An Essay pn Deification

@22 Sometimes people need to die to have their effect. King, Lincoln, .. their lives are like the fish that the natives of New England planted with the corn.

I doubt that King's effect was lost, sad as it may have been, because of his death. My parable above and at SJ on the deification is meant to be taken seriously. A lot of our culture comes form the deification of dead heroes.

The obvious question is this unique to Christendom? I do not think so, The death of a savior is central to a LOT of religions associated with the moon .. the religions with gods called "Baal, Dionysus, and Christ" are the most familiar.
In Judaism, the death of Moses on the wrong side of the Jordan, is an important part of validation oh his founding myth. The Shia use the death of Ali in the same way. Buddha's death is maybe the closest to that of Jesus.

So is MLK now a deity? Where does He rank with Jesus, Buddha, Ali? As the years have passed I have watched the transformation of the man MLK into something very god-like.
I actually feel this has been a good thing. AA religion, w/o the Jesus like story of MLK would be a lot weaker.

I wonder if some folks now pray to MLK? I guess that this is an advantage of the Roman Church. Once they have done their beatification process, a human can ascend the later and, literally become an object of worship.

I guess I am getting too literary but I recommend Achebe's little book .. Arrow of God, for an idea about how real a man created deity can become.

And me personally, well HA is so sarcastic, I maybe ought not to say these things here. Oerhoas a few F bombs and personal isnults would help?

BUT today is a kind of holy day for me so, yes I will admit to some sort on belief in a higher being. The closest I can come to belief in a Deity is my belief that there are many people better than I .. some famous, some not. The famous ones leave legends and writings .. not to mention podcasts!
I, without the authorization of any Pope or Sanhedrin, have decided to choose the god-like people I want to learn from.

The list, among the famous, is not long. FWIW my list of god-like humans, teachers, includes Alinsky, Chavez, Darwin, Hillel, Gandhi, Gautama, MLK, Jefferson, Maimonides, and Spinoza, I obviously know too little for this list to meran much to others and have left off many names, including living people I respect and others not famous enough to mean anything to most folks.

So, on MLK day, I declare this a a Yomtov, a good day. For me anyway! Perhaps I should found a religion?