Quote:
Originally Posted by cylon  <snip>
Having learned about its history, and knowing that the early teachers may have seen it as metaphor and symbolic, I'm more willing to see the good things that are in there. But that's only after rejecting a literal interpretation. |
Well I certainly bow to your superior studying of the subject - it's always been a blur to me. I was brought up in the Church of Holy Lip-service myself - taking lovely moral lessons where we can find them and not taking things to literally if anyone mentioned God drowning the whole of humanity apart from one family and all the animals, that kind of thing.
I'm sure it's a cultural thing - it is almost unheard of to find someone in Britain who believes that the bible is to be taken literally. They'd be gawped at with disbelief. We don't quite know how to take the USA piping fire and brimstone into people's homes on tv. It would either have about 10 viewers or there would be an outcry and we'd ban it!
It's actually quite stunning, now I think of it, how things like the story of Noah and his Ark were actually played out by me and my little friends for the entertainment of parents, before we had any critical faculties to speak of, and no-one seemed to question the point of imparting such a mythic tale of Divine Genocide. I think they'd have just thought it was a necessary moral lesson that basically just said "People long ago were very bad and now we've all learned our lesson and that's why we're very good now". I'm stunned! It's just hit me, the power of it! I want to go back in time, put my hand up and say, "So, what happened to the rest of the people on the planet, Miss? We kept our eye on Noah and the happy ending with the dove and stuff, but what about the other - what, thousands, millions - of folk who - what, ate the wrong meat on the wrong day or something? Did God just slaughter the lot of them without a moment's notice? Couldn't He have at least dropped leaflets explaining the choice: submit to my will or die you feckers! And anyway, if He
made us in His supposed infinite wisdom, and then we went bad, wasn't it a bit rich taking it out on us, don't you think, Miss, eh, Miss, eh?"
Anyway, this poor old thread is groaning with sideline issues. Sorry to go off at a tangent.
@Wax Frog (or anyone) - what are 'waxies', pretty please?