Jesus was a Liberal

I would say that a “Jesus freak” is anyone who is a Christian and appears “too religious” to the person applying the term.

When I was in college in the late 60’s, the people we called Jesus freaks carried around leather-bound Bibles, but they never called them Bibles, but “the Word”, confusing the Bible with the “Logos” (“Word”) in the New Testament.

The typical Jesus freak in my experience emphasized spirituality over metaphysics.

There are certainly lots of religious-minded people in the world, and in history. If we were discussing the question, “why do people have eyebrows”, a scientist might suggest that it was a survival trait.

There are religious people. Is having an attraction to religion a survival trait either biologically or culturally?

Hmmm?

There are certainly lots of religious-minded people in the world, and in history. If we were discussing the question, “why do people have eyebrows”, a scientist might suggest that it was a survival trait.

There are religious people. Is having an attraction to religion a survival trait either biologically or culturally?

I was listening to the radio last week and tuned into “The Chapel Hour” which is a production of Bob Jones University [Bob Jones is an ultra-conservative Bible college in town], and got to hear Chancellor Bob Jones himself preach. He preached on one of the Psalms and then he said “God is masculine”. He went on to say that all the attributes of God (such as strength and power) were masculine. He took a few jabs at the femininists and said “I could not worship a goddess” and then “I could not worship a feminine God”. “God is masculine and don’t let anyone tell you any different.”

Of course I expect a Neanderthal sermon from Dr. Bob. That’s his viewpoint and that of his University.

But besides God being a Spirit, I thought that his view was a highly biased view of the Bible. Beyond the image of God as an eagle caring for its young (at the end of Deuteronomy), even attributes such as strength and might are not truly masculine. For example, looking at the mightiest things on the earth: earthquates, hurricanes, volcanos — these are neither masculine nor feminime.

If the Orthodox priest is an Icon for Christ (and Christ was an Icon for the Father (“show us the Father”)), then an all male priesthood is presenting God with exclusively masculine images. Unless you are prepared to say that God is male, then I suggest that there is some reasonable to reconsider the all-male priesthood.

The LOGOS was not male (indeed Wisdom is arguably female), so the Incarnation as a male is an accident, not essence. The priesthood might be better focused on essence (love and mercy) rather than on accidents (gender).

I do not think that humankind posited gods to make themselves feel more important. Certainly in Judaeo-Christian tradition, humans are incorrigible sinners, fallen and generally a disappointment to their creator. Or as put by the prophet:

(Isa 55:9 KJV) For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are [God’s] ways higher than your ways, and [God’s] thoughts than your thoughts.

If humankind was not indowed by God with an innate sense of trying to seek his creator, then I think one might better look at the human desire to understand the good times and the bad times in life–for which the prophet says:

(Isa 45:7 NRSV) I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the LORD do all these things.

Or it might have come from the ancestors of the televangelists who discovered that if you spin a good story, people will give you money.

But as a person of faith, I think there’s something deeper going on.

John, the fundamental thing about interpreting the story of Job is to remember that this not, nor was it ever intended to be taken as a historical narrative; it’s a drama.

The author of Job wished to examine the question of “why do good people suffer”? He uses the dramatic device of Job’s “friends” to voice various opinions for the examination of the reader, and then he has God supply an answer of sorts: that God’s ways are beyond our understanding, but that good will be vindicated one day.

The work is dramatic poetry (with the bit about God and Satan in prose at the very beginning and the very end added to the original at some later date). It examines the question of evil and suffering in the world. The conversations between God and Satan are simply dramatic window dressing and have nothing more to do with the story itself as to the opening and closing phrases of our fairy tales “Once upon time” and “and they lived happily ever after” (which indeed is how Job ends).

The topic of church burnings has been a difficult one partly because many remain unsolved.

But here in South Carolina, if you burn a church, you will more than likely get caught. Two members of the KKK plead guilty to the burning of a Black Church this week, and today two more were indicted