Sometimes my many years of theological studies can be more a burden than a blessing. I'll see some person proclaiming to be of a certain faith in one breath... then turn around and say or do something that violates that faith in the next. And though they don't realize their hypocrisy, I do.
And it burns.
I see this crap and my brain feels like its on fire.
As I mentioned in a previous entry, The Bible is quite clear that nobody but God knows when the end of the world is coming. Furthermore, it is my interpretation that by claiming to know for dead-certain a Rapture date, Harold Camping was declaring himself a prophet. Because if he claims to know a date that God's Word specifically states only God knows, then he is claiming to have divine knowledge... thus making him a prophet.
And now that his prophesying is obviously not true, not correct, and not divinely given by God... well, I'm afraid the future doesn't look very happy for Harold Camping...
"But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.
Deuteronomy 18:20 (New International Version)
Since God Himself has set the punishment for being a false prophet to death, Harold Camping's followers will have to kill him now won't they? At least I guess that's how it goes. I don't really know how they will reconcile that with the whole "Thou Shalt Not Kill" thing. As with everything in The Bible, that's open to interpretation.
Or I suppose I should say selective interpretation.
Because how many times have we seen people use a fragment of their holy text to justify their actions... all while violating another fragment mere passages away? They pick-and-choose what they want to believe and act upon while ignoring others because they don't really want to live according to their doctrine. They just want to live however they want to live and use pieces of doctrine to justify it.
Which is the very height of hypocrisy.
And it burns.
But suffering for other people's faith is an unavoidable consequence of humanity. And it doesn't take a prophet to see that this isn't going to change any time soon.
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We are just so bad at paying attention. I was thinking about how Jesus said not to use vain repetition in prayer, so what does the Catholic Church do? Create the Rosary! I mean, how much more clear could the dude have been? But do people listen? NOOOOOO.
I can’t reconcile the God of the Old with the God of the New Testament and have given up bothering. As a recorded member of the Friends I get to do that if so led. The Old Testament God is a jealous, brutish, crabby old thug. The God of the New Testament expects you to be good but will usually give you another chance. “Another chance” is my whole metaphor for Christianity. If you just followed the “words in red” (Zondervan’s way of showing what Christ said) you’d be a buddha, a zen master.
Even then it’s important to remember that the Bibles that evolved out of the King James understanding are different from the old Geneva Bible. Catholics and Protestants can’t even agree about what constitutes the 10 Commandments. And if you ever read the story of the HUMAN councils that said what went in and what stayed out of the Bible you couldn’t possibly hold that it’s a man-made great bloody mess and about as far away from “holy writ” as can be expected. Yet “great learned men” pound the pulpit bloody insisting the Bible is the inerrant word of GAWD. And it doesn’t matter how much they have to torture it to get it to be that way.
So, for me – a Quaker – the great debates that ensue whenever scholars wring their hands and spit at one another over the meaning of a dash here or there, seem futile and silly.
and that would be “you couldn’t possibly hold that it’s the literal word of God and not a man-made great bloody mess…”
My Bible doesn’t say I can’t have a vodka lemonade at midnight if I wanted one!
It is so disheartening to see that this blatant disregard to the world we live in seems to be a part of the human condition.
Someone who believes they are good goes and hurts someone else. Someone who cries for freedom looks the other way (or at times encourages) when someone else is repressed. All of the people who just don’t care anymore because of how jaded it makes them. And as much as I try to chalk it up to “Oh, that’s just the way people are, aren’t they colorful!”, I find I can’t. I wonder how they don’t see (or care). And it hurts. It makes me mad.
It burns.
I have never heard that that feeling described so acutely. I have tried to express it before to those who wonder why I react to these things, but never felt I had the words.
Although, it does make it that much better when you learn of those people who are on the same page as you.
This is one of the reasons I really enjoy your blog.
Sigh…. there’s a sucker born in every minute, and Harold took full advantage of that. Hope those idiots feel like dumbasses today.
I was at my college reunion during the “Rapture.” We hung onto our beer bottles at exactly 6:00 hoping we could continue the cocktail party wherever we went. Good thing nothing happened. I hadn’t thought to hold onto the keg…
The conundrum all of Camping’s believers and followers have made for themselves is a bit much. Tight pickle.