The Morning Service
Jul. 24th, 2005 09:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloSunday mornings we usually catch the end of the church service on Radio 4 while we make breakfast. The preacher (whoever it is) rarely makes any concession to the fact that he's working in an intimate medium, but soars and trembles and booms. It gets my goat.
Today the guy was rhapsodising about the vision of paradise at the end of the Book of Revelations. Yes, yes, yes- it's very beautiful, but the Book of Revelations is all about God and his angels killing people. It's the most bloody-minded, fanatical, genocidal book in the Bible- the first century equivalent of an Al Quaeda website. Taking the pretty bits out of context is- well- like discussing Hitler soley in terms of autobahns and his patronage of Albert Speer.
I've been reading stuff recently where Muslims are urged to face up to the violent passages in the Koran, to acknowledge (presumably with tears of penitence) that their religion isn't all pink cotton-candy. Fine- yes please- the sooner the better.
But the Koran isn't the only Holy Book to trip out on fantasies of murder.
Today the guy was rhapsodising about the vision of paradise at the end of the Book of Revelations. Yes, yes, yes- it's very beautiful, but the Book of Revelations is all about God and his angels killing people. It's the most bloody-minded, fanatical, genocidal book in the Bible- the first century equivalent of an Al Quaeda website. Taking the pretty bits out of context is- well- like discussing Hitler soley in terms of autobahns and his patronage of Albert Speer.
I've been reading stuff recently where Muslims are urged to face up to the violent passages in the Koran, to acknowledge (presumably with tears of penitence) that their religion isn't all pink cotton-candy. Fine- yes please- the sooner the better.
But the Koran isn't the only Holy Book to trip out on fantasies of murder.
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Date: 2005-07-24 05:45 am (UTC)Her response was pure superstition. As if she believed that God would kill her son if she entertained the least doubt.
Why do believers have such low moral expectations of God? They tiptoe around him as though he were an erratic, unpredictable, paranoid autocrat- like Caligula or Saddam Hussein
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Date: 2005-07-24 05:52 am (UTC)How has it come to this, I wonder? Maybe the more we fear, the more we feel protected--like the Stockholm syndrome with kidnap victims.
If any of us truly believed we could by wrong choices go to Hell and be punished FOREVER (the horror of this is simply beyond thought), we would never have children, lest we subject them to such a monstrous possibility.
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Date: 2005-07-25 01:53 am (UTC)