hutch (06/12/82)
Regarding the Weinie Roasts for Jesus: I don't know what exactly you are referring to, but if you mean to imply a daily meal which is blessed by a prayer, that is hardly a memorial weinie roast. Prayers blessing food are cross cultural and seem to be a part of any culture that has risen to the level of the chimps. The memorial meal for Christians is the Communion Meal, in which we partake of His death on the cross (a mystery, in the ancient sense of being something that is hard to comprehend and whose mystic meaning is generally kept secret from unbelievers who would ridicule what they won't understand - and not only Christians have mysteries, nor are we immune to ridiculing others for their strange secret mysteries) is in remembrance of a sacrificial and substitutiary death. Christ was no suicide and the underlying meaning of His death is a positive one, since death could not keep him. We remember this with solemn rejoicing. This differs greatly from a flip, casual and insensitive party whose promoters are likely only reacting to a personal fear of death by trying to trivialize the reality of it's effect on themselves and others. This fear-denial reaction is especially easy to slip into when the person was someone that you knew or admired, since you had wanted to be like him or her and had adopted parts of the admired traits, and now YOU are threatened by the *ultimate* judgement of that which you admired BY THE ONE WHO YOU ADMIRED IT IN. The MWR is at best an immature response to an extremely hard thing, and at worst, when treated as a joke or a game by the callous, is an insult to the survivors and a numbing action. And, yes, it is in VERY bad taste. Steve Hutchison ...decvax!teklabs!tekmdp!dadla-b!hutch