Iowa city council debates proper time in meeting agenda to “undo the curse that was just put on our city.”
An Iowa man has kicked off controversy over religious freedom in the small town of Ottumwa, Iowa by opening a city council meeting with a prayer to Satan, which then kicked off a debate about the proper time in the meeting agenda to undo the “curse.”
Wasn’t it the Council of Nicea (or something like that) that more or less assembled the Christian Bible as we know it today? Which means there’re a bunch of stuff that didn’t make it in.
Some of which appears in Jewish scriptures and in Islamic scriptures or lost to time.
If it’s written by fallible men, and edited by fallible men, then its “Canon” isn’t worth shit.
The Ethiopian Bible exists and has the stuff they took out. Its a good read too and most modern Christians dont dismiss it out of hand. Just to play devils advocate, the weird thing is if we look at original texts of the Bible from western Europe and then we look way east to the orthodox people in Russia and then down to the Ethiopian Christians in Africa, all their texts are the same. Not just similar, the same. Yeah, there are some translational differences, but theyre really not huge. Then we find the dead sea scrolls and even then, same exact texts. These texts spread like wildfire all over the world. Now I get it. I see Christianity today and the absolute bastardization of it all and I understand why what i believe would and should be completely considered irrational. When you get down to what Jesus taught, its so much simpler and philosophical than the religion being espoused by sonny Christians Who seem like they’ve never actually read the book. Over the years, ive talked to a lot of people one on one about it, a lot of staunch atheists. When I’ve had the time to actually explain things to them over a beer and not just expected to defend myself with a couple of sentences, I’ve always had them walking away with a least the understanding of why. Because when you take what Jesus said, remove the religion and rules and crap everyone has tried to tie to it, then put it into a philosophical context, its pretty plain to see what he was saying was “dont be an asshole and love everyone. Youre going to reap what you sow. Theres a God that created all this around you and what he wants is your spiritual enlightenment and for you to willingly give of yourself and do no evil, not because of reprocussions, but because its the right thing to do.” To bring it to a modern example: be the guy at the Cornell party who sees the situation, picks that girl up and carries her out of that house and gets her somewhere safe. Not being the guy doing lines of ketamine off of a drugged up, passed out girl. If you can be that guy who stands up and does the right thing even if it means losing everything, I think no matter what, youre my brother. And thats what Jesus was trying to teach.
It depends on the speaker. Just like you are explaining Jesus’s pro social teachings, i went to a Bible study for a while where the guy leading it kept studying the passages claiming that only followers of Jesus would be saved.
Don’t forget that when you translate it from the original, you make choices about which words to use