Bible Extreme Quotes

The person who takes every opportunity to "pick on" others is often mistakenly called "sadistic". In reality, this person is a misdirected masochist who is working towards his own destruction. The reason a person viciously strikes out against you is because they are afraid of you or what you represent, or are resentful of your happiness. They are weak, insecure, and on extremely shaky ground when you throw your curse, and they make ideal human sacrifices.

Love has no gender - compassion has no religion - character has no race.

It is time we admitted, from kings and presidents on down, that there is no evidence that any of our books was authored by the Creator of the universe. The Bible, it seems certain, was the work of sand-strewn men and women who thought the earth was flat and for whom a wheelbarrow would have been a breathtaking example of emerging technology. To rely on such a document as the basis for our worldview-however heroic the efforts of redactors- is to repudiate two thousand years of civilizing insights that the human mind has only just begun to inscribe upon itself through secular politics and scientific culture. We will see that the greatest problem confronting civilization is not merely religious extremism: rather, it is the larger set of cultural and intellectual accommodations we have made to faith itself.

Either you are homophobic or you are a human - you cannot be both.

Being homosexual is no more abnormal than being lefthanded.

In the unification of two minds, orientation of sexuality is irrelevant.

Homosexuals are not made, they are born.

…for no one alive is innocent. Everyone is involved in accumulating points and surviving. Thus, every act of survival is an act of destruction. Every breath destroys universes. We are all murderers.

Masturbation is pleasure without cost. So how might you make people pay?

If you think your religion requires discrimination, you're probably misreading your faith.

If you think the goal of life is to impress someone with your possessions or looks or intelligence or... then you are not living - - you are a circus act.

Man's extremity is God's opportunity of helping and saving.

the passionate defense of the Bible as a “history book” among the more conservative wings of Christianity, despite intentions, isn’t really an act of submission to God; it is making God submit to us. In its most extreme forms, making God look like us is what the Bible calls idolatry.

If I were the Devil . . . I mean, if I were the Prince of Darkness, I would of course, want to engulf the whole earth in darkness. I would have a third of its real estate and four-fifths of its population, but I would not be happy until I had seized the ripest apple on the tree, so I should set about however necessary to take over the United States. I would begin with a campaign of whispers. With the wisdom of a serpent, I would whisper to you as I whispered to Eve: “Do as you please.” “Do as you please.” To the young, I would whisper, “The Bible is a myth.” I would convince them that man created God instead of the other way around. I would confide that what is bad is good, and what is good is “square”. In the ears of the young marrieds, I would whisper that work is debasing, that cocktail parties are good for you. I would caution them not to be extreme in religion, in patriotism, in moral conduct. And the old, I would teach to pray. I would teach them to say after me: “Our Father, which art in Washington” . . . If I were the devil, I’d educate authors in how to make lurid literature exciting so that anything else would appear dull an uninteresting. I’d threaten T.V. with dirtier movies and vice versa. And then, if I were the devil, I’d get organized. I’d infiltrate unions and urge more loafing and less work, because idle hands usually work for me. I’d peddle narcotics to whom I could. I’d sell alcohol to ladies and gentlemen of distinction. And I’d tranquilize the rest with pills. If I were the devil, I would encourage schools to refine yound intellects but neglect to discipline emotions . . . let those run wild. I would designate an athiest to front for me before the highest courts in the land and I would get preachers to say “she’s right.” With flattery and promises of power, I could get the courts to rule what I construe as against God and in favor of pornography, and thus, I would evict God from the courthouse, and then from the school house, and then from the houses of Congress and then, in His own churches I would substitute psychology for religion, and I would deify science because that way men would become smart enough to create super weapons but not wise enough to control them. If I were Satan, I’d make the symbol of Easter an egg, and the symbol of Christmas, a bottle. If I were the devil, I would take from those who have and I would give to those who wanted, until I had killed the incentive of the ambitious. And then, my police state would force everybody back to work. Then, I could separate families, putting children in uniform, women in coal mines, and objectors in slave camps. In other words, if I were Satan, I’d just keep on doing what he’s doing. (Speech was broadcast by ABC Radio commentator Paul Harvey on April 3, 1965)

Though we may not be so extreme, many of us do have certain Christian activities (church attendance, tithing, Bible studies, and so on) that we feel we must do to be good Christians. These activities themselves are obviously not wrong, but a performance-oriented perspective is wrong.

Homosexuality is immutable, irreversible and nonpathological.

We must come to the Bible with the purpose of self-exposure consciously in mind. I suspect not many people make more than a token stab in that direction. It's extremely hard work. It makes Bible study alternately convicting and reassuring, painful and soothing, puzzling and calming, and sometimes dull - but not for long if our purpose is to see ourselves better.

You can see the same immorality or amorality in the Christian view of guilt and punishment. There are only two texts, both of them extreme and mutually contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (it occurs in a passage of perfectly demented detail about the exact rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up in its context (Exodus 21). The second is from the Gospels and says that only those without sin should cast the first stone. The first is a moral basis for capital punishment and other barbarities; the second is so relativistic and "nonjudgmental" that it would not allow the prosecution of Charles Manson. Our few notions of justice have had to evolve despite these absurd codes of ultra vindictiveness and ultracompassion.

People fight over religion, because they don't understand religion. They think reading a few Bibles, Qurans and Vedas makes them religious. Books are not religion my friend. Real religion is realization of the Self.

Can you imagine, somebody telling you, your love for your dearly beloved is a sin! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, women are inferior to men, and are meant only serve the men! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, a man can have multiple wives, and yet be deemed civilized! Here that somebody is a fundamentalist ape - a theoretical pest from the stone-age, that somehow managed to survive even amidst all the rise of reasoning and intellect.

It goes without saying that even those of us who are going to hell will get eternal life—if that territory really exists outside religious books and the minds of believers, that is. Having said that, given the choice, instead of being grilled until hell freezes over, the average sane human being would, needless to say, rather spend forever idling in an extremely fertile garden, next to a lamb or a chicken or a parrot, which they do not secretly want to eat, and a lion or a tiger or a crocodile, which does not secretly want to eat them.

