The UmBlog

I took vacation days before the Thanksgiving break to enjoy an entire week of vacation. Enjoyment for me includes reading big and difficult books. This week I read the final installment of Rick Atkinson's World War 2 trilogy, The Guns at Last Light . In light of this week's riots in Ferguson, Missouri after the grand jury conclusion, this observation of Atkinson's struck me. Liberated prisoners from German work/prison/extermination camps were asked to "'Keep disclipline ...Let your behavior be a credit to your national honor.'" Instead, starvation, revenge, indiscipline, and chaos often created what Allied officers called a "liberation complex." SHAEF had presumed refugees "would be tractable, grateful, and powerless after their domination from two to five years as the objects of German slave policies." As an Army assessment concluded, "They were none of these things...newly liberated persons looted, robbed, murdered, and in so...

Dear Johnboy The extremist Islamic partisan group ISIS, has made headlines for their wholesale slaughter of infidels, defined by them as anyone who does not share their strain of religion. The headline above those headlines is their treatment of captive women and children who are enslaved either for labor or for sex. Here is a first person account in the Washington Post of a 14 year old Yazidi girl  who was captured, enslaved, and rescued. Here is a video and story in the Daily Mail of ISIS fighters discussing the purchase of captured girls and their prices. Here is a CNN story with  ISIS's theological justification for the treatment of captured women. Nauseating, isn't it? As you know from your history reading, ISIS's behavior is not unique to conquering armies. Unfortunately, their behavior is biblical. But then, not everything biblical is Christian . Here is the biblical case for the capture and enslavement of human beings. When Israel is not attacking citie...

Every book that I have read about critical Biblical scholarship and Biblical theology has been a difficult read until the new book by Enns, The Bible Tells Me So...why defending scripture has made us unable to read it . At points, it is laugh out loud funny. Dr. Enns, a professor of Biblical Studies at Eastern University practices the Sound of Music maxim, "a spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down." I'd say most American evangelicals like C.S. Lewis so much that he gets a free pass on his non-fundamentalist ways. But that means some of his books are not as popular among us evangelicals, like his Reflections on the Psalms. But Enns wants us to know he is not writing anything crazier than what Lewis wrote, and if we aren't keeping Lewis out of heaven, we shouldn't immediately write Enns off either. Enns opens with a quote from said book of Lewis's. The human qualities of the raw materials show through. Naivety, error, contradiction, even (as in the c...

Let me say it for any critics. I'm stupid. I'm blind. I am an ally of minorities, including sexual minorities. I do that poorly as well. This is one stupid, blind guy's attempt at re-reading Romans 1. I am trying to continually learn. Today, my reading plan took me into the beginning of Romans, St. Paul's magnum opus on grace and faith. Romans 1 is called a clobber passage because it seems to categorize all homosexuality as bad. Here is the second half of the first chapter. Romans 1:21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.   24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one ano...

Dear Johnboy, Forget WWJD, you need to figure out WWJH, Who Would Jesus Hate. Because there are some verses in the Bible, Old and New Testaments, that declare God's hatred for some people. In fact Jesus even commands us to hate some people. Wait a second. God can't tell us he loves the world in one place then tell us to hate those he in fact loves, can he? Is he self-contradictory? Is one of these paths the Christian way and one not? Some Christians, really intelligent ones even, refuse to resolve this tension and hold these opposite commands in tension. They refuse to prioritize "God is love" and believe that the God who is love hates. Here is a link to one example . Here are a couple videos ( 1 , 2 ) of pastors preaching about God hating people. We all agree the Westboro Baptist Family Cult focuses on the hate verses and tries to share the bad news as often as they can. The thing is, does hate mean what we think it means in the Bible? There is little help fr...

This topic is an addendum to my last post in the series, Not everything Biblical is Christian, Part 8 - Jesus and nocturnal emission laws . I concluded that post by saying, "I still don't know where Jesus is in this passage, Deuteronomy 23:10" If there be among you any man, that is not clean by reason of uncleanness that chanceth him by night , then shall he go abroad out of the camp, he shall not come within the camp: 11 But it shall be, when evening cometh on, he shall wash himself with water: and when the sun is down, he shall come into the camp again.  The King James version is more of the Hebrew to English word for word translation. The modern versions are more explicit about what the Hebrew alludes to "in happenings of the night." 10 "If any man among you becomes unclean because of a nocturnal emission , then he shall go outside the camp. He shall not come inside the camp, 11 but when evening comes, he shall bathe himself in water, and as the s...

Not everything Biblical is Christian, part 8. See part  one ,  two ,  three ,  four ,  five ,  six  and seven  to catch up. See the briefest of reviews at the bottom. Dear Johnboy I know if you read this ten years ago, you would write me off, because I am not dealing with one of those verses you memorized repeatedly through your AWANA childhood. 2 Timothy 3:14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness , 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. I want to clarify how I can agree with verse 16 and write a series called, Not everything Biblical is Christian . As I tried to rem...