I have been reading a sci-fi series by David Weber. It is called the Safehold series and like all of his work it is very entertaining. The latest is called At the Sign of Triumph. It is a take-off on Battlestar Galactica except the humans have found a planet and are hiding from the aliens. He builds a world and culture and provides action, tension and characters.
What is hard for me to accept is the way in which he creates a religion for the world. He recreates a parody of the Catholic church of medieval times. It has priests, saints, angels, sin, mass, penance and a complete list of Christian accouterments. It has a holy book and many of the quotes are paraphrases of the Bible. It has sincere and devout believers and fanatical hypocrites. It is much like the church today. The one thing left out is Jesus.
People don’t seem to realize that the whole edifice comes crashing down without Jesus. You notice the same phenomenon in our society today. We can talk about God. We can even use the word “lord” but the one thing that gets people shook up is when we talk about Jesus.
I find that much like modern Christmas. We have schools that let out for two weeks and ignore the reason for the break. We have holiday programs and ignore the fact that “holiday” is a corruption of “holy day”. We celebrate joy for no reason. In the end, it really doesn’t work. It becomes a frantic search for the present in the gag gift where you keep opening boxes only to find a smaller box inside.
So enjoy the books. Enjoy the season. Understand that you will get a lot more out of them if you know the missing ingredient.
Merry Christmas
homo unius libri
Is it heresy if the person expounding it is not a believer?
ReplyDeleteGrace and peace