When I was a teenager, my mom drove us down from Nashville to Pensacola to visit my grandmother, but there was a special event she was excited to take as to: the Brownsville Revival. We arrived at the massive church to join the line, hoping to make it into the main sanctuary and not the overflow tent with the projector screens.
As a lapsed Episcopalian, lapsed evangelical, lapsed pagan, lapsed atheist, and now moderately Buddhish, a little Daoist and permanently on the fence with a spiritual wedgie...I find your Unholy Sh*t posts absolutely fascinating! Each one seems to shed light on the lessons and we "should have" learned from them, not what we are told they mean. I haven't entered a holy building for spiritual/worship purposes for more than half of my life by this point (sometime in the mid 90s I think it was) and don't intend to change that. That being said, your enlightening posts have made me more open to understanding biblical stories in a new way. Keep flinging the Unholy sh*t !
I wrote my thesis on inculturation, the "join their culture, understand them, speak their language, and share the message of Jesus and how it fits right in but adds (whatever is different)" idea. And well grounded in the NT, with "you've got a shrine to the unknown god - good idea! Let me tell you about that god!" and "I'm not obliged to be vegetarian, but if the barrier for my neighbor is that I'm eating meat, then I'll stop."
The number of times the church hierarchy reprimanded such people for not instead demanding new converts switch to European dress/language/name/etc just keeps going on and on.
Somehow, I hadn't put Pentecost alongside the early church described in Acts but, per your usual hilarious and profound insight, it makes so much sense and is another "piece of the puzzle" that I think Jesus left for us. It is always about love each other, care for each other and death is not the end of things. When you have written through the entire church year, you truly need to publish it. It will be a bestseller of the highest order for two reasons: the people who are searching and seeking and for the ones who just want to remain closed minded and hateful and burn books. Win/Win. Much love to you!
Wait, what? The laying of hands is bullshit? My day is ruined. lol. Another fascinating post on a topic I really know very little about. Although I do remember in elementary school when we had a discussion on antisemitism one of my classmates did talk a lot about how the Jews killed Jesus. It was then that I asked my teacher my very profound question (profound, at least for a 10-year old): if antisemitism exists, does semitism also exist? I was told there was no such word. I was very disappointed. Meh.
As a lapsed Episcopalian, lapsed evangelical, lapsed pagan, lapsed atheist, and now moderately Buddhish, a little Daoist and permanently on the fence with a spiritual wedgie...I find your Unholy Sh*t posts absolutely fascinating! Each one seems to shed light on the lessons and we "should have" learned from them, not what we are told they mean. I haven't entered a holy building for spiritual/worship purposes for more than half of my life by this point (sometime in the mid 90s I think it was) and don't intend to change that. That being said, your enlightening posts have made me more open to understanding biblical stories in a new way. Keep flinging the Unholy sh*t !
I wrote my thesis on inculturation, the "join their culture, understand them, speak their language, and share the message of Jesus and how it fits right in but adds (whatever is different)" idea. And well grounded in the NT, with "you've got a shrine to the unknown god - good idea! Let me tell you about that god!" and "I'm not obliged to be vegetarian, but if the barrier for my neighbor is that I'm eating meat, then I'll stop."
The number of times the church hierarchy reprimanded such people for not instead demanding new converts switch to European dress/language/name/etc just keeps going on and on.
Somehow, I hadn't put Pentecost alongside the early church described in Acts but, per your usual hilarious and profound insight, it makes so much sense and is another "piece of the puzzle" that I think Jesus left for us. It is always about love each other, care for each other and death is not the end of things. When you have written through the entire church year, you truly need to publish it. It will be a bestseller of the highest order for two reasons: the people who are searching and seeking and for the ones who just want to remain closed minded and hateful and burn books. Win/Win. Much love to you!
Wait, what? The laying of hands is bullshit? My day is ruined. lol. Another fascinating post on a topic I really know very little about. Although I do remember in elementary school when we had a discussion on antisemitism one of my classmates did talk a lot about how the Jews killed Jesus. It was then that I asked my teacher my very profound question (profound, at least for a 10-year old): if antisemitism exists, does semitism also exist? I was told there was no such word. I was very disappointed. Meh.
One of my favorite ones aside from the women at Easter!