Once upon a time there were two guys.

Once upon a time there were two guys. Both these guys were farmers and lived in a place where there wasn’t a lot of water. One guy’s name was Bob and the other guy’s name was Sam. A lot of other people lived in this same area. About half of them thought that Bob was a cool guy and liked what he had to say about things. The other half of the people that lived in those parts thought Sam was wise and fair in the way he did things.

It came about that there was a great drought in the land. For 10 years everybody was having a very rough time of it because they all needed water to run their farms and even for them to be able to have some to drink. Three different times there had been studies done that showed how to fix the problem so that everyone would have enough water. All three studies agreed in what the problem was, how it came to be a problem, and what was needed to fix the problem. In short what all the people in the area needed to do was to work together.

Since Bob and Sam were the leaders in this part of the land they met together to see how things could be worked out. During their first meeting Bob and Sam didn’t get anything accomplished. Well, they did accomplish one thing; they got to call each other names. The 2nd time they got together, they didn’t call each other names, but they only participated in verbal jousting which became quite heated at times.

In the end Bob and Sam couldn’t work out their differences and almost everyone died. Those that survived moved away and today the place is a desolate waste land. This is too bad because all they had to do was to pool some of their resources, and some of their talents, to create a mutual, workable solution. What Bob and Sam fought about had nothing to do with what was needed to do with fixing the problem. What they fought over was something that Bob and Sam introduced from old squabbles that had gone on for years, mostly over their strongly held convictions on what happened to people when they die. During their meetings, no one on Bob’s side was convinced what Sam was saying was true, and likewise, no one on Sam’s side was convinced that Bob was saying was true.

Well that’s the story I had to tell today. And as far as Bob and Sam go, well at least they and all the people that followed them know the answer to, ‘What happens to you when you die.’