Hello, friends, and welcome to the weekend. Ready for some brunch?
Did you overdo it at Thanksgiving? Here is a helpful list of signs that you did:
~ Paramedics bring in the Jaws of Life to pry you out of the recliner.
~ You get grass stains on your behind after a walk, but never sat down.
~ You receive a Sumo Wrestler application in your email.
~ You set off 3 earthquake seismographs on your morning jog Friday.
~ Pricking your finger for cholesterol screening only yielded gravy.
~ Representatives from the Butterball Hall of Fame called twice.
~ Your arms are too short to reach the keyboard & write nasty comments about this.
This is sad: 70% of British youth have never heard of Mozart. 20% think Johann Sebastian Bach is still alive.
Time to re-test the dating of the Shroud of Turin?
For the past 600 years Christians have venerated the Shroud of Turin as a precious relic, a portrait of Jesus, and (perhaps) even proof of the reality of the resurrection. Then, in 1988, three laboratories based at top universities performed radiocarbon analysis of some of its threads. The results were collected and collated by the British Museum in London and published in a splashy article in the prestigious Nature magazine that claimed to offer definitive proof that the Shroud was a medieval fraud.
Oddly the original data was unavailable to researchers. But in 2017, a legal request under the Freedom of Information Act obtained the raw information for the first time. Their results, published recently inArchaeometry, show that the issue of the dating of the Turin Shroud is far from settled.
Three men who were arrested in 1983 and found guilty of murdering a 14-year-old boy in Baltimore were released on Monday. Prosecutors announced that the convictions had been in error and that another teenager had been the real killer. Alfred Chestnut, Andrew Stewart and Ransom Watkins were high school students when they were convicted. Now in their 50s, they had always insisted that they were innocent.In examining old cases, the Baltimore authorities found numerous errors in the investigation. It has become increasingly common for prosecutors’ offices around the country to re-examine convictions when evidence suggests that an error might have been made.
Quotable: “Today isn’t a victory,” said Marilyn Mosby, the state’s attorney. “Today it’s a tragedy that these men had 36 years of their lives stolen.”
“The Avengers,” “Frozen” and “Get Out” are among the 10 most influential films of the 2010s, according to our critics. (They also name their favorites.)
Late-night comedy: The hosts noted the White House visit by Conan, the military dog who participated in the raid that killed the Islamic State’s leader: “When Trump said, ‘Sit, stay and rollover,’ every Republican in Congress started doing it,” Jimmy Fallon said.
Former Harvest Bible Chapel senior pastor James MacDonald took home more than a million dollars a year according to a financial and legal review the church released Thursday night. In 2015 the executive committee approved an overall compensation package of $1.24 million for MacDonald; that rose to $1.37 million in 2016 and $1.387 million in 2017. The 2019 package was supposed to be $1.27 million, the report says.
Part of this was an incentive bonus for ending the year with a net money surplus, more people attending church, and more major gifts than the targeted amounts. Because he did so in 2016 and 2017, MacDonald took home a total of $273,125 in incentive bonuses over the course of those two years.
By the way, even though Harvest has officially proclaimed McDonald “unqualified” for ministry, he is looking to start preaching again early next year. This is from his new website:
We have also been welcomed by New Life Covenant Church in Humboldt Park, Chicago, a multi-ethnic church under Pastor Wilfredo DeJesus. New Life has embraced us fully, offering us a place to serve as volunteers and time to heal. Early in 2020, around the anniversary of my last local church sermon, we will begin considering interim preaching opportunities.
On the first full day of his tour of Japan, Pope Francis visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki and delivered a clear message: possessing or deploying atomic weapons is immoral.
“Peace and international stability are incompatible with attempts to build upon the fear of mutual destruction, or the threat of total annihilation,” Francis said in an address in Nagasaki. He spoke at the site where the United States exploded an atomic bomb in 1945, killing 74,000 people by the end of that year. “The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral,” he said Sunday. “As is the possession of atomic weapons.”
The 33,000-member New Creation Church (In Singapore)led by charismatic televangelist Joseph Prince has decided to buy a small piece of property near their church campus. It looks like this:
This is the Star Vista, an iconic shopping mall. It was a steal at only 217 million dollars. The church needed no funding drive, because they already had the cash on hand. And really, why wouldn’t they?
