Gibbon Island by Anthony Watkins (novels in english .txt) 📕

River.

When I protested that this was the silliest basis for a religion I had ever heard, my host challenged me. “Are you Christian?” I answered that by tradition and birth I was indeed Christian, though I practiced no religion in any organized fashion.

“You mean you think Slakanath, the great spider is unbelievable, but you follow a religion centered on a homeless brown man who was born to an unwed mother
and spent most of his adult life wondering with a dozen other men, in the company of only one woman, and she was a prostitute?”

I said I thought that was a crude way to describe the life of Jesus. He replied, “But that is not the unbelievable part!”

When I asked him his point, he explained. “The followers of this homeless brown bastard who hung out with a dozen men and one prostitute, hate few things more than unwed mothers, homeless people, prostitutes people of color, and homosexuals.”

As I have stated, I am what might call a nominal Christian, one who is classified as such by birth and culture, but I do carry a Rosary in my left pants pocket. Instinctively, I reached into my pocket and rubbed the comforting beads. The old man noticed the motion in my pocket and gave me a funny look. I
sheepishly pulled out the Crucifix and string of beads.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Just hoping to improve my odds of not getting struck by lightning from standing so close to you while you say such outrageous things,” I replied.

“And how is your God’s bolt of lightning different from their great spider’s avenging foot fall?” Papitukan queried.

I thought for a moment. “Well, everyone has seen lightning, no one has ever seen the foot of an inter-galactic spider,” I replied, pretty pleased with my
unassailable logic.

“How do you know lightning is not the flash and thunder of the great spider?” he answered. I walked off perplexed. I thought my reasoning was correct. Some people refuse to see logic, even when it is clearly presented to them. But who was refusing to see the truth, me or Papitukan?
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Publication Date: 11-19-2009

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