We ain’t afraid of no ghost

As for the title of today’s post, don’t worry, we won’t need any Ghostbusters to come out and put the smackdown on some specters. I just wanted to say a quick word about the Holy Spirit, sometimes called the Holy Ghost (and I didn’t want my announcement earlier today of Miz Pink’s temporary takeover of the blog to be the only post of the day; I need to give you something substantive).

Anyway, if you haven’t thought much about the Holy Spirit, you’re not alone, and it either means you aren’t Christian—or you’re one of the probably 75% of Christians or more who just never think about the Holy Spirit.

Like, I said, you have a lot of company.

Oh, you read about him in the Bible from time to time, but he hardly gets any play. We’re so focused on God the father and creator, and on Jesus the messiah and savior, that we just don’t really pay any attention to the third party in the upper management structure of the universe. Granted, I was of the same mind from the time I became born again up until maybe a couple years ago. I did my best to serve God and to honor Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for me, but I never gave the Holy Spirit a second thought.

At least not until I went to a church that focused on the Holy Spirit. Now, that wasn’t altogether a good thing, mind you. Some churches, Pentacostal ones among them, have a tendency to get a little too worked up about the Holy Ghost and forget to give enough time to God and Jesus. So, while it was a good thing I went to the church in question long enough to get an appreciation for the Holy Spirit, I’m very glad I’m not going there anymore.

So, who is the Holy Spirit and why should you care? Upon becoming born again by accepting Jesus as lord and savior, you essentially build the bridge between you and God that has been missing all your life. Sin and corruption separated you from a personal relationship with God. Jesus made it possible for the bridge to be built. Once you accept Jesus, the Holy Spirit enters into you and voila, the bridge is complete.

Oversimplified description perhaps, but why stop with the oversimplification now? Another way to think of the Holy Spirit is as a super-conscience. Once you are born again, God essentially lives inside you, or at least a portion of Him does. This isn’t possession, because you still call the shots about what you are, or aren’t, going to do for God and whether you are going to take the paths in life that He wants you to or not. But the quality of your spiritual life depends a lot on how much you are willing to heed the nudgings of the Holy Spirit and how much you are willing to listen to him.

And yes, I’ve said “him” a couple times now. The Holy Spirit is a being, every bit as much as God and Jesus are. Whether or not God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost are separate beings representing a Trinity or whether they are all the same being in three different presentations is irrelevant. Regardless of which it is, the Holy Spirit is still someone to be respected, honored and listened to. The Holy Spirit is the comforter that Jesus sends to you and the guide for your faith walk.

So, don’t get so caught up in the Spirit that you lose perspective and forget to give proper attention to your creator and your savior. But at the same time, make sure you don’t ignore him, either, in your Christian walk. Because to do so is to be someone who is saved in terms of your soul, but perhaps lost in terms of getting through life in the best way possible for you and those around you.

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It’s a pink world after all

Just a heads up that the color of things around here is going to become decidely more feminine for a week, give or take. I’m not taking a vacation per se, but old Deacon Blue will be taking a vacation from blog posts for a short time (maybe one day a real vacation to a scenic locale will be in my future). In my place, I’ll be handing the reins to Miz Pink to (hopefully) keep up pretty much daily posting. I’ll probably post once or twice over the weekend before I go on my tiny sabbatical. Just wanted to let you know. I know you’re in good hands. Better looking ones, I’m sure, as well, if she’s as religious about moisturizer as my wife is. Also, this means that aside from looking at the word “shit” at the top of my page every time you come here, the language will be a lot cleaner for the time I’m gone. God bless.

St. Paul the Prickly

St. Paul…you know, the guy who is responsible for a good chunk of the New Testament thanks to those letters he wrote, mostly to young Gentile churches in the years after Jesus died and rose…well, he’s a lot like my father-in-law. I love him, and I can learn a lot from him religiously. But I wouldn’t talk much politics with him. Nor would I discuss many social issues like, say, feminism. And I sure wouldn’t ask him for much in the way of advice on communications in interpersonal relations.

That isn’t a knock, by the way. Both my father-in-law (who was once my pastor) and Paul show a lot of intellectual power. They are both strong in their spiritual faith. Both of them have a lot to teach me about how to be a better person: for God, my family and others in my life. I respect both of them greatly. And I pay attention to them.

