I want to comment on number 10 to say that I am usually apalled at the typical 21st century American Christian evangelical belief about the bible. Have you ever been in a church when the pastor tells you to “raise your bible in the air and repeat after me, ‘every word in this book is true . . . (on and on ad nauseum)’ “? Some times I wonder if God isn’t going to judge us for raising our adoration of the bible to the level of idolatry. The bible is an amazing book, and we are fortunate to have it. You are right in saying that most Christians today have little knowledge about it. In fact, in my experience, those who know the least about it’s origins and the process of how it came to be are the the people who seem to be the best at using it like Thor’s hammer on the heads of “unbelievers”.

I like your point about taking more time for personal reflection, and reading the bible is one of the practices that produces positive change through personal reflection. We do well to get a better understanding of the time, place, culture and events into which God was acting and speaking in each writing that has been preserved for us in the bible. The meanings are deeper, richer and more amazingly profound for us than the proclamation that “Every word is true” can express. It is written that King David meditated on the law of God day and night (well, there was at least one night where he wasn’t meditating on God’s law, but that’s another story). It is far better to internalize what we read and give the Spirit time to lead us into the truth than it is to simply read, claim and regurgitate it for others.

But any way, I ramble. As usual, well spoken John!

I don’t think I’ve really got a point beyond saying that, from personal experience, I can say that living like Jesus is a far more effective evangelical tool than any amount of words could have ever done for me.

The LGBTI Christian friends I know are being bashed over the heads with bibles all the time by other Christians and they already know Jesus??? This is the problem with christians like yourself – you are doing exactly what John is saying don’t do in point no.8. Just because you thnik you believe the bible is clear on this “sin” as you have written, does not mean you are correct – in fact I think you are way off!

Cheers

Yes! Especially 10- You know what? Number 10 is really the truest and saddest part of most Christians I know.

My first impression reading your list, by the time I was at number 6, is that you live in a fantastic parallel universe, where Christians are the plentiful, mostly wealthy, active, zealous, & confident, and you are asking them to tone it down for some reason! I guess this list must be very particular to where you live, you lucky guy LOL!

Points 7 (abandon logic), 8 (homophobic), and 10 (ignorant) are things I’ve come across in my life, especially 7, basically an inability to convey the bibles message effectively. 8 and 10 are more things I hear about or see on TV or notice in the world at large, not so much in my circle.

Now, to get to point 1, what most of the posts seem to be fixated on, I want to add that as far as I know, the camel through the eye of the needle verse is commonly mistranslated. The word “camel” simply refers to a thick rope in the original language (no prizes for knowing what that is).

Here in Greece, where I live, many people are aware of this fact, but I didn’t see it the preceding posts, maybe I missed it. I did read about the interpretation of the eye of the needle being the city gates but cannot pronounce a verdict on this interpretation as I havent researched it. Certainly we can say that, when translating, one must be aware of the cultural context words are uttered in to render their correct meaning in another language.

So…… that verse is saying that its hard for a rich person to get into heaven. As hard as it is to string a rope through the eye of a needle (probably not a factory made stainless steel needle a millimeter thick that you are imagining right now). In other words its pretty hard. There is no implication that it is impossible or anything of that sort. And that makes sense. Since money easily currupts many. But I interpret that a steadfast knowlegable & faithfull believer, as we aspire to be and some of us already are, would be much less likely to fall to that fate.

I know its hard to take my word for it over a lot of bible translators etc, but it is what it is, its your choice what you want to believe. It has been endoresed by westerners too, for example Desiderius Erasmus (1566) and (catholic Saint) Thomas More (1535).

Also, the reason I said ‘this response’ because it is tiring for people to use the ‘well it doesn’t make sense, but God can do it!’ response. Yes, God can do anything! But that should not be the default answer for lack of Biblical studying to understand what the Bible is saying.