Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

88. SOMETHING LIKE THIS SHOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED:

"And Jacob once the tomb was empty what else was there to do except believe in something miraculous and the bones anyway the bones never showed up and that was the simplest thing - all the authorities had to do if they wanted to stop this crazed band of nascent Christians was to produce some bones - in fact ANY BONES would have done - and disprove in their way the occurrence of which everyone spoke but nothing like that ever happened nothing of the sort occurred and they let it all keep running on and eventually PERFECTLY it fell into place into something and neither lions nor martyrdom nor slayings and killings and ostracism and outlawing could put a stop to it as it grew fingers and added doctrines and made its rules and credos and new beliefs over old beliefs and before it was too far on the everything about it had become everything else and political power and secular rule became its order of the day but JACOB again NONE of that would have happened if they didn't will it to and that's the run of the world today - that's what we're left with the remnants of all which occurred and every offshoot from that which still exists today is what we're still fighting over and there will be no loving end to anything of this sort but any fool who fights for God is fighting for a DEFINITION alone - that and nothing more can you understand that Jacob?" and Jacob said "why do you believe everything you read and what if it never happened like that ? what if this was all made up in say 719 and they added AD to it for credibility and the entire backstory of all mankind can be adduced to be fictitious and without any basis in reality - have you ever considered that - and perhaps you're nothing more than - as all of us - a captive complete and total to whatever they've told you occurred" now I won't go on to say this conversation was something I wanted to listen to ad infinitum BUT it was interesting enough and these people were characters in the way that fiction makes characters who embody concepts which the story needed and that's probably just as artificial as anything else since - using myself as an example - whatever I was told when I was young I've since later found out was wrong incorrect lies and crap the stuff like 'statesmen never lie cops are your friends the priest will help you do this for your own good' and a million more things I've wrestled with mentally but never talked over and (as I recall) the last friendly conversation I had with my father was as I drove him home from a problem and all the way home he talked about the moon and everything about the moon and who'd been there already and who really made it there first and what the Russians (he called them Russians not Soviets) were planning to do and it all made little sense to me because I didn't view the moon in his terms - as if it was some form of political real estate that someone had to inhabit just to show who was boss - and the entire framework of that thinking and that thought was bogged down in nothingness and we never got anywhere with that one : but anyway I'd have rather talked with him IF I HAD TO about the beauty of its light and the odd regularity of its passage and waxings and wanings and what it all meant for those before us and the eons of time it was seen from the sea by sailors with nothing else to do or see.