But they can both be jerks, too. They can both be narrow-minded. To their credit, both of them also tend to qualify their statements (Paul in his letters and my father-in-law in church) when they are indeed their own thoughts as opposed to biblical doctrine. Admittedly, the line can blur sometimes, and there are moments in my father-in-law’s sermons when you know his personal feelings have crept in…just as there are moments in Paul’s letters when it looks like perhaps he was going off on a personal tangent without remembering to warn us.

None of this dilutes the value of their messages, but it requires a certain willingness to forgive the man for his faults and focus in on the message. Paul was a learned, disciplined, committed man. He was a Pharisee and was all too willing to take on the mission of hunting down and persecuting Jews who were preaching Jesus as the Messiah and as having risen from the dead to ascent to the right hand of God his father. Despite his conversion to a belief in Jesus as the son of God, Paul didn’t suddenly get a personality transplant and thus much of what he says is colored by the way he was raised and the way he saw the world.

Here’s a funny take on St. Paul from cross-dressing British comedian Eddie Izzard (there is some foul language, but you’d expect that with me, now wouldn’t you?). Watch it for a nice palate cleanser, and then we’ll continue…

So, there were a lot of people who probably would have liked to give Paul the middle finger and many more who still do today. Certainly, he doesn’t endear himself to modern women with this:

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. (1 Timothy 2:11-14)

First, some have argued that the misogyny was added later after Paul was long dead, but I’m going to give credit to Paul for this because…well, why the hell not? The man lived in a society far more male-centered than what Americans are accustomed to today. Women didn’t hold positions of power generally, and educating them certainly wasn’t a priority, so why would he want a woman telling him what to do? Jerky, yes. But for the time and place, pretty normal thought process. Besides, I think the intent of that passage is a bit more narrow than it seems, as I noted in this post. Just for the record, I talked about Paul and the Pauline letters a bit here, too.

That certainly isn’t the only place where Paul exhibited a certain prickly streak, but it is one of the most telling for our modern times. So, if the guy has some old-world, old boy network chips on his shoulder, why care about anything he says?

Well, the man’s writings lay out a huge chunk of the fundamental doctrine of the church. The other apostles actually listened to him (once they figured out he wasn’t trying to infiltrate them as some sort of trick to destroy them) when he challenged what they were doing. He challenged himself and was open about many of his own flaws. This isn’t the kind of guy who seems to be out to create a church to suit his own ends but someone who was on a mission. In this case, a mission for Christ.

Now, consider also the fact that while the other apostles focused on teaching the Jews about Jesus and his divinity, Paul was tasked with reaching everyone else. The Gentiles vastly outnumbered the Jews and represented a whole host of different belief systems or lack thereof. If Paul seems like a hard-ass at time in his letters, let’s remember that he had to try to stamp out heretical fires at every turn, often when he was far away from the churches that were under fire, and thus unable to counter the false doctrines in person. You’re trying to keep people in line under God’s laws and strengthen their faith while battling their very human natures and being persecuted yourself at every turn.

I’d be a bit salty too.

Fact is, there is little that Paul writes that isn’t fully in line with the teaching of Jesus and the laws of God. And what bits of personal bias he might show at times can often easily be reconciled with societal changes today without altering the core intent. I know a lot of women won’t like the fact that I agree with Paul that women aren’t meant to be pastors. But with educational levels being what they are today, I think they belong everywhere else in the church, and I think Paul would agree on that front as well, given that he recognized a couple women who were important in the evangelism of the early church.

I suspect Paul would hold fast to views against sexual immorality and other desires of the flesh, as well he should given that God doesn’t want us to sin in those ways. But I also don’t think he’d be pleased with people bombing abortion clinics or trying to force secular lawmakers to hold to biblical law on issues such as sexual intercourse.

Paul was a sonovabitch at times, but he was an honest one and a faithful one, and that gives him a lot of credit as far as I’m concerned.

I know I already have a link to some biographical info on Paul embedded in the first word of this post, but click here for a Wikipedia entry on him should you like to learn even more. I rely on Wikipedia for a lot of the informational hyperlinks around here and I just feel like I need to branch out sometimes.

Of scarves and fidelity

So, I’ve got a beef with the right wing and the left wing today, thanks to recent posts at The Field Negro and Raving Black Lunatic that have hipped me to some crazy stories in the news…well, online rants that have made the news, anyway.

