Wed 28 Jun 2006
Props To My Man Samson (or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the Bible)
Posted by william under Social Musing , Work
Recently, at work, I was participating in water-cooler type conversation when I learned something rather shocking. Some one had commented that I had just cut my beard short. These trimmings are always overdue so when I do get around to them I get a little crazy. My beard is, for the time being, significantly less fuzzy than usual. I replied to my co-worker that, yes, I had cut my beard very short and that I had lost all of my superhuman strength as soon as my chin hairs hit the sink.
Blink.
There were four persons in the room between the ages of 21-29 and none of them could pick up what I had just put down. I should have said, “ya I have Ryker beard now”. That they would have got but all I got were crickets.
Shocked (as referenced above) I explained, in brief that this guy in the bible named Samson was wicked strong and he would wrestle lions and then he met with this dame Dalila. He said his strength was due to his doo and so she went and truncated his fortitude, follicle by follicle. Amen.
No one had heard the story before. No one had heard of Samson at all. Strong like Samson? Is that supposed to mean something? Nope.
Now I may have it wrong but I thought that, like Noah and the Ark, the Samson story transcended the religious myths and had made it into the cultural ones. Noah they got.
Hmmm. Interesting.
Dude, I LOVE this post - even if I do require an encyclopedia of oblique cultural references to decode it. (Crickets, yo.) Get yer woman on that post-rating thing so that I can give you four stars. Or e-props. Or whatever.
This, as you will no doubt roll your eyes at, is an observation that Christians have been weeping and gnashing their teeth at ever since the scopes monkey trial made it possible to teach science in schools. “Oh, the disintegration of our society!” they wail. “Oh, but our children don’t know what the bible is! Whatever will we do?” But the more cunning among us scratch our whiskers (for we still have our powers), and think, “hmmm… this might make things easier for us. Less of that baggage thing, more of the sort of tabula rasa that you get in post-communist countries.” Or not. But there are those among us (possibly just me) who wonder if this might just signal the end of the bloated, privileged, power-hungry Church and the emergence of something a little more humble. A little less obnoxious. A little more “lamb” and a little less “lion.”
[...] - willbop: Props to my man Samson, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned To Love the Bible [...]
Obviously, it’s time for Hollywood to take another crack at it. Viggo Morensen as Samson. Penolope Cruz as Delilah. Will Farrell providing comic relief as the bumbling barber.
I know the Samson story, though maybe only because I have this “Picture Bible”, uh, graphic novel that my stepmom bought me when I was a kid, and I read it on weekends when I was at my dad’s house, and I must’ve read it a whole bunch of times.
I figure this means my idea of what really happened in the Bible is pretty screwed, not to mention edited for children.