Besides the price must have seemed like a steal compared to the 500 million they paid for their auditorium in the same campus:
President Trump pardoned two turkeys, named Bread and Butter, as part of the annual White House Thanksgiving tradition. No word yet on if they will return the favor.
Kevin Williamson visits a flat-Earth conference in Texas: “As flat-Earth writer Noel Hadley tells me, ‘Satan runs everything: music, Hollywood, media, Republicans, Democrats, Washington, Israel, Zionism. . . .’ They know Satan when they see him. But they don’t know what the Earth looks like — only that it is not round. And that if people only understood that, then they would . . . change their diets, and vaccine companies would go out of business, as one speaker insisted. ‘We don’t believe in a flying pancake in space,’ says exasperated conference organizer Robbie Davidson, a Canadian conspiracy hobbyist, ‘and we don’t believe you can fall off the edge of it.’ But what does the Earth actually look like? That, apparently, needs “more investigation,” in the inevitable dodge uttered from the stage.” 
Do cows need virtual reality? Do cows want virtual reality? Moscow-area farmers strapped modified VR headsets to cows to see if it improved their mood — and, of course, their milk production. The project subjected cattle to a simulated summer field with colors tuned for the animals’ eyes, giving them a decidedly more pleasing landscape than a plain, confining farm.
It appears to have worked, at least on a basic level. The first test reduced the cows’ anxiety and boosted their overall sentiment. While it’s not certain how well this affects the quality or volume of milk, there are plans for a more “comprehensive” study to answer that question.
They will also try other VR type activities:
Madeleine Kearns writes about how transgender activism ruins the lives of children:
“The Younger case has gained much media attention, in the U.S. and beyond. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the BBC all seem to cast the father as the villain, in particular for his refusal to agree that his child is transgender. Rolling Stone opines that the Younger story has become a ‘terrifying right-wing talking point.’ Vox is worried about Republican state legislators’ trying to introduce bills prohibiting chemical and surgical interference with the sexual development of children who say they’re transgender, and ‘what [this] could mean for families nationwide’ when ‘legislators want to have a say in whether Luna Younger should be allowed to socially transition.’ For the Left, the Younger story is a tale of backwards attitudes victimizing a child.
There are three clinical approaches to helping children who exhibit symptoms of gender confusion. One involves a range of talk therapies and psychotherapies to address suspected underlying causes. A second, called ‘watchful waiting,’ allows the child’s development to unfold as it will, which may mean that he chooses to transition later or not at all.
“Then there is a third option — informed by an ideology according to which it is possible for a child to be ‘born in the wrong body.’ In this option, clinical activists recommend a drastic response when a child expresses confusion about gender. First, parents should tell the child, however young, that he truly is the sex he identifies with. Second, parents should consider delaying his puberty through off-label uses of drugs that can have serious (and largely unstudied) side effects. Third, parents should consider giving their child the puberty experience of the opposite sex, through cross-sex hormonal injections and gels (which result in sterility). Finally, parents should consider greenlighting the surgical removal of their child’s reproductive organs.
“Since there are no objective tests to confirm a transgender diagnosis, all of this is arbitrary and dependent on a child’s changeable feelings. To make aggressive treatment more acceptable, its advocates have come up with a media-friendly euphemism, ‘gender affirmation.’ If it’s affirming, activists say, it’s also kindness, love, acceptance, and support. The opposite, trying to help a child feel more comfortable with his body, is a rejection: abuse, hatred, ‘transphobia,’ or ‘conversion therapy’ likely to lead to child suicide. This is a lie — a lie designed to obscure a critical truth: that neither a child, nor his parents on his behalf, can truly consent to experimental, life-altering, and irreversible treatments for which there is no evidentiary support.”
| Democratic Primary: Here are the latest poll numbers and here’s a look at four problems with the 2016 polling that could play out again in 2020. |
|
Qualified for the December debate*
|
NATIONAL POLLING AVERAGE
|
INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTIONS†
|
WEEKLY NEWS COVERAGE
|
|---|---|---|---|
| 27% | $37.6m | #1 | |
| 22% | $49.8m | #2 | |
| 18% | $61.5m | #5 | |
| 8% | $51.5m | #4 | |
| 4% | $35.5m | #6 | |
| 3% | $15.1m | #12 | |
| 3% | $13.9m | #7 |
Have you heard of HipDict, the crowdsourced dictionary that defines what we’re really saying when we use everyday words, or maybe you’re already following it? Here are a few samples:
Well, that’s it for this weekend. Have a great Saturday, friends.
