Don't be so quick to judge others"It seems there is always someone willing to use Bible quotes to tear someone down and present themselves as morally superior.
"These Bible thumpers always seem to miss the quotes that tell us it is not our place to judge. They skip over where Jesus told his followers to 'love one another as I have loved you.' Our Bible had about 45 human authors over about 1,500 years.
Door-to-door religious fruitcakes.
Glee!I had a couple of missionary-types from the local Baptist church knock on my door today. Sadly, I was unaware what they were until I opened it. I did, however, play with their brains for a little bit until they started trying to get into creation science nonsense, at which point I concluded that intellectual combat with unarmed individuals really wasn't much fun. It's a little bit like talking to a dumbed-down version of Eliza.
I don't understand missionaries. I really don't. I mean, okay, you go ahead and believe what you like. But please keep your Jesus off of my p****, okay? I've ranted before about how religion is a great playground for the stupid. Maybe that's the answer. But it seems odd that this particular brand of stupidity so often feels a burning desire to reach out and smear itself on others.
It isn't just Christians who engage in utterly loopy behaviour in the pursuit of their faith, but they're the only ones I've encountered who make such a mockery of themselves. Sure, lots of folks go around killing other folks because they believe in the wrong god - Muslim Jihad is the most applicable comparison to the Christian Inquisition that pops into my head at the moment. All groups and all religions have a pretty significant psycho segment. But only Christians seem to manage the sheer zen-like silly arrogance required to go door-to-door selling Jesus like Girl Scout Cookies.
Mahatma Gandhi once remarked, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
Most Bible-thumpers don't seem very Christian. Which is interesting. When I think of "Christian," I tend to think of, oh, the stuff Jesus said. Turn the other cheek. Love thy neighbour. The Sermon on the Mount. All that stuff. And really, that's a darned good perspective on things and a respectable lifestyle. It's a pity few self-proclaimed Christians follow it.
My reading of the Bible tells me that Jesus would have been appalled at the idea of anyone killing someone else in his name. I'm equally sure Jesus would have taken a great deal of offence at being hawked by a bunch of brain-damaged, self-righteous, unthinking fools who clearly didn't get the point of anything he was trying to say.
Not that that seems to stop anyone from doing either - and most of them will insist (as today's assclowns did) that they've read the Bible from cover to cover, when, in fact, they have apparently done nothing of the sort.
But all of this raises one rather interesting question in my mind - what would life in the United States be like if we had ever had a President who was truly a Christian? How would life be different if there was a single genuine Christian in the White House today?
...something to think about, isn't it?
Bible Thumpers
This Is Your Proselytizer SpeakingThese days most people are looking overseas and worrying about Muslims. Not me, because I'm worried about the religious fanatics right here at home. I don't care if you believe in god or even if you believe the Bible is literally the word of god. Believe whatever you like. Unfortunately, in the last 20 years, religious fanatics have come to believe their faith entitles them -- even requires them -- to interfere in everyone else's life. Isn't it enough that we non-believers are going to hell (you say)? Must we have hell-on-earth in the company of bible thumpers, the painfully self-righteous and sanctimonious? These Christian Radicals are on jihad, claiming the one true way and prepared to kill for their faith (something I can't see Jesus approving).
When Chairman Mao lived, millions carried his Little Red Book. There wasn't the tiniest doubt that it contained all the Truth and Wisdom in the world. I know devout bible-literalists will blanch at the comparison. But, consider, the followers of Mao would be just as shocked. So it is with fanatics.
Increasingly, we are being assaulted and threatened by these Born-again Believers who believe American is ''a Christian nation.'' Some of their thoughtless intrusions are almost laughable, but something worse is in the works. Every day, the most radical and dangerously devout, including the President, are working to limit our freedom: our freedom to believe what we want to believe (including nothing); our freedom to choose, not just whether to have children but who to love and marry; our freedom from state-sponsored religion (a form of dictatorship); our freedom to protest.
Am I repudiating all who sincerely believe in god? No. By all means, live your life in loving compassion and peace; if it takes a god to inspire (or threaten) you, so be it. Believe what you will, share your beliefs with your congregation. Work to change the world, through your own good example. But remember, most of us have different views and all of us want freedom from oppression, no matter how well intended.
