Okay. I gotta tell you about the Holy Land Experience. It's this Crazy Christian theme park of sorts in Orlando, and if you're coming from the west, you have to drive past all the Disney World and Universal exits, and can you even imagine being a kid and wanting to go to Disney World and having your parents drag you to the Holy Land Experience instead? Because Disney World is too godless? (Heh, I made that up--the Crazy Christians probably hit Disney World AND the Holy Land Experience, but oh man, it is such a depressing place compared to Disney World and Universal.)
Anyway, so yes. Crazy Christians. Apparently, people come from all over the continent to see this place--there were nutbags from Alberta, Canada, and I had never even seen an Alberta license plate before, and I've, like, driven around in Canada (yeah, so my driving area was confined to, like, an hour from the New York border, but whatever--still closer to Alberta than Florida!). Anyway, for all this it was kind of disappointing, but only because I was hoping it would be more absurd, but as far as Crazy Christian projects go this one was pretty even-keeled. I guess it's supposed to be, like, 66 A.D. Jerusalem, and there were various ancient-type buildings and people milling about in period dress. Also, statues of Roman centurions everywhere. I don't know why I found that odd, because, you know, Rome occupied that area at that time, but they were totally everywhere, these statues.
My favorite parts were the Crazy Christians in attendance (more on them in a bit) and the kiddie area, which featured Moses parting the Red Sea:
The whale that swallowed poor Jonah:
And Jesus walking on water:
This was the kind of absurdity I was hoping for in the whole park, but I guess they only crazied out for the young believers.
Okay, now onto the Crazy Christians themselves. There's this building there called the Scriptorium that features a tour of the evolution of the written Bible, and I guess curiosity got the best of us, because we waited in line for it, and while we were waiting one of the women who worked there was talking to this Christian fellow about all the snow that's happening--and about how it apparently snowed in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, and the man smirked, "Global warming, right?" which made Carlos and me roll our eyes at each other, and then the woman said, "God's obviously trying to get our attention," and I muttered, "Yeah, he'd like you to stop ruining this lovely planet he gave you," but no one heard me, which was probably for the best. And I don't know how, exactly, we got involved in this conversation, but the woman was like, "God will do whatever he wants to get our attention. Do you believe that?" And Carlos just said, "It's crazy," but he sure was not talking about the snow in Vegas.
Then, later, we were in a gift shop, and there was a fellow who was talking up this tallis, trying to sell it, and Carlos noticed he was holding it upside down, but he refrained from saying anything until the fellow actually came up to us, and Carlos, bless him, couldn't help himself and said, "You're holding it upside down." The man insisted he was not, but Carlos stood firm, and so the man just asked him if he had a tallis, and Carlos said no, he didn't have cause to use one much, and the man got all wise, like, "How can you not have one, but not use it much?" So Carlos explained that they keep tallisim in the synagogues for services, and the guy asked if he was a Messianic Jew, and Carlos said, "No, just regular type." Actually, he said that to me later, and we both giggled about it--what he really said to the guy was that he was just Jewish, and the guy was like, "Prove it! Read this!" So Carlos took the tallis from him, flipped it the right way up, and translated the Hebrew. While that exchange was a little awkward, it was still fun, because it involved schooling a Crazy Christian. And this: "Are you a Messianic Jew?" "Nope. Just
regular type."
Okay, so. The Scriptorium itself was a big load, yo. It was so cheesy, all about how the Bible was first written down and transported and then translated and copied and all the attempts to destroy it and prevent it from being translated into the vernacular, and blah blah, all the crap Carlos and I already knew from going to a Catholic college, where we were required to take four semesters of the development of western civilization. But the thing that got to me was the dramatic narrator's insistence that through all this copying and translating and strife, the words of the Bible stayed entirely accurate, and that is just god damn impossible. First, the old stories, like those in Genesis, for sure, started out as oral tradition before finally getting copied down, and it is impossible to retell a story orally without changing it. Second, seriously, how many times has the Bible been copied out and translated, and you're telling me no one's made a significant mistake? Please. And then you get some monastic scribe copying the book of Judges or whatever, and he sees something he thinks is a mistake, so he corrects it, but what if it wasn't really a mistake?
I guess the Holy Ghost is supposed to keep the message pure, working through these scribes to inspire them to get God's word down right, or whatever, but come on. The Holy Ghost is useless these days, running around with a sheet over his head like he's in an episode of
Scooby Doo. The Holy Ghost did not prevent inaccuracies in the Bible, just like he did not make the Catholic Church infallible. Just think of how many competing translations of the Bible we have right now--how did that happen, huh? If the Bible's message stayed pure through these thousands of years, how come the Christians and Jews can't agree on things? How come the Christians or the Jews can't agree amongst themselves?
But the thing about being in a place like this is that you are surrounded by people who totally and utterly believe this shit, and even with my Catholic school background, I was staggered by seeing this. (I guess because Catholics don't traditionally put a big emphasis on Bible-reading like the Protestants do.) There were people on this tour who were on the verge of, like, praising the lord for making sure his word was passed on, and I just had to laugh. Quietly. Behind my hand. I mean, this is all a bunch of crap, obviously, how the myths of one culture could possibly be the ultimate truth for all peoples, but I didn't feel the need to be rude, since no one was at that time advocating preventing me from gaining equal civil rights.
Anyway, I was just baffled by all this. I was always aware that millions of people think the Bible is, like, the only truth on earth or whatever, but I guess I was never actually confronted with it, face to face. I did not enjoy it, except to just laugh at the absurdity of it.
I kind of wish we'd gone to Disney World.
Next on The Florida Chronicles: manatees, beaches, and O'Boobigan's!
Anyway, the other best part of this trip came on our last night there when we were driving home from the beach. We drove through this intersection where there'd been an accident, and then Carlos looked up and said, "Huh. O'Boobigan's!" He had found an Irish pub called O'Boobigan's. Since it was dark and stuff, we decided to return in the morning for a photo op:
Then we went to the beach one last time before dragging ourselves to the airport. We drove by Raymond James again, where the Buccs game was just getting underway, and oh how we wanted to snag some tickets from the scalpers at the strip club and forget our flights. Plus, getting home was a mess for both of us, and I got home right after the giant snow storm ended. Boo.
Other things: our rental car was from Missouri, and I wish I had remembered to take a picture. Hertz charged us an extra hundred bucks for being under 25, which is just painful, because we're almost 25! Boo. I was the driver, and Tater was the navigator, and I must say, while I generally loathe automatic transmission, it was nice not to have to worry about shifting when I wasn't sure where I was going.
