. At this point God finally noticed his grandson complete with angelic bodyguards and sent his emissary to bring him "home". Elua resisted and charmed the angel into returning to God without him. This of course ticked God off, but he was a newer more gentle God, so he decided not to smite Elua on the spot. Instead he sent his second in command to ask Elua to leave. Elua said he would only leave if he had a place just as beautiful to go to...And God created Heaven as we know it today.

The Kings in the France area worshiped this version of Christianity until civilization swept through and burned them all as witches at some point in the dark ages (you can tell that I'm really clear on this).

So now onto my morning musings...

My biggest issue with Christianity and all of the "Christianity with a twist of lime" religions. Is that they've switched from being about faith, to being a way to control the people. In this day and age, most people are smart enough to know that, and are leaving structured religion for something a little more personalized. (A dash of astrology here, a dab of Christian ethics there, zen for the morning, paganism in the evening and Wa-la! Make it up yourself and you don't have to make time to worry about whether you're going to hell or not).

The Norse religion (Odin and friends) is dead for the most part. But because it had such a colorful mythos it will still be remembered. As long as someone can remember the personalities, it can be resurrected at some point. The Christian religion has been systematically killing off it's mythos for centuries. When it's gone, who wants to remember it? If the church were to switch it's emphasis away from good vs evil, and back to conflict vs peace (a topic for another day) and reintroduce some of it's more colorful characters into it's cannon. It might stand a better chance of recruiting people from my generation, myself included.

On that note...Any Christian who is reading this...Please don't take that last sentence as an invitation. The only people that annoy me more then Amway salespeople are "Born-agains".

~~~Join me tomorrow when I discuss the benefits of burning green or white candles at your Ostara ceremony~~

*smirk*