First, we have right-wing pundit Michelle Malkin, who in her blog post Of Donuts and Dumb Celebrities tries to make the case that a scarf worn by Rachael Ray in a Dunkin Donuts commercial somehow legitimates and supports terrorism because is supposedly so obviously a keffiyeh. Given that it’s still pretty rare to find a die-hard conservative who is an atheist, I’ll work under the assumption that she’s Christian. And in putting forth this rant (which actually convinced Dunkin Donuts to pull the ad), she epitomizes one of the things that pisses me off about narrow-minded right-wing Christians, which is that they think you can reduce terror-loving religious extremists to something like a scarf. They are so frickin paranoid that we’re going to be overrun by swarthy Jesus-hating footsoldiers that they are concerned someone will see Rachael Ray in something keffiyeh-like and sympathize with terrorists.

Way to oversimplify religious extremism while completely ignoring your own.

But hey, I have a left-leaning Democrat in my sights too. Let it never be said I never have anything bad to say about the folks who are a bit closer to my political views. In this case, Sylvia Welsh, in a blog post titled The Shrinkage Factor, actually suggests that Barack Obama’s seemingly unassailable fidelity to his wife is some sign that perhaps he’s not tough enough to be president. That’s right, she actually tries to weave together a blog post that can somehow posit that by being faithful to his wife he’s too much of a nice guy (granted she makes a lot of other points in this blog as well, few of which make any damn sense). And in this we see the hypocrisy of someone whom I’m certain would be quick to decry a conservative Christian for cheating on his wife while espousing family values, but can also be among those who expect Obama to repudiate his pastor of 20 years and also knock him for not cheating on his wife. What Bizarro World suburb does this woman live in?

*Sigh* God save me from the idiots on the right of me and the idiots on the left of me…please.

Gender bender by Miz Pink

So, Sir Pink and I survived yet another large holiday cookout/get together with my family. No relatives were injured in the making of this event and my darling chivalrous hubby wasn’t (as has happened several times before) put in a position of feeling he had to step in and protect me from an ideological attack from any of my many relatives who take a rather narrow conservative view of most religious, social and political stuff. Good thing, too, because Sir Pink left his charger and lance at home hundreds of miles away.

But the lack of personal involvement in heated debates doesn’t mean I didn’t hear my fair share, including one of my uncles, who is a reverand and who likes to preach that homosexuality is a special kind of sin that puts you in immediate damnation because it’s a sin against the Holy Ghost. For those of you not familiar with this conept of blasphemy agaisnt the Holy spirit, here you go…from Matthew chapter 12 (in Jesus’s own words):

31 Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. 32 “And whoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age, or in the {age} to come.

I know, pretty heady stuff to know that there is a sin that even Jesus says cannot be forgiven. But before I go on too much longer, let me tell you that my uncle is full of it. I’ll encourage the good Deacon to post some other day on what blasphemy against the Holy Spirit really is. Not that it will change my uncle’s mind of course.

Anyhoo, my uncle’s twisted logic on this is that God determines what gender you are at birth, and thus what sexual orientation (since its only supposed to be boys on girls, dontcha know), and therefore to go against that is to fundementally reject God’s design for you. And that is supposedly a sin against the Holy Spirit and a form of blasphemy. I haven’t heard anyone else make this silly argument, but in the interests of not causing family warfare, I have stopped telling my uncle that.

So at the Memorial Day park gathering, what better way to celebrate fallen soldiers than to reiterate his argument to the huddled, beer-besotten masses (well, the half dozen people sitting near him anyway) his view on this subject, with the added notation that people who undergo sex change operations are doubly guilty of blaspheming against the Holy Ghost because they have rejected not only their assigned sexual preference but assigned gender as well.

Again: total bull. But at the risk of making anyone mad around here, I will agree with my uncle on one point. Transgender stuff creeps me out big time. Gay and lesbian sex? Doesn’t really raise my hairs. Cross-dressing? Cool, if that’s your thing. Sex change? Makes me break out in goosebumps just thinking about it and not the good kind of goosebumps either.

I don’t think it’s some unforgivable sin, mind you. I just don’t get it. If you tell me you are only attracted to your own gender, I get that. It’s a personal lifestyle choice. But to say God gave you the wrong body? C’mon! Get real!

