here we go a ranting, on a winter's eve ...

Douglas Connelly is indeed a blockhead.  We've got a cranky, exiled 90 year old guy who suddenly has a vision about the end of the world, given to him by his old buddy Jesus Christ.  How is he different from anybody wandering around in the street mumbling to themselves?  Oh, and of course I'm talking about John, the guy who wrote the book or at least told it to someone who wrote it down before it headed over to a selection committee where they yeah or nayed themselves into a canon (followed by another selection committee and another one as people decided that the other guys had a few of their bullet points wrong on their internal mission statements).  Fast forward over the last couple thousand years and people are still arguing over this.

The thing that really got me about this book was somewhere in the middle where he's talking about how reading one of the sections can't help but make you fill up with praise and adoration for Jesus, and how it's good practice to get going on that now so that you're ready to perpetually pat the dude on the back and say "good job for destroying mankind and bringing us all up here where we're just wandering around happy for ourselves and the only thing that we've got to do is constantly congratulate you."

I feel like a book like this, that purports itself to be a guide to understanding a complex book that no one really understands and everyone has a different idea of, should be written by more than one person.  I feel like at the very least more than one denomination should be reflected in the construction of the book and perhaps a few literature/ philosophy people who can provide counterpoints to the rampant symbolism in the text.  But no, we get one pastor out of Michigan to tell us how it is (which is something that really annoys me in general and is used so often by talk show/ talk radio personalities to lend some pseudo-credibility to their rants and ravings and opinions).  We're talking PERSPECTIVES here people, we need more because you are not the be all and say all for the universe!

I was raised Lutheran, but a pretty liberal Lutheran, not the Missouri Synod who require woman to only wear calico dresses, and we never really covered this book in any of my Bible classes.  Better bet, I figure, to focus on the good guy hippie Jesus who wanders around with plenty of parables doing good wherever he goes.  Not only that, but he's got a gang of do-gooders that travel around with him (if they had a van and a theme song it would've been an awesome '80's show).  I think that the pastors of church's brand of Lutheranism were a little embarrassed by this book ... I mean it is pretty silly.  Lamps and lampshades and if you don't do as we say we're going to take your cookie, er, lampshade and you'll die with everyone else that doesn't agree with us when seals are opened and horsemen appear ... and monsters?  Um, it sort of sounds like John was just a little pissed that he didn't get into a quality nursing home and decided to take it out on mankind (though, probably the Romans first ... after that, maybe he'd chill out a little).

And really, the most frightening thing of all about this book, is that otherwise normal looking people that are upstanding members of communities believe it is absolutely true.  (Of course nothing surprises me anymore given how many people belong to the creepiest cult in the world ... I'd name it but then I'd get stalked and sued by their lawyers).  

Crazy is as crazy does.  Rant done.  (Bet you enjoyed Lewis Black more ...)