I am disinclined to formal religion. I think it is archaic, formulaic, unconscious and corrupt. But that’s just me. I know a lot of nice people who are religious but, well, church isn’t for me. Do not get me wrong. I have a faith. It’s just not in religion. I have a faith in God or, better put, a higher being, a spirit of sorts…..well, we’ll just let it go at that, shall we…..just a belief in something much bigger than me, ya know? The universe unfolding as it should, maybe?
My go-to statement on religion is: Religion is to God what Safeway is to food. Just a marketing arm.
But I must admit, the more I read the current news, the more Revelations and Ezekiel come to mind (never having read them, of course). Revelations is in the New Testament and Ezekiel and Zechariah are in the Old Testament and neither of them seemed relevant to me….until, well, lately. Both those Testaments posited that there would be an Apocalypse of sorts. An End of Days kind of thing. TEOTWAWKI.
The New Testament lists the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as conquest, war, famine and death, while in the Old Testament, it’s the Book of Ezekiel and Zechariah that threaten with the sword, famine, wild beasts and pestilence or plague.
It still seems pretty far-fetched and typically Wrath-of-God, magical thinking kind of stuff but we are definitely feeling some kind of apprehension. Aren’t we? To be honest, if four guys on horses showed up, I’d freak out (bear in mind I live on an island). And if I had lived through the mouse and rat plague of Australia, I’d have been hysterical!
“So, what’s the point, Dave?”
One of those horsemen is pestilence. Another is War. A third is famine and the fourth is Death which seems kind of redundant to me. Wouldn’t the first three combined kill you dead? Whatever. And the devil, of course, is the Prince of Lies. Haven’t y’all noticed the ascendancy of lying lately?
I think you know where I am going with this……
Covid is being followed by Monkeypox and now, get this: Polio! Polio was eradicated in the US but it is now a clear and present danger in New York state. Seems two counties in upper New York are largely anti-vaxxers and they got hit hard by Covid and now their waste water is testing positive for Polio (tested because somebody recently became paralyzed by the disease there).
And then you got your China flexing their missiles over Nancy Pelosi visiting Taiwan. And Ukraine is fighting Russia and Russia is now fighting the West in every other way. And the good ol’ USA is always good for a little gunfire home and abroad.
I suppose not being able to get dried sour cherries, lemon grass, avocadoes or cauliflower does not really qualify as famine but famine is happening again in Africa and, of course, the Russian conflict closed the ‘Breadbasket’ of the world in Ukraine’s wheat. That is still hardly world famine but, with Climate Change a lot of large commercial gardens are going dry. California is literally toast. Rivers are drying up in Europe and the US. Plus the oceans are going dead. NO fish. NO avocadoes. NO mustard. NO wheat. Jus’ sayin’….
….and the biggest all-time liar in history NOT in a mental asylum was recently the president of the United states. And Alex Jones, a dissembler and racist and bully and supporter of the January 6th insurrection is worth over $300 million – all from being good at bad stuff.
Am I sayin’ anything important? No, not really. I am just sayin’ that a guy who doesn’t put much store in the bible, has maybe read 5% of it (I was much younger when I made a stab at it and the language was just too boring) and can’t accept that a bunch of scholars hundreds of years after Christ died wrote God’s word is NOW, of all times, having those weird thoughts.
I’d consider starting the Church of Dave but I fear it is too late…………………………….