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The Anumeralist used to be a newsletter in the early 90's...now defunct.
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Mission Statement: to work for an America where no one is forced to apply for or give out an ID card or serial number

The Anumeralist
Wynn Schaible, Editor In Chief
published by Samizdat Productions


--A Word From The Editor--

Just when the People were getting used to living with modern civilization, along comes this guy who tells them all the things they know but don't want to hear about the government they're living under. What do you intend to do about it, smarty pants? they ask, and he starts talking like promises made hundreds of years ago actually have some relevance in this day and age. But finally the government demands so much that they let him have a shot, and he wangles an audience with the President and says, "Let my people go."

But the government won't let them without a Number on their passports and a complete listing of all financial assets, so there follows what the People's own records describe as a war of magic, which is pretty hard for some critics to take but when it was all over the President said, "Get the hell out of here," which is roughly equivalent to the IRS agreeing that none of us owes any taxes for the year, and that should be a good enough indication that something miraculous happened in anybody's book.

So he leads them out "from slavery into freedom," but as soon as it's clear that they're not going to America they complain and grumble and act like the worst combination of the guests on Oprah and the kids in the back seat on a long drive. But the task becomes plain: become nomads and lean mean fighting machines without recreating your God in that image. It's a tough assignment and all but two of them flunk, including the leader himself.

So finally they cross Jordan under the right-wing religious nut Joshua and proceed to occupy the land in the most un-pc manner possible. No respect for women, children or other cultures, and certainly no religious toleration, but they get their way and their Promised Land with apologies to nobody. But then they start picking up on all their former neighbor's bad habits, getting drunk, cheating each other, even falling as low as monarchy. And they take up with their neighbors' religions, softer more modern affairs with such things as temple prostitution both homo- and heterosexual. Well, it's going to happen anyway, right? So why not let the church get something out of it? More fun than bingo, after all. They even "pass their children through the fire," which we used to be told was human sacrifice but now the critics say was just giving the kid a quick whisk over a ceremonial flame. Not exactly as safe as infant baptism, but less painful than a brisk. But see their opinions on the exodus.

But it was then, now, always, and only the symbolism that counted, and they kept losing it despite a whole string of moral/magical preachers who tried to guide them back. So finally their luck ran out and they suffered the fate of any nation that leaves its founding principles and quite a few that haven't, and that should have been the end of the story but circumstances/God brought them back, and in another few hundred years when another Joshua was born, they were still there.

They were still having that original problem, though, with another government encroaching on their lives. They could have used another Moses, but they were already in the Promised Land and all the good territory was currently owned by the multinationals (empires, that is). They were looking for another Judas Maccabeus, but he was the one that brought the Romans in, in the first place to help get rid of the Greeks. What they got was a Messiah who said: The kingdom is in Heaven, not on the earth, and you must be prepared to share it even with those pagans abd secular humanists and damn immigrants who took your earthly kingdom away from you. And here, frankly, is where all this writing by analogy breaks down. Because what would that mean, in the current secular context? I may call myself a Christian, but we've got some latitude in this piece of terra firma to work out our God-given rights and I for one am not willing to give it up!

But the message was too much for the People's religious leaders and it was even too much for the Romans, who could tolerate any religion as long as people didn't take it too seriously. So they nailed him to a cross. So the Son of God hung there like a bug on a pin, with his body screaming in pain and his private parts exposed for whatever added humiliation the pain might allow him to feel. If I'd been God I would have struck the whole lot of those responsible dead then and there, but I'm not and I don't want the job and I probably wouldn't handle it any better than any of the others, from Emperor Nero to David Koresh, who've tried out for the position. Besides, if you're a Christian you believe that Christ died for you, so if the question gets asked, Who crucified Jesus? the only possible answer is, I did.

But they took him down a buried him, and just like the Exile that should have been the end of it. But when they went back to check the on the body the boulder had been rolled away and the soldiers that conquered the world had fainted from fear, and when they looked into the tomb there was --nothing there--- Then the women, and soon everybody, started seeing strange things and the rest, after all, is history. "Mass hallucination," say the critics. or "They stole the body." But people suffering hallucinations generally aren't too persuasive to their neighbors, and we ask the critics which is more improbable: that Jesus rose from the dead or that a motley crew of 11 religious charlatans would all suffer hardship, torture, and death for their own lie?

The moral, if we're still entitled to draw one, concerns truth. Truth exists, and its existence is not determined by the shortcomings of the bearers or their temporary adverse circumstances, and it will still triumph over persecutions that would kill any lie. That's not a facile platitude, especially for us lying under a glacier of repression. And for those awaiting it, it will seldom come when expected--or be what they expect it to! But it, and nothing else, can set us free.


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