Unlike
Catholicism and most Christian religions, worshiping Greek gods makes you feel
good about yourself instead of just really guilty. If you’re Catholic, you have to tell all of
the horrible things you’ve done to an old man who is hopefully sleeping and not
dead. You also have to try to measure
yourself up to act like Jesus, and that’s a lot like trying to blow stuff up
with your mind: everybody tries it, but it always ends in disappointing
failure. Worshiping the Greek gods, on
the other hand, makes you feel great. We
all do some pretty terrible things sometimes, but that doesn’t mean you have to
feel bad about them. Hate your kids
sometimes? So long as you haven’t thrown
them off a skyscraper, you’re doing a better job of parenting that Hera. Went off on someone because they walked into
the bathroom while you were in the shower?
I’m going to assume you didn’t send hunting dogs to rip them apart. Get in a bar fight or steal something? If you worship Ares or Hermes, you don’t have
to confess that, it’s basically the equivalent of going to church. Heavy drinking if frowned upon by most
religions; the Greeks had a god for it.
Basically, you can both worship and look down upon the Greek gods. “What would Jesus do?” Try “What would Zeus not do?” As long as you don’t turn into a horse and go
around raping people, you’re doing pretty well.
Say
what you will about Zeus and his extremely dysfunctional family, they get stuff
done. I like that think that the Greek
deities and Old Testament God used to be drinking buddies, going around and
wreaking all sorts of havoc on Earth just for the hell of it. Zeus would turn into different animals and
screw everything that moved. God would
go on his whole “angry and vengeful God” spiel and do some good old fashioned
smiting, turning people into pillars of seasoning and making whales eat the
people that pissed him off. Unfortunately,
the whole flooding thing ruined everything.
Zeus had the idea to wipe out a whole valley of people who angered him
with the exception of a single couple who were total dicks. God, seeing how great that turned out and
being a little drunk, decided to do the same thing, but bigger. What he ended up with, however, was a single
family that was really pissed off about having to basically live in a cramped
zoo for several months and a bunch of fish, but who really cares about them? Anyway, God realized maybe murdering
everything may have been a little rash, made a deal with Noah not to do that
again. He found Jesus, turned his life
around, and became New Testament God, who isn't nearly as fun. Zeus and God used to do all sorts of awesome
miracles, though I use the term very loosely.
Now, the most New Testament God can do is save the occasional kid from
cancer or appear on a piece of toast.
You might argue that the Greek gods haven’t been doing much lately
either, but that’s because nobody worships them anymore. It’s kind of hard to compete with a religion
that promises gods who don’t make you spouse have sex with bulls or force you
to kill your family. Were we all to
begin worshiping the Greek pantheon again, I’m sure all sorts of crazy stuff
would happen. It would make the plagues
in Egypt look like a common cold.
The
Greek gods are far more worth of our adoration because I genuinely think they
love us more. Sure, God loves everyone,
but that kind of make love lose its meaning.
In a way, he just sort of feels ambivalent towards all of us. Furthermore, he loves serial killers every
bit as much as he loves the nicest person you’ve ever met, so where’s the
motivation? If you piss off Zeus, you
can bet you’ll regret it. If you make
him happy, you’ll still probably regret it because you’ll anger some other god
in the process, but at least they show that they care. Really, our relationship with God at this
point is only alive enough to die. We’re
just going through the motions. At
church, all you hear is dispassionate chanting as if the building is full of
zombies, and it probably isn’t, though you can never tell given the high
percentage of elderly people. People
pray to God, something happens that is just promising enough that they keep on
praying. We tried to make him jealous by
starting some Protestant churches, but that just resulted in a hundreds of
years of bloody war and potlucks.
Greek
gods, on the other hand, know how to treat a worshiper. Sure, they’re fickle, petty, and jealous, but
at least they showed that they knew we still exist. God often asked us to cut back on the whole
eating thing, which is tantamount to calling us fat. If that isn’t enough, instead of taking us
out to nice feasts, he just gives us a cracker every week that doesn’t taste
like anything if we’re lucky. At least
add flavors or something. If he can
create the entire world in six days, I don’t think cinnamon flavored Communion
is too terribly much to ask for. In
Greek culture, they have all sorts of feasts.
Screw not having meat on Fridays during Lent. You’re more likely to offend Greek gods by
not eating the food. Lastly, there’s the
whole child thing. God is kind of
stingy, giving us only one kid. Zeus
alone has given us several, whether we wanted them or not. Greek gods gave their children amazing
abilities, from incredible strength to great beauty to unbelievable musical
skill. Jesus got the ability to make
cabinets and get plastered from a water fountain. The gods gave their children advice and the
locations of powerful artifacts. Do you
know what Jesus got? Crucifixion. Some people complain about the fact that most
of the sex that Greek gods had with mortals wasn’t exactly consensual. Don’t go all high and mighty on me. When a giant wheel of eyes or whatever angels are supposed to look like pops up and says, "Hey...you're having God's kid," you don't exactly say no. At least
Zeus was classy enough to show up in person and not send one of his
lackeys.
Worshiping
Greek Gods is clearly a better idea than continuing with Christianity. They make you feel better about who you are,
the bad things you do, and the even worse things you haven’t done that they
have. Though it might not always work
out in your favor, at least Greek deities actually affect the world instead of
making the occasional appearance on breakfast foods. The Greek gods love us more than the
Christian one and can help us get out of a relationship that should have ended
a long time ago. Just think about it:
you are a single goat sacrifice away from a (possibly) better life.
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