The Internet Monk Archives 
“The one-one hundredth are not really a factor.”
I’m pretty certain Jesus had a parable that addressed a related concept. Something to do with sheep, if I recall.
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What a wonderful affirmation. Thank you. And I’m very glad you were born and have endured, and that each of us came into this world despite the ignorance and dysfunction of our forbears and their times. Our existence is our proof that God loves and values us; may he continue to bless us all, and may we learn to love each other, and ourselves, as he loves us.
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I’m glad your father left home and came here.
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Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life.
If this is not true, then nothing else about “following Jesus” matters – do whatever you wish.
Dana
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Democrats want to ensure that everybody who is entitled to vote can vote. If a few non-citizens and felons get into the mix, well, that’s a rounding error.
Republicans want to ensure that nobody who is not entitled to vote does vote. If a few black folk or naturalized citizens get turned away at the polls, well, that’s a rounding error.
I approve of both impulses.
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Remember the answer Lewis Thomas gave when asked whose music he’d send beyond the solar system with Voyager?
“I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach.” And after a pause he added “But that would be boasting.”
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Don’t ever call him a monkey, though.
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Among the farms of southern Italy, my father’s parents tried to marry him off to his cousin. He fled to America and avoided a match he wasn’t interested in, but it was common practice in the Italian sticks for first cousins to marry. Not that long ago, as the ages go, but a very different day and time, as you say.
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Two anecdotes along those lines:
1) Shortly before Vatican II, there was one trad Cardinal who was obsessed with “The Sacred Prepuce” (Jesus’ foreskin from His bris), “The only part of Our Lord’s body left on Earth after His Ascension”. This struck me as one BIZARRE relic obsession.
2) At a Boy Scout summer camp in the late Sixties, I remember some preacher at the camp’s Sunday services who was equally obsessed with Christ’s Resurrection body being “FLESH AND BONE! NOT FLESH AND BLOOD!” (I remember the guy’s voice from AM Christianese radio, Guy had a similar accent to J Vernon Magee, but was definitely NOT him; for one thing, JVM didn’t SCREAM every word like he was In Your Face.)
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And from what I’ve read on other blogs in IMonk’s bloglist, Born-Again Bible-Believing Evangelical Christians (BABBECS) are THE biggest and most rigid fanboys of the above gender definitions.
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What would it take to convince you, except facts?
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In the middle of the last century, George, 20, and Francis, 15, accompanied by her Mom, 32, made a trip from Michigan where the women were from to a state where the young couple would be allowed to marry if accompanied by a parent, Kentucky. At the first courthouse they came to, the official told them they were too young and refused to issue a marriage license. They were successful at the next town and were married. Eleven months later I came along. My Mom and Dad are still around and this coming Friday we plan to celebrate their 70th anniversary. I realize that was a different day and time.
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Great books. Some of the most clever and funny I’ve read.
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I’m getting turned around by the use of so many negatives. But to address what I think is the point of the quote: I presume much on the mercy of God, on a daily basis, far more than I do on my own ability to put down my flesh by ascetic disciplines, or anything else. When I see another sinner, I say, “There go I, by the grace of God.”
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Yes, total war, with or without nuclear weapons, is immoral. So is area bombardment of cities in which noncombatants live, such as we’ve done most recently in Iraq and Syria. But then again, the largely mercenary armies that state’s and their princes used right up to the modern period were no more discriminating than citizen armies of the modern nation-state. Ironically, we have moved into a period when mercenaries, under the name of contractors, outnumber regular nation-state military by a factor of perhaps 3 to 1 in war zones. These mercenary/contractors have much looser rules of engagement than our national military does, and are far less discriminating when it comes to so-called collateral damage. Who knows, maybe Facebook will end up with their own military, after they implement their own cryptocurrency. Behold: the nation-state subsumed into the corporation-state.
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None of the above. Time, place, location, environment, circumstance.
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Isn’t that one of the issues? Yes, the Christian Bible puts Jesus at the center, but it does so by recontexualizing, reinterpreting, utterly changing a lot of original, non-Jesus centric texts…in order to create something Jesus centered. And others have done the same post-Jesus/post-Christian as well to those same texts.
The truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view.
