{"id":28520,"date":"2015-02-15T09:07:20","date_gmt":"2015-02-15T14:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=28520"},"modified":"2015-02-15T09:07:20","modified_gmt":"2015-02-15T14:07:20","slug":"this-book-is-perfect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/02\/this-book-is-perfect.html","title":{"rendered":"This Book is Perfect"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both;text-align: none\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-28519\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2015\/02\/wpid-Photo-20150208220717721.jpg\" alt=\"wpid-Photo-20150208220717721.jpg\" width=\"497\" height=\"331\"><\/div>\n<p>I came across this meme and thought it worth sharing. People often claim that the Bible is a supernatural book, and yet rarely do they claim that this is its supernatural power. And yet history shows that, at the very least, people have tried to justify just about everything using the Bible.<\/p>\n<p>But that is because of the view that the Bible is authoritative in a particular sort of way. And so the hope of many readers is that, if they can just find justification for this or that in its pages, then they have ended discussion.<\/p>\n<p>But that isn\u2019t so. The Bible doesn\u2019t justify everything. The Bible doesn\u2019t justify anything. The Bible, in and of itself, justifies nothing. What it offers are human perspectives which\u00a0are sometimes lofty and challenge our attempts to justify ourselves, if we listen carefully. And what it offers are instances of humans justifying things, claiming things, and arguing things.<\/p>\n<p>The Bible is perfect only in the sense that it provides a perfect opportunity to engage in a conversation spanning centuries, and to hear voices which not only attempt to justify all sorts of things, but also voices which emphasize that all human attempts at self-justification are misguided, even when they use the Bible in their attempt to do so.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I came across this meme and thought it worth sharing. People often claim that the Bible is a supernatural book, and yet rarely do they claim that this is its supernatural power. And yet history shows that, at the very least, people have tried to justify just about everything using the Bible. But that is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":28519,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,42],"tags":[1140,4871,7250],"class_list":["post-28520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible","category-humor","tag-bible","tag-humor","tag-meme"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>This Book is Perfect<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I came across this meme and thought it worth sharing. People often claim that the Bible is a supernatural book, and yet rarely do they claim that this is\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/02\/this-book-is-perfect.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"This Book is Perfect\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I came across this meme and thought it worth sharing. People often claim that the Bible is a supernatural book, and yet rarely do they claim that this is\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/02\/this-book-is-perfect.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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