Giving Birth, and Advice For Jesus

THE MOST EYE CATCHING if grotesque Facebook post I have yet encountered was a superbly painted portrait of a young woman giving birth while seated, legs apart. The red infant is ready to be caught, on its way to the ground. The caption said: "He became one of us". Since Facebook posts are fair game for comments, I typed: "Arguably, he exercised poor judgment". I haven't been back to read any responses to my irreverant comment, but as I always do, I stand by what I typed. I live in a liberal bubble, so perhaps they took it easy on me. If not, so what? Exquisite though the painting is in color and detail, depicting the sacred moment of childbirth, the sacred moment of the arrival of the Christ child, I scrolled on, and might never return. The painting is a bit too good for me. Maybe everyone should witness a childbirth in art or even in "real time", as we say, to gain greater appreciation of life, and its processes. The painting was more than enough for me. I already appreciate life, and I meant what I said about poor judgment .No one should ever question God's judgment, we are told, but I dare do, particularly the Christian version thereof. Occam's razor cuts both ways: the simplest explanation for problems is usually best, and the simplest solution to problems is usually best. If, for example, you're God, and you're going to enter the world as a human being to teach and offer salvation, why not do some good along the way, amid the confusion and conflict you so sow merely by being there, and by teaching by using confusing metaphorical anecdotes? First, drop the pretense of being illiterate. Write the New Testament yourself, with clarity, with witnesses. Spare us the strife, confusion and choas engendered by the couoncil of Nicea, and by coutntless rewritings and editings through the ensuing centuries. Although it is hard to think of a worse way to convey knowledge than with books, they are, after all, the best game in town, or were in ancient times, and what could be more definitive than "The Gospel According to Jesus Christ", first, and last edition. Basic literacy classes for the desicples would have greatly enhanced their credibility as apostles, for that matter. And this approach would certainly not have violated the prime directive any more than magically mass producing bread and fish out of thin air, and probably less so. Using literacy as a tool to spread the faith would not exactly have been like pulling a laptop out of one's robe in the first century A.D.. Every now and then some wayward inquisitive heretic ponders at the necessity of staging a purely theatrical tortorous death, subjecting the greatst man who ever lived to three days of nonexistance, instead of simply offering forgiveness to humanity without all the drama. The question is valid. How meaningful is it to pay a debt you owe yorself by putting part of yourself to death for three days as payment for the misbehavior of creatures of your own creation? Another valid question. The answer, of course, is that in human form, on Earth, Christ is at once God, the Son of God, both, and neither. That was decided at the Council of Nicea also, in 325 A.D., by popular vote, just as the clerics voted on the holy scripture, what to leave in, what to take out. What a pity, and much ado. Upon historical reflection, we could just as easily, much more easily, have gotten the word, and could still have it, straight from the Son of God, straight from the horses mouth, so to speak.