At school I was sent before the head teacher when I suggested that the bible surely should be found in the fiction section of the library, maybe alongside the sci-fi shelf. Someone else was threatened with expulsion for asking the RE teacher if Jesus was born in Bethlehem how come he had a Mexican name? We laughed; we didn’t understand it but it wound the teacher up to bursting point and that was fun.
Look at it from a realistic point of view – IF someone could come back from being dead for 2000 years (and that’s a bit of a coincidence too!) then what is to say that this person isn’t fighting for freedom with the local native people? All those films of the 50s and 60s showing the people as being white Anglo-Saxons were really only for the convenience of American church-goers and American actors – and how many films would have been made had the main subject looked like a Palestinian? Reincarnation conspiracists might even consider that the jews were still trying to carry out what they have been accused of ever since…
And IF he did come back (snigger!) what would he think of the religion today? Lets face it – religious worship is now, amongst others, the preserve of the old and unsound (I once had a boss who, when I complained about the number of hours I was working, said he would prey for me – and he really, really meant it), fanatics who would blow themselves up for a cause or censor school science books, trying to prevent people having sex rather than assisting in fighting AIDS or birth control programs, arguing over gay bishops whilst raking in cash through cable networks, disputing financial settlements with children that were abused whilst in its care.
I don’t doubt that good works are being carried out somewhere in the world by the church – any church – but the church with which the majority of us come into contact through the media really needs to get its act together. The church of England is extremely wealthy but I have lost count of the number of appeals I have attended to raise funds to repair the spire or the roof, for example appealing to the congregation of eleven for £450,000 with the head man talking of encouraging people from the council estate outside to join in whilst we listened for our cars being broken into. The vicar lived in the biggest house on the estate, with a big wall around his garden and security cameras watching his two cars in his drive as well as the church; he could probably watch the burned out cars and boarded up windows of the houses of his flock from the comfort of his armchair.
I saw a TV show a long time ago – probably on Channel 4 – where they talked about contact with other life forms from other solar systems and I believe a priest then talked about converting the aliens to christianity and spreading the good word across the galaxy. Can you imagine the sheer stupidity of trying to instruct someone whose technological capabilities would far outweigh anything we could ever dream of, who has traveled many light years across a universe or two, trying to tell them you are unworthy until you are converted into our church and you should believe our beliefs just because a few millennia ago a man got nailed to a cross? As I recall one of the other guests said that if the visitors had any sense then they would have already shot their own priests before they left – which went down well. But the idea that some man with a gown and a cross would try to impose his beliefs in that situation still shocks me and all I can think of is it didn’t work for the indigenous people of the Americas so count me out.

Anyway.
In my past life I apparently was a female road, bridge, and dock builder in the 1600s in the north of England – ha ha! See http://users.pandora.be/gad/re/engels.html

Flood – ranting and raving about nothing in particular. Again.