We really would

have missed out on a lot.

Would Paul Have Made a Good Evangelical?

The correct answer is 'no'.

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"In a thousand ways he was saying that God comes to you disguised as your life!" - Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture As Spirituality, pp. 126

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I love to see

such intelligent and informed discussions of a translation of the Bible.

The Collins Bank Bible: A Review of The Holy Bible: New International Version

The average reader won't notice and won't care. Only those who are serious students of scripture are likely to notice.

I wish I could say that I was still (if I ever was) a serious student of scripture. I wish that I could say I was a serious student of anything! My ability to approach anything in that manner has weakened more and more with each passing year.

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Today's lesson...

"The Bible, in its entirety, finds a fine balance between knowing and not-knowing, between using words and having humility about words, even though the ensuing traditions have not often found that same balance. "Churchianity," by its very definition, needs to speak with absolutes and certainties. It is expected to make total truth claims and feels very fragile when it cannot. It is the same kind of bind that a politician is in, who must pretend he is absolutely sure of himself, even though we all know it is not true. As Marcus Borg and others say in The Emerging Christian Way (see my coment in the bibliography), that is the largely impossible task institutional religion has taken upon itself. It is crumbling beneath it, in my opinion.

I understand that structural need for clarity, certitude and identity, especially to get you started when you are young. Religion, though, also needs a balancing agent to unlock itself from the inside, which most of us would call the mystical or prayer tradition. ("Mystery," "mystical," to "mutter sounds" all come from the Greek verb muein which means to "hush or close the lips"). Without this unlocking, we will not produce many adult Christians, and certainly not Christians who can build any bridges to anybody else.

Without an in-depth prayer tradition, religion has cried wolf too many times in history and later been proven wrong. Observe earlier authoritative church statements on democracy, war, torture, slavery, women, usury, anti-Semitism, revolution, liturgical forms, native peoples, the Latin language and the earth-centered universe - to name a few big ones. If we had balanced our knowing by some honest not-knowing, we would never have made such egregious mistakes. We proved whatever we wanted from one twisted line of Scripture. The unprayerful heart will always twist reality to its own liking." - Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture As Spirituality, pp. 114.

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A saintly point

Peter and Paul

We need good scholarship, that's very true, but we also need a good understanding of the Gospel from the lives of the saints. That's where the living Gospel is.

(I love his reference to 'metaphorical phantasmagorical criticism' Heh.)

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Modern saints and prophecy

The Prophecy of Isaiah Continued in the Catholic Worker Movement

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I think God has a sense of humour

We provide so much fodder for a sense of humour that God must have one. God's just got to laugh at us (between periods of crying over us, I think)...

The Gospel and Humor: Humor is like seasoning on food – everything is flat without it.

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Is it all Mark's fault?

Of does the responsility lie with Peter?

What Did Jesus Do? Reading and unreading the Gospels.

Or perhaps it really is all about Jesus. Maybe that could be given some thought...

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All about naking

Clothe the Naked

It might be an extinct word, but Mark Shea uses it with his usual insight, intelligence and sense of entertainment.

As he says, we don't find many homeless people naked here. They freeze to death in the Winter with clothes on, let alone without...

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They've certainly provided ammunition

to the 'separation of Church and State' and atheist groups (pun intended)...
'

U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret 'Jesus' Bible Codes

"Pentagon Supplier for Rifle Sights Says It Has 'Always' Added New Testament References"

First, I don't think they're too 'secret'. Second, Trijicon manufactures many sighting products for sale to civilians and they're absolutely wonderful to use. I wonder how many people noticed the scripture verse references before this became public. Probably very, very few. I can just see the protesters jumping up and down in their chairs and frothing at the mouth over this. Such a waste...

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A Conservative

Bible project?

A new conservative bible...

We all know what Jesus will be like in it...

Express free-market parables? Get rid of liberal bias? Good grief! All they'll do is insert their own bias. And it'll likely be in King James English, because everyone knows that that's how God really spoke.

What a wasted effort!

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A good idea

but one that won't work.

What's Your Authority?

"In Catholic Answers' seminars, we emphasize that you should always demand that a missionary who comes to your door first establish his authority for what he is going to tell you, and only then proceed to discuss the particular issues he has in mind."

You don't start questioning the foundations of a fundamentalist's beliefs just this easily. What you see here is the very bare outline of a circular conversation that goes nowhere and, in my mind, will accomplish little. It's very optimistic though, particularly in its intent of getting Catholics to learn a bit of Scripture and history...

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Gospel dinner theatre


Improving the Storytelling of the Gospel

Something that's tough to do during a Mass or service...

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It's about time


A New Counter-Reformation Starts at the Vatican

But it really has been underway for some years. People (and that includes the laity in the Catholic Church) are just beginning to notice...

None of you knew this, I'd guess...

"When a man has lost his hair and is bald, he is clean." - Leviticus 13:40 (New International Version)

(Scripture passage pointed out by Lark News dot Com)

Most Catholics

would never be able to deal with Mormon missionaries like this. Most of us don't know scripture well enough or have a good enough grasp of scripture as a book, as literature, as history,and as a living Word, to be studied and learned. That's what the Protestant faiths do. We need to learn from them.

Like Abraham, I was visited by three men...wearing ties.

The Word of God

Synod to focus on proper use of Scripture

The Church discusses the Word of God...

Wow!

Pope handed bible 'work of art'

It's an incredible work. I've seen a reproduction of it. Absolutely incredible!