Of all the possible ways to spend the week leading up to the three-day commemoration of the death and resurrection of Christ Our Savior, I’m pretty sure that one of the most counterproductive, least evangelistic options at our disposal is engaging in messy, protracted fight scenes (whether amongst ourselves or with others) for the purpose of defending the position that believers who follow the Lord’s tenets to the letter should be rewarded with government-approved perks for this accomplishment, and that those who don’t, shouldn’t.

I could be wrong. Maybe there are worse ways to count down to Easter. I’d prefer to eschew those, too.

My thoroughly unworkable solution to the strife would be to end the current perk structure altogether from top to bottom and let the World devise some other system for rendering such benefits to one and all, preferably a system that doesn’t sully a faith-based concept by co-opting it as a soulless contract template. I’d imagine the simplest way to maintain the structural integrity of a faith-based concept is to discontinue its use as a legal concept, mandate that invocation and adherence result in absolutely no financial privileges or advantages whatsoever, and ensure that the only direct gains to be derived from entering into it are 100% spiritual and intangible.

Within the believers’ context, I would posit that our indignant insistence on any net profit to ourselves, above and beyond God’s promises to us, is a form of entitlement.

…

This, among countless other great reasons, is why I’m not in charge of things.

So. Easter, then, anyone?