<<http://whatsallthisthen.blogspot.com/2004_06_01_whatsallthisthen_archive html#108794001034037156>>
MESSIAH MOON I didn't know anything about the "coronation" of Reverend Sun Myung Moon until I read about it in Eric Zorn's column in the Chicago Tribune last Sunday. Zorn is disturbed that Democratic congressman Danny Davis - along with several other members of congress, attended a ceremony in Washington where they fawned over this self proclaimed "messiah," and Davis took an active part in the "crowning" ritual - actually carrying a crown resting on a velvet pillow. Zorn cites Moon's history of separating followers of his Unification Church from their families and of making bigoted statements about gays and Jews and says that he is disturbed that Davis not only doesn't seem to realize what kind of message the Korean newspaper owning billionaire ex-con is spreading, but sees nothing wrong with his participation in the bizarre "coronation" ceremony. I guess maybe the rest of the Washington bigwigs who attended the ceremony saw nothing wrong with it either. But I think we can all be grateful that we can talk about it and read about it and see a video recording of what went on. Because without that kind of exposure, Reverend Moon could well be the messiah that our descendants would be worshipping for decades to come and perhaps warring with those who didn't worship him as their messiah. I'm not particularly disturbed that this ridiculous ceremony took place or that members of Congress took part in it. Cult figures have come and gone for centuries and Senators and Representatives and Washington bigwigs have been known to lend their support to and to be influenced by some of the nuttiest people and ideas that you can imagine. But my imagination leads me to a different take on this affair. This story was reported by journalist John Gorenfeld on his weblog and spread to other sites. But imagine for a moment that we are not living in the age of the blogosphere That there is no Internet. No television or radio. No cameras. No film or video. No newspapers or magazines. No telephone or telegraph. In other words, a primitive age, not unlike the time of another "messiah." The "coronation" ceremony would still have taken place and still have been attended by respected leaders of our nation. But we wouldn't hear about it right away. No phones. No television. No Internet. It would take time for the news to reach us. And when it did, it would be a culminating story. Stories of Reverend Moon's followers and of his pronouncements and very likely of alleged miracles performed by the Reverend, would have preceded the news of his "coronation." Those stories would have come to us in bits and pieces for years, told by "eye witnesses" to eager listeners, who would tell the stories to others, and they to even more eager listeners, each story-teller lending his understanding and his interpretation of what he had been told . And now we would hear that some of our leaders had gathered to celebrate this great and wonderful event. This coronation. This acceptance of the Reverend Moon as the ambassador of God, sent to save the people of the world. And "Moonism," a religion that had been practiced by only a handful of adherents in the past, would suddenly blossom into a mainstream faith, spreading from farm to farm, from village to village and town to town, until all the people of the nation would raise their eyes to the heavens and sing the praises of Sun Myung Moon, ambassador of God and savior of mankind. And of course, absent all of the modern tools that I have cited, you could substitute a variety of names for that of the Reverend Moon. Pat Robertson. Jim Bakker, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, Robert Schuller just to name a few. They may not proclaim themselves as "messiahs" - but preaching the "word of God," and claiming that they hear the "voice of God," they too could become the raison d'�tre for the establishment of a new religion. I've written about religion on this blog before and of my difficulty in believing what millions of my fellow humans believe. Not just that there is a God, but that his personal messengers were born as humans anywhere from a couple of thousand to five or six thousand years ago. Why it took so long for God to send down a messenger - or a messiah as some believe, is difficult to understand. But I find it interesting that God did not wait until the time of a Reverend Moon, where his message could be recorded and spread to all of mankind. Where the miracles that his messengers performed could be witnessed by millions of people. Instead, the messengers that we believe he sent, came at a time when there was no way to record them and to subject them to the kind of testing that is available to us today. Convenient don't you think? Or mere coincidence? What would be wrong with a "messiah" arising among us today? Christians believe that there will be a "second coming" of Christ. But Moon claims that the "founders" of five great religions have endorsed him as the true messiah. So maybe he is what he says he is and we need to try to accept him at face value. Or do we first need him to turn water into wine, make blind men see, make bodies of water part, be declared dead and shipped to a funeral home, only to return the next day in fine physical condition? Or is it that such messianic activities can only be achieved in an age where no means exist to record them, other than the word of mouth of eye witnesses? That's what the Zorn column got me thinking about. I'm amazed that millions of others don't think about such things. Or at least don't seem to. If they do, I wish they'd get in touch with me and tell me so. I tell you folks. Sometimes it gets very lonely around here, where I'm the one who has to keep asking - what on earth is all this then?? ? ---- "As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities." - Voltaire
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