Enhancing Fertility, Religiously

 HUNTING EASTER EGGS,which has recently been outlawed in republican states as a form of gambling and cruelty to the unborn, was among my favorite recreations until, oh, third grade. The activity was provided for me as fun by by mother, and inseminated into the early Christian church because the egg embodies and symbolizes fertility, and the Christian religion is a fertility cult on steroids. In ancient times, when newly neolithic humanity became dependent on agriculture and animal husbandry, fertility cults emerged around the world, independently. Offer a blood sacrifice, human or animal, to the hungry gods, who control everything, and they, appreciatively, grow better crops. Among the wonders of the early twenty first century is that such primitive religions, invented millennia ago and embracing fantastically false realities,  continue to flourish amid the rising tide of science. That they do so is a testament to humankind's inherent conservative nature. A brown wooden cross with a brown crown of thorns served as a backdrop prop for an Easter service I saw. Nothing abnormal or special about this. Crosses on display everywhere, including necklaces and lapel pins. The fact that I seem to be the only living person appalled, disgusted, and  horrified by an instrument of torture and death employed as a sacred religious symbol dampens not my revulsion. No, I'm not "missing the point". Neither are the cross worshipers. we merely have different points of view. I have always, since early childhood, found the image of the cross, with or without the bloody Jesus in agony  nailed to it repulsive, horrifying, despite the fact that i am supposed to see it as a symbol of beautiful sacrifice, resurrection,atonement, salvation, and love. Call me crazy. I call the others crazy. For me the perfect symbol of the resurrection of  Christ is not the instrument with which he was tortured to death, but rather, the manner in which he was born again. Let the symbol of the Christian faith be the mouth of a cave, with a huge Boulder only partially blocking it Picture a golden rod, in the shape of a horseshoe, upside down, for good luck.. Next to it stands a solid circular golden coin shape, the boulder. the edge of the boulder intersects the horseshoe edge, and just barely passes through it. Now hang it up in church, on steeples, on lapel pins, a symbol not of tortorous death, but of the actual circumstances of the resurrection of Christ. Crazy? No, just unfamiliar. You the cross wearer are the crazy one, no disrespect intended. I am willing to apologize for having unorthodox views on religion, if that's what it takes to bring peace. but I shouldn't have to. My views should be respected. I am unwilling to change them, other than from within, with God's assistance and guidance. My religiosity consists of humble admiration, not worship, of the infinitely superior spirit which reveals itself, in what we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality, to quote Einstein. the best I can do is to let the christian cross inspire me to hope and belief that humanity is on the verge of outgrowing primitive, barbaric religions, and replacing them with sublime comprehension of the wonder of existence.