Baby Bible Thumpers
All too often on the school bus, I found myself surrounded by baby Bible thumpers intent on interrogating me. The usual procedure was to shower me with incessant and overlapping questions which I attempted to answer as best as I could. No matter how good my answers were, they were never satisfactory. Of course, these children of God weren't seeking enlightenment; the whole point of the exercise was to socially pressure me out of my heresy. When this failed, they resorted to the hellfire-and-brimstone sermon they had learned in Sunday school in an attempt to frighten me out of my heterodoxy.
As a result, I probably learned Revelation (666, Antichrist, Rapture, Armageddon, etc.) better than most Christians. When I mistakenly rejected Biblical supremacy, I had the book literally slapped into my head by good Baptist children who had grown frustrated with my abject stupidity which prevented me from realizing that the Bible proved them right and me wrong. Of course, physical assault proved to be an equally effective argument.Bible Thumpers
While it may be a good satire against the practices of obnoxious American Fundos, it doesn't say much one way or the other about religion. Except by implication. It suggests that all religion (Christianity in particular) is comparable to the raving of the Fundo who hassles you on the bus. I suppose it's a good thing that the pamphlet was written, though. It shows that anti-religious bigots can be just as idiotic as the worst Fundos on their worst days.
The problem of faith is difficult, there's no question. In The Violent Bear It Away, Flannery O'Connor tackles the issue of religion becoming the epicentre of evil. The whole world of the book is permeated with religious psychosis. Rather than confront themselves, the novel's protagonist Tarwater, caught up in a tide of inherited magical-religious obsessions, collapses into murder and insanity.
Hank's pathetic dupes in "Kissing Hank's Ass" make the same mistake as did Tarwater. Rather than ask questions of faith, they took it as a mystical system to replace critical thinking [1] and their own obligations as free human beings. This is religious only in the trappings. In my opinion, "put not your trust in princes..." applies to books too.
Talking about God is not necessarily a religious thing to do. Don't convince yourself that a similarity in subject is equivalent to a similarity in content; most people who are religious do something more meaningful about it than going door to door and falling down in auto-induced hallucinations.
[1] Smart-ass rejoinders along the lines of "I thought that was what religion was!!! LOOOOL!!!" will be ignored.
Is the Bible God's Word?
Authors, avail yourself of the "Collins'" R.S.V. 'with' its annotations). What have Christian scholars to say about the "Book of Isaiah?" They say: "MAINLY CREDITED TO ISAIAH. PARTS MAY HAVE BEEN WRITTEN BY OTHERS." In view of the confessions of Bible scholars, we will not take poor Isaiah to task. Can we then nail this plagiarism on the door of God? What blasphemy! Professor Cumptsy confirmed at question time, at the end of the aforementioned symposium that the "Christians do not believe in a verbal inspiration of the Bible." So God Almighty had not absent-mindedly dictated the same tale twice! Human hands, all too human, had played havoc with this so-called Word of God - the Bible. Yet, Bible-thumpers will insist that "every word, comma and full stop of the Bible is God's Word!"
About bible thumpers
Know how you feel, I've got all these church goers knocking on my door all hours of the night. Bother the hell of me. I started to have fun though I invite them in for pizza with Satan. I some times just say I am a Satanist and slam the door. One time I came to the door with a book of shadows and threw it at them... ok that was cruel but it was 4:00 am. Don't get me wrong I have no problems with the bibles peaceful teachings but when it ruins my peaceful sleep and semi peaceful life then its time to make a stand.
Amen brother!!
There is quite a furor going on in the State of Alabama today. A federal court has ruled that a Christian religious monument should be removed from the lobby of a State courthouse. The conservative religious right has come out demonstrating en masse to have a monument retained. I wonder how the conservatives would react if the monument had been Buddhist?? They would probably be demonstrating against the monument rather than for it!
This entire episode reinforces my belief in the doctrine of strict separation of church and state in our constitution.
The backward red-necked bible thumpers should never be allowed to force their views on the enlightened secularists!!!........Amen brother!!
To all the "bible thumpers" out there...
There is a connection between mild changes in brain chemistry and prayer. These changes can have a MILD effect on pain perception. Attitude/mood/positive thinking/prayer/laughter or a belief system are all found to evoke the exact same biochemical changes in synaptic activity in both the brain and peripheral axons. But it is important to note that these biochemical changes are minor at best and cannot effect the course of most organic disease process. Although there is some evidence to suggest that recovery has actually occurred due to these activities (see "The Power of Positive Thinking" and "Laughter is Best Medicine" and "The Prayer Cure"). Laughter and prayer are found to do the same thing biochemically, and again, can be of some minor benefit as far as coping goes. So a good commune with god or a Seinfeld re-run are equal as far as head pain and our human being is concerned.
