{"id":31461,"date":"2015-08-31T06:28:47","date_gmt":"2015-08-31T10:28:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=31461"},"modified":"2015-08-31T06:28:47","modified_gmt":"2015-08-31T10:28:47","slug":"the-fundamentalist-interprets-scripture-sheep-and-goats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/08\/the-fundamentalist-interprets-scripture-sheep-and-goats.html","title":{"rendered":"The Fundamentalist Interprets Scripture (Sheep and Goats)"},"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><p>On the day of Biblical interpretation, the fundamentalist sits on his glorious throne, and separates Bible passages before him, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And to those on his right, he says, \u201cCome, things the Bible clearly says!\u00a0For I was confident, and your fostered my arrogance; I was\u00a0certain, and you gave me no reason to doubt; I\u00a0hated others, and you assured me that God hated them too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And the\u00a0Bible said nothing in reply, because a book cannot talk, and to hear what it says, one must read it with ears willing to hear.<\/p>\n<p>And to the passages on his left, he says, \u201cDepart from me, things the Bible cannot possibly mean!\u00a0For I was confident, and you spoke of humility; I was certain, and you sought to put me in my place; I hated others, and you spoke of love even for enemies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And the\u00a0Bible said nothing in reply, because a book cannot talk, and to hear what it says, one must read it with ears willing to hear.<\/p>\n<p>And so it was that the passages on his right remained in his presence as \u201cwhat the Bible clearly says,\u201d while those on his left were sent away into everlasting forgetfulness. And there was weeping and gnashing of teeth \u2013 not from the Bible, which has no teeth to gnash, but from those who encountered the misguided fundamentalist, and found that even the teachings of the Bible could not get through to him.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-31462\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2015\/08\/Sheep_and_goats-Natural-Resources-Conservation-Service-1.jpg\" alt=\"Sheep_and_goats-Natural-Resources-Conservation-Service-1\" width=\"496\" height=\"332\"><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the day of Biblical interpretation, the fundamentalist sits on his glorious throne, and separates Bible passages before him, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And to those on his right, he says, \u201cCome, things the Bible clearly says!\u00a0For I was confident, and your fostered my arrogance; I was\u00a0certain, and you gave [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":31462,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,139],"tags":[1140,3678,4003,5309,8693,11182],"class_list":["post-31461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible","category-fundamentalism-religion","tag-bible","tag-fundamentalists","tag-goats","tag-interpretation","tag-parable","tag-sheep"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Fundamentalist Interprets Scripture (Sheep and Goats)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"On the day of Biblical interpretation, the fundamentalist sits on his glorious throne, and separates Bible passages before him, as a shepherd separates\" \/>\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\/08\/the-fundamentalist-interprets-scripture-sheep-and-goats.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Fundamentalist Interprets Scripture (Sheep and Goats)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On the day of Biblical interpretation, the fundamentalist sits on his glorious throne, and separates Bible passages before him, as a shepherd separates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/08\/the-fundamentalist-interprets-scripture-sheep-and-goats.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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