We in the United States have such an inadequate view of what a Christian is called to be,” Newell told me. “The Bible tells us that we are broken beyond repair—all of us—and that Christ came to heal us. Churches are supposed to be hospitals for the sick. And once we’re healed, we’re supposed to be helping others get healthy, too.

But, careful! Jesus does not say, Go off and do things on your own. No! That is not what he is saying. Jesus says, Go, for I am with you! This is what is so beautiful for us; it is what guides us. If we go out to bring his Gospel with love, with a true apostolic spirit, with parrhesia, he walks with us, he goes ahead of us, and he gets there first. As we say in Spanish, nos primerea. By now you know what I mean by this. It is the same thing that the Bible tells us. In the Bible, the Lord says: I am like the flower of the almond. Why? Because that is the first flower to blossom in the spring. He is always the first! This is fundamental for us: God is always ahead of us! When we think about going far away, to an extreme outskirt, we may be a bit afraid, but in fact God is already there. Jesus is waiting for us in the hearts of our brothers and sisters, in their wounded bodies, in their hardships, in their lack of faith.

Well, Espen, you're no drug addict, so why do you beg?" "Because it's my mission to be mirror for mankind so that they can see which actions are great and which are small." "And which are great?" Espen sighed in despair, as though weary of repeating the obvious. "Charity. Sharing and helping your neighbor. The Bible deals with nothing else. In fact, you have to search extremely hard to find anything about sex before marriage, abortion, homosexuality, or a woman's right to speak in public. But, of course, it is easier for Pharisees to talk aloud about subordinate clauses than to describe and perform the great actions the Bible leaves us in no doubt about: You have to give half of what you own to someone who has nothing. Thousands of people are dying every day without hearing the words of God because these Christians will not let go of their earthly goods. I'm giving them a chance to reflect.

The Christian, therefore, has a sociological base which is extremely strong. As humanists are fighting today against prejudice, they have little philosophical base for their battle. But as a Christian I do: No matter who I look at, no matter where he is, every man is created in the image of God as much as I am. So the Bible

No Quran, no Bible, no Gita, no Cow, is greater than the human self.

If you are not selfish you are wasting your life

I fucking hacked him up good. That bible pedo fucker deserved to die like that.” “So that’ll be a yes. A huge fucking yes to the extreme makeover, Krueger edition.

The Bible is clear that discrimination exists and that Christians must resist it. Sinful discrimination indeed causes some disparities. But the Bible never goes to the extreme that we find in the thinking of Ibram X. Kendi. In his award-winning bestseller Stamped from the Beginning, Kendi argues that “racial disparities must be the result of racial discrimination.

It is now 55 years since my last book report, which is a long time to live with a guilty conscience. So here it is: In the spring of 1956 I wrote a highly favorable review of the Bible without reading a word of it, and it was the last A I ever got in English. Why it has taken so long to come clean I'm not sure, except I have always been extremely sensitive about my academic reputation.

We all have exactly the same number of minutes in a day. The question is, how will we use them? Most people today are either too busy—or not busy enough. The Bible tells us that both extremes are wrong.

I am on the third book of the Bible. This one is called Leviticus. I turn the page and read: If anyone curses his father or mother, he must be put to death. That strikes me as pretty extreme. Do they mean curse as in use obscenities toward, or curse as in hire a witch to perform a solemn utterance intended to invoke a supernatural power to inflict harm on them? I can’t help noting the use of the male pronouns. I wonder whether this directive applies to me. Am I subject to a womanly loophole? Whoever wrote this book prioritized men so much, he forgot about the other half of humanity. It seems like I can curse my parents with no repercussions at all.

People who have extremely limited knowledge of The Bible or its implications may still choose to classify themselves as Christians on the basis that their parents do so—they may never even give it a second thought. This phenomenon of our nation’s children inheriting religion is often overlooked because the perpetrator guilty of indoctrination is not a dictator or cult leader, but instead it is most often their own parents or close family members.

A religion which supplies only mercy and forgiveness must create demand through systems of oppression. The genius of Christianity is that it caters to opposite extremes--the oppressed who demands mercy and the oppressor who demands forgiveness.

By any reasonable definition, the Christian God is an extraterrestrial. And given God’s track record of demanding human sacrifices and destroying whole cities, one could make a very strong case we are talking about an extremely malevolent force.

The Bible warns [parents] against extremes in dealing with our adult children. It tells us to avoid trying to control [them] once they become adults. When children become independent, a major transition takes place: They are no longer under our authority.

People are vaccinated with dangerous chemicals during their childhood, indoctrinated with immorality through television while growing up, taught to reject God by their teachers, fed with genetically modified food, and led to suspect others by their relatives and friends, and then you wonder why it's so difficult to find a normal person in this modern world, why nobody assumes responsibility for their words and behavior, and why everyone is so selfishly abusive. The biblical apocalypse has begun and the zombies are everywhere. It's just that we call them stupid and selfish instead. But they do act like there's no life inside of them anymore. There are no more normal human beings around. The survivors of this apocalypse are extremely scarce and must be treasured.

Our schedules are so hectic we can’t get everything done, or else we are bored and restless, constantly looking for something to amuse us. We are the most frantic generation in history—and also the most entertained. The Bible tells us that both extremes are wrong.

Those who still defend cessationism risk quenching the Spirit (contra 1 Thess. 5:19) and inappropriately closing themselves and others off from the full range of blessings God might have for them and from potentially the greatest amount of effective service for his kingdom. Without swinging the pendulum to the opposite extreme and embracing the various abuses of the charismata or trying to imitate the Spirit’s work in one’s own strength, cessationists really should cease trying to limit God in how he chooses to work in his world today. It is, in essence, a form of antisupernaturalism for all the postapostolic eras of Christianity.

