Dear Anna,
I'm curious about your views on religion. I'm sure you realize that the United States is a nation of God-fearing people. Now that you live here, are you prepared to accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior?

Signed,
Bathed in the Blood of the Lamb




Dear Bathed,

Yes, I'm prepared to accept Jesus as my savior - conditionally. But you must realize that I have many issues with Christianity, not the least of which is its reliance upon so-called scriptural sources. I am talking about the Bible. Glaring inconsistancies aside, testaments both old and new enlist the oddest stories as teaching tools. The lessons imparted by these weighty tomes are tenuous at best.

Take the parable of the Prodigal Son, for example. Why on earth would a father heap rewards upon his shiftless male child, little better than a migrant, while disregarding the years of loyalty demonstrated by his older offspring. In Luke 15:23, he welcomes the wayward boy with open arms and even slaughters a fatted calf for the occasion. In the Soviet Union of my youth this simply would not happen. The Prodigal Son, upon returning, would have been taken taken into the town square and flogged without mercy. And in Stalin's day it would have been a Gulag matter.

Also let us consider the story from Genesis where Cain slays his brother Abel. Rather than banishing Adam's well-meaning if obsessive son, as God did; it would have been wiser to promote the lad and keep him close, all the while looking for signs of treachery. For many years the KGB successfully employed this as a working stardard for its operatives' advancement.

And what of Moses, so vividly portrayed by Charlton Heston in the American cinema? Pharoh Rameses II, played by a muscular Yul Brenner, orders Moses to make an end of the Ten Plagues of Egypt. But Moses refuses to intervene with God in the matter, and thus brings about the death of every Egyptian first-born child. How ludicrous. What could Rameses have been thinking? He should have thrown Moses to the crocodiles after his initial demur. His first-borns would still be dead, of course; but at least the slaves would not have left Egypt.

These are but three examples of the Christians' unreasoned theology which must be addressed before this modern communist woman washes herself in any lamb's blood.

Sincerely,  Anna

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