Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.'
You're going to have to define "creature". Otherwise, they're going to be very busy preaching not only to humans, but also to every cat, dog, horse, donkey, bird, moth, worm, bee, snake (how's that for irony?
), and so on and on and on. Did they manage to convince many of these "creatures" to give up their cat, dog, horse, donkey, bird, moth, worm, bee, snake, etc. beliefs, or were they damned because this religion is speciesist?
This conversation reminds me of a scene from Jesus of Nazareth.
I've seen that miniseries a few times. I just realized now that Michael York and Olivia Hussey have worked together in more productions than I'd realized (Romeo and Juliet, this miniseries, the musical
Lost Horizon).
Want some more evidence of God, here's this:
- The Sun is approximately 400 times larger than the Moon.
- The Sun is also 400 times farther away from Earth than the Moon.
Ergo, eclipses. If it were not so then these things such as eclipses would not be the same. Every time the sky winks at us it's a reminder of the Lord.
This last eclipse featured prominences, disruptions above the surface of the sun that extend outside the coverage of the moon which appeared to the eye as red dots. This is something I don't remember seeing in 2017.
Seriously, THIS is what you take as "evidence of God"?
It's just
physics, and sheer luck that at this particular time in our planet's history, when there are people capable of understanding physics, the Moon is at exactly the right distance from Earth to make total solar eclipses possible.
Here's the thing. The Moon used to be much closer to Earth than it is now. Again, that's physics. It's been slowly spiraling out into a farther orbit ever since, so each year it's a little farther away, and therefore appears as smaller in the sky. We don't notice this at present, because the human lifespan is so short, and this recession is so slow.
Have a read:
Total solar eclipses are cosmic coincidences that won't last forever
As is Japanese Jesus among Japanese Christians, and black Jesus among black Christians... ;-) Outside of some black groups and some white groups (Christian Identity comes to mind), I doubt anyone really thinks he looked Chinese, French, etc. Mary is also invariably represented as a member of the culture creating the art -- and the Holy Family was usually depicted in the clothing of the creative culture (medieval robes, Japanese kimonos, etc) until the industrial era or so.
People create their gods in their own image, or the images of things they consider important. You're not going to get beaver-gods in ancient Egypt, because they didn't have beavers there. But they did have gods and goddesses based on what was within their experience of nature.
There's a book I read back in high school about the various stage productions of
Jesus Christ Superstar. It's fascinating how some productions try to make it as traditional as possible, while others go high-tech. I worked on two productions of it, 20 years apart. Both were mostly traditional, and actually pretty minimalist when it came to the set. The high-tech stuff came with the strobe lighting (for the Simon Zealotes scene), the fog machine, use of projection on a scrim to show images of war during the Gethsemane scene, this was the first musical that theatre company did when each main singer sang into an individual microphone, and let us not forget the 25w light bulb (
) that we used in the campfire scene (I think I still have that; I swiped it from my Lite Brite game and took it back after the show's run was over).
Some other productions went heavy into the Vietnam War imagery, which I'm relieved that ours didn't. About the most modern we got with presenting some scenes other than how I've already mentioned was that King Herod's court was set up like a gym. Herod wore a track suit and spent much of the song lounging in a hot tub, while his court alternately exercised and snacked on junk food. The director decided we needed
some comedy relief since the rest of the show was increasingly grim and violent.
These are 43-year-old memories, btw.
