Pravles Redneckoff 🇷🇺 Z

Thursday, September 12th, 2019, 13:00

Parkring, 1st district of Vienna

"This is very interesting and thought-provoking. But I cannot give you qualified feedback," Buba says. "I am not a Christian. And I'm not a particularly devout Muslim, either."

Buba thinks for a while.

They pass the Kursalon music hall, where in summer open-air concerts are performed. It is located on the edge of the City park.

"Have you discussed this with a Christian priest?" Buba says.

"No. And I'll tell you why," Lisa says. "That's a nice segue to how the elites fought Jesus."

"As you probably know, murdering Him didn't exactly work out," Lisa says. "If it was impossible to silence the Christians by force, they needed to do something differently. The Romans had resources and time. So, they pivoted to another method of de-fanging Christianity."

"At all times, there were ideologues in service of the elites," Lisa whispers. "Goebbels crafted the false Gospel for which the Europeans killed millions of Soviets. His Roman counter-part, Tertullian, was one of the people who turned true Christianity into a faggoty one."

"Why are you whispering?" Buba says.

"You told me to not mention Goebbels in public," Lisa says.

"Comparing Tertullian to Goebbels is…," Buba says.

He looks away.

"Even if you whisper it," Buba says. "Even to a Muslim."

Geez, I don't know what came over him, Lisa thinks. It's just a statement of fact.

"Anyway, this Tertullian fella declared that anyone who rejects the idea of Jesus rising from the dead is a heretic," Lisa says. "This was the start of, as I said, turning true Christianity into a faggoty one."

Buba facepalms.

"You need to work on your terminology," Buba says.

To their right is the Marriott hotel which, in a way, is the American counterpart of the Russian World War II monument.

Most of the buildings on the Ring street look like someone tried very hard to, simultaneously, give every building an individual touch, yet make sure together they blend into a harmonius whole. The fact that they succeeded at this makes them worthy of being considered World Heritage sites.

(Including the Russian monument, which was built around an already-existing fountain, and which blends relatively well into the overall layout of the former Stalin square.)

How European, how un-American!

And so, the colossus of the Mariott hotel was built in the mid-1980s. It's basically a big white and black cube. An attempt to put a piece of New York into the center of Vienna, to the greatest extent allowed by the building code. Its facade has one big arch and two smaller ones on the sides.

Meaning is in the eye of the beholder, and if the beholder is geopolitically minded, those circular elements will evoke associations with the phallus and testicles. A healthy, erect, 70-foot-tall phallus.

It is a perfect symbol of the eternal, mostly-consensual alliance of the American groom and his European bride.

"Why is that resurrection issue so important?" Buba says. "To me it looks like some theological thing that ordinary people don't care about."

"Only at a first glance," Lisa says. "Normal people don't rise from the dead. If you are forced to believe that Jesus rose from the dead, it means you have to believe that Jesus wasn't a human, but a God. This has enormous practical consequences."

"What consequences?" Buba says.

"I will give you a more modern example," Lisa says. "Right now, as we speak, the astronauts at the International Space Station are doing spacewalks. Now, Buba, does this amazing fact inspire you? Will you, as a result of these astronauts doing their spacewalks, do something differently in your life? Please answer honestly."

"I don't know how I could," Buba says. "I'm just a normal person. And those astronauts are like, uhm, better human beings. They are selected based on their physical fitness, and they gotta have better brains."

You managed to bewilder this old man, Lisa thinks. Don't feel bad. He did something worse to Timur back in the restaurant. So this is a little healthy, harmonious payback.

"And what do we call beings that can do things – like spacewalks – that you and I can't?" Lisa says.

"Gods?" Buba says.

They enter the city park. It's much smaller than Central Park in New York, but what it lacks in size, it makes up in cleanliness and safety.

To their left is a lawn with a big clock made out of flowers.

"Bingo," Lisa says. "If you believe that Jesus was a human, albeit a highly-talented one, you will believe that you can do whatever he did. Including developing himself from a carpenter to the founder of the world's largest religion."

They walk towards the golden statue of Johann Strauss, a popular musician of the 19th century comparable in impact to Elvis Presley.

"If, on the other hand, you believe that Jesus is God, Word turned flesh, you won't even attempt to do something meaningful with your life," Lisa says. "If most Christians started to believe that Jesus was God, then most of them wouldn't do anything. They wouldn't challenge the authorities. They wouldn't try to transform themselves into better and stronger human beings."

"That's an interesting take on Christianity," Buba says.

"There is another, specifically Eastern European reason where true Christianity can shine and the faggoty one underperforms," Lisa says.

"And what is it?" Buba says.

"Many Eastern Europeans, whether Russian or Ukrainian, feel like they are living on the outskirts of civilization," Lisa says. "It's a boring life in a boring place without any hope."

"I am not sure about that," Buba says.

"Maybe not in your generation," Lisa says. "But I've seen people who described St. Petersburg as a 'hole' and tons of Ukrainians who think the same of Kiev."

"I don't see why it is specific to Ukraine," Buba says. "I am pretty sure many people here in Vienna would consider New York or Paris a better place."

"People can't live without meaning," Lisa says. "There must be some hope that your life matters, that you do something valuable that other people can't do. In Eastern Europe, people feel they can't do anything like that, and faggoty Christianity works only as a palliative. When you want to kill yourself because nothing is happening in your crappy little village of Kiev or Moscow, you can go to a church and get calm there. Until the feeling of silent desperation comes back and the cycle starts anew."

"At least that's better than drugs or alcoholism," Buba says.

"No, it isn't," Lisa says. "It doesn't solve the root of the problem."

"How can your true Christianity solve this?" Buba says.

"True Christianity says – act like Jesus," Lisa says. "True Christianity says – Jesus used to live in a crappy village on the outskirts of civilization just like you. But he worked on himself and transformed himself from an illiterate carpenter to founder of a world religion."

"I am not sure that it was Jesus who built that religion," Buba says. "It could be the Romans who took his ideas, modified them, and then created that religion. There is a little contradiction there, I think."

"This is actually a good point," Lisa says. "But my argument still holds: When a person starts doing something with their lives, lot of good things happen. Doing something makes hopelessness go away, and with it the desire for chemical or spiritual opiates for the people. This is a way to salvation that works and that doesn't require blind faith."

Buba puts his hand on his chin.

"I never thought I could listen for so long to theological elaborations without falling asleep," Buba says. "I don't know what to say. Let me think."

He didn't reject the whole idea momentarily, Lisa thinks. Even he, the closest I have to a political mentor. That's a good sign.