The history of Christian Europe has been studded with religious reform movements; they, so to speak, come with the territory of a religion based on an extremely long sacred text, the Bible, some of whose sections advocate moral values opposed to those of any political system or religious structure which has ever existed,

With the fate of Roe v. Wade now hanging in the balance, I'm calling for a special 'pro-life tax.' If the fervent prayers of the religious right are answered and abortion is banned, let's take it a step further. All good Christians should legally be required to pony up; share the financial burden of raising an unwanted child. That's right: put your money where your Bible is. I'm not just talking about paying for food and shelter or even a college education. All those who advocate for driving a stake through the heart of a woman's right to choose must help bear the financial burden of that child's upbringing. They must be legally as well as morally bound to provide the child brought into this world at their insistence with decent clothes to wear; a toy to play with; a bicycle to ride -- even if they don't consider these things 'necessities.' Pro-lifers must be required to provide each child with all those things they would consider 'necessary' for their own children. Once the kid is out of the womb, don't wash your hands and declare 'Mission Accomplished!' It doesn't end there. If you insist that every pregnancy be carried to term, then you'd better be willing to pay the freight for the biological parents who can't afford to. And -- like the good Christians that you are -- should do so without complaint.

If we ask a random orthodox religious person, what is the best religion, he or she would proudly claim his or her own religion to be the best. A Christian would say Christianity is the best, a Muslim would say Islam is the best, a Jewish would say Judaism is the best and a Hindu would say Hinduism is the best. It takes a lot of mental exercise to get rid of such biases.

One human life is a thousand times more valuable than a thousand bibles, qurans, suttas and vedas - one human life is a thousand times more valuable than a thousand doctrines and rituals - one human life is a thousand times more valuable than a thousand theories and schools of thought - one human life is a thousand times more valuable than a thousand religions and ideologies.

The most sensitive period of their developmental age, when the kids are supposed to be taught to question everything and nourish their reasoning skills, they are taught that God created the world in seven days – that the human race did not evolve from apes through millions of years, rather it came from the amorous congress between two God-made humans, named Adam and Eve. And if you ask why? The answers of the uneducated primordial teachers would be that the scriptures say so. And now if you ask, can’t the scriptures be wrong – do I have to take these stories literally? They would lash out with rage and shout at you – how dare you question the scriptures! Every single word in it is true. There is no greater truth than the truth of these sacred texts.

The history of Christian Europe has been studded with religious reform movements; they, so to speak, come with the territory of a religion based on an extremely long sacred text, the Bible, some of whose sections advocate moral values opposed to those of any political system or religious structure which has ever existed, and which attentive readers can discover and rediscover at any time.

Blind obedience to books, whether it is the Bible, the Quran, the Vedas or any other, has erected more and more walls in this world - and to defend those walls, even more fences on both sides. Now the real question is, how much more time will humanity take to realize the obvious devastation that these disgusting walls of segregation have brought along and keep on bringing along in this world!

We are starting to redefine Christianity. We are giving in to the dangerous temptation to take the Jesus of the Bible and twist him into a version of Jesus we are more comfortable with. A nice, middle-class, American Jesus. A Jesus who doesn't mind materialism and who would never call us to give away everything we have. A Jesus who would not expect us to forsake our closest relationships so that he receives all our affection. A Jesus who is fine with nominal devotion that does not infringe on our comforts, because, after all, he loves us just the way we are. A Jesus who want us to be balanced, who wants us to avoid dangerous extremes, and who, for that matter, wants us to avoid danger altogether. A Jesus who brings us comfort and prosperity as we live out our Christian spin on the American dream.

Here’s the main fallacy. They defend their discrimination against those who believe the Bible by pointing to the opinion of the scientific majority that was caused by the discrimination against those who believe the Bible. They defend their bullying by pointing to a majority, but that majority was created through bullying. That’s a circular reasoning fallacy and an extreme example of the evil of discrimination and prejudice.

Arguing about how it literally happened can be an easy way to avoid facing the people in your life you need to forgive. For the people who first heard this story, the story would have had a provocative, unsettling effect. The Assyrians? The Assyrians were like a huge, gaping, open wound for the Israelites. Bless the Assyrians? The story is extremely subversive because it insists that your enemy may be more open to grace and love than you are.

The central fact of biblical history, the birth of the Messiah, more than any other, presupposes the design of Providence in the selecting and uniting of successive producers, and the real, paramount interest of the biblical narratives is concentrated on the various and wondrous fates, by which are arranged the births and combinations of the 'fathers of God.' But in all this complicated system of means, having determined in the order of historical phenomena the birth of the Messiah, there was no room for love in the proper meaning of the word. Love is, of course, encountered in the Bible, but only as an independent fact and not as an instrument in the process of the genealogy of Christ. The sacred book does not say that Abram took Sarai to wife by force of an ardent love, and in any case Providence must have waited until this love had grown completely cool for the centenarian progenitors to produce a child of faith, not of love. Isaac married Rebekah not for love but in accordance with an earlier formed resolution and the design of his father. Jacob loved Rachel, but this love turned out to be unnecessary for the origin of the Messiah. He was indeed to be born of a son of Jacob - Judah - but the latter was the offspring, not of Rachel but of the unloved wife, Leah. For the production in the given generation of the ancestor of the Messiah, what was necessary was the union of Jacob precisely with Leah; but to attain this union Providence did not awaken in Jacob any powerful passion of love for the future mother of the 'father of God' - Judah. Not infringing the liberty of Jacob's heartfelt feeling, the higher power permitted him to love Rachel, but for his necessary union with Leah it made use of means of quite a different kind: the mercenary cunning of a third person - devoted to his own domestic and economic interests - Laban. Judah himself, for the production of the remote ancestors of the Messiah, besides his legitimate posterity, had in his old age to marry his daughter-in-law Tamar. Seeing that such a union was not at all in the natural order of things, and indeed could not take place under ordinary conditions, that end was attained by means of an extremely strange occurrence very seductive to superficial readers of the Bible. Nor in such an occurrence could there be any talk of love. It was not love which combined the priestly harlot Rahab with the Hebrew stranger; she yielded herself to him at first in the course of her profession, and afterwards the casual bond was strengthened by her faith in the power of the new God and in the desire for his patronage for herself and her family. It was not love which united David's great-grandfather, the aged Boaz, with the youthful Moabitess Ruth, and Solomon was begotten not from genuine, profound love, but only from the casual, sinful caprice of a sovereign who was growing old.

