Saturday, January 3

Any expected deliverer.

If you were to begin a new career as a messiah, do you think you'd write your scripture first or do you wander around in the desert for a while before you start? Or of course you could wait for someone else to write it. This option is risky because it may never happen, and even if it does, people really can't be trusted to get it right unless they're being paid. Face it, people love to blog about a corrupt, sex-addicted prophet, but no one wants to take time to write about saviors that are on their way up. You've got to pay for positive publicity. You need an agent. Someone to contract biographers with names like Ezekiel and Ahmed to follow you around and to codify your teachings; someone to help you choose a color scheme for your tunic and footwear; someone to write your press releases and lobby the local papers to publish blurbs about your good deeds and/or miracles. In the meantime, you go ahead and get the difficult bits out of the way - you spend some time in India, "get noticed", stop eating for a month or two, will yourself blind, visit a few whorehouses, sleep in caves, start a war then end it, gain the trust of a handful of influential but wacky religious leaders (especially that Indian fellow with the withered hand), and you never ever let yourself get caught defecating. Six months later and halfway around the world, your biography/scripture is finished and you have a small but loyal group of followers. They're mostly Unitarians and owners of alternative medicine clinics, but it's a start. You grow your beard long and dye it white for effect.

1 comment:

AG said...

I dunno, a career as a prophet seems kinda fruitless, at least for the first few years. People are obsessed with tradition and ancient lore, not some new jack on the street tryin'a get his message out. Also, you'd have to facilitate some miracles, or half-miracles to gain cred. I guess you could get your boy to act like he was healed or something. If you were successful, you'd be set for life with minions of people ensuring your safety and always buzzing around you. Actually, this is starting to sound like the presidency.