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[sikora]

Referring back to my post about the Magnificat of Mary.  Read in the Catholic version, it says that God will knock the rich around.  In the "Conservative" version, God will knock the miserly around.  I read that as the rich can be generous and dole out good stuff. Maybe they'd give to Second Harvest.    Figuratively speaking, would Bill Gates or Newt Gingritch wash my dirty feet as Jesus did the feet of his disciples during his last night on Earth? Or because I'm white, educated, and come from a modest but middle class back ground, would Rush, Newt, Bill et al be more likely to wash my feet than the feet of my Spanish speaking neighbors on one side?  Or the Sioux family on the other?  Or the Somali family across the street?  Or the gay couple on the corner?  Or the people who knock on my brother's church door and ask for a meal?  I don't think so. If they were told to wash someone's feet, they'd hire someone else to do it, at an economically reasonable rate.

Yeah, this is an issue for me.  When you look really homelessness in the face, when you thank a God you are not even sure exists that you don't have children dependent on you, you want a Jesus who is not supply side.

Schafly, leave my Jesus alone.

[anthroid]

Horrifying decision by idiots, but the liberals set the agenda of tailor-made agenda-driven bible revisions years ago.  It is hard for them to complain when some conservatives follow their lead.

There is a major difference between conservative Christians tampering with the Bible and liberals tampering with it.  Liberals don't believe it is THE Word of God; conservatives do.

Jesus had many harsh words for hypocrites.

Your point is unclear.  Please explain.

Sorry.  The point is, it makes sense to criticize any human text.  But you can't make the argument that a text is divine--and thus not to be tampered with--and then proceed to tamper with it.

Gotcha.  You rock.

[grasshopper]

Horrifying decision by idiots, but the liberals set the agenda of tailor-made agenda-driven bible revisions years ago.  It is hard for them to complain when some conservatives follow their lead.

There is a major difference between conservative Christians tampering with the Bible and liberals tampering with it.  Liberals don't believe it is THE Word of God; conservatives do.

Jesus had many harsh words for hypocrites.

Your point is unclear.  Please explain.

Sorry.  The point is, it makes sense to criticize any human text.  But you can't make the argument that a text is divine--and thus not to be tampered with--and then proceed to tamper with it.

Ah, but you can make the argument that the text is divine -- and should be tampered with.

[mdwlark]

Horrifying decision by idiots, but the liberals set the agenda of tailor-made agenda-driven bible revisions years ago.  It is hard for them to complain when some conservatives follow their lead.

There is a major difference between conservative Christians tampering with the Bible and liberals tampering with it.  Liberals don't believe it is THE Word of God; conservatives do.

Jesus had many harsh words for hypocrites.

Your point is unclear.  Please explain.

Sorry.  The point is, it makes sense to criticize any human text.  But you can't make the argument that a text is divine--and thus not to be tampered with--and then proceed to tamper with it.

Ah, but you can make the argument that the text is divine -- and should be tampered with.

Help me out with this one.  I'm not getting it. 

[grasshopper]

I can faithfully believe that the text is indeed the inspired word of God, but that its use and application is contextual, and therefore it needs to be translated and interpreted, not to find the "true" meaning, but to find the most useful, pertinent, and righteous meaning.

Of course, at that point, we stop debating about what is "true", and begin knocking each other about over what is useful, pertinent, and righteous. 

[mdwlark]

I can faithfully believe that the text is indeed the inspired word of God, but that its use and application is contextual, and therefore it needs to be translated and interpreted, not to find the "true" meaning, but to find the most useful, pertinent, and righteous meaning.

Of course, at that point, we stop debating about what is "true", and begin knocking each other about over what is useful, pertinent, and righteous. 

And of course, God doesn't understand context. Mr. Schafly needs to help him out.

[post_functional]

Horrifying decision by idiots, but the liberals set the agenda of tailor-made agenda-driven bible revisions years ago.  It is hard for them to complain when some conservatives follow their lead.

You mean the bible had remained completely unchanged and unrevised until modern-day liberals started monkeying around with it?  Golly!