Viking leaned in, stopping just short of touching me. He knew not to fucking touch me. “You carved that fucker up Krueger style, didn’t you, brother?” I stayed staring at the woods, catching the bitch’s dress disappear in the distance. “Flame?” Viking pushed. My teeth gritted, remembering piercing that fuck with my blades and I snarled. “I fucking hacked him up good. That bible pedo fucker deserved to die like that.” “So that’ll be a yes. A huge fucking yes to the extreme makeover, Krueger edition.

The late Francis Schaeffer, one of the wisest and most influential Christian thinkers of the twentieth century, warned of this exact trend just a few months before his death in 1984. In his book The Great Evangelical Disaster he included a section called “The Feminist Subversion,” in which he wrote: There is one final area that I would mention where evangelicals have, with tragic results, accommodated to the world spirit of this age. This has to do with the whole area of marriage, family, sexual morality, feminism, homosexuality, and divorce. . . . The key to understanding extreme feminism centers around the idea of total equality, or more properly the idea of equality without distinction. . . . the world spirit in our day would have us aspire to autonomous absolute freedom in the area of male and female relationships—to throw off all form and boundaries in these relationships and especially those boundaries taught in the Scriptures. . . . Some evangelical leaders, in fact, have changed their views about inerrancy as a direct consequence of trying to come to terms with feminism. There is no other word for this than accommodation. It is a direct and deliberate bending of the Bible to conform to the world spirit of our age at the point where the modern spirit conflicts with what the Bible teaches.2 My argument in the following pages demonstrates that what Schaeffer predicted so clearly twenty-two years ago is increasingly coming true in evangelicalism today. It is a deeply troubling trend.

This is an extremely difficult matter for modern readers of the gospels to grasp, but Luke never meant for his story about Jesus's birth at Bethlehem to be understood as historical fact. Luke would have had no idea what we in the modern world even mean when we say the word "history." The notion of history as a critical analysis of observable and verifiable events in the past is a product of the modern age; it would have been an altogether foreign concept to the gospel writers for whom history was not a matter of uncovering facts, but of revealing truths.

I think that [William] Faulkner and I each had to escape certain particulars of our lives, and we found salvation through words. I understand the Bible story of Babel so much better now. I think that moments of extremity, desires of escape, lead us to foreign languages--not those learned in schools, but those plucked from the human heart, the searing conditions of isolation. I did not have to be limited to my biography because of words, and I shared this with Faulkner, who invented new words and punctuation and expression and worlds. He utterly reshaped the world.

It was thought that one would go insane if, despite numerous admonitions, his auto-erotic practices persisted. This preposterous myth grew from reports of wide-spread masturbation by the inmates of mental institutions. It was assumed that since almost all incurably insane people masturbated, it was their masturbation that had driven them mad. No one ever stopped to consider that the lack of sexual partners of the opposite sex and the freedom from inhibition, which is a characteristic of extreme insanity, were the real reasons for the masturbatory practices of the insane.

The narrow path of the righteous is an extremely difficult path to travel. The rough road to victory is a very challenging endeavor that pushes the limits of endurance. Enormous mountains of hardship, boisterous storms of adversity, and several other elements of confrontation are there in their various forms of operation to test our faith. So it’s very important for us to apply the word of our God to our lives, and believe it with unwavering faith. Then no form of adversity can keep us back from a successful advancement into a deeper progression where greater achievements are obtained.

In our times, the indirectness and “invisibility” of the planetary damage we cause poses a major challenge. Even when we are very aware of our role in the problem, we don’t see the effect of our actions on a daily basis. The earth is so big and complex. Turning on a car engine, a light switch, or an air-conditioner doesn’t suddenly raise the outside temperature or trigger an extreme storm. But we are essentially drilling holes without fully grasping the consequences of our action. If we did fully grasp them, could we look our children in the eye and admit to them that our lifestyle will jeopardize their future?

We stand at the intersection of extreme privilege and extreme poverty, and we have a question to answer: Do I care? Am I moved by the suffering of all nations? Am I even concerned about the homeless guy on the corner? Am I willing to take the Bible at face value and concur that God is obsessed with social justice? I won’t answer one day for how the US government spent billions of dollars on the war in Iraq ($816 billion and counting, when $9 billion would solve the planet’s water crisis[36]), nor will I get the credit for the general philanthropy of others. It will come down to what I did. What you did. What we did together.

the causes of poverty as put forth in the Bible are remarkably balanced. The Bible gives us a matrix of causes. One factor is oppression, which includes a judicial system weighted in favor of the powerful (Leviticus 19:15), or loans with excessive interest (Exodus 22:25-27), or unjustly low wages (Jeremiah 22:13; James 5:1-6). Ultimately, however, the prophets blame the rich when extremes of wealth and poverty in society appear (Amos 5:11-12; Ezekiel 22:29; Micah 2:2; Isaiah 5:8). As we have seen, a great deal of the Mosaic legislation was designed to keep the ordinary disparities between the wealthy and the poor from becoming aggravated and extreme. Therefore, whenever great disparities arose, the prophets assumed that to some degree it was the result of selfish individualism rather than concern with the common good.

MAY 31 The Power of Your Words Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit. PROVERBS 18:21 NASB OUR WORDS have tremendous power and are similar to seeds. By speaking them aloud, they are planted in our subconscious minds, take root, grow, and produce fruit of the same kind. Whether we speak positive or negative words, we will reap exactly what we sow. That’s why we need to be extremely careful what we think and say. The Bible compares the tongue to the small rudder of a huge ship, which controls the ship’s direction (see James 3:4). Similarly, your tongue will control the direction of your life. You create an environment for either good or evil with your words, and if you’re always murmuring, complaining, and talking about how bad life is treating you, you’re going to live in a pretty miserable world. Use your words to change your negative situations and fill them with life.

