Posted on 08/10/2005 10:48:11 AM PDT by curtisgardner
Just what is it about the Bible that drives left-wingers crazy?
When I say "left wingers," I'm speaking specifically about the far left. Those who spend inordinate amounts of time analyzing what you believe in, and not a single second on introspection. The people who try to eliminate any mention of God or Jesus in public places, but think it's perfectly fine to try and tell us that "Jesus was a liberal" via a sticker on the bumper their sloth-paced, battery-powered "savior of the ozone" vehicles – on public roads no less.
These are the kind of people who will burn thousands of gallons of jet fuel to fly to an environmental summit meeting, and "it takes a village" types who will gladly torch "the village" if they find out "the village" is using rabbits for medical research. The folks who decry violence in all of its forms, and yet are fully prepared to go on a hunger strike if the government doesn't give Ted Kaczynski his stuff back.
The way left. Terminal campus-dwelling know-betters with THC-clogged neurotransmitters who actually think Phil Donahue is kept off the air because of an organized conspiracy. Those leftists who sacrificed the better part of their lives just to get the FDA to have nutritional information put on the wrapper of a Snickers bar, and are positive that the real reason the dinosaurs became extinct was coconut oil. Those people.
A quick glance at the Bible, and it's not difficult to see why the tight sphincter of the left further asphyxiates that bug up their tuchis. The Bible is full of nightmares for leftist red-tape mongers and professional rule-imposers. Take these examples:
1.Moses parted the Red Sea without first performing an environmental impact study.
2.Jesus gave a Sermon on the Mount where he talked of giving to the poor, and spoke out against greed, and all without charging attendees $300 per ticket. (Barbra Streisand only).
3.The term "The Three Wise Men" is insensitive to the intellectually challenged. That should be changed to the "Trio of educationally advantaged amateur astronomers."
4.Instead of gold, frankincense and myrrh, they should have brought hummus, incense and a representative from Child Protective Services.
5.The Virgin Mary didn't first meet with consultants from Planned Parenthood.
6.Ten plagues and still not a single person thought of nationalizing health care?
7.Adam didn't ask Eve for verbal as well as written consent before touching her.
8.Of course Cain killed Abel. He was obviously suffering either from bipolar disorder, low blood sugar, emotional abuse as a child, or societal neglect.
9."The trials of Job" were nothing. Try getting a job with nothing but a masters degree in Norwegian Art History – that's a test!
10.Too bad Greenpeace didn't have their own ark so they could have rammed Noah's Ark. You just know that, after the flood, Noah sold those animals to the circus.
11.The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah could have easily been prevented if they would have passed hate-crime legislation sooner.
12.Jesus is one of the greatest teachers in history, but isn't a member of the National Education Association. In other words, God uses scab labor.
13.David slew Goliath simply because he was unfortunate enough to have been stricken with gigantism.
14."The Last Supper" didn't offer an option for people on gluten-free diets, and the fat content on the food was not labeled.
15.The part about Jonah and the whale becoming entangled in tuna nets is conveniently passed over in the Old Testament.
16.God should have spent the seventh day not resting, but rather going around putting warning stickers on all potentially dangerous, really pointy things.
17.What's the big deal about Nebuchadnezzar spending seven years ingesting grass? Heck, Woody Harrelson's done it longer than that.
18.The Bible mentions nothing about obtaining the necessary permits to build the Tower of Babel.
19.People lived to be hundreds of years old without prescription-drug coverage? I don't think so.
20.Jesus turned water into wine, which was not very mindful of those who happened to be teetering on the brink of plunging down the stairs of their 12-step program.
21.Of all the wealth possessed by King Solomon, the amount he donated to environmental causes: $0.
And the thing about the Bible that drives the left the most crazy?
22.People can find salvation without their assistance.
I'm certainly not trained in either Hebrew or Greek but yes, let's say I'm fairly certain - but not so certain that I'm not interested in hearing what somebody else has to say on the matter. Essentially, the Children of Israel were held to a higher moral standard than the practiced by the people around them - because nakedness does not necessarily involve sexual relations but sexual relations do involve nakedness (unless we are talking about the Clintoon version of sex - just kidding as even that still involves nakedness on the part of at least one of the participants). I believe too that this position is consistent with passages elsewhere. Otherwise, how does one interepret the story of Noah and his sons when he accidentally got drunk on some fermented grapejuice? It would be ridiculous to suggest that there was any kind of sexual angle to this story. It was simply a story of how two of the sons who observed the strong moral code averted their eyes when they covered over their sleeping father.
Genesis 9(King James Version) 21 'And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. 22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. 23 And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness.'
As well, why would scripture go to all this trouble of describing specific people that one should not have sex with when the commandment was already issued of 'sexual relations only being allowed with one's lawfully wedded spouse'? This would be totally redundant and throw into question, the intent and validity of the original blanket commandment. My thinking is that the intent of the passage (not all of it since other things are also referred to in this chapter) was simply to say that people were not to parade around naked - especially in front of those people that one was close to but not married to i.e. father and daughters, mother and sons etc. This was specifically spelled out because these other people were always close by because of shared living quarters etc. What scripture is saying is that modesty must still be observed even if it is difficult because of living arrangements. I'm sure that someone will then say 'so then it's ok to parade around people who one isn't close to?' I'm sure I could find other places in scripture where this would also be forbidden but for different reasons.
The Bible is this amazing collection of writings that encompasses virtually every subject known to man - not just a moral code, history book, marriage instructions, science topics and a path of salvation for sinful mankind to gain forgiveness with his Creator but everything else in between. So you don't think that it is the literal word of God? You would think that if it wasn't, it would be full of errors but so far none have ever been found. Why would that be unless in fact it is the inspired Word of God. Here a challenge to you. Find one (yup, just one) irrefutable error in the Bible. My only request is that you don't bring forth examples from some phony baloney translation written by who know who. Stick to something solid like the King James Version. Incidentally, scripture itself says in numerous places that ALL scripture was inspired by God. It also says that God is infallible - which pretty much makes it impossible for scripture to have errors. Good luck in your search.
hardcore fundamentalists
BTW I am one of those "hardcore fundamentalists"
but I could tell right away from your attitude
I might as well save my breath and cool my coffee
with it.
"BTW I am one of those "hardcore fundamentalists"
but I could tell right away from your attitude
I might as well save my breath and cool my coffee
with it."
Well said. And I would certainly not expect to sway you from your core beliefs, nor you will sway me. But we do know where we stand and the tent is big enough for all of us. Discussion is great, civil discussion even greater. Enjoy that cuppa joe
And what on earth version are you quoting from? Quoting scripture is great but it must be done accurately. 'Uncovering one's nakedness' is not the same as 'sexual relations'.
The Bible in total is pretty good advice and I don't much care if it is inspired by God or by godfearing people...
The results are far and above any alternative I've witnessed to date.
(Just my opinion)
SPOTREP
Intersting speculation. DOes it come with a bumper sticker that proclaims My Jewish Carpenter can beat up your forgotten Rabbi?
You make some good points--and the Jewish attention to
nakedness was something Hitlers goons attempted to exploit
in the death camp experiments. But IMO the term is an idiom
and in most languages people like to use different terms for the expression of thought. So I would disagree about any invalidation of blanket prohibition. Rather like Americans when Washington was Commander of the Army and their several ways to speak bout the unspeakable unnatural
sexual behavior -some calling that prohibited Sodom--others
mearly adressing it as an "unspeakable act.".
I'm going to have to do look into it a bit more because it's interesting that the various translations certainly seem to have a different view of how the original should have translated. I'm out of town and not near some of my materials to do that right now but will take a look on the weekend.
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