Prayer is a ritualistic activity and we know that humans can find solace in such activities. But remember, god was created in MANS image NOT the other way around. Our species is the result of countless millennia of natural selection. The ligament in our hips are twisted 90 degrees (evidence that we were quadrupeds in the past) and we have rudimentary tails (coxes bone). In fact, I could fill many pages with all the rudimentary structures in our bodies that uneqivicabaly prove beyond the shadow of doubt that we are the result of an evolutionary process. We started as one cell thanks to some friction in our atmosphere billions of years ago.
They conceal this kind of information in books but if you try hard enough you can find it. We were not created by any god so therefore it is ludicrous to believe that divine intervention could even exist, let alone alter the course of a purely organic phenomenon! There are 3 trillion cells in our bodies and every single one is totally dedicated to our well-being (homeostasis). And the smallest cell within us is more sophisticated that the most complicated laboratory or machine that man has ever conceptualized. If we as humans recover it is because our cells have dictated so, and if we suffer the malady of cancer it is for the same reason.
There is absolutely no divine being deciding our fates for us. In fact, I am convinced that most of man's infirmity is the result of man, our environment and lifestyles. The 3 leading causes of death in our country is heart disease, cancer and stroke. All of these are largely man made, just like god.
I do pray. I believe that prayer helps me focus on hope and the more moral side of life. God to me simply is a concept that encapsulates being kind, hopeful, loving, caring and moral. But I am not foolish enough to believe that god has a plan for me or anyone else. Nor do I ask him/her for answers. I definitely wouldn't be so pitiful as to ask the lord to heal my head. I simply pray that I can take the most responsible road as far as my lifestyle goes to allow my body the best opportunity to heal. People that I have known that have been pious all their lives that have turned to their god in their time of serious illness have ALL died an untimely death as a result of their diseases.
"Preaching luminary tell pastors to oppose "Bible-bashers, Bible-thumpers"
By Alexa Smith
02 Jun 2000MONTREAT, N.C. - It was, interestingly enough, a reserved, feminist Hebrew Bible exegete who brought the house down – and brought about half of the 1,000 people sitting in a packed Anderson Auditorium at the Montreat Conference Centre to their feet.
After wending her way through the stories of Ruth and Jacob and Moses, scholar Phyllis Trible told participants in "Reclaiming the Text: A Preacher's Conference," that reclaiming the text has much to do with loving the book's complexities despite its ambiguities. "Do not abandon the Bible to the Bible-bashers and the Bible-thumpers," said Trible, the emeriti exegete from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. "Take back the text. Read it closely; for in the details both God and the devil dwell. Reclaim the Bible. Do not let go of it until it blesses you. But remember, you may be changed in ways that are not always compatible with your own desires ... Jacob limped.
"In reclaiming the text, we are called to make it work for blessing and not for cursing, so that we and our descendants – indeed, so that all the humanity of the Earth - may live."
The applause went on and on.
Not because what she said was comfortable. Trible took swipes at both the political left and the political right for often "naive" and "iron-clad" styles of Biblical interpretation. She decried how the book is used to fuel the culture wars that have "Bible-thumpers and Bible-bashers lining up" ... to use its texts "against each other," whether the issue of the moment is abortion or tobacco or homosexuality - while failing to explore the ambiguities and multiple meanings that may be read into centuries-old texts, depending, as she emphasized, on the context. "Those of us who refuse to join the thumpers or the bashers are called upon to engage the text in more excellent ways ... to make the Bible work for good and not for evil, for blessing and not for curse," Trible said. She allowed that that may be difficult, but those who love the book have "a never-ending responsibility to choose rightly."
Bible-thumpers, Jesus freaks misguided
by Jesse Bohrer-Clancy."What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet"
-- William Shakespeare, Romeo and JulietA couple of weeks ago I was a perusing through this esteemed campus newspaper of ours when I stumbled across a little tidbit from the AP wire. It appears that a group of students at East High School in Salt Lake City tried to form a school club called the Gay-Straight Alliance. It was a support group for students who were struggling with their sexual identity. The Salt Lake City School Board got wind of this, then proceeded to get their high-and-mighty panties all in a snit and squashed it. In the process they also ended up banning all other clubs within the school district that were not academic due to a federal law and U.S. Supreme Court decision which would allow the district to either allow all extracurricular clubs or simply none at all. So rather than let a couple of concerned kids form a support group, the school board axed everything.
