Was Shakespeare Real?

Keep reading and the title will make sense…

As most of you know I usually attempt to avoid religious topics since my intent is to present information to facilitate your growth as a Martial Artist. As such, you can incorporate your religious beliefs with my thoughts, reflects and training techniques as you see fit. Today however, I want to post a comment from another blog that caught my eye. The main topic the comment responds to is the assertion that God does not exist and Jesus was a fictional character, of course the author cites minutiae to support this idea.  Not surprisingly many of the commenter’s support his opinion. I am not insulted or offended by these types of views, you see I believe in free will. So with that preamble here is the comment in play write format that caught my eye:

Mad Max | August 12, 2009, 7:18am | #
SCENE: THE HEADQUARTERS OF DECIUS COMICUS, ANCIENT ROMAN PUBLIC RELATIONS CONSULTANT. TWO SINISTER-LOOKING JEWISH CLIENTS ARE TALKING TO DECIUS.

PAUL: Here’s the deal, Decius – we want to create a new religion, a religion for which people all over the Roman Empire will be willing to die, but we don’t have a good founder figure. We were hoping that you could use your creativity to make up a founder for our religion.

PETER: We were both impressed by your work on the superheroes Battus Manus and Homo Superbus. We want you to create a fictional character like that, only we’re going to try and convince the world the guy really existed.

PAUL: …

DECIUS: A tall order, indeed. How about this: I’ll invent a great religious leader who came to Rome to preach justice and righteousness. His enemies killed him by the sword, but he came back to life again.

PAUL: That’s interesting, but we’d like to make a couple changes. First, instead of having our founder come to Rome, have him live out his entire life exclusively in the Jewish lands on the east of the Mediterranean (except for a side-trip to Egypt). I mean, why would we want to have him come to Rome to preach righteousness?

DECIUS: Uh, because Rome is the capital of the world?

PETER: Nah, it would be more authentic if he spent all his time in our neck of the woods. It’s an obscure area, and your Roman officials often kill locals accused of sedition, so it will seem more plausible that he died there.

PAUL: And another thing – instead of having him die a hero’s death by the sword, why not have him crucified?

DECIUS: But that’s a disgraceful and ignominious punishment! Dying by the sword is much more honorable than getting tortured and hanged like a common criminal! That would be a major stumbling-block in trying to win converts!

PETER: True, but we were thinking that, a few centuries down the road, a death by crucifixion would make for some cool artwork.

PAUL: And we don’t want a wretched Jew to die any kind of honorable death, even in fantasy.

DECIUS: But, *you’re* Jewish.

PETER: Yeah, but we’re self-hating, like Woody Allen.

DECIUS: Very well, then. And since you want to persuade people that this guy is real, I’ll bribe a Jewish historian in town – Josephus by name – to mention your guy in that history of the Jewish Wars he’s working on, so as to delude the world into thinking your guy existed. I’ll also put out the word to pagan critics of your religion that they should avoid insinuating that he didn’t exist – their denunciations should focus on other issues.
[SOURCE]

I couldn’t have made the point better myself or I would have!  It is funny to me that people have such a hard time believing in God given all the things they are willing to believe. I’ll leave the examples to you…

Let me know if you want more posts centering on Religion.

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