{"id":10843,"date":"2012-10-17T16:42:01","date_gmt":"2012-10-17T20:42:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=10843"},"modified":"2012-10-17T16:42:01","modified_gmt":"2012-10-17T20:42:01","slug":"smart-people-saying-smart-things-69","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/10\/17\/smart-people-saying-smart-things-69\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart people saying smart things"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Morgan Guyton: \u201cUnpaving the Romans Road\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s my test for you to see whether you have buried Jesus under your Romans Road. When Jesus tells the Samaritan woman to go get her husband and then answers her reply that she has no husband by saying, \u201cThe truth is you\u2019ve had five husbands and the man you live with now isn\u2019t your husband,\u201d is he (1) convicting her of her sin or (2) expressing sympathy and acceptance to a woman who got rejected and divorce-slipped by five men (which was not adultery under Mosaic law \u2026)?<\/p>\n

If you automatically answered\u00a0 No. 1, it\u2019s because you or whoever interpreted this text for you in the past superimposed the Romans Road paradigm for Christian conversion on top of the text. \u2026 For the woman to \u201cget saved\u201d according to this formula, she has to be convicted of her sin, throw herself at the mercy of Jesus, and then accept His salvation. The problem is that words like sin, forgiveness, repentance, or salvation do not occur anywhere in the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. There is no reason to conclude from the words as they are written in the text that Jesus couldn\u2019t have been sympathizing with the woman rather than rebuking her when he told her the truth about her love life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rachel Held Evans: \u201cI love the Bible\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Bible is a sacred collection of letters and laws, stories and songs, prophecies and proverbs, philosophy and poems, spanning thousands of years and multiple cultures, written by dozens of authors and inspired by God. It is teeming with metaphor and imagery, tension and contrast. It defies our every effort at systemization. It defies our every attempt at mastery. Indeed, it forces us into community \u2014 with God and with one another \u2014 precisely<\/em> because it is difficult to understand,\u00a0precisely<\/em> because it was never meant to be read alone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Scott Paeth: \u201cChurch for Freaks II\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

In Christ\u2019s crucifixion we see both the reflection of our brokenness and the consequence of our brokenness, since in our woundedness we wound in return. We as broken creatures harm those who are least worthy of harm, and bring to grief those towards whom we owe the greatest love. And in the cross, this reality is made manifest to us. At the same time, we\u2019ve been wounded in our turn, and in Christ we see the reflection of a God who is with us in our woundedness, who suffers both for us and because of us, and in whom our hope therefore must rest.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jarm Logue: Letter to Mrs. Sarah Logue, 1860<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

You say you have offers to buy me, and that you shall sell me if I do not send you $1,000, and in the same breath and almost in the same sentence, you say, \u201cyou know we raised you as we did our own children.\u201d Woman, did you raise your own children for the market? Did you raise them for the whipping-post? Did you raise them to be drove off in a coffle in chains? Where are my poor bleeding brothers and sisters? Can you tell?<\/p>\n

Who was it that sent them off into sugar and cotton fields, to be kicked, and cuffed, and whipped, and to groan and die; and where no kin can hear their groans, or attend and sympathize at their dying bed, or follow in their funeral? Wretched woman! Do you say you did not do it? Then I reply, your husband did, and you approved the deed \u2014 and the very letter you sent me shows that your heart approves it all. Shame on you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Morgan Guyton on what Jesus never said to the woman at the well; Rachel Held Evans on the Bible; Scott Paeth on the crucifixion; and Jarm Logue, an illegal immigrant in 1860, responds to an appalling request from his aunt\/”owner.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-10843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-smart"],"yoast_head":"\nSmart people saying smart things<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Morgan Guyton on what Jesus never said to the woman at the well; Rachel Held Evans on the Bible; Scott Paeth on the crucifixion; and Jarm Logue, an illegal immigrant in 1860, responds to an appalling request from his aunt\/"owner."\" \/>\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\/slacktivist\/2012\/10\/17\/smart-people-saying-smart-things-69\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Smart people saying smart things\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Morgan Guyton on what Jesus never said to the woman at the well; Rachel Held Evans on the Bible; Scott Paeth on the crucifixion; and Jarm Logue, an illegal immigrant in 1860, responds to an appalling request from his aunt\/"owner."\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/10\/17\/smart-people-saying-smart-things-69\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-10-17T20:42:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/10\/17\/smart-people-saying-smart-things-69\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/10\/17\/smart-people-saying-smart-things-69\/\",\"name\":\"Smart people saying smart things\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-10-17T20:42:01+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-10-17T20:42:01+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\"},\"description\":\"Morgan Guyton on what Jesus never said to the woman at the well; 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Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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