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Well said.
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you have a point, but I don’t trust Trump to make sound decisions
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I’m not looking for facts. I’m looking to be convinced enough to have faith in those ideas.
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Congrats to Manohla Dargis for including Hou Hsiao Hsien’ film THE ASSASSIN from 2015 in her list of best movies.in the NYTs article. I thought I was alone in appreciating this astounding movie. It was amazing to read the negative reviews the movie got at the time of its release. Were we seeing the same movie?
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And yet, during his lifetime, every single cell of that body will be replaced by another one, most of them every seven years. What will be left is the DNA pattern, transmitted from one imprint to the other, unless something mutates it; but the material being will be entirely different at the end than at the beginning. Do we know what the body really is, or what constitutes its consistency across time? Information reliably transmitted seems to be the non-material essence of what we call body.
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Not to be a curmudgeon but you could make the case that the possession of nuclear weapons by both sides in the Cold War prevented a third world war. The most risky situation would have been if only one side possessed them. This is why Oppenheimer and others made the rather whimsical suggestion that we deliberately share our knowledge after the end of the war.
And can we really say that nuclear weapons are intrinsically more immoral than conventional weapons? After all the firebombing of Tokyo caused way more casualties than Hiroshima or Nagasaki. That raging peacenik General Curtis LeMay pointed out that if the Japanese had won the war the American leadership would have certainly been culpable for war crimes.
Seems to me Jesus’ radical pacifism is the only real alternative. As soon as you grant legitimacy to the concept of a “just” war then all your boundaries become rather arbitrary.
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One way I’ve heard it put is this… “Liberals would rather 10 undeserving people benefit than one deserving person suffer; conservatives would rather 10 deserving people suffer than one undeserving person benefit.”
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““My son (for that is how he wishes to be related to me) has an unusual body and it is not yet apparent what he is. Through prayer and ascetic struggle his true body will emerge, but make no mistake. It is with this body, and no other, that he will achieve his salvation.””
Now THAT is a good answer.
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“It has become increasingly common for prosecutors’ offices around the country to re-examine convictions when evidence suggests that an error might have been made.”
What’s next, presumption of innocence? Jeez, godless liberals! Everybody knows that if you weren’t guilty you wouldn’t have been accused in the first place. Ok so a few innocent people get caught up in the process. That’s simply the price you have to pay to make sure no one gets away with anything. And doesn’t all this whining just put pressure on an already overburdened legal system? To have to prove that the suspect is actually guilty is just going overboard.
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I’m currently reading “The Bible Tells Me So” by Enns. It actually has helped my own faith in Jesus quite a bit because I see much of the OT as written by men trying to struggle towards God (or away from Him at times). Freed from the historical and scientific problems one can concentrate more on the important Biblical topics.
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It is doable.
I believe Chile and South Africa surrendered their unacknowledged nuclear weapons to the UN Security Council in the late 80s early 90s.
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I Cor. 15:35 35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?”
I remember getting into a discussion with a Biblical literalist, since they seem to be the demons around here, about the Resurrection of Christ, and how he made a big deal about how Christ bore the marks of His crucifixion after His resurrection, and about how they were the “only man-made things in the Kingdom of Heaven, the wounds of Christ”. I inquired as to the marks of His circumcision, whether or not Christ rose with His penis intact. We are not told, but I think it is a valid question. The literalist took great umbrage saying that Christ no longer had a penis because “He no longer needed it.” I pointed out that the same objection could be made about His stomach.
I wonder a lot about people with “gender dysphoria” as to what body they will be resurrected in. St. Maximos the Confessor says that (once again, inasmuch as I can follow him) male and female are two energies of the human nature, and these are imperfectly reflected in their incarnate situation. I wonder what transfolk believe they can express in their surgically altered bodies that they cannot in the bodies they were given.
An Orthodox priest had an inter-sexed individual as a parishioner, and some people whose business it most certainly was not asked how he counseled this individual. His response took my breath away. “My son (for that is how he wishes to be related to me) has an unusual body and it is not yet apparent what he is. Through prayer and ascetic struggle his true body will emerge, but make no mistake. It is with this body, and no other, that he will achieve his salvation. He will have struggles we will not, but make no mistake. You presume greatly upon the mercy of God if you do not believe that your own body, in which you are so comfortable, will reveal its true nature without the same amount of prayer and ascetic struggle.”
