I took Jess on a small date to L.A. on Saturday night. The plan was to get dinner, a light dessert, and see a play. We did the first two, then drove around downtown for a while, finally ending up at the playhouse.

It was called "Eve's Rapture" - I'll allow the skepticism to brew within you now for a few seconds . . .

As an aside, one must go into a play like this already expecting mockery, or at least apathy toward the Faith, as A) the playhouse is in a major metropolitan city, and B) it carries a title which, in Christian circles, would be considered taboo. But if you're anything like me, a title like "Eve's Rapture" at a playhouse in Los Angeles breathes curiousity into my bones, and, well, I couldn't resist. I resolved, "Come on, how bad [meaning sacreligious] could this play really be?"

Gulch.

It was bad. It far exceeded my already low expectations. I'll spare you the details so long as you understand that the story was essentially this: Satan is seen with pity as one whom God banished to Hell void of justice; Adam and Eve were sissy-la-la, fantasy-engulfed, idiots who over-emphasized the fact that they should just be quiet because, afterall, "It's God's way"; Satan seduces (sexually) Eve; Eve rebels against God and Adam; Adam stays pious to God and is told to neither love nor hate life; Eve is liberated and becomes the supreme matriarch, eventually shooting God, Adam, and all who oppose her, and then shoots herself (because Satan, in seducing her, impregnates her, and Satan is later mentioned to be God).

I wanted to throw-up, naturally. It both sickened and saddened me. The playwrite has probably had so many horrible examples of Christianity gallavant through his life that it caused him to react, albeit in his art, by creating a new, Eden-revisited story.

All low-blows and suckerpunches aside, it was a great play, though I probably felt it was good for a different reason than other audience members did. I could see the annoyance and probable anger toward naive, and passionately ignorant Christians that the playwrite seemed to have. As I have told some of you, if I could pigeonhole this writer's greatest problem with God/Christians from one line of his play it would be this:
ADAM says to the Angel Michael, after hearing that EVE had left him and after seeing all the destruction that sin had caused: "Angel Michael, call me ignorant, but isn't it un-fair that all of humanity must suffer because of one sin? Isn't this injustice?"

I heard the playwrite loud and clear - people are inherently good, however, Christians claim that all are plagued with this "original" sin and therefore need something else to make them truly free. In his play the heroine was Eve, who succumbed her "wifely" oppression in the garden and even "killed" God. She continued saying, "I will fight for the real truth."

The real truth, to the playwrite, is actually understanding that God does not exist and that we must kill off this "God" figure if we are ever going to be truly free. If we don't we will forever be held down, oppressed, and all-in-all kept from living any kind of satisfying life.

So I am writing this to get your thoughts. Are we oppressed and kept from living the "true" life? If we believe in God, then are we cutting ourselves short of what life really has to offer?