My personal take is that if you think you’re a woman trapped in a man’s body or the other way around, I think you need to get some counseling, not surgery. Advances in surgery that allows “gender reassignment” make sense for the poor little babies born with both sets of gender equipment or none at all. That’s a genetic mashup and God gave us the brains to take that on, so we should. But to argue as a person with fully functioning natural parts that you got the wrong set is plain nutty. Is that insensitive of me? Maybe so but it’s how I feel.

I remember a guy friend in college joking with me that he felt like he was a lesbian trapped in a man’s body. I think he was sweet on me and was trying to turn it into some sort of come hither line, but if so it didn’t work. He probably would have loved to try on a woman’s body just long enough to enjoy some lesbian action but he was joking, and I’m sure many other men have made similar jokes.

And yet…I read a year or two ago about a man who did indeed get a sex change operation to become a woman, but who continued to have sex with women. A guy who really thought he was a lesbian trapped in a man’s body! And this goes to show how we misuse medical technology, usually to try to look better when we shouldn’t be trying to…but sometimes to just change what God gave us just because we aren’t satisfied with our private parts. It’s something that also bugs me when women go for fertility drugs and in vitro because they so desparately want kids, and then they end up with 6 or 7 or 8 of them and start crying for help to pay for and raise their ungainly gaggle of little’uns. Medical science isn’t a toy, and sometimes, nature (and God) know best.

So what’s next as medical technology advances? Species reassignment? Always wanted to be a wolf or a bear or a horse? Here’s your chance! I’m a gay tiger trapped in a female human body. Let me out! I want to hook up with Siegfried or Roy.

Whether you believe in God or not, sometimes I think we just need to accept what is set before us. Or in this case accept what we are set inside of…our very own bodies.

To our fallen heroes

It’s a little late in the day, or the long holiday weekend for that matter, to be posting about Memorial Day I suppose (if I have any readers outside the U.S., that is a holiday honoring those who have died while in military service to the country). But given that I have a household full of sickies this weekend (myself included), I hope I can be forgiven.

Certainly, not all who die in military service are heroes. But most of the people in the military are there because they believe they have a patriotic duty, and they take the safety of their country seriously. Seriously enough to leave limbs, peace of mind and sometimes even their lives behind. I have had serious disagreements with most conflicts in which the U.S. has engaged during my lifetime, but that doesn’t dilute the respect I have for those who wear the uniforms of the various U.S. military branches with honor and dignity.

With so many having died in Iraq alone—not just U.S. service men and women but Iraqi citizens as well—I am reminded that everything I do here in this country and everything that I enjoy has been paid for in blood at some point—sometimes the blood of soldiers, sometimes the blood of abused workers in other countries, sometimes the blood of other people entirely. That bloodletting doesn’t always involve death, and it’s not the divine kind of blood that Jesus shed for our sins, but it’s blood nonetheless.

Sometimes blood has been shed with good cause and sometimes not, but people have bled all the same. Looking to those who have served the U.S., I have this to say: For the majority who survived, I say “God bless.” To those who have perished in honorable service and to their families, I say “Thank you.” I look forward to the day when we won’t have to send our sons and daughters to die for any cause.

How would Jesus roll?

There is a hilarious exchange beginning about three-quarters of the way down in the comments of this post at Deus Ex Malcontent in which a guy named “Bill White” (yeah, right) poses as a right-wing nutjob. At first, it seems like he might be serious and really believe what he writes, but as things progress, it eventually becomes clear it’s just sophisticated parody. I point this out only because there is a comment by Bill White that he drives an F-150 and someone later jokes that if he were a true Jesus freak, he would drive an F-350.

It’s funny to me, at least, because I think there are so many Christians of the more right-leaning persuasion (and other persuasions, probably, to be honest) who really do drive big, honkin, gas-guzzling vehicles. These are the same people who probably stuck “What Would Jesus Do?” stickers on the bumpers or the back window back when the WWJD thing was all the rage.

Sadly, what such folks seem to have forgotten was that Jesus mostly walked around, and when he rode into Jerusalem in his final days on Earth, he rode on a friggin donkey. So, let’s consider how Jesus would roll if he had a car. Hell, if Jesus were in the flesh here on planet Earth today, and if he were driving anything, it wouldn’t be anything flashier than a Prius. And frankly, that would be too much for him to be comfortable with, I suspect.

To be honest, I think he’d be driving a used Geo Metro.