Lest you think I’ve gone soft in my dotage, let me assure you that it only requires me a half an hour reading Ezra Pound to long for the Sons of Gilead. My temptations are different than yours.
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Ook.
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I would so like to walk into a library and find that the librarian is an orangutan.
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Agreed. But given just how counter to every traditional social and political convention Jesus’ teachings are, it leads me to think there’s something to it. 😉
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To trust the Gospels’ depictions of Jesus, we must beforehand trust the Gospels’ writers/redactors. Whole lotta trustin’ goin’ on!
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Unfortunately, the effectiveness of nuclear deterrent is due to its inherent terroristic threat of violence against noncombatants for geopolitical goals. This terrorism can only reinforce the global terrorism on a smaller scale that we see almost daily across our planet.
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Thank you for sharing your experience, and the wisdom you’ve derived from it.
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I’m no fan or supporter of Trump, but with or without Trump, our use as of nuclear deterrent as a nation has been immoral. The underlying threat of nuclear deterrence is a terrorist threat, using the threat of violence against noncombatants to achieve political as well as military goals. Overt state sanctioned terrorism is the operating principle.
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You obviously weren’t involved with Campus Crusade. One of their most common tracts had a little cartoon of a train labeled “FAITH” being pulled by a locomotive labeled “FACT”.
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“If you want to get a million dollars, Start Your Own Religion.”
— L Ron Hubbard, sometime in the late Forties (i.e. just before founding Scientology)
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True.
But along the way the kids have come up with more words for more nuanced identities, some of which fit me much better than the first one that came along, namely “transexual.” My experience is more fluid, and if I can borrow from the modern lexicon, I’d say “genderfluid” and “nonbinary” fit me better.
It is the meditation and discernment process of a lifetime, for me, finding a way to think about who I am.
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It’s actually called “The Jesus Racket”.
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Three words: CRAZY RICH ASIANS.
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Of course, the possession and/or deploying of nuclear weapons is immoral–it is the ability to destroy hundreds of thousands of people–and everything around them–with a single weapon. But it is, so far as I can see, also inescapable. If every country in the world destroyed their atomic bombs, all at once, the country that cheated and hid a few, or continued their nuclear program on the sly, would end up ruling the world. As we have proved time and time again, humans are not to be trusted to play fair when power is the prize for winning.
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Yes, this.
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A friend of mine has been highly successful, at the age of 70, in changing to identify as a woman, including surgery. It might still be possible for you to do the same, if you wanted to consider it.
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Yes. I’m inclined to think that young children (not yet teenagers) should be allowed/encouraged to develop as they wish, without medical intervention. When the surge of hormones hits sometime in the teen years, their identification may change in ways that can’t be predicted. If, when they are fully mature, they still find themselves in the wrong body, and wish to change, that is time enough for medical intervention to match their brains to their bodies.
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The new thing since I was a kid is that there are now treatment options, so that gender dysphoria is no longer a permanent (or terminal) condition. People who would otherwise be driven to despair have some hope that things can be different, that things can get better. There may be side effects. Suicide rates for queer kids are very high.
It seems in every case I’m familiar with that the impetus toward some kind of flexibility in gender identity comes from the kid who’s experiencing gender dysphoria, not from the parents. If the parents can adapt, the outcomes tend to be much better.
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“The one one-hundredth are not really a factor.”
Unless YOU happen to be one of those one one-hundredths.
And given Jesus’ ambiguity about marriage (He Himself never married, and taught that marriage would not occur in the New Kingdom) and His subversion of societal gender and family roles, why do we make such a bloody fuss over these matters?
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But if we knew those things, there would be no need for faith. They would be fact, instead. Faith and fact are not actually compatible, since one depends belief, and the other on evidence. It would be easier on humans if they could be reconciled, but I don’t see how.
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Yes it is Eeyore. The one one-hundredth are not really a factor.
You were born male or female –
__________
I take no counsel from teenagers or activists. None, Zip, Zero
I always have, for my conscious years, paid attention to people’s life stories; They have educated, informed and saddened me. What I have determined; we ALL desperately need a Saviour. One is available, Jesus the God Man, the WORD.
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I sympathize with your experience. It must have been very difficult and painful for you to struggle through those gender identity issues. And God knows the atavistic thinking of many Americans when it comes to this subject seems to be growing in certain places, rather than diminishing.