Great. Now not only will these kids have gay-bashers after them, all of the other students will use them as scapegoats as well -- for terminating all the district's social clubs. It's rather funny, however, if you consider that the district will allow the formation of a "Beef Club" where members sit around eating steaks and burgers and go to monster truck rallies, but not a support group for a bunch of kids who probably need one. Ah yes, Salt Lake City, home of the Mormon Tabernacle and Beavis and Butthead. I do believe that it was Samuel Clemens who once said that when God created the idiot, he made the school board as practice.
But perhaps we should examine this a wee bit closer. Where does this anti-gay sentiment come from? Not enough iron in the diet? Too much carbon monoxide from the monster truck rallies? Bad interpretations of the Bible. Oops, now I've done it. I'll probably get spew from every Jesus freak on campus for what I blunder into next.
If you ever take the time to listen to someone condemn homosexuality, they will invariably start off with the Bible. So I swiped my roommate's copy and went a-perusing. I came across the Book of Leviticus, which details, among other things, the proper procedures for various types of sacrificial offerings, purification after childbirth, what and what not to eat, rituals to get rid of disease and mildew, and a detailed account of what are acceptable sexual relations and practices. And the Bible-thumpers are quite right: Leviticus 18:22 clearly states "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable." The rest of that particular section then goes on to deal with incest and adultery, but just about every other human culture also has taboos against incest.
Yet there are those who would say that it would be unfair and improper of me to take that particular passage out of context. And they would be absolutely right, so here's some other little goodies I dug up out of the Book of Leviticus. It is a sin to do the following things: to plant your field with two kinds of seed (Lev 19:19), to wear clothing woven of two different materials (Lev 19:19), cutting the hair at the sides of your head or trimming your beard (Lev 19:27), to get a tattoo (Lev 19:28), or to have sex with a woman during her period (Lev 18:19) along with many other little interesting tidbits. Damn, it looks like we're all gonna burn.
It fascinates me how the moral majority is able to pick and choose just what sins they would like to enforce. Perhaps the next OCA initiative will not only condemn homosexuality, but those damn cotton-polyester leisure suits as well. But then they'll spout out that all of those other sins are all out-dated and aren't really applicable. Oh really? Well, I feel so much better already knowing that someone else has the best interests of my morality in mind.
When you really get down to brass tacks, there's two things that just piss me off about this whole situation. The first is that there are so many more things that "good God-fearin' folk" should be worrying about. Such as going out of our way to help our fellow man. And I'm not talking about the Mormon missionaries who go out of their way to give out stacks of the Book of Mormon. I'm talking about the nuns from the jungles of Africa to the American inner cities who care for the sick and the dying. People who actually try to do some good in the name of God.
What really gnaws at me is the fact that someone would have the audacity to tell me who I can and can't love. Being gay isn't about just preferring someone of the same sex. It's about love, just like it is for everyone else. We are all human and we all have the same emotions. We all have the same capacities for joy, sadness, and love. The Bible-thumpers then try to get all warm and fuzzy by saying love the sinner but hate the sin. But what they just don't get is that being in love is not a sin, nor is the expression of it.
Christian morality be damned, love is the greatest power of all, history will prove that. Love is the highest moral choice of all.
Jesse Bohrer-Clancy, a senior majoring in biochemistry, is a columnist for the Emerald.
The Two-Edged Sword
Charles MooreEver meet a Bible-thumper? I have. In my first encounter, I was late getting to my history class and noticed a friend, also late, being cornered by a real “Jesus freak.” It looked as if he was being hit over the head with a Bible, and as I approached closer that was exactly what was happening.
“Don’t you know that the Bible says you have to be born again!” Thump. “Jesus said, ‘I am the Way, the Truth, the Life.’” Thump, Thump. One verse after another spewed forth. I got my first Bible lesson ever. I also got my first taste of what a terrible weapon the Bible can be when it is misused.
I love the Bible, but Bible-thumpers make me mad. I’ve met far too many Bible-toting Christians who know chapter and verse but treat the Bible as if it were a religious hobbyhorse, riding on it but not living by it.
One of the worst sins today is bibliolatry: revering the Bible as if it were a paper Pope. Fundamentalists or not, too many Christians revere the Bible more than the author of it.
Recently a good friend of mine, a youth worker, along with her pastor, were getting beat up by a contentious group in their church all because they were not “biblical enough.” Though the youth group was flourishing and lives were being turned around not enough was being done to teach them “the basics.”
