The Morning Service

[poliphilo]

Sunday 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.

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

What I can't figure out is how one can possibly claim to love such a capricious and sadistic being? Such a mean old man...

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.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We have created God in the image of human authority. He has the power of life and death and is beyond criticism. I would like to affirm that we have outgrown this kind of relationship with our Big Men, but I see how people line up behind George Bush- simply because he's the Top Dog- and I doubt whether we have.