[grasshopper]

I can faithfully believe that the text is indeed the inspired word of God, but that its use and application is contextual, and therefore it needs to be translated and interpreted, not to find the "true" meaning, but to find the most useful, pertinent, and righteous meaning.

Of course, at that point, we stop debating about what is "true", and begin knocking each other about over what is useful, pertinent, and righteous.  

And of course, God doesn't understand context. Mr. Schafly needs to help him out.

God understanding context? What are you on about? God doesn't need to understand "context." God is transcends time and space. God is hyper-contextual. God sees context, and is all like "pfft. Idiots with their time and space requirements."

But, see, contextualization is exactly what these yahoos are doing. Which is fine. You can believe that the Bible is the (inspired) word of God and still muck around with the text.

The problem isn't that he's mucking around with the text. The problem is that he clearly has no idea what is useful, pertinent, and righteous, since it so flagrantly opposes what I think is useful, pertinent, and righteous. And obviously, I'm right. Right?

[grasshopper]

The problem isn't that he's mucking around with the text. The problem is that he clearly has no idea what is useful, pertinent, and righteous, since it so flagrantly opposes what I think is useful, pertinent, and righteous. And obviously, I'm right. Right?

Let me amend this to add that the problem is that he has no idea what is useful, pertinent, and righteous. And also that he has absolutely no clue what the hell he's doing.

[qrypt]

The problem isn't that he's mucking around with the text. The problem is that he clearly has no idea what is useful, pertinent, and righteous, since it so flagrantly opposes what I think is useful, pertinent, and righteous. And obviously, I'm right. Right?

Let me amend this to add that the problem is that he has no idea what is useful, pertinent, and righteous. And also that he has absolutely no clue what the hell he's doing.

You're talking about God here, aren't you...

[grasshopper]

The problem isn't that he's mucking around with the text. The problem is that he clearly has no idea what is useful, pertinent, and righteous, since it so flagrantly opposes what I think is useful, pertinent, and righteous. And obviously, I'm right. Right?

Let me amend this to add that the problem is that he has no idea what is useful, pertinent, and righteous. And also that he has absolutely no clue what the hell he's doing.

You're talking about God here, aren't you...

Ha!

That's good.

[francie_]

I can faithfully believe that the text is indeed the inspired word of God, but that its use and application is contextual, and therefore it needs to be translated and interpreted, not to find the "true" meaning, but to find the most useful, pertinent, and righteous meaning.

I very much agree with this.  My own way of thinking about the Bible is that is not so much "true" but "truthful", as in, full of truth in the larger sense: the truth of the human condition and of the path to redemption.

And here's a little video I like to show my classes about conservation and imaging technologies.  It also illustrates how Biblical scholarship is still an evolving process as old texts are discovered and deciphered.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3318/04.html

Schafly's initiative is clearly a ploy to publicize his website.  I wonder how he's dealing with the whole "render unto Caesar" episode.  Makes Jesus seem like a tax-and-spend liberal, IMO.

[abuflletcher]

And here's a little video I like to show my classes about conservation and imaging technologies.  It also illustrates how Biblical scholarship is still an evolving process as old texts are discovered and deciphered.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3318/04.html

While fascinating to watch, I can't help, on some level, being horrified by the vast waste of human intelligence over the centuries.  Isn't the ultimate message here that someone nearly 2000 years ago thought all this bible stuff was rubbish?

[abuflletcher]

But then I am thankful for this:

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/egypt/dailylife/dailylife.html

So a guess rummaging through garbage tips is worthwhile. 

[t_r_b]

While fascinating to watch, I can't help, on some level, being horrified by the vast waste of human intelligence over the centuries.  Isn't the ultimate message here that someone nearly 2000 years ago thought all this bible stuff was rubbish?

Someone was probably fed up with all the piles of papyrus their eccentric family member kept piled around the house. It's just like when my mother threw out the original edition Dungeons & Dragons books sitting in my closet. Some day, an archaeologist will stumble upon them while excavating a late twentieth-century landfill and be appalled by our culture's callous disregard for its priceless treasures.