Benjamin asked this question in a recent comment:
Can I do the same thing with religion as with the Bible, and throw out the flat book approach–take what works, chuck the rest?
Which got me thinking.
To me it’s fascinating that this is even a question. By insisting “you cannot do this”, some conservative Christians have made it into an issue. If they hadn’t, would anyone even be asking whether they can use their own judgment about what applies to them out of a book that’s 2,000 years old? Read the rest of this entry »
07-09-2008 |
41 Comments »Benjamin (host of Off The Map’s Justice and Compassion blog) sent me an interesting article about Thomas Jefferson’s Bible.
From the article
Making good on a promise to a friend to summarize his views on Christianity, Thomas Jefferson set to work with scissors, snipping out every miracle and inconsistency he could find in the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Then, relying on a cut-and-paste technique, he reassembled the excerpts into what he believed was a more coherent narrative and pasted them onto blank paper — alongside translations in French, Greek and Latin.
In a letter sent from Monticello to John Adams in 1813, Jefferson said his “wee little book” of 46 pages was based on a lifetime of inquiry and reflection and contained “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.”
07-08-2008 |
20 Comments »by Benjamin Ady
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. (Matthew 10:34, King James Version)The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name. (Exodus 15:3, King James Version)
I recently learned of a really fascinating study about how God-sanctioned and/or Biblical violence affects aggression.
Last year psychologists at the U of Michigan, Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, and Brigham Young University did a study in which they gave a violent Old Testament passage (Judges 19-21) to a number of people to read. Some believed in God; some didn’t.
Half the participants in each study were told that the passage came from the Bible. The rest were told it came from an ancient scroll discovered at an archaeological dig. Furthermore, half the participants read a passage that had an extra verse in which God clearly sanctions the violence in the passage. Read the rest of this entry »
04-09-2008 |
18 Comments »Claudia asked the following questions in a comment on the Church Rater blog post Beth and Traci and the looks on their faces .
Beth suggested we bring Claudia’s questions over here. I thought that was a great idea. I think it’s neat when people who aren’t Christians ask friendly curious questions of Christians in order to understand Christians better.
I would love to hear more about your process of mulling/studying/struggling/etc. - are there guidelines you tend to follow, or patterns you recognize that lead you to read a given [Bible] passage in a certain way? Or do you trust to some instinct or divine guidance or feeling to let you know at what point God’s really speaking directly to you through the book?
And another question for the group at large - again, hoping this doesn’t come off as confrontational, it’s just really, really interesting: Can any work OTHER than the Bible be divinely inspired?
01-24-2008 |
8 Comments »I’ve seen a few blog entries about AJ Jacobs and his project in which he spent a year following every rule in the Bible.
Yesterday I listened to the Nick and Josh podcast with AJ. I enjoyed it. He’s very personable and it was interesting to hear what he learned from his year. It changed his life: he still does some of the things he started doing in his year of living Biblically.
12-13-2007 |
6 Comments »I’m reposting part of a comment by Steve S responding to me saying I read the Bible the same way I read Jane Eyre.
Do you read all books like you read Jane Eyre?
The New York Times?
A New Kind of Christian?
The Audacity of Hope?
Gallic Wars?
The Gospel of Judas?
Because I would have a completely different approach to Jane Eyre than I would to a newspaper article or a history textbook, or even a cookbook. Don’t the genres and the authorship play any role in your approach to a piece of writing?
I guess I don’t understand what you are saying…
Could you clarify how the approach is the same? Read the rest of this entry »
11-29-2007 |
18 Comments »This is my latest response in the newspaper dialog I’ve been having with Rev Lueking.
Dean, in your most recent response to me, you asked about sharing with me what you have learned from people who live in other countries. I would be happy to read about what they’ve taught you.
You also asked: “Would you or anybody else make up a God who comes to us in the form of a suffering servant, an itinerant rabbi who was nailed to a Roman cross for the sins of the world? Would you invent a risen Christ who turned traitorous disciples into trustworthy witnesses with Good News to spread, down through the centuries, even to us in our time?”
I think you were implying the answer is “No.” However, I can’t categorically say that no one would make up a God like that. People are creative, and the stories they make up are sometimes strange, unusual, moving and beautiful.
My own feelings about this story are deep and very mixed. I see beauty in the sacrificial love and humility in it. On the other hand, it’s very hard for me to accept that the only way God could rescue humanity would be to require the bloodshed and brutality of the cross. That part drives me to wonder: Is this really the best story that ever could be told, or is it only the best story anyone could tell 2,000 years ago? Which would mean it’s long overdue for an update, since people have learned many things in the last 2,000 years. I apologize if that sounds very irreverent. I don’t know how to stop asking these questions without giving up a part of what it means to me to be human. Read the rest of this entry »
03-15-2007 |
4 Comments »SezMe recently posted the following comment (on A New Progressive Alliance)
I’m a bit surprised that no Christian has objected to this sentence:
“We maintain that the character of a human being can only be defined and evaluated on the basis of one’s actions.”
This is not consistent with the Bible.
What do you think?
02-16-2007 |
40 Comments »Gregg Lamm recently e-mailed me this:
I’m wondering if a good discussion at CatE might be on how people have encountered the Bible in their lives … the good, the bad, and the ugly. Certainly the recent posts on the Native American experience with the Bible and how it was used “against them” shows a side of Christian evangelistic fervor (and a reading of and use of the Bible) that is so revolting I can hardly stomach it.
In what significant ways, good, bad or ugly, has encountering the Bible shaped your life?
These could be direct - from your own reading of it and application of it. Or indirect - how.other people highly influenced by the Bible have significantly affected, or do significantly affect, your life.
01-24-2007 |
28 Comments »JoAnn wrote the following comment on the first-time visitor’s page:
God and His teachings are absolute. To understand God one must be touched by His Holy Spirit to understand and believe as God would have us to believe. The bible states..”Lean not on your own understanding”…. and He will make your paths straight. There are no gray areas when it comes to God..
01-02-2007 |
15 Comments »