Nothing up Their Sleve
Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
He sighed deeply and said, “Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to it.”
Where ability fails audacity will suffice
I was a big believer in relics, signs, and miracles. Moreover I believed in the Shroud Of Turin. For those of you who have been hiding under a big yellow rock, the Shroud of Turin is about ten feet of linen purported to be the burial cloth of Jesus. It surfaced in the early Middle Ages and round about ended up in the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin Italy where on occasion it is displayed to the faithful to marvel over. The reason they marvel is if you stand two or three yards back you can make out the image of a man. Front and back, with blood in the appropriate places. This in and of itself is a bit odd but long about 1898 or so before one such event a photographer was called in to photograph the cloth and while developing the plate it was revealed that the negative was indeed a positive life size portrait of the big guy in great detail, nail holes and all. And so it began.
The Catholic Church has no shortage of holy relics from fingers to heads to enough splinters of the real cross to rebuild the Grand Ol’ Opry. Combine that with statues crying bloody tears and prophesying little girls and you can readily see the Poping business is doing quite well considering they have copyrights and trademarks on practically everything but the Book of Mormon. Can I have an Amen?
So I bought it all, hook, line, and Rosary. I first heard of the Shroud when I was married to my first ex-wife. Back then it was no big deal. I came upon this little book that I checked out of the public library that had a picture that gave me the shakes. Hey! That was the face of Jesus, dudes! Or so it seemed. And I was a sinner. A Baptist sinner who in spite of being saved and all, was sitting there staring into the face of what I believed to be Catholic Jesus. And that will sour your fried chicken. So I ran my wife off and joined the Catholic Church. Sorry about that Charsha! The new had worn off anyway. Now, where was I?
When the carbon dating said that the Shroud was originated right about the time it popped up I wrote an article showing that the fire it had been through somehow reset the carbon and in concert the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) admitted that the origin of the cloth was beyond them and gave all kinds of science showing that most likely it was the real McCoy or rather at least a reasonable facsimile thereof. They based this on the image not having been painted, the fibers only being slightly discolored on the top molecule and pollen coming from 123 Calvary Street Jerusalem!! After more examination it was found that there were two Roman coins on the eyes of the temporary deceased and resounding evidence of the little dumbbell things at the end of the Cat O’ Nine tails used to flog Jesus before his Green Mile. By the way folks, this is why you should never trust science.
Scientists make a lot of hay about the scientific method. Simply put, if you can duplicate something then that more or less means it’s probably true. I’ve duplicated six marriages looking for Miss Right and have only found Miss Right Now so there’s that. They could never duplicate the image on the Shroud so it must be true . . . right? They even used software from NASA that “proved” the image was of some unearthly origin. The best idea they could come up with was there was some kind of nuclear event under the cloth that blazed the image on there without changing the subject's complexion below the first molecule one itty bitty bit.
At this point I need to tell you that the relic business is alive and praying. Anything that you can see, taste, hear, feel, or smell will bring big bucks if some Bible guy saw, tasted, heard, felt, or smelled it. And this is a universal rule from letters from Joseph Smith admitting in writing he conversed with a salamander to Jesus’s first grade report card. People will believe anything, scientists will either confirm it or play dumb and the cash cow will moo at the moon. Another Amen please.
It would behoove some enterprising trickster to perfect a real, 100% copy of a burial cloth of Jesus to parlay off to some FOOL who has more castle than good sense. That’s exactly what happened and I’m a gonna tell you how. There was this research guy who took it upon himself to figure out how that image got on that there bed sheet. One thing you always got to be wary of is somebody saying that people of some bygone age being limited as far as talent, need, and greed. The “They can’t do that” excuse will get you hung. Prime example; Egyptian pyramids. Looking at the size of the blocks everybody knew it just couldn’t have been the Egyptians. Why, we can’t even do that ourselves. Had to be aliens or something. Yet right over on the Yucatán Peninsula there are pyramids and everybody knows who built them . . . MEXICANS!
People in the 1300s didn’t have magnifying glass. Yet there is a painting from that era of a bishop reading his Bible with a pair of glasses. Ruh Roh! Underestimating the fervor of the faithful combined with the audacity of free enterprise will produce surprising results ie holy bedsheets.
Before I continue, I need to clarify that I am in no way casting aspersions on the sacrifice of Jesus which I totally believe in. I’m jabbing the puffed up Pharisees of all makes and models from old popes to Olsteens who sell Him to people looking for answers. So, having said that shall we continue?
This research guy didn’t just blurt out an idea, he traced the development of renditions of Christ’s image all the way from graffiti on a wall to the Holy Shroud with attention to each little detail that had been added through the years. Originally there was no pictures. Thou shalt not make any graven image and all that sort of thing. Then we got Jesus wearing His temple garment to the cross and over the years developed bit by bit to looking like He was on the way to Woodstock. The Shroud displayed all of these improvements up to and including the realization that nails through the palms would not hold a human body to cream which in and of itself was lauded as further “proof” of the validity of the now very holy Shroud.
Then our investigator set upon photographic techniques of the fourteenth century. Yeah, you heard me right. Photographic techniques. Oh Wilbur! Dey didn’t have no iPhones in 1399. No, but they had silver oxide. They noticed that it changed color in the sun. Never forget that these old cats were always trying to change lead into gold. And those pyramids in Acapulco? VIVA ZAPATA!
Camera Obscura. Write that down, there’s gonna be a test later. Remember that science experiment in the fourth grade. You know the one. A shoe box, punch a hole in one end and light a candle? Somehow the image of the candle finds its way through the little hole into the shoebox appearing upside down inside the box? Yeah. That experiment. Now put that in the Middle Ages with a barn with a hole, a cadaver hanging up in a tree, the sun sending the image onto a stretch of cloth inside the barn and a guy with all the time in the world to get it right. Now back to the twenty-first century with our little amateur investigator toying with this and that and VOILA! The Shroud of Austin! I embellished a bit but if you have the time you can find it all at this link.
In conclusion: Over and over and over again Jesus warns us about false Christ’s, tricksters, film flam men, demanding signs, and all the various imperfections of the human condition. Our brains were designed to “connect the dots.” Where there is a space, fill it in. Your blind spot in your eye does it every day. It’s doing it right now as you are reading this. We believe! We want to believe. We have mental luggage that forever tells us that movement in a bush in Central Park could be a tiger, those coins Penn and Teller dump out of that’s guy’s glasses in the front row are real when such a thing is impossible, but you saw them. I saw them! Telling some girl at a party that the vermouth in her martini will neutralize the gin and the more she drank the clearer her mind will get. Lord, I’m sorry I did that. I promise I won’t do that no more. And Jesus warned us about all of this capping it off telling Pilate that His kingdom was not of this world. The Kingdom of God is within you. You could have seen it had you only looked, but you were too busy looking at bed sheets.
Comments
Post a Comment