(Note: I realize this is horrifying. Just keep reading.) "Turn to Leviticus 20:13, because I actually discovered the cure for AIDS. If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them. And that, my friend, is the cure for AIDS. It was right there in the Bible all along — and they’re out spending billions of dollars in research and testing. It’s curable — right there. Because if you executed the homos like God recommends, you wouldn’t have all this AIDS running rampant." This is an American pastor openly calling for the death of all homosexuals. The anti-gay movement is now so extreme, some, (not all) call for genocide. So how about instead of Alex from Target or pumpkin spice lattes, we get this out on the media. Because this is disgusting. No one should have to be called worthless, better in death, for a problem they did not cause. AIDS did not start with homosexuals, and it's not going to end with them. The only thing that has to end is hate like this.

It’s immaturity that creates the crazy-making effect of causing you to doubt reality, second guess what is true, and get yourself so off-kilter you stop addressing what obviously needs to be talked about. Another person’s immaturity will always be felt by a mature person. You may not be able to put your finger on it, but you will ask, “What’s going on here?” The person may be extremely intelligent and successful and even quote Bible verses left and right but lack emotional maturity. That doesn’t mean we should leverage this in judgmental or demeaning ways against them. Remember, but for the grace of God, we could be doing some of the same things they are. We don’t want to grow hard, angry, or develop an attitude of superiority when setting boundaries. We must stay humble and surrendered to Jesus in this process. So, let them have their own journey and revelation. Be wise with setting and keeping your boundaries and remember that you don’t have to stay in the same place the other person is in. And use these insights to help you become more aware of what’s at play, so you don’t keep feeling like the crazy one and discounting your discernment.

Early in my career, I formed a personal motto, one by which I continue to live: If offering a criticism, accompany it with one potential solution. In the case I described, the individual didn’t want to work together to find a solution. Unfortunately, I’ve never found an effective way to deal with adults who exhibit immaturity. The Bible offers a bit of interesting insight that I consider applicable: “Do not eat the bread of a selfish man, or desire his delicacies; for as he thinks within himself, so he is. He says to you, ‘Eat and drink!’ but his heart is not with you. You will vomit up the morsel you have eaten, and waste your compliments. Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of your words” (Proverbs 23:6-9). The Bible also says, “If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men” (Romans 12:18). It saddens me to say, but in that individual’s case, peace meant limiting my interactions with him. To foster peace, I stopped saying hello in the mornings. Not out of spite, but because friendly conversation led to comfort, and comfort, I noticed, opened the door for negative comments. Rarely do I take such an extreme measure, but sometimes distance is helpful. His visits ended. My peace and fervor began to reemerge.

Your Bible makes more than a hundred references to the Holy Spirit. Jesus says more about the Spirit than he does about the church, marriage, finances, and the future. Why the emphasis on him? God does not want a bunch of stressed-out, worn-out, done-in, and washed-up children representing him in the world. He wants us to be fresher day by day, hour by hour. But let’s be careful. The topic of the Holy Spirit seems to bring out the extremists among us. On one hand there are the show-offs. These are the people who make us feel unspiritual by appearing super-spiritual. They are buddy-buddy with the Spirit, wear a backstage pass, and want everyone to see their healing gifts, hear their mystical tongue. They make a ministry out of making others feel less than godly. They like to show off. On the opposite extreme is the Spirit Patrol. They clamp down on anything that seems out of line or out of control. They are self-deputized hall monitors of the supernatural. If an event can’t be explained, they dismiss it. Somewhere in between is the healthy saint. He has a childlike heart. She has a high regard for Scripture. He is open to fresh strength. She is discerning and careful. Both he and she seek to follow the Spirit. They clutch with both hands this final promise of Jesus: “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:8 NKJV). God

Finally, one extreme statement must still be made, without any platitudes, and in all soberness. Not considering oneself wise, but associating with the lowly, means considering oneself the worst of sinners. This arouses total opposition not only from those who live at the level of nature, but also from Christians who are self-aware. [82]It sounds like an exaggeration, an untruth. Yet even Paul said of himself that he was the foremost, i.e., the worst of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). He said this at the very place in scripture where he was speaking of his ministry as an apostle. There can be no genuine knowledge of sin that does not lead me down to this depth. If my sin appears to me to be in any way smaller or less reprehensible in comparison with the sins of others, then I am not yet recognizing my sin at all. My sin is of necessity the worst, the most serious, the most objectionable. Christian love will find any number of excuses for the sins of others; only for my sin is there no excuse whatsoever. That is why my sin is the worst. Those who would serve others in the community must descend all the way down to this depth of humility. How could I possibly serve other persons in unfeigned humility if their sins appear to me to be seriously worse than my own? If I am to have any hope for them, then I must not raise myself above them. Such service would be a sham.

It is the lessons that we disagree with that force and challenge us to grow and learn for ourselves, and though the matter of spirituality and the afterlife are VERY grey areas, I hope that the thoughts I have on the matter will enlighten you, force you to reflect on your own beliefs, or piss you off enough to go and do your own research to find out if what I am writing is more relevant to your own life that you would like to believe.        Be skeptical, ESPECIALLY of things you read and things you see on the news. Do your own research on topics you think are relevant to your life. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, at least THESE days they are. This was not so until VERY recently in human history, and it still isn't in many parts of the world. From birth, humans are trained to believe the things that their parents believe and their social group believes. There are some of us that didn't believe, and therefore didn't behave. I got into so much trouble I was no longer afraid to get into trouble, and this gave me freedom and fearlessness of thought that no one else in my school had. I am extremely grateful for the punishments I received for the crime of thinking for myself. I am thankful for being ostracized for being different. The only way to lead yourself out of the imprisonment of outdated modes of thinking and ancient beliefs is to cast away the old system, and them you can start to build.

