K's blog (original) (raw)

Living in the city, you get a certain feel for the beat of it. However, there are some questions that are hard to answer. Take the fundamentalists (as I will refer to them), who hang around the big shopping streets carrying signs reading "the end is nigh; this is a bad time to be gay" and other things to that effect. Now, I'm not going to complain about them being there, since that is not how the city works. Like the living statues, pigeons and Nigerian prostitutes you just have to accept that they're there and try to avoid getting into any deep conversation with them. However, it is rather puzzling how they seem to appear around late April, multiply during the summer and then seems to fade away around September / October.

My first thought was that there is a buyers market out there for salvation. During the winter months, the Salvation Army takes over the entire market by offering free soup with salvation. True enough, you do see more Soldiers around in winter, especially around Christmas. However, these are all out collecting, not offering redemption. It would seem that they are not interested in the people-just-doing-some-shopping market, and prefer those lost lambs who seek them out. Hence, they can offer no threat to the fundamentalists who cater to the lost lambs seeking a new pair of jeans.

One might consider that it is the fundamentalists themselves who just don't consider saving souls worth risking a cold for. However, that shows a lack of conviction that is rather unbelievable. If they have a holy mission, they shouldn't take half the year off. I myself rarely tell people what to do, but if I had given people a rather important task, I really wouldn't want to come back[1] 8 months later only to find my faithful servants being all "what? Saving souls? I was doing that, but then it got a bit cold. Why, is there a rush? Oh, the end is nigh, yeah.. I guess it would be a bit of a hurry then." I have no idea how they can possibly excuse such behavior to anyone, themselves included, so I guess this idea falls on its own unreasonableness.

Perhaps there is some prophesy I seem to have missed about the world ending in October. Only people with the highest faith in Man's ability to abruptly change would consider it worth offering sinners a chance of redemption in the latter half of September. And when October has passed, well, the world didn't end this time around. And carrying around big signs saying "the end is nigh" when it is almost an entire year off, that is a bit blasphemous or at least misleading.

Does anyone know?
The living statues go to Poland, I've heard.

[1]Omnipresent deities can't come back, but bear with me on this one.