Bible // Current

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10 days ago

Bone Fragments Confirmed to be Saint Paul

Pope Benedict XVI said scientific tests confirmed shards found in the underground chamber at the church of St... more

EmperorThan
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Celtic Christianity Today Homily “The Cost and Joy of Discipleship” By Rev. Dr. George Cairns

(Valparaiso, Indiana) - Rev. Dr. George Cairns of Chesterton, Indiana delivers Sunday homily entitled “The Cost and Joy of... more

Yoopernewsman
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Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed and Forgery in the Holy Land

Review of the book by Nina Burleigh. This book describes one of the greatest hoaxes of all time as she follows the path of several... more

GrrlScientist
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Jack Black & Michael Cera Take Over Current

Jack Black and Michael Cera take over Current ... by force ... pirate ship style ... and are joined by Christopher Mintz-Plasse... more

chapinyoung
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Teaching Creationism in Schools [video]

This video gives you a brief overview of what the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) does to protect our schools from... more

GrrlScientist
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All Rocks Go To Heaven [pics]

An automatic sign generator, two churches, and a religious argument, what more could anyone want?

GrrlScientist
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Some Thoughts About Creation [video]

In this amusing video, Ricky Gervais discusses the creation story as he reads about it directly from the Bible. Kinda sad that... more

GrrlScientist
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Court: No Bible show-and-tell in school

A kindergartner's mother cannot read Scripture during show and tell, even if the Bible is the boy's favorite book, a... more

ClipsFC
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This is a great way to look at marriage

I found this not only funny but also a great way to look at the archaic laws that govern our lives and see how they do not... more

cheakywillie
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School Makes Teen Reveal Pregnancy

How far should a school go to get help for a pregnant teen? A mom in Texas says her daughter's school crossed a line when... more

retro_Syl
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Celtic Christianity Today Homily “The Goodness of Creation” by Rev. Dr. George Cairns

Celtic Christianity Today Homily “The Goodness of Creation” on April 26, 2009 at Union Community Church, Valparaiso,... more

Yoopernewsman
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2010 - National Year of the Bible?

A Republican House member wants President Barack Obama to make 2010 the Year of the Bible. There's no sign that Obama will... more

unimatrix0
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Lawmaker wants to make 2010 'Year of the Bible'

When the clock strikes midnight on Dec. 31, 2009, Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) hopes you’ll be ringing in “the Year of the... more

retro_Syl
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Former Fundamentalist Has Made a Career of Debunking the Bible

He says he's not trying to destroy your faith. He's not trying to bash the Bible. And, though his mother no longer talks... more

korourke
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Barnabas Nagy is hated - judge ye, or judge not?

Messengers were always hated, and they will be. If messengers of truth are not said to be evil, liars, self-lovers, drunkards etc... more

barnabasnagy
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THE PURPOSE OF LIFE

In the first Fireside entitled “Why Life”, the most basic questions of existence are both asked and answered. In the... more

Bahai144
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"For many Christians, the life of Jesus signifies the birth of a new kind of God, a God of universal love. The Hebrew Bible—the “Old Testament”—chronicled a God who was sometimes belligerent (espousing the slaughter of infidels), unabashedly nationalist (pro-Israel, you might say), and often harsh toward even his most favored nation. Then Jesus came along and set a different tone. As depicted in the Gospels, Jesus exhorted followers to extend charity across ethnic bounds, as in the parable of the good Samaritan, and even to love their enemies. He told them to turn the other cheek, said the meek would inherit the Earth, and warned against self-righteousness (“let he who is without sin cast the first stone”). Even while on the cross, he found compassion for his persecutors: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

But there’s a funny thing about these admirable utterances: none of them appears in the book of Mark, which was written before the other Gospels and which most New Testament scholars now consider the most reliable (or, as some would put it, the least unreliable) Gospel guide to Jesus’ life. The Jesus in Mark, far from calmly forgiving his killers, seems surprised by the Crucifixion and hardly sanguine about it (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). In Mark, there is no Sermon on the Mount, and so no Beatitudes, and there is no good Samaritan; Jesus’ most salient comment on ethnic relations is to compare a woman to a dog because she isn’t from Israel.

Why would some scholars downplay the earliest description of Jesus in favor of accounts compiled after there had been more time for myth to accumulate? In part, maybe, because some of them are Christians, or at least lapsed Christians who still resonate to their native faith. But in part, also, because it’s not obvious why a whole mythology about a “good” Jesus would have taken shape decades after the Crucifixion. What, after all, would have inspired early followers of Jesus to invent the idea of a brotherhood that knows no ethnic or national bounds?

Clues have been emerging in recent years, but not clues of the usual kind—not long-lost scrolls or other ancient artifacts. The clues come from the modern world, and they’re all around us. It’s increasingly apparent how analogous a globalizing world is to the environment in which Christianity took shape after Jesus’ death. And in this light, it makes sense that early devotees of the crucified Jesus would develop the now-familiar Christian message, which could later be attributed to Jesus himself.

Now, as we approach the global level of social organization—and see the social order threatened by strife among the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) —another burst of moral progress is needed. Success is hardly guaranteed, but at least the early history of Christianity and indeed of all Abrahamic faiths gives cause for hope. However bleak a globalizing world may look at times, the story could still have a happy ending, an ending that brings out the best in religion as religion brings out the best in people.""For many Christians, the life of Jesus signifies the birth of a new kind of God, a God of universal love. The Hebrew... more

St_Alia_10191
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added
3 months ago

Gory Easter Plays Miss the Point of the Gospels

"This Easter weekend, tens of thousands of Christians across the country will turn out for Passion plays, dramatic portrayals focusing on the last week of the life of Jesus Christ. Many are tiny church pageants with casts of 12 disciples, a Jesus of Nazareth, and perhaps a couple of Roman centurions, all wearing bed sheets with nylon ropes tied around their waists. Others, such as the musical Tetelestai in Columbus, Ohio, and the Topeka Passion Play in Kansas, are semiprofessional events that hosting churches have perfected over the course of multiyear runs. But the most well-attended are Bible spectaculars that would make Cecil B. DeMille swoon, featuring immense casts and crews who pull off gritty depictions of first-century capital punishment and Vegas-y musical numbers.

Like The Passion of the Christ, these productions (most of which predate Mel Gibson's film) focus on the severity of Jesus' suffering in death. The moments of beating and crucifixion are sparse in the Gospel accounts, but modern Passion plays match our culture's taste for visual realism. The audience viscerally experiences each of the 39 lashes delivered onto Jesus' body and each of the four stakes driven into his limbs. Christians have long dwelled on the details of the suffering of Christ, but with today's theater techniques, nothing has to be left to the imagination.

there are also other Jesus stories to tell—including the ones Jesus shared. One famous Gospel phrase is (in the Latin Vulgate) compelle intrare, meaning "compel them to come in." The words come from a stirring parable Jesus told about a rich man who sends invitations for a fabulous dinner party, only to have no one accept. So the rich man has his servants round up "the poor and crippled and blind and lame," ending his pronouncement with a rhetorical flourish: "Compel them to come in." (St. Augustine co-opted the phrase, making it a theological basis for state-sponsored acts against heretics.)

It's Easter. Spring is here, though the calendar doesn't quite match the weather in many places. With the fast of Lent over, churches hoping to share their beliefs could take Jesus' parable as a suggestion: Throw a dinner. Make it lavish. "Go out to the highways and the hedges," as the rich man said, and invite the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame. What kind of story would that tell?""This Easter weekend, tens of thousands of Christians across the country will turn out for Passion plays, dramatic portrayals... more