Jesus himself remains an enigma. There have been interesting attempts to uncover the figure of the ‘historical’ Jesus, a project that has become something of a scholarly industry. But the fact remains that the only Jesus we really know is the Jesus described in the New Testament, which was not interested in scientifically objective history. There are no other contemporary accounts of his mission and death. We cannot even be certain why he was crucified. The gospel accounts indicate that he was thought to be the king of the Jews. He was said to have predicted the imminent arrival of the kingdom of heaven, but also made it clear that it was not of this world. In the literature of the Late Second Temple period, there had been hints that a few people were expecting a righteous king of the House of David to establish an eternal kingdom, and this idea seems to have become more popular during the tense years leading up to the war. Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius all note the importance of revolutionary religiosity, both before and after the rebellion.2 There was now keen expectation in some circles of a meshiah (in Greek, christos), an ‘anointed’ king of the House of David, who would redeem Israel. We do not know whether Jesus claimed to be this messiah – the gospels are ambiguous on this point.3 Other people rather than Jesus himself may have made this claim on his behalf.4 But after his death some of his followers had seen him in visions that convinced them that he had been raised from the tomb – an event that heralded the general resurrection of all the righteous when God would inaugurate his rule on earth.5 Jesus and his disciples came from Galilee in northern Palestine. After his death they moved to Jerusalem, probably to be on hand when the kingdom arrived, since all the prophecies declared that the temple would be the pivot of the new world order.6 The leaders of their movement were known as ‘the Twelve’: in the kingdom, they would rule the twelve tribes of the reconstituted Israel.7 The members of the Jesus movement worshipped together every day in the temple,8 but they also met for communal meals, in which they affirmed their faith in the kingdom’s imminent arrival.9 They continued to live as devout, orthodox Jews. Like the Essenes, they had no private property, shared their goods equally, and dedicated their lives to the last days.10 It seems that Jesus had recommended voluntary poverty and special care for the poor; that loyalty to the group was to be valued more than family ties; and that evil should be met with non-violence and love.11 Christians should pay their taxes, respect the Roman authorities, and must not even contemplate armed struggle.12 Jesus’s followers continued to revere the Torah,13 keep the Sabbath,14 and the observance of the dietary laws was a matter of extreme importance to them.15 Like the great Pharisee Hillel, Jesus’s older contemporary, they taught a version of the Golden Rule, which they believed to be the bedrock of the Jewish faith: ‘So always treat others as you would like them to treat you; that is the message of the Law and the Prophets.

I know that when I read the Bible, my life is transformed. I think differently. I act differently. I talk differently.

This is extremely significant. Knowing something of when the Pentateuch came to be, even generally, affects our understanding of why it was produced in the first place—which is the entire reason why we are dipping our toes into this otherwise esoteric pool of Old Testament studies. The final form of the creation story in Genesis (along with the rest of the Pentateuch) reflects the concerns of the community that produced it: postexilic Israelites who had experienced God’s rejection in Babylon. The Genesis creation narrative we have in our Bibles today, although surely rooted in much older material, was shaped as a theological response to Israel’s national crisis of exile. These stories were not written to speak of “origins” as we might think of them today (in a natural-science sense). They were written to say something of God and Israel’s place in the world as God’s chosen people.

Before the invention of the moveable type printing press by Gutenburg in 1439, Bibles were copied by hand and extremely expensive. Only a small percentage of God’s people would have had their own copies of God’s Word. So to meditate “day and night” on a passage meant to have memorized it:

Jesus demanded, “You shall not want to commit adultery.” Many ancient Jewish moralists condemned lust; some later rabbis even compared extreme lust to adultery. Jesus’ warning here develops the context of the prohibition against adultery in the law: the seventh commandment prohibited adultery, but the tenth commandment warned that one should not even covet one’s neighbor’s wife (Ex 20:17; Dt 5:21). Jesus uses here the same verb as in the standard Greek translation of the tenth commandment. He refers, then, to wanting to have one’s neighbor’s wife.

The sixteenth-century parallel: (1) medieval scholasticism as a synthesis between the Bible, Plato, and Aristotle; (2) the heresy of works-salvation, perhaps with Tetzel as an extreme case; (3) Luther the Reformer, who like Athanasius pushes hard for the fundamental principle of justification by faith alone; and (4) Calvin the consolidator, who rethinks the whole of theology in the light of the knowledge gained in the Reformation.

The worst extremes usually start with slight deviations.

Augustine altered this in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. In reaction against a popular view that lives are determined by either a good god or an evil god who are equal or nearly equal in power (Manichaeism), Augustine insisted that things occur in accordance with the will of one God alone: the Creator God of the Bible. Augustine’s views have been extremely influential throughout church history. Some theologians pushed his view of providence so far that they denied that humans are free (e.g., Gottshalk in the ninth century), but most continued to affirm human freedom while also insisting that God controls all things. This position is called compatibilism, for it insists that belief in human freedom is compatible with the belief that God controls everything. The

When economic imbalances became extreme, the lack of equilibrium and viability could threaten social and political order.

Almost every book in the NT has something to say about false beliefs and those who advocate them. We are warned, e.g., about false prophets (Matt. 7:15–16; 24:11), false christs (Matt. 24:5, 24; Mark 13:22), a different Jesus and a different spirit (2 Cor. 11:4), false apostles (2 Cor. 11:13–15), and “another gospel” (Gal. 1:8). With so many warnings, it is clear God knew that many false teachers would come, and that he did not want his people to be deceived (cf. Eph. 4:14; 2 John 7). In what follows, notable deceptions of prominent cults will be summarized, along with a brief biblical response. From the viewpoint of those who hold to historic, evangelical Christianity, a “cult” is any religious movement that claims to be derived from the Bible and/or the Christian faith, and that advocates beliefs that differ so significantly with major Christian doctrines that two consequences follow: (1) The movement cannot legitimately be considered a valid “Christian” denomination because of its serious deviation from historic Christian orthodoxy. (2) Believing the doctrines of the movement is incompatible with trusting in the Jesus Christ of the Bible for the salvation that comes by God’s grace alone (Eph. 2:8–9). By this traditional understanding of the word “cult,” the following groups described are “cults,” though this does not imply that they share the extremely oppressive, authoritarian, life-controlling, and often immoral practices that are found in what the secular world calls “cults,” using the term in a more extreme sense.

