Neo-Gnostics. The new synchratists. It's the best way I can find to describe the work of scholars like John Dominic Crossan and Elaine Pagels and popularists like Dan Brown. What makes a Neo-Gnostic? First, there's the insistance that the Bible makes sense only if you have a special knowledge. For instance, the Church was wrong for 2,000 years about the account of Jesus' resurection and crucifixion. The authors never intended it to be undestood litterally, merely "prophetically". Christianity is really supressed goddess worship, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Second, an attempt to reinvigorate the the Gnostic writings in order to create a "special knowledge" that serves as a key for decoding or even flat out re-creating a new Christianity. Funny how the new Christianity that's found always harmonizes so well with the spirit of the age... We've seen these sort of attempts before, and the fact is that however well-intentioned they are, they die out the minute the fashions of the age change. Only orthodoxy marches on, refined by the passing ages, now swerving this way, now that, but always there just when we think we've seen the last of it. You can follow the documentation of 2,000 years and come to your own conclusions. The Platypus reads on.
I got my Super Nintendo Entertainment System when I was eleven years old. That's a couple years after it first came out. The occasion was a little dramatic: to celebrate the end of a two-and-a-half year course of treatment for cancer. I had no idea that it would be waiting for me at home after the final doctors visit. It was a nice spring day, the trees were waving gently in the breeze outside the bay windows. With a cup of tea resting on the coffee table, I set down to play. What was that first game? It was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past . Around twenty years later, my SNES still works as does that Zelda cartridge. It's been a long way from boyhood in Southern Connecticut to manhood in North Houston, but I'm still playing. Why am I still playing? There were stretches when I didn't. Many times, I've just been too busy. There were also seasons when it felt embarrassing to still be playing video games....
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