So with Bible in hand, these zealots launched a foray of “e-missives” on the Internet and managed to stir up quite an uproar. My friends kept quiet, only replying to those who came directly to them. But the Bible-vanguard chose the tactic of subversion, ignoring Jesus’ command to speak directly in love (Matthew 18:15) as well as his prayer to seek unity (John 17: 20-23). In the name of being “biblical,” these self-appointed Inquisitors almost managed to rip apart my friend’s church.
If Bible-thumping is scary so is its twin opposite: Bible-bashing. Bible-bashers also take the Bible into their own hands. Though less inclined to beat people up with it, they spend their efforts cutting and splicing, dissecting and deconstructing it. According to these folks, the Bible needs to be liberated from an encrusted, archaic shell of cultural prejudice, unscientific presuppositions, and patriarchal, homophobic biases. Utilizing the latest historical-critical methods, they see the Bible as little more than a document, albeit a useful one, which is errant and relative. For them, the Bible may be a guiding light, but not a unique authority. It must be judged by norms deemed relevant today.
Such “liberated” Christians, no longer bound by outmoded doctrines or tradition, assert new interpretations: Paul was gay, Mary a prostitute, Jesus a wondering cynic or mystic, not unlike other Mediterranean gurus of his day. Not only this, these Christian revisionists claim that both the Gospel writers and Jesus himself were mistaken—at least the Jesus as recorded by bigoted, Jewish males who inadvertently distorted his message. Firing off their own barrage of arguments, they tell us that the Bible’s message, along with its meaning, is essentially one that we give to it. Any “word” we hear in it must ring true to our own experience.
While engaged in doctoral studies, I often heard budding scholars poke fun at the Bible. “How could Jesus speak to a deaf and dumb spirit and then the spirit talk back to him?” or, “Paul must have been schizoid: he tells women to shut up when in church on the one hand and then commends them for preaching the gospel while at his side.” I found such talk not only offensive, but bewildering. Did these theological upstarts know the context of Jesus’ or Paul’s words? Rarely. Often they hardly even knew where they could be found.
The basis on which we come to the Bible or to Jesus is absolutely critical. If we come to the Bible with our own agendas or with norms received elsewhere (be it science or philosophy or politics or sociology), then neither the Bible nor Jesus possesses authority. They are held captive by our experience, our logic, and our value-schemes. However, if we come to the Bible with the readiness to have our assumptions and norms transformed (and yes, “judged”), then Christ can freely direct our lives. Jesus and his kingdom, not doctrine, or holiness, or justice, or equality, or peace, or inclusion, or any other ideal must set our agenda.
In the Bible, God’s reveals himself. God’s revelation is an event where Christ addresses, encounters, redeems, and transforms us. It is not a repository of “truths” and “facts” necessary for us to formulate disputable doctrines and detailed theologies. God’s Word is “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword” (Heb. 4:12-13), a power able to transform and equip us (2 Timothy 3:15-17). It is not something to analyze and argue over, but to respond to with our hearts and wills.
While on the road to Emmaus, after his resurrection, Jesus broke bread with his disciples. Their eyes were finally opened. Amazed, they asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” When Jesus appeared to them again, “he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24). Only when the living Jesus speaks to us can our hearts and minds be opened to the Truth. Jesus alone is the key to the Bible—for everything that took place prior to his coming pointed to him, and all that followed afterward pointed back to him.
Perhaps this is why as far as we know Jesus never wrote a thing, with the exception of scribbling something in the sand that would soon be erased (John 8:8). True, Jesus proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom. He had something important to say. Yet his message was not a “teaching,” but the news that God is on the march, remaking and realigning our twisted worlds into life-giving deeds of divine mercy and justice. This is why God sent us his Word in person. Through his very life, Jesus demonstrated the presence of God’s rulership in the world. And it was this Word, this deed, which wrote itself first and foremost on the personalities of his disciples, who through the Holy Spirit became bearers of God’s new thing.
The apostle Paul, often the brunt of criticism and misunderstanding, boasted not in his knowledge of the Scriptures, but in knowing Christ, “and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). He did not worry whether his churches were "biblical” or “relevant,” but whether they were faithful, showing themselves to be "letters from Christ...written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts" (2 Cor. 3: 1-3).