But, are the medical therapies we are discussing here designed to delay bodily changes in children (although I wonder about the safety of that, too) until maturer adults can make informed decisions about sexual identity, or are they designed to change the child physiologically in the direction of a certain identity? It seems like the latter to me.
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And there’s no bizz like the Jesus bizz.
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Some answers, despite similarity in levels of ambiguity with answers to other kinds of questions, require more of the those who respond positively to them. For instance, if, despite the ambiguity involved, I have decided that Christianity makes enough sense to me to merit holding on to it, that will require more of me personally than if I decide, despite the ambivalent evidence available, that the universe is finite rather than infinite. I tend to demand a higher level of certitude, or less gross ambiguity, from answers that will demand more of me personally if I opt for them.
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good grieft
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as to ” Pope Francis visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki and delivered a clear message: possessing or deploying atomic weapons is immoral “,
I would have thought the Pope was wrong about OUR country possessing and deploying atomic weapons, because we were able to be responsible AFTER the bombing of Japan;
but then we elected Donald Trump.
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“Ankh-Morpork, we have an orangutan.”
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Thank you for the picture of the lunar eclipse of our flat earth, except it’s a picture of Discworld and not earth. And, the picture didn’t show the four elephants standing on the turtle; they’re the ones holding up the earth. If this makes no sense to you, immediately check out Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books.. They’re a mash up of “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” and “Lord of the Rings” (and various other books too).
Also, thanks for the picture of the cows, which comes courtesy of Prince Edward Island’s “Cows Ice Cream.” They have incredibly witty and clever graphics (if you like cows).
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My guess is probably not. But in this reply, my point was that binary sexuality is not a physical absolute.
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Starting with the Gospels and seeing how Jesus handled the Old Testament, moral questions, and what He taught. If, as we assert, He is the Incarnation of God, what He has to say on these things should be of paramount importance.
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So… I’m sixty-five. My body is male. I strongly resist identifying as a man.
When I was a wee tyke in the 1960s there were no words for any kind of transgender identities. Kids since then have coined or repurposed words to describe their experience of gendered identity. I’m thankful, every day, for words to use to describe how I feel, how I am in the world.
Let me just say that if there had been drug therapies available to delay bodily changes until I was old enough to make an informed decision, much pain and suffering in my adult life might have been averted.
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Actually, I think the author was Peter Kreeft, who is Catholic IIRC.
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On I know, I’m living it. But unfortunately it is the James MacDonald’s that the world hears about.
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Yes there are some hard cases, but why always run to the exception rather than the rule? Is there some sort of study that shows most transgender people physically fall into that category?
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Define reading with Jesus as the center.
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Lutheran author, obvs.
(Marty Haugen said the Lutherans have five gospel writers: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Johann Sebastian Bach)
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Realistically, pretty much ALL answers have very similar levels of ambiguity because when you’re exploring existential/metaphysical questions, the unavoidable fact is that we are limited to hanging out here in Meatspace and using our limited senses and cognition to try to figure stuff out. It’s not about getting more or less ambiguity; it’s about whether one set of ambiguous and unverifiable answers makes enough sense to you to merit holding on to them.
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Good question. I guess the truth I want to derive is whether or not Jesus was legit and whether there is indeed life after death. Those two things being true would have a significant positive impact and it would be better for all of humanity if they were true. Thus, those are the two things I want to be true and, quite frankly, they are the only things that really matter to me in this whole Bible thing.
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I’ve never heard of a pastor receiving an “incentive bonus.” You’re right; theirs is a business model. I wonder what the apostle Paul, who worked as a tentmaker to support himself, would say about such an arrangement.
At the same time, we have to remember that pastors like James MacDonald are a minority. Most pastors earn modest salaries at best. I recall one relative who was a pastor years ago; he took on a part-time job to help feed his growing family while serving at a small rural church. There are also plenty of bivocational pastors, who work regular jobs and pastor a church on the side. A lot of those churches are too small to pay the pastor a full-time salary.
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There are still many states that permit that kind of marriage of a minor with an older person, if the parents allow it. It’s sickening.
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Good questions. Are there certain answers, or only ones with more or less ambiguity?
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Yes. What if Jesus was one such? Wouldn’t such an incarnation in certain ways be symbolic of more inclusive humanity than clear biological sexual identification?
