Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Warning

If any book ever needed a warning label (parental advisory), this is it.   Found at the excellent blog of Yellowdog Granny.

3 comments:

  1. "Both religious and non-religious people have celebrated this time of the year throughout history nearly everywhere in the world. That makes this the perfect time to forget our differences and exhibit good will (and peace) to all our fellow humans."

    Ted McLaughlin, December 25, 2010 [Emphasis added]

    Wow, that sure was short-lived.

    Happy New Year, Ted.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Are you trying to say that ALL parts of the Bible are appropriate for children?

    ReplyDelete
  3. No, Ted. I'm just questioning whether four days after your holiday post you're still forgetting our differences and exhibiting good will (and peace) to about 2 billion of us who consider the Bible to be the inspired Word of God.

    Are there difficult passages in the Bible? Absolutely. But the difference between "descriptive" and "advocating" can't be so easily conflated as the "advisory" seems to do. It's like Lenny Bruce once said, "Knowledge of syphillis isn't an order to go out and get it."

    Regarding what's appropriate for children, Paul had it right in his first letter to the Corinthians when he wrote, "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me." (1 Cor 13:11). Children are no more capable of understanding those difficult verses than they are capable of doing calculus. (At nearly 61 years old, I'm still struggling with many of them myself - and for that matter, I've never even tried to grasp calculus!)

    But there's a central message in the Bible that supercedes the one that's warned about in the advisory: a message of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. A message that has inspired generations of believers to transcend their baser instincts and live for something greater than themselves. That was the message I was introduced to as a child (albeit in small doses at first), and although I've lived it out imperfectly over the last six decades, I still believe it to be the theme of the Bible. That's after having read it through from Genesis to Revelation at least twice and continuing to study it nearly every day.

    Karl Barth, one of the greatest and most prolific theologians of the twentieth century, was once asked how he would summarize the essence of the millions of words he had published.

    He replied, "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

    ReplyDelete

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