I find it exceptionally moving that the Bible should cast in these heroic roles two figures at the extreme margins of Israelite society: women, childless widows, outsiders. Tamar and Ruth, powerless except for their moral courage, wrote their names into Jewish history as role models who gave birth to royalty – to remind us, in case we ever forget, that true royalty lies in love and faithfulness, and that greatness often exists where we expect it least.

I say this with all my humility, To the fundamentalists particularly. This is not meant for those of faith, Who never claim ideological supremacy. What do the dumbbells of bible know, About the bold serendipities of love! What do the captives of koran know, About the welcoming language of the dove! What do the vultures of vedas know, About the elimination of assumption! What do the militants of atheism know, About the sweetness of assimilation! I learnt my religion on the streets, Like Jesus, Gautama, Shams and Shankara. Given the choice between dogma and love, The human always chooses love over dogma. Love finds new meaning in every age, Each amplifies the glory of the last one. Those who fear expansion out of insecurity, Deserve only pity not serious consideration. But beware o lovers, hate not those, Who stand as obstacle in your love. Lovers are born to conquer hate and fear, To reciprocate them is to dishonor love.

Taking all in all, God is, as he candidly informs us in his autobiographical chronicle — the Bible — extremely whimsical and revengeful; actually an ideal model of a despot.

Your Bible should show the wear of extreme use, the tear stains of repentance and transformation, and a life that no longer walks according to the course of this world or according to the prince of

This is my father’s story. I am writing it to find him. But to get to where you’re going you have to first go backwards. That’s directions in Ireland, it’s also T. S. Eliot. My father was named Virgil by his father who was named Abraham by his father who once upon a time was the Reverend Absalom Swain in Salisbury, Wiltshire. Who the Reverend’s father was I have no clue, but sometimes when I’m on the blue tablets I take off into a game of extreme Who Do You Think You Are? and go Swain-centuries deep. I follow the trail in reverse, Reverends and Bishops, past the pulpit-thumpers, the bible-wavers, the sideburn and eyebrow-growers. I keep going, pass long-ago knights, crusaders and other assorted do-lallies, eventually going as far back as The Flood. Then in the final segment, ad-breaks over and voiceover dropped to a whisper, I trace all the way back to God Himself and say Who Do You Think You Are?

Thus strength training gives your metabolism a boost far beyond the duration of the actual workout, for as long as 48 hours. In contrast, after aerobic training your metabolism returns to normal almost immediately. So with interval training we’re not only building muscle, but we’re also able to kick up our metabolism long after–even when sleeping! Many people believe aerobic activity strengthens their heart, and decreases the chance of things like coronary artery disease. Yet, after much research, even U.S. Air Force Cardiologist Dr. Kenneth Cooper–the very man who coined the term “aerobics”–now believes there is no correlation between aerobic performance and health, longevity, or protection against heart disease. On the other hand, aerobic activities do carry with them a great risk of injury. Most, even so-called “low impact” classes or activities like stationary cycling, are not necessarily low-force. And things like running are extremely high-force, damaging to your knees, hips and back. Aerobic dance is even worse. Sure, you’ll hear the occasional genetic exception declare that they’ve never ever been injured doing these exercises. But overuse injuries are cumulative and often build undetected over years until it’s too late, leading to a decrease or loss of mobility as you age, which, in turn, too often leads to a shortened lifespan.

Most people would agree that it’s the physiques with the most development across a spectrum of physical qualities that are most attractive, as opposed to those that have very limited usefulness. It is diversity in physical ability that is most useful and functional, not to mention beautiful. In contrast, those who are extremely developed in a certain area almost always have a weakness equivalent to their strength. The super fast, skinny runners lack strength, and the bulky bodybuilder types have little endurance.

The Bible is an extremely violent book. The Bible’s got everything in it that’s bannable. It’s gratuitously violent, gratuitously sexual, totally sexist and racist and it does encourage people to be violent, although it does that because of its philosophy, not because of the descriptions of the battles in it.

sorry, but I don’t think we should aspire to be a Christian country anyway. I don’t see America in the Bible, you know?

Some of us are just tired of being used as political props,” Hostetter said, citing text messages from friends who’d been disgusted with the tone of the event. “We were hoping this would be more than another campaign rally. I mean, if you want to use biblical language to speak to political issues, fine. But at some point, you have to actually speak to the Bible. Right?

EUSEBIUS [Chronicles, Anno 2083] (beginning October, A.D. 67), says, "Nero, to his other crimes, added the persecution of Christians: under him the apostles Peter and Paul consummated their martyrdom at Rome." So JEROME [On Illustrious Men], "In the fourteenth year of Nero, Paul was beheaded at Rome for Christ's sake, on the same day as Peter, and was buried on the Ostian Road, in the thirty-seventh year after the death of our Lord." ALFORD reasonably conjectures the Pastoral Epistles were written near this date. The interval was possibly filled up (so CLEMENT OF ROME states that Paul preached as far as "to the extremity of the west") by a journey to Spain (Rom 15:24, 28), according to his own original intention. MURATORI'S Fragment on the Canon of Scripture (about A.D. 170) also alleges Paul's journey into Spain. So EUSEBIUS, CHRYSOSTOM, and JEROME. Be that as it may, he seems shortly before his second imprisonment to have visited Ephesus, where a new body of elders governed the Church (Acts 20:25), say in the latter end of A.D. 66, or beginning of 67. Supposing him thirty at his conversion, he would now be upwards of sixty, and older in constitution than in years, through continual hardship. Even four years before he called himself "Paul the aged" (Philemon 1:9).