What Bible-thumpers and Bible-bashers alike fail to realize is that the Scriptures retell God’s history—a story that beckons us to obedience and change. The Bible, therefore, must not be a sounding board for our ideas, nor is it a divine data bank that provides answers to our questions. As French social philosopher Jacques Ellul reminds us, “Faith consists in heeding God’s questions and risking ourselves in the answers that we have to give.” The Bible should “read” and interpret and question us, for it is we, not the prophets of old, who are in the dark.
Sadly, too many of us either imprison Christ between the pages of our Bibles, bound by the letter (and our favourite modern translation), or we yank him out of God’s history altogether by turning him into some image or construction of our own making, exalting and trumpeting our own unique brand of spirituality. In either case, Christ is not Lord and his word cannot speak.
Obscure passages aside, few of us want to be held accountable to any word other than our own. In fact, we want the last word, not because we don’t understand, but because we refuse to surrender our autonomous wills and obey. Kierkegaard once wrote, “What is the New Testament? A handbook for those who are to be sacrificed.” This is what we don’t want to do. We’re happy to receive a “biblical insight” but not the sword that cuts and convicts. To quote Kierkegaard again:
Can’t we be honest for once! We have become such experts at cunningly shoving one layer after another, one interpretation after another, between the Word and our lives (like a boy putting padding under his pants when he is about to get a spanking). And we then allow this preoccupation to swell to such profundity that we never come to look at our lives in the mirror. All this interpreting and re-interpreting is but a defence against God’s Word.
It is all too easy to understand the requirements contained in God’s Word (“Give all your goods to the poor.” “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the left.” “Count it sheer joy when you meet various temptations” etc.). The most ignorant, poor creature cannot honestly deny being able to understand God’s requirements. But it is tough on the flesh to will to understand it and to then act accordingly. Herein lies the problem. It is not a question of interpretation, but action.
Bible Thumpers
If you are having a problem with bible thumpers, and I can see how that could be a problem, then you should consider moving somewhere more hedonistic and blasphemous. Los Angeles is a good example. It would be quite rare to have a bible thumper get in your face around there. Plus, all the good looking women from middle America always end up moving out here. Quite a nice selection of hunnies.
A question for any remaining Bible thumpers that still lurk
by TravisReady? Ok, here goes...
Recently, a certain Dr. Laura said that homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22 and cannot be condoned under any circumstances. The following is an open letter to Dr. Laura penned by a US resident:
Dear Dr. Laura,
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him or her that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.
I do need some advice from you however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to follow them.
(a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odour for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbours. They claim the odour is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
(b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
(c) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offence.
d) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighbouring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
(e) I have a neighbour who insists on working on Sunday (the Sabbath). In the book of Exodus verse 35:2 it clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?
(f) A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't know. Can you settle this?
(g) Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?
(h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev.19:27. How should they die?
(i) I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
(j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16). Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14).
I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging, and we should do what the bible says.
Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.
Two obvious bible thumpers
What is it with all the religious nutters. I was just sitting here painting when the doorbell rang. I wasn't expecting anyone, but I answered anyway. There, standing on my doorstep, were two obvious bible thumpers, Bibles in hand. One of them had the worst hair I've seen since Texas--big, frouffy, and utterly objectionable. "How do you think we can have peace?", asked Bible Thumper A, she of the horrible hair. "Peace where?",
I said, honestly confused. World peace? Peace of mind? Peace in one's household (ie--freedom from scruffs with Bibles on the doorstep)? "Peace here on earth," she said. "Eh...I don't know about that," I said. I have no idea how we can have peace on earth, without getting rid of all the people, that is. "Do you think we can get peace out of the Bible?", she pressed.
"Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea how many wars have been fought over that book? Look...I don't believe in God, I have major reservations about Christian ideology, and you can't persuade me otherwise." "But aren't you interested in peace on earth?" "No, but I'm very interested in peace right here, so...go away." At that point, they heard my bird walking around in the bedroom, and, looking past me into the hallway, asked if they could come in and talk to my friends about the Bible!
I refused, waved goodbye, and closed the door. They were still babbling when it slammed shut in their faces. Faugh. I hate people who try to invade other people's lives with their religion. Especially when it's MY life they're invading, and I'm trying to get some work done.
Today was an especially bad day: my bird's been ill since yesterday, and worry doesn't do anything for the generosity of my mood. I was in such a mean-spirited mood that I considered grabbing their Bibles and writing "GO, SATAN, GO", or some similarly offensive slogan all over them, but then I realized the pen in my hand was just a Wacom pen. Not too useful for defacing Bibles.
Contributed by Oliver Gregg. Somerset. UK.
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