Whatever: March 2004 Archives

Star Trek's Klingons are a warrior race, not known for their design skills, as Klingons for Christ amply demonstrates.

Klingons for Christ is a place to discover the teachings of Christ in a new light. No disrespect to any faith, race, aliens, or fans is intended. But the way of the Klingon Warrior can, and should, include the teachings of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

I was going to file it under 'Intentional Humour', but then I read the Statement of Purpose:

Klingons for Christ is a website designed by John DeVera as a personal witness to the divinity and Lordship of Jesus Christ. Christianity and Christians, though, are not isolated in warm and comfortable cocoons waiting for the return of Christ in glory. Rather, we are to be IN the world, but not OF the world. This presents an incredible challenge, and a wonderful opportunity...

...It occurred to me that, in many ways, the Christian is much like a Klingon. Of course, unlike our alien counterparts, we do not go after our enemies with batlh'etlh, and our enemies do not normally use phasers, photon torpedoes or disruptors. No, the Christian's battle is against the forces of darkness, a far more noble and serious battle than taking out a Romulan listening post.

And so I have attempted to present an idea to engage your minds and pummel your hearts. I hope that there is much within this electronic epistle to engage you. If much of the site appears to be a light and spiritual-free zone, I hope that you will forgive me for indulging my hobbies. If the site appears too preachy, I hope you will forgive me for being too blunt and graceless in my presentation of the Gospel: the Good News of Jesus Christ.

I'm not sure the comparison is one Christians would want to encourage.

Canada: The former religious editor of the Toronto Star has published a book, and I think we can safely say that fundies won't like it. Its basic thesis is that Christ is a mythological character, and should be understood as such, and that Christianity built on what had gone before, then tried to deny it violently.

The Church of the 3rd and 4th centuries, when challenged by its Pagan critics as to the real sources of its gospels, dogmas, and rites, reacted with fierce hostility, systematically hunting down and eliminating all traces of its Pagan past. It hounded anyone, whether Christian or not, who bore witness to the old truths. It closed down the traditional, Pagan philosophical schools, persecuted those involved in the various popular Greco-Roman Mystery Religions, burned hundreds of thousands of books, and hurled the charge of heresy -- with its penalty of excommunication -- at any who threatened to question the orthodox party line. Many were put to death. The Pagan inheritance was everywhere hotly denied. This was the beginning of a violent process that was to recur over the centuries and eventuate in a Christianity that Frye once bluntly described as a ghost with the chains of a foul historical record of cruelty clanking behind it. Studying this attempt to squelch the truth in detail for the first time was a profound shock for me.

Today there is no longer any excuse for any hierarchy to ignore the truth of what has actually transpired. The record is now plain for all to see. Not only did the early Christians take over almost completely the myths and teachings of their Egyptian masters, mediated in many cases by the Mystery Religions and by Judaism in its many forms, but they did everything in their power, through forgery and other fraud, book burning, character assassination, and murder itself, to destroy the crucial evidence of what had happened.