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Yes, Enns main target is literalism (a worthy target). And he own history shows why that is such a concern for him. However, other scholars are also challenging literalism without the lack of reconstruction thoughts that Enns is seemingly doing. This criticism of Enns has increased.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2019/08/19/reviewing-pete-enns-saving-the-bible-but-losing-god/
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I once owned a book on apologetics which had a chapter with a number of arguments for God’s existence, followed by a discussion of each argument. The shortest argument and supporting discussion was the following…
“ARGUMENT: There is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach; therefore there is a God.
SUPPORTING DISCUSSION: You either get this one, or you don’t.”
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Recently he’s been spotted around Memphis with Elvis.
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I think we also generally have a false romantic notion of the fixed character of identity. Identity is a process, with certain overlapping characteristics from one era of life to another. It is not a given at the beginning of life; if stability is one characteristic of identity, so is dynamic change. I have come to think that more stable identity is something we grow into, rather than start with.
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I think John Sebastian yet lives, however, Johann SB is long gone…
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What of those born with mixed/undifferentiated genitalia? It DOES happen…
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“When we make a mental shift to letting the Bible be what it actually is and not what we want it to be, we might discover that in the process we’ve rediscovered what God meant the Bible to be, as well.”
Yes, and that is something many other scholars, such as NT Wright, advocate. However, as is increasingly seen and commented about in regards to Enns: That is not what he is communicating (at least as well as he thinks he is)
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I guess the question is, what IS our basis for faith? A written word? Observing a miracle? Feelings? Are any of these irrefutable and unshakable?
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Wait a minute!! When did Johann Sebastian die?
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Yes, I agree completely. In particular, anyone under the age of 13 or so hasn’t reached the point of mental development where they can actually assess their own thoughts and feelings and identity in an adult way to make that kind of decision. I’d actually go further and say that ideally people wouldn’t be making *any* life-altering decisions until their prefrontal cortex is fully developed, i.e. age 23-25. But obviously that’s not practical. 🙂
And, of course, that applies to other life decisions too – I find it kind of horrifying that there are still states where a 13-year-old girl who’s too young to know any better can be married to a man in his 30s or 40s…
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Correction: ….over the course…
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It is possible to support and affirm a child in their identity without subjecting them to invasive medical therapies which have unknown long-term side-effects. As to the ability of a child to know or choose their identity fully as their bodies and minds undergo the formative changes programmed by nature, there is reason to think they are incapable of that, that their determinations are tentative rather than definitive, and that they are as likely as not to change their minds and choices over the coarse of their development. “Watchful waiting.”
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What can you say about a miscarriage of justice like the one those three wrongly convicted men have suffered? Here is one major argument against the death penalty: the fallibility and imperfection of the state and its justice system, and the irreversible finality of the death penalty, which leaves no room or time for redress, which leaves nothing for the victims of wrongful conviction to recoup.
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Eeyore, I’ve asked some of my trans friends that exact question – whether their “transition” was because they didn’t feel like they fit the cultural stereotype of masculinity or femininity. All of the people I’ve asked have said that no, for them it was driven by strong feelings of a mismatch between their bodies and who they felt themselves to be – i.e. “gender dysphoria.”
That said, there’s many different reasons a child or teenager might want to change their gender identity. It may be actual gender dysphoria. It may just be because experimenting and “trying on” different identities is part of how we figure out who we are. It may be because they feel like they “fit in” better with girls vs. boys or vice versa. It may even be because in certain social circles, taking on some sort of “queer” label gives you social cachet.
But, the one thing we know statistically is that kids who feel supported and affirmed in their chosen identity are much less likely to try to kill themselves or to end up with other problems, compared to kids whose families try to “fix” them. That’s why people on the far left treat this as a life-or-death issue: because in many cases, it literally is.
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But what if, as a result of Enns’ or any other approach, you find that your certainty about Jesus being “the center” is also dissolving? Shouldn’t you be willing to follow that ambiguity into a Jesus-less place, if that’s where you find it’s leading you, rather than insisting on Jesus being the one “Certainty” you insist on holding onto? I think that’s the situation that Rampaging Chipmunk finds him/herself in, if I’m reading correctly. Sometimes I think that is my own real situation as well.
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Have as little to do with the police as possible. That’s your best bet. But it may be outside your control, if you, your family, and friends have already had something to do with the police.
