A Savior We Can Relate To?

What do you think about when the word “Savior” is spoken?  Depending on your religious or spiritual bent all sorts of images can come to mind, but go past the initial thoughts, the first images, and go further.

Now to some of you what follows may border on blasphemy, but honestly, what do you think it was really like being a revered spiritual leader?  What about the long days traversing the desert, dealing with dust storms, lack of drinkable water, natural and man-made encumbrances.  It had to be a tough job.  And what about the bodily functions?  No one ever thinks about the bodily functions.  When was the last time you thought about Jesus picking his nose, peeing, or squatting behind a rock to go poop?  Never, right?

The thing is, we put our, human form, deities on a pedestal that none of us would care to stand on.  We forget that they led very similar lives to the ones we live today.  Well, except for the modern comforts of drive thru restaurants, water on demand, and hemp stores on every corner (they definitely had better access to mind altering substances).  Not to mention information available at the push of a button.  Ok, so maybe it was a very different time.  No disposable water bottles, no toilet paper, and no itunes!  But we’re the same.  As evidenced by the way we respond to the stimuli of our everyday world.

Yes, of course I am being a little sarcastic.  The world around us is ever changing and yet we tend to be static when it comes to religion and the stories, that before science, were feasible, plausible, and accepted as fact.

Switching gears a little, but not much:

Recently another “deity” fell or perhaps he was just knocked off his pedestal.  Bill Cosby.  Not my deity, but revered as one by many who followed his career.  I don’t know what he is guilty of, or what behavior he actually participated in, but are we judging him by today’s standards for yesterday’s behavior?  God forbid if we could really know what atrocities were begotten by the founders of our country.  Our early presidents had slaves, called for the massacre of the native inhabitants of the land, and would only “let” women do what they said they could do.

Let’s make sure we have all the facts.  ALL the facts.  Not just the stories.  Because stories are often manipulated by the narrator.  Some are fact based and some are just parables.  It’s important to recognize the difference.