Crazy Tales about Religion and Worldviews

Since the middle of May I have been posting podcast readings of the chapters from my latest wacky idea (Okay not really the latest wacky idea, because I can come with a wacky idea every few seconds): Journeys from the Land of Jah.

These are tales of an adventurer taking a journey outside the village he was raised in to see the world, and discover what other people believe.  The goal of these tall tales is to poke fun at belief systems and present them in such absurd characterizations as to present our beliefs as they might be seen from the standpoint of the outsider who thinks we are crazy.

The Adventurer is every person, and the isolated village he comes from is the Land of Jah - the world of Christianity.  His travels take him into the land of Jah, and outside to far more divergent faith systems.  So far the Adventurer has traveled outside the Land of Jah into psuedo-Christian Gnosticism, Free Thought Atheism, and a land of New Age relativism.  Now he is beginning a journey back into the villages of Jah to meet Word of Faith, Revivalist, and Deliverance Ministry villages.

In the end I hope to pick on everybody equally - including myself (already done a little actually).  Baptismal views, reformed theology, and extreme views of grace will get equally made fun of with materialism, astrology, and waiting for flying saucers to come and take us away.

There is a goal in all these silly tales of religion and worldviews:  To help us see ourselves in the same light that we judge others in, and understand that perhaps our beliefs are at times as equally absurd to others as theirs are to us.

These podcasts are loose tellings from a first draft of the story.  They are presented in oral tradition storytelling form for this first release of this concept with hopes of getting feedback from friends.

After I have set out about twenty podcasts I will return to ask questions which come from each podcast, and hope to start dialogue about the absurdities presented.

If you have been listening in - thanks.  You can download the chapters on the iTunes store - simply type in my name Phil Wyman, and it should come up.  Or of course you can start listening here on this blog.