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Often if someone is trying to deconstruct our particular idea of what the Bible is and how it’s supposed to work, it can feel like what they’re attacking is the Bible itself.
The Bible is a record of a conversation spanning a thousand years and several very different cultures, from the Bronze Age Hebrew people up through the Ancient Greek culture, Roman world, and Jewish diaspora. The different voices recorded in that conversation sometimes disagree with each other. If you’re coming from a “modern” mindset looking for a factually true textbook, that’s a problem. But to the Jewish people who compiled the Bible, listening to your “elders” arguing – and inviting you to join the conversation – was the path to gaining wisdom.
When we make a mental shift to letting the Bible be what it actually is and not what we want it to be, we might discover that in the process we’ve rediscovered what God meant the Bible to be, as well.
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I also ask these questions this with your caveats: What is a wrong body? If the parts of a child’s body are healthy and functioning as they should, and the body is sound, with no deformities, how could it be a healthy or wise option to subject it to intensive medical therapies, with unknown long term side effects, to change it for purposes of gender reassignment, or anything else, particularly when the child’s body is going through dramatic formative changes already as programmed by nature? When it comes to children, why is “watchful waiting” not nearly always the right option to take?
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Human nature is incredibly stubborn. I don’t foresee it changing. Others may however.
One’s born sexuality will not change. Surgery doesn’t change your chromosomes. People who think that it will should not be disparaged, they should be mourned instead.
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Well put, Eeyore. Faith is a walk into the dark.
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Yes, it is after all a business model…
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If you’re not reading it with Jesus as the center, it may as well be just another religious or philosophical book. I think Enns is doing a valuable service by undercutting the false assumptions of fundamentalist inerrantism. The real crux of the issue (pun intended) is, after that deconstructing, are you going to follow Jesus into ambiguity – or demand Certainty from another source, like atheism?
Some folks need to give up Certainty if they are going to really find – and follow – Christ.
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A church should take care of its pastor financially, but reading about Harvest Bible Chapel just makes me sick. Bonuses for extra money and people is a business model, not a church. People just become customers, not the body of Christ. And quite frankly, though I would love to have a million dollars, no pastor should be paid that much. Ministry should not be something to get rich off of.
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“(the) third option — informed by an ideology according to which it is possible for a child to be ‘born in the wrong body.’”
I am expressing this opinion very tenatively, and if someone is better informed on how this works I’m ready to listen. But I do wonder how much of this is due to one or more sides in this debate clinging to established behavioral and psychological stereotypes of what a particular gender “should” be. IOW, if you are a “male” you are decisive, assertive, attracted to women; if you are a “female” you should be nurturing, demure, willing to be led, ad infinitum ad nauseum. If we were to drop these stereotypes and let peoples’ natural personalities develop apart from gender and sexual expectations, how much of the transgender dilemma would no longer be a dilemma?
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“seems just intent on deconstruction”. That has often been my thought as well. I actually have a commentary by Enns, and he can make very helpful insights not just in understanding the text but also in application. But most of his work about what the Bible is just leaves thinking there is really no point in reading the Bible as opposed to any other religious or philosophical book.
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“…which is that I don’t THINK the Bible is true but I WANT it to be true”
How are you defining “true”?
I appreciate aspects of the podcast, but disagree with others. I probably consider more what is said about the Old Testament since that is Enns’ specialty, than what is said about the New Testament or the Bible’s overall theology. The show does not include a very wide scope of views, and seems just intent on deconstruction (I am not the only one to point this out). However, i don’t think the intent is to cause people to dismiss the Bible.
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RE: The 3 gentlemen released from prison – wrongly convicted
__________
You should know this and your family and friends should know this.
DON’T TALK TO THE POLICE
Short clip –
30 minute clip – which is absolutely brilliant and funny
James Doane
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Been listening to The Bible For Normal People as I do chores over my four day weekend. Very interesting of course… but while more knowledge is very illuminating, it kinda just makes me think more that it’s all just a bunch of old writings and nothing more. Already thinking that more often than not though so I guess nothing really has changed. While my own perception of my beliefs shifts some from day to day and year to year, I think my actual opinion; which is that I don’t THINK the Bible is true but I WANT it to be true; has actually been pretty stable for the roughly six years that you all have seen me here. I think I just am less afraid to actually confront that thought process and acknowledge it now compared to the past.
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