Gazing Upon the Wonder of a -- What Th...?!

Have you heard of Orlando's Holy Land Experience? I gotta be honest, this thoroughly weirds me out. I can't quite put my finger on it. (Could it be that I just don't have enough fingers?!) There's just something strange about a bunch of modern white people acting the part of ancient jews. (Though, after all, we all know that Jesus was a lean, lanky white guy with long, luscious locks, right? It's utter heresy to imagine otherwise!) This is all about as pleasant as a mouth full of sugar. I'm trying to articulate my feelings, all the while feeling kinda stunned that I'd have to -- that there's actually a monstrosity in the world to cause to me to feel this way.

It seems like suddenly people have been listening to the clamour of the Christian right that have been chanting the same mantra same message for years: "We have money to spend! Give us Christianised entertainment!" The trouble is, I'm not so sure that that's actually a worthy goal. I have a rather large problem with the way the church continues to create walls between itself and the world. And things like Christianised theme parks merely add more bricks, making ourselves irrelevant to other faiths, cultures, even (dare I say) the truth of the gospel, all in the name of Christ. I know! Let's make artificial, surrogate experiences that hollow out the essence of our faith to a dry husk. Now we can have a profound religious pilgrimage, right from the comfort of the family gas-guzzler, while sucking on a fast food milkshake and watching who-knows-what on the onboard LCDs. Gee whiz, kids, now ain't this fun!

If this is either the church's status report or the forecast, I'm just a tad concerned! I can only imagine how much this has cost, and will continue to cost. And for what? Seriously, what? Oh yeah, but if you're going, can you take this little prayer I wrote to stuff into the replica wailing wall? They just gotta have one...