CBEB’s

I got a flyer in the mail today from a neighborhood church. On the front was a picture of Jesus hanging on the cross with the words, “an Easter Love Story”, below the image. On the back of the flyer was this:

For God SO loved the world… We’ve probably all heard the start to that verse, but what does it really mean in our daily lives? Come join us this Easter at Parkdale Baptist Church as we discover the type of practical, everlasting and sacrificial love God has for us. It’s a story that offers guidance for life’s challenges, encouragement in life’s difficulties and hope for eternity. It can be your story too!

As Tina Turner would say, “What’s love got to do with it?” Seriously, I just don’t get any sort of “Love Story” vibe when I read the Bible, especially the crucifixion stories. Instead of your typical “Boy Meets Girl” story, we get this:

• Omnipotent Being meets girl
• Omnipotent Being uses magic to impregnate girl
• Thirty some-odd years later, child of Omnipotent Being and girl gets nailed to a cross
• After being dead for three days, child of Omnipotent Being and girl comes back to life and ascends to Heaven

I guess one might say that’s a happy ending… if one is willing to overlook the whole “everyone who doesn’t believe this shit gets thrown into a Lake of Fire in the sequel” angle to the story.

I realize I’m grossly oversimplifying the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, but the details don’t really help. The whole “Jesus died for your sins” concept doesn’t sound like love to me. In fact, it reeks of overkill. It’s really arrogant to think you’re so important that you’ve done something which merits a human sacrifice in order to make things right again.

Furthermore, “Jesus died for your sins” doesn’t make much sense in light of the fact - according to the Bible - He didn’t really die. I guess “died for your sins” carries a little more impact than the more truthful, “Jesus gave up Spring Break for your sins”.

Christianity has always been one of those things that the more I think about it, the less sense it makes. I feel I’m not alone in thinking that way, seeing how so many youngsters are getting disillusioned with the Jesus Fan Club.

Some of you might think what I’m about to do is tantamount to giving aid and comfort to the enemy, but I’ve been reading a lot about young people leaving the church, and I’d like to offer Christians some friendly advice on how to get the kids interested in Jesus once more.

The solution is not only simple, it’s Biblically sound: Zombies.

Something on which we can all agree: Churches could use more brains.

It’s a well known fact that kids love zombies. If you’ve got children, ask your son or daughter which they’d rather have at their next birthday party: clowns or zombies? If your child says “clowns” (or even worse, “a magic show”) memorize this phrase: “I had no idea my child would grow up to be a serial killer”; it will come in handy someday.

It’s beyond me why churches haven’t latched on to Zombies as a marketing tool. Some Christians might deny there are zombies in the Bible, but it’s right there, in Matthew 27, verses 45 through 53:

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man calleth for Elias. And straightway one of them ran, and took a spunge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink. The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him. Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

Those are just about the coolest verses in the Bible, but you never hear preachers talking about zombies running around Jerusalem. I realize some Biblical literalists might point out that the word “zombie” doesn’t actually appear in the Bible; my response is, “so what?”. The word “dinosaur” doesn’t appear in the Bible, yet Ken Ham built a multi-million dollar museum dealing with Dinosaurs and the Bible. The word “homosexuality” occurs exactly zero times in the King James Bible, but to listen to some preachers, you’d think that’s the only subject the Bible covers. If creationists can extrapolate the word “plesiosaur” from the Biblical Leviathan, then surely Christians can agree that Dead People Coming Out of Their Graves = Zombies. This is ain’t rocket science, people.

Even I might consider attending this church.

Even one of the great minds of the Enlightenment, Thomas Paine, knew the zombie issue warranted more investigation. In The Age of Reason, he wrote:

The writer of the book of Matthew should have told us who the saints were that came to life again, and went into the city, and what became of them afterward, and who it was that saw them — for he is not hardy enough to say he saw them himself; whether they came out naked, and all in natural buff, he-saints and she-saints; or whether they came full dressed, and where they got their dresses; whether they went to their former habitations, and reclaimed their wives, their husbands, and their property, and how they were received; whether they entered ejectments for the recovery of their possessions, or brought actions of crim. con. against the rival interlopers; whether they remained on earth, and followed their former occupation of preaching or working; or whether they died again, or went back to their graves alive, and buried themselves.

Strange, indeed, that an army of saints should return to life, and nobody know who they were, nor who it was that saw them, and that not a word more should be said upon the subject, nor these saints have anything to tell us! Had it been the prophets who (as we are told) had formerly prophesied of these things, they must have had a great deal to say. They could have told us everything and we should have had posthumous prophecies, with notes and commentaries upon the first, a little better at least than we have now. Had it been Moses and Aaron and Joshua and Samuel and David, not an unconverted Jew had remained in all Jerusalem. Had it been John the Baptist, and the saints of the time then present, everybody would have known them, and they would have out-preached and out-famed all the other apostles. But, instead of this, these saints were made to pop up, like Jonah’s gourd in the night, for no purpose at all but to wither in the morning.

Chances are, at least one church in your town puts on an annual Passion Play (except when YHWH sends unfavorable weather), but do they include Zombies in their production? With Hell Houses becoming a popular method of “witnessing” these days, adding Zombies to your church’s Passion Play only seems like the next logical step.

For that matter, any filmmaker wanting a prefab “cult” audience can kill two birds with one stone by making a new, improved “Greatest Story Ever Told” by adding Zombies to the mix. As The Passion of the Christ demonstrated, the MPAA has no problem at all with snuff films, as long as Jesus is the star of the picture. That means you could make the goriest Zombie movie ever made, and not only would the diehard gorehounds be lining up to see it, church leaders would command their flocks to see it as many times as they can.

The really cool thing about a Zombie Jesus Movie is that they didn’t have guns back in the Bible days. Since it’s a scientific fact that Zombies can only be killed by destroying the brain, Bible Zombies would be especially hard to kill, bringing a fresh perspective to a genre that’s gotten stale over the years. Plus, Bruce Campbell would make a badass Jesus.

Christians love to parade one of the central contradictions of their religion with silly “Buddha and Mohammed are dead, but Jesus lives!” arguments. If Jesus lives, how could he have died for our sins? If he died, but now is no longer dead, then he’s a freakin’ Zombie. There’s no need to explain away this paradox; it should be celebrated and exploited.