That’s truly beastly

OK, my sex-related post a couple days ago went over some kind of line (or maybe multiple lines), so I pulled it on the advice of Quality Control Director Mrs. Blue (for those who wondered from my A Woman’s Place post whether my wife holds a strong position in the family, that should clear up your confusion right there; she also controls the checkbook, by the way). But it’s still about time for another sex post, so here goes. This one has major icky overtones, but I like to think Mrs. Blue will let it pass because in this case, I’m telling you about something that is a huge “don’t go there” kind of activity. I mean, seriously, don’t touch this crap with a ten-foot pole kind of sex.

Bestiality.

Do not, I repeat, do not have any sexual contact with animals. I’ll back up my shit in a moment, but let me repeat.

Don’t do it.

In fact, don’t even look at porn related to it. Because if you’re looking at that kind of thing out of anything more than a passing morbid curiosity about what the hell it looks like, you probably want to do it (see brown and tan alert levels in this post, please). If you’re feeding any kind of desire or sexual release with the use of images of people-and-animals sex, you have already crossed a line. Don’t add any more fuel to the fire. Do not try to imagine if you can recreate that urban legend about Richard Gere and the gerbils. Don’t. Step away from the shit now. Get professional help and pray for release from this sin as soon as you can. Run, don’t walk, to the nearest help for your affliction.

OK, I know I was subtle there, but I hope you got the point.

First off, let’s not even put bestiality in any kind of similar class to things like fornication or homosexual sex, and for one very key reason: Those other sexual acts involve consenting adults. You may be sinning, but at least you’re in agreement with the other person that you want to sin. It’s a choice. God gave us free will, and we sometimes don’t use it the way we should.

Animals, however, have a notoriously poor record of being able to give informed consent. I don’t care how much you think an animal might be into you; the fact is, you’re the more evolved creature, you know better, and the animal isn’t capable of making a proper decision about whether to engage in sexual relations with a human. Animals act on instinct. You have intellect and emotion. Much like a manager having sex with a subordinate under his or her supervision, it is just wrong. The balance of power is too skewed and you are exerting yourself on an innocent creature in a nasty form of abuse. The only sexual sins worse than bestiality, as far as I’m concerned, are sexual contact with kids and rape, which are not only sins, but are just plain evil. It is abuse of one of basest sorts. It demeans your victim and your own soul and violates so many other things in addition to God’s law. Bestiality may not be as pointedly and clearly evil as child sexual abuse, but it sure is sick, and it sits pretty closely to the border of true evil.

Second point against bestiality: God didn’t address sex with animals as much as other sexual sins in the Bible, but it got addressed in a particularly pointed way in one place (Leviticus chapter 18, verses 22-23):

You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination. Also you shall not have intercourse with any animal to be defiled with it, nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it; it is a perversion.

Generally, when we’re told what we are supposed to do (or not do) in the Word of God, the masculine pronoun is used, with the understanding that in almost all cases, it applies equally to women. But here, just to drive the point home, God wants us to know that men shouldn’t have intimate relations with animals and women shouldn’t have such relations either. He only bothers to mention men with same-sex relations, but He repeats the warning about animals for both genders. Just in case there is any confusion, God made sure to let you know that no one is to lie down with animals in that way.

This kind of sex is so wrong on so many levels that I am not about to give it any wiggle room whatsoever. You’re violating human laws, you’re violating God’s laws, you’re going against basic human nature. You’re even forcing an animal to go against its nature.

Just say no. And if you can’t say no, find someone who cares about you to drag you to someone who can help you, be it a priest, pastor, therapist, hypnotist, a government-trained ex-CIA brainwasher or all of the above.

(For those who care, I found the T-Shirt image at a site called http://www.newworldordertshirts.com)

Who picked this stuff out?

So, there were a lot of letters from apostles floating around in the days of the early Christian church, but there wasn’t general agreement as to which ones were the actual canon of Christianity until around the middle of the second century—and it still wasn’t “official” even then. So, based on that alone, why do we accept the current books of the Bible as being the “right” ones? Couldn’t it just have been a bunch of guys in a religious old boy’s network screwing with us to promote their own power and their own ends? Why should we trust that they picked out the right books to put into what would eventually come to be called the Bible?

Well, here are a few reasons that I think are good ones.

