By Chic Hollis – Philosophical Musings
Following yesterday’s “Hallowed Evening” celebration, November 1st is a day for all Christians (and Jews perhaps) to reflect seriously on the sacred words contained in the Old and New Testaments of The Holy Bible. To stimulate your thinking and awaken your slumbering curiosity, I have provided a dozen simple questions about what was chronicled in those Sacred Scriptures:
1. Why didn’t God make more people like Jesus, instead of bakers and fish mongers? Jesus could feed multitudes with only a few small loaves of bread and a couple of gefilte fish fillets.
2. Why did God disrupt the evolution of talking serpents? Such informed beasts would make educational pets for kids and cheery companions for lonely widows.
3. If King Solomon was so wise, why did he marry so often?
4. If gay marriage is not acceptable to God, why isn’t there an 11th Commandment stating: “Thou shalt not marry a member of the same gender”?
5. If God gave man dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, and everything that creepeth upon the earth, what did God give women dominion over? Men?
6. If Sampson lost his famous strength when Delilah had his long curly locks cut off, how come so many outstanding black athletes shave their heads?
7. If the deluge supposedly removed all the undesirable species of land-dwelling animals, what did God do after that to weed out the unwanted species of animals that inhabit the rivers, the lakes, and the seven seas?
8. If all Christians are to love both their neighbors and their enemies, whom are the devout to hate?
9. Because the name “Jesus” can’t be found anywhere in the Old Testament of my King James Version of The Bible, is that the reason why the Jews didn’t recognize their Savior when his parents chose that name for the newborn babe they laid in the manger?
10. Whatever happened to the rod that Moses used to find water in the desert, to divide the Red Sea, and to convert into a viper to scare the Egyptian Pharaoh? Finding that sacred rod seems to me to be a much more important task than looking for the Ark of the Covenant.
11. If there really are places like Heaven and Hell, on what day of the week did God create those often talked about locations? Is it possible that there might be an ancient scroll in some lost amphora lying in an unknown cave in the dusty mountains of the Holy Land that has a map of the whole universe showing where to find the risen dead?
12. If God so loved the world, why didn’t he populate it with loyal, obedient, chaste males and females just like Jesus and give them eternal life without parole?
Now a few questions for your Christian priests, preachers, pastors, ministers, and spiritual guides about the Beatitudes. (You know, what Jesus taught his twelve disciples in his Sermon on the Mount.)
A. If the poor in spirit are to be blessed with the Kingdom of Heaven, what are the rich is spirit to be blessed with? The Kingdom of Hell?
B. If the meek are to inherit the earth, what are the audacious to inherit? The moon and the stars?
C. If all those who hunger and thirst after righteousness are to be filled, what are they to be filled with? Religious baloney?
D. If the peacemakers are to be called the Children of God, what are those humans who are always fighting with their neighbors to be called? The Children of Israel?
E. If the pure in heart are blessed by seeing God himself, are the impure in heart blessed with meeting the Devil herself?
P.S. If these simple questions mystify you as they do me, please don’t give up the faith! That’s the easy way out of searching for enlightenment. You have to open your copy of the Sacred Scriptures and read it word for word!
