I wrote this in a comment in a discussion group on Facebook, and thought it might be worth sharing beyond that context. Choosing to believe that the Biblical texts are inerrant truth, all written by whom they claim to be, and even that God is really their author, and then treating any evidence to the contrary in a dubious denialist manner, is nowhere said to be the basis for God judging human beings favorably. Read more
Hemant Mehta shared the above image from a counter-protest to Westboro Baptist Church's protest at a Lorde concert. That is what it means to counter-protest. Responding to hate with hate is simply joining in the hatred, not objecting to it. To take a stand against hatred, your words and actions need to express the opposite of hatred. Read more
Two posts that appeared yesterday on blogs I read seemed to me to converge on a common point, albeit from opposite sides. First, Fred Clark offered a post about American Evangelicalism’s demonization of others (both real and imagined) so as to bolster its own goodness. At the end, after quoting C. S. Lewis, he writes: American evangelicalism has been reshaped and redefined as precisely the thing that Lewis warned against — a never-ending quest for “the sheer pleasure of thinking... Read more
I've heard it suggested on more than one occasion that heaven and hell are the same place, and the difference is the attitude of the individual to the experiences and surroundings there. This cartoon, which was shared by Kissing Fish on Facebook, seems to envisage something along those lines. Although you have to wonder what Adam and Steve did that was so terrible that their punishment is having Fred Phelps as a roommate… Read more
One of the comments on this image on Facebook was “I feel the need…the need for creed.” What other Top Gun allusions can you think of that might fit this photo of sideways church, which does indeed look (with some help from Photoshop, of course) like a military fighter jet? Read more
From TheologyGrams Read more
While some religious believers argue against the Big Bang, others have seen it as proof of God. Such language is problematic. It is one thing to say that our universe seems to point beyond itself to something that came before it. It is quite another to try to use that as proof that one’s own ideas about God are somehow validated thereby. Nevertheless, there are far worse things that people can point to as “proof of God.” While most of us... Read more
Matthew Malcolm pointed out the above misprint in an NRSV Bible. For a verse to go missing from the final chapter of Revelation is particularly ironic, given what it says just a few verses after the missing one! Read more
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