First, let’s handle the Old Testament. Aside from some reordering of certain books and the addition of a couple in the Catholic version of the Bible, the Old Testament is pretty much the Jewish Bible, or Tanakh. Now, there are some things in there that I don’t take 100% literally (I’ll get around to starting my Old Testament series soon), but as far as being the inspired Word of God, I have to accept those books because that’s what Jesus taught from. If it was good enough for Christ, it’s good enough for me, and for the most part early Church leaders didn’t muck around with it, so as far as I’m concerned, it stands strong.

But what about the New Testament? Folks point out rightly that the epistles in there (the letters written to various cities and groups by apostles and others who were setting the foundation for the church) certainly weren’t the only letters out there by church leaders. How can we know that they ones that were picked were the right ones? Folks say it was inspiration from God, but anyone can say that. In general, I think that with opinions flowing and changing, the fact that certain letters stood out and were widely accepted by the mid-second century is probably a pretty good indicator of their resonance and staying power, and thus their inspired nature.

As for the gospels, why only the four “synoptic” gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and none of the others, such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of Mary? or the Gospel of Binky the Elder, for that matter?

Well, Judas didn’t write the Gospel of Judas—so there’s a big ding right there—and the document seems to be no older than the second century, which puts it well after Jesus’ death, unlike the synoptic ones that have origins much closer to Jesus’ lifetime, written by people who knew Jesus. Basically, it’s a work of fiction in the Gnostic tradition to recast Judas and his role. It might be interesting, but it’s ultimately no different than historical fiction that authors write today. It cannot be trusted.

As for the Gospel of Mary, it isn’t even clear which Mary (Mary Magdalene or Jesus’ mother) is the supposed author. Also, even if it is accurate (and the oldest surviving copy is missing several pages, so there’s no way to figure out what it was supposed to say in its entirety, unlike the synoptic gospels, which have hundreds of copies in multiples languages that can be compared and contrasted to ensure the whole story is there). Besides, this “gospel” isn’t focused on the teachings and life of the adult Jesus, and thus really isn’t a gospel at all. Again, interesting reading, and perhaps not fiction, but also not suitable for advancing the great commission.

As for the Gospel of Thomas, it’s not clear enough whether it was written anywhere near as close to Jesus’ lifetime as were the synoptic gospels, nor whether it was actually penned by the apostle Thomas. The stark ways in which is departs from the synoptic gospels in terms of philosophy and theology make it too likely to have been a heretical work and not something truly in the spirit of God’s new covenant with humans.

In general, though, looking at the whole Bible, what strikes me is this: In at least three gatherings of big muckity-mucks of the church in the years 393, 397 and 419, they all agreed to keep the books in the Bible as they were, which mirrored an Easter letter in 367 by the Bishop of Alexandria that listed the books of the Bible that should be considered canon. So, why don’t I hold to the old boy’s network conspiracy theory, even though it was an old boy’s network meeting each time? Because if I were among a bunch of guys and we were trying to figure out how to control people through religion, I would probably be trying to slip in some newer stuff (Hell, it worked for John Smith when he invented what would become the Mormon church and bilked everyone into believing his ridiculous new gospel of Jesus).

I mean, really. The general population way back then, the rank-and-file believers—they weren’t educated, and they don’t know how to read. So, if you’re the church leaders, why not declare that some of your writings, or those of earlier church leaders whom you agree with, are divinely inspired? Who’s going to challenge you on this? No one. And presto!…the Bible becomes your tool of control and propaganda. All you have to do is find some good stuff that someone else had already written, or write your own stuff (sufficiently in line with established doctrine so as to not be suspect, but spun to suit your needs) and make it canon.

The fact that they didn’t suggests to me that they were trying very hard to make sure they chose writings that were from divinely inspired people who lived during the time that Jesus was alive. Yes, a lot of these bishops and popes and shit from those old days were bastards. A lot of them were power-hungry, greedy, deviant freaks. But not all of them. And clearly, even those that did have personal agendas drew the line at messing with God’s word, which at least says their religious and spiritual aims were on target (in this case, at least), if not their worldly activities and goals.

Mea culpa

I have appointed my wife as quality control person for my blog but sadly, she doesn’t read my stuff until after I post. Given that I’ve gone this many weeks without a complaint, I take it seriously when she says a post bugs her, so on Mrs. Blue’s quality control advice, I have removed the post I had for May 21.

Sorry for any inconvenience, be it having offended anybody unduly or in making anyone wonder just what they missed.

 

😉