One table over from where copies of The First American Bible were being sold (for a discounted price of $149.99), Road to Majority attendees crowded around a rack of T-shirts that carried slogans such as “Faith Over Fear” and “This Means War.” The top seller, offered in at least seven different colors, was “Let’s Go Brandon,” a bowdlerized euphemism that conservatives chant as a substitute for “Fuck Joe Biden.” The shirts even included a hashtag—#FJB—that jettisoned any plausible deniability. When I asked Dave Klucken, the booth’s proprietor, what brought him all the way from Loganville, Georgia, to peddle these goods, he replied, “We’ve taken God out of America.” Did he really think #FJB was an appropriate way to bring God back? Klucken shrugged. “People keep on asking for it,” he told me. “You’ve got to give

October 13 • Morning Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation. —2 Corinthians 7:10 (ESV) Genuine, spiritual mourning for sin is the work of the Spirit of God. Repentance is too excellent a flower to grow in nature’s garden. Pearls grow naturally in oysters, but repentance never shows itself in sinners unless divine grace works it in them. If you have one particle of real hatred for sin, God must have given it to you, for human nature’s thorn bushes have never produced a single fig. “Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh.” True repentance is linked directly to the Savior. When we repent of sin, we must have one eye on sin and another on the cross. Better still, it will focus both eyes on Christ and only see our transgressions in the light of his love. True sorrow for sin is extremely practical. No one may say they hate sin if they live in it. Repentance makes us see the evil of sin, not merely as a theory, but in reality—as a burned child dreads the fire. We will be just as afraid of it as someone who has been recently stopped and robbed is afraid of the thief on the street. We will avoid it—avoid it in everything—not only in big things, but in little things, as people avoid little vipers as well as big snakes. True grieving for sin will make us guard our tongue carefully, for fear that we should say a wrong word; we will be very watchful over our daily activities, just in case we might offend in anything. Each night we will close the day with painful confessions of shortcomings, and each morning we will awaken with anxious prayers that this day God would hold us up so that we may not sin against him. Sincere repentance is constant. Believers repent until their dying day. This pattern will not be sporadic. Every other sorrow lessens with time, but this costly sorrow grows with our growth. It is such a sweet bitter that we thank God we are allowed to enjoy and to tolerate it until we enter our eternal rest.

It is while they were waiting to set sail from Aulis for the second time that a tragic series of events, immortalized by the later Greek playwrights, took place. Because the goddess Artemis, for reasons best known to herself, had sent winds that prevented the fleet from sailing, the increasingly impatient Agamemnon took measures that we would regard as rather extreme. He planned to sacrifice his own daughter Iphigenia in order to placate the goddess. The Cypria, however, puts a pleasant spin on these events, stating that Artemis snatched Iphigenia away at the last minute, making her immortal, and left a stag on the altar in her place, much as Isaac was replaced by a ram during the intended sacrifice by Abraham, as related in Genesis 22 of the Hebrew Bible. Euripides

Oftentimes religious circles are known for extreme control of the people, situations and environment around them. Control then becomes the issue of the hour. Studying the Scriptures without letting the Holy Spirit teach us puts us in control. He always takes us to Jesus. Going to the One the Scriptures point to puts Him in control. In other words, when the Bible is an end unto itself, it gives us a measure of learning, but no personal transformation.

ECCLESIASTES—NOTE ON 1:2 vanity of vanities! All is vanity. This extremely important thematic word (Hb. hebel, lit., “vapor,” taken figuratively as “vanity”; see esv footnote) occurs frequently throughout the book; at this early point, however, the Preacher leaves it unexplained. It is only as the book progresses that its meaning becomes clear (for further discussion of its meaning, see Introduction: Key Themes

That is just the charge, which he brings against God, and it is only at his suggestion that men have adopted it. Leaving aside the matter of evolution in its most extreme phase, considered for a minute the very common idea that in the beginning God did indeed set the universe in motion; but that He then endowed matter with a certain amount of force, and subjected it to certain definite laws, so that everything should run for ever after much the same as a clock that has been wound up and left to itself. With what confidence can one who holds such a view offer prayer? What can he expect to receive? No wonder that people complain that their prayers are not answered. The god that they worship is too far off to hear their prayers, and too indifferent, or too rigidly circumscribed by the laws which He has laid down, to interfere in their behalf if He has laid down, to interfere in their behalf if He should hear. Such a God is not the God of the Bible.

In spite of his many successes, he is denigrated for his extreme polygamy, having had 700 wives and 300 concubines according to the Bible. These women drew him towards sin and idolatry and made God angry with him, and this has been attributed as one of the causes for the division of Israel after his death.

Another way of looking at our experience of difficulty in the text of Scripture is to receive our struggle as an inviting challenge from God. Thomas Merton suggested, For most people, the understanding of the Bible is, and should be, a struggle: not merely to find meanings that can be looked up in books of reference, but to come to terms personally with the stark scandal and contradiction in the Bible itself. It should not be our aim merely to explain these contradictions away, but rather to use them as ways to enter into the strange and paradoxical world of meanings and experiences that are beyond us and yet often extremely and mysteriously relevant to us.

The Bible is not a weapon, a sword to be wielded today against modern-day Canaanites or Babylonians. It is a book where we meet God. It brings hope, encouragement, knowledge, and deep truth for those willing to risk, to 'die' to themselves, as Jesus puts it, to accept the challenge of scripture, knowing they will be undone in the process. That journey is lifelong, marked by discipline and humility, to know the Bible intimately with agility and gentleness--an arena of spiritual growth, for love of God and humanity, not for World Bible Extreme Cagefighting.

Those who preach bookish religion are the greatest atheists of all, because they don’t have the slightest idea of neither God nor religion. Their beloved religion is their book. And their God is in the doctrines.

Christ did to the Jewish orthodoxy, what Buddha did to the Hindu orthodoxy.

It’s time that Christianity should be redefined by the world based upon the original teachings of Jesus, instead of the Old and New Testaments which have been interpreted, reinterpreted and distorted by all the Ecumenical Councils, i.e. the Church Councils.

Jesus recognized that God within him and became Christ - so did Siddhartha Gautama and became Buddha - so did I - and so can you.