I'm sorry, Mark

But your entire post is a straw man of epic proportions.

(for those who don't get the joke, background here).

This week's Correlated Post: Brad is smarter than Jesus.

Jesus told some great stories, but he had no clue what they really meant.

See, when Jesus told his disciples (in Matthew 13):

10 And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? 11 He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. 12 For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. 13 Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. 14 And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: 15 For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. 16 But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear.

He was lying. And that allegorical interpretation he gave in verses 18 - 24? Jesus was wrong about that as well. In fact, when he gives some more parables and then treats them as allegories? Man that Jesus fellow had no clue what he was saying. Instead, listen to Brad as he gives us the truth:

The second tendency we have that limits our reading of the parables is the assumption that parable = allegory. I believe there are certain shortcomings to such an approach. For one thing, it presupposes Jesus speaking coded riddles to hearers . . . more significantly, such a reading pushes to the margins the likely experience the people who heard the Savior teach, their understandings of a parable whose fabric was drawn from their own day-to-day lives, and, by implication, the meanings likely intended by the Master for His hearers.

See? The parables aren't allegories, and despite Jesus saying that he speaks in parables in order to hide their meaning from some of his audience (i.e. "coded riddles") - well, Jesus obviously hadn't thought about this as much as Brad had.

Of course, with an explanation that uses the phrase "governing imperatives and modalities of power are antithetical to those manifested" - you have to know that this Brad guy is clearly smarter than Jesus and knows more about the parables. Jesus used such simple, down to earth language, it's obvious he's not as learned as Brad. And we all know that being learned makes you wise, right?

Does Kaimi even post at T&S even more?

He's posting at FMH
(and proving he hasn't read Fast Food Nation, because if you've read that book, you know Jesus would strike you dead on the spot if you tried to give him a Cheeseburger)

He's posting at BCC
(and proving he really is a FLAKer, since it's clear he doesn't really believe the church's teachings on marriage)

But at T&S? Silence.

Is there a background purge going on? Is Adam Greenwood finally making his move, and soon he will dominate the blog? Or perhaps Kaimi's just bored hanging around with the moderates, and feels he needs to move closer to the DAMU.

(As for last week - no post, cause there was nothing worth correlating. I can only work with what y'all give me. Trust me - there will be a correlated post later this week!)

Correlation of all the Joseph Smith picture posts

Everybody's talking about it.

What is it? It's it.

Okay, enough with the Faith No More puns. It's the Joseph Smith photo. Of course, they all have it wrong. After an exhaustive Google search, I found the true and only photo of Joseph Smith, and it's a shocker!

Apparently Joseph Smith liked to dress in drag.

Hey! I did a Google search, so my findings must be right! This is the Internet era, and new technology trumps everything!

This week in Correlation: Reader Question about a Gopsel Paradox?

I just got an anonymous e-mail, asking me the following question:

I brought up something in church the other day, but they cast me out as a heretic, chasing me from the building with cries of "she's a witch! Burn her!" I escaped, but am still confused. Perhaps you can help:

1. God loves us all and wants us to return to the Celestial Kingdom.
2. BUT: After judgment, some of us will be assigned to the Terrestrial, and some to the Telestial, and a few benighted types will wind up in the place that must not be named. Not everyone gets to go Celestial.

OK, so loves me and my sister, how is it that my sister could go Celestial, whereas I might go Telestial? Does that mean God really didn't love me?

Doesn't love trump silly things like having to repent, after all?

New feature: Ask Mr. Screwtape!

Dear Mr. Screwtape:

I think the Bloggernacle is fertile ground for brining souls to our Father below. I was thinking that the current unpleasantness in Iraq might be a useful wedge issue to distract people from following the precepts of our Enemy. Do you have any advice?

--Mugglewumperid

Dear Mugglewumperid:

As I once told my delicious nephew Wormwood,

I had not forgotten my promise to consider whether we should make the patient an extreme patriot or an extreme pacifist. All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged . . . Whichever he adopts, your main task will be the same. Let him begin by treating the Patriotism or the Pacifism as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the "cause", in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the British war-effort or of Pacifism. The attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affairs are treated primarily as material for obedience. Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours—and the more "religious" (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here.

The same rules apply now, though I was discussing an earlier World War. In fact, several of my pupils already have several members of the Bloggernacle well down this path. (These links are only some of the more typical examples - these people are everywhere on the Bloggernacle). Most have not quite gotten all the way down the path, but they progress with every new post.

Notice how they begin by treating their specific views on the war as a integral part of their religion. Soon, under the influence of this partisan spirit, they will soon (some already have) come to regard it as the most important part. Eventually, politics will trump religion, and then we will have them. I suggest you study their work carefully and apply these techniques to whomever you have been charged with.

Affectionately Yours,

Screwtape.

This week's Correlated Post: Revisionist Writers of the Gospels?

Recently, a friend asked me for help in creating a lesson centered on Jesus. I decided to go back to the original source, the true and infallible Gospels, which were written by Christ's apostles during his ministry and therefore contain no errors. Or, at least, so I thought.

Now I don’t know about you but but if the writers of the Gospels were as infallible as I was taught, they should have been able to keep their stories straight. I went to the Gospel of Matthew, then the Gospel of Mark, followed by Luke and then John. I was shocked!

Matthew refers to Jesus as the Son of God. Luke calls him the Son of Man. John calls him the Word of God. And they can't even agree on when Jesus cleansed the temple. What kind of bizarre revisionism were the writers of the Gospel involved in? John's account clearly contradicts the other Gospel writers. I always thought that John was a little shady anyway, writing about himself in the third person and all that.

Frankly, there is no way to reconcile this. Which account, which will contradict other scripture no matter what, will become the standard? Are we uncomfortable with the idea that the names and dates that John used are now foreign to the other Gospels? Am I just straining at gnats and swallowing camels?

How do we handle John's clear contradictions with the other Gospels?

• Clark Goble answer: All the accounts are correct, in different parallel universes, based on the latest ideas in quantum mechanics.
• Kevin Barney answer: Look at how much I know about the original Greek texts! Here are a lot of big words that give context to the debate but otherwise don't actually answer the question!
• ECS Answer: Anyone who doesn't agree with me is evil!

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