Damn, I really need to hit your other blog more often. The LJ friends listing is just so darned convenient. I guess it's like when Spider started writing for the Hole-it's more effort, but it's a better thing at the end of the day.
Anyway, a couple of tangentially related points.
1. I had a very interesting exchange with an unknown but apparently knowlegable bible-type person concerning the Words of Jesus. It's alway been my impression that, if the Bible had stopped at the gospels, it would have made a heckuva lot more sense. There's a lot of good stuff attributed to Jesus, but all the crap after that is pretty much a blueprint for building church control structures. Anyway, we got to discussing the discrepancies between What Jesus Said and how the Christian church operates. His contention, and I'd never thought of it this way, was that the Words of Jesus were meant for the contemporary Jews, not for the Christians. The importance of Jesus was wrapped up in the prophecy, not his words and deeds (which, to my way of thinking, are about the only good part of the book). Anyway, that was an eye-opener for me, and it explains a lot. No wonder the church sucks.
2. A friend of mine has had way too much experience dealing with the insane, and one of the lessons he has taken from this is that insanity is contagious. It's hard to live among the mad and not become like them. You can't really communicate with them without getting your head in that same space. The application of this idea to religion is probably pretty obvious....
no subject
Anyway, a couple of tangentially related points.
1. I had a very interesting exchange with an unknown but apparently knowlegable bible-type person concerning the Words of Jesus. It's alway been my impression that, if the Bible had stopped at the gospels, it would have made a heckuva lot more sense. There's a lot of good stuff attributed to Jesus, but all the crap after that is pretty much a blueprint for building church control structures. Anyway, we got to discussing the discrepancies between What Jesus Said and how the Christian church operates. His contention, and I'd never thought of it this way, was that the Words of Jesus were meant for the contemporary Jews, not for the Christians. The importance of Jesus was wrapped up in the prophecy, not his words and deeds (which, to my way of thinking, are about the only good part of the book). Anyway, that was an eye-opener for me, and it explains a lot. No wonder the church sucks.
2. A friend of mine has had way too much experience dealing with the insane, and one of the lessons he has taken from this is that insanity is contagious. It's hard to live among the mad and not become like them. You can't really communicate with them without getting your head in that same space. The application of this idea to religion is probably pretty obvious....