Category: One Year Skeptic

Reference links:

Old Testament

My conclusion, based on today’s reading, is that Ezra is a drama queen. He makes it to Jerusalem and then goes all ballistic on the folks who had married with the locals. He cites the prohibitions against marrying or making treaties with the natives of the land back from Joshua. Now, in addition to being applicable in circumstances very different from the present, it seems rather hypocritical of Ezra to cite authorities who say that peace should not be made with other nations when their remnant only exists by the mercy of the Persian empire.

New Testament

Paul tells the Corinthian church, through a specific example of immorality, that they should banish those who violate their cultural norms from their community. However, what I find more interesting is that Paul makes it clear that the community of believers are only to apply their standards to others in the community of believers. Their standards are not meant to be applied to those outside of that community. Perhaps there is a lesson here that might be applicable to many modern hot button issues.

Psalms and Proverbs

People may be right in their own eyes,
but the Lord examines their heart.

Rather appropriate given the recent readings in Corinthians. Yet Paul’s words make me read this in a different light. Without our recent readings from 1 Corinthians, I may have thought this was a proverb of condemnation, and maybe that was the original intent. But Paul makes it clear that while the possibility that you are right in your own eyes buy not the eyes of the Lord is something you should be wary of, he does not present it as something bad. On the contrary, he presents it as something unavoidable.

Reference links:

Old Testament

Ezra arrives in Jerusalem today. Who is Ezra you ask? Well, if he actually is the author of this part of the book of Ezra, he is someone who is quite willing to toot his own horn. Other than that,

This Ezra was a scribe who was well versed in the Law of Moses, which the Lord, the God of Israel, had given to the people of Israel. He came up to Jerusalem from Babylon, and the king gave him everything he asked for, because the gracious hand of the Lord his God was on him.

Artaxerxes seems to think that Ezra is a pretty great guy, and so he gives Ezra the job of enforcing the law of Moses in the land of Judah. Now, this may make it seem like Ataxerxes though the God of Israel was pretty awesome, but it is worth pointing out that, in general, it is believed that policy at the time was to encourage people who were part of the Persian empire to follow their own religious laws as long as they were compatible with the laws of the empire.

Beyond that, nothing much exciting happened in today’s reading. A lot of new people are introduced, but it is unclear how many of them will continue to be relevant.

New Testament

Paul pulls out the sarcasm today in his condemnation of some of the pride filled and judgmental attitudes of the people of Corinth:

You think you already have everything you need. You think you are already rich. You have begun to reign in God’s kingdom without us!

and

Our dedication to Christ makes us look like fools, but you claim to be so wise in Christ!

But let’s pop up a level and look at Paul’s purpose in saying all this. In today’s reading, Paul condemns, in no weak terms, those who felt they were better than others and were abandoning the attitudes Paul felt were proper in followers of Jesus.

This reading shows, one of the weaknesses of chopping up the New Testament into bite sized little chunks.  It is clear that today’s reading is part of Paul’s appeal at the beginning of the letter that the Corinthians not divide themselves into factions. This means that everything that comes between should be considered in light of that situation. Now, I do not have time to do that right now, but I strongly suspect that much of what Paul said would read differently if it were interpreted as part of a condemnation of those sewing division in the Corinthian church.

Psalms and Proverbs

Unfailing love and faithfulness protect the king;
his throne is made secure through love.

Nice sentiment but, sadly, would not work for today’s leaders, at least not in the world of American politics.

The glory of the young is their strength;
the gray hair of experience is the splendor of the old.

Another nice sentiment. I wish that our culture spent more time recognizing the wisdom and experience of the old instead of trying to color, suck, and inflate to preserve a false and artificial appearance of youth.

Physical punishment cleanses away evil;
such discipline purifies the heart.

This one, not so great. I am not a big fan of physical punishment.

Reference links:

Old Testament

Today’s reading mainly concerns itself with establishing the legitimacy of the building of the temple. This mostly takes the place of bureaucratic back and forth between Tattenai, governor of the area which contains Jerusalem, and Darius, king of Persia. Eventually, it is decided that building the temple is not only legitimate but should, furthermore, be supported out of the coffers of the state.

After this, the temple is completed and dedicated and the first Passover celebrated in the new temple. As is not surprising given how few people returned and how much less influential the Jews are now, the dedication takes on a much smaller scale than the celebrations of the past. The dedication consisted of a relatively tiny 100 bulls, 200 rams, 400 lambs, and 12 goats (one for each tribe). That said, I think the celebrations may owe their decrease in scale to more than just the fallen fortunes of Judah. The account of this celebration was written significantly closer to the true historical memory than any of the other books we have read. As is not unusual when comparing the past to the present, those people putting together the Hebrew scriptures probably exaggerated the past to give it greater contrast with the present.

Another change between this book and earlier books is that the tone has suddenly become much more monotheistic. We saw the beginnings of this when the king of Egypt told Josiah that he was going to battle by the command of Josiah’s God. We see that again in today’s reading where Darius and his officials seem to see the God of Israel as THE God. Although it is not clear one way or another whether or not the author of Ezra wants to represent these non-Jews as believing only in the God of Israel and Judah, it is clear that the Jews themselves are starting to see their God as more universal. Less the God of Israel and Judah and more the God who chooses Jerusalem as his primary place of worship.

The timing of this change makes sense. According to some of the resources I have read, the exiled Jews had to dramatically change their conception of God when they went into exile. Before that, they had followed a very place based religion. Their religion was place based both in their manner of worship (centered on the temple in Jerusalem) and in their conception of God;;the God they worshiped was their God. Whether they believed that other people were worshiping other Gods or false Gods, they did not believe that they were worshiping the God of Israel and Judah.

But now that has changed. Being removed from a geographic location forced the Jews to change their conception of God. If their God was only place based, then clearly he had failed. Thus, he started his evolution to a much more familiar universal God.

New Testament

Paul continues to address the issue of division within the Corinthian church. He once again emphasizes God’s primary role in the development of the individuals in the church. Particular individuals may help, but they are not to be given credit. Paul then goes on more about the wisdom of the world verses the wisdom of God.

Also, the people of God are the new temple. This is particularly interesting given that this letter was written before the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem by the Romans. By making this statement before the destruction of the temple, Paul emphasizes just how much he has broken from his Jewish roots.

Psalms and Proverbs

No mercy here:

A wise king scatters the wicked like wheat,
then runs his threshing wheel over them.

Reference links:

Old Testament

The people rebuild the altar so they can resume the giving of sacrifices. After that they start to rebuild the temple. This is a bittersweet moment. The people feel joy that the temple is to be rebuilt, but those who can remember the old temple weep because they see how much less impressive this temple will be.

The rest of today’s reading covers some of the obstacles that faced those rebuilding the temples. We read,

The enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the exiles were rebuilding a Temple to the Lord, the God of Israel. So they approached Zerubbabel and the other leaders and said, “Let us build with you, for we worship your God just as you do. We have sacrificed to him ever since King Esarhaddon of Assyria brought us here.”

But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the other leaders of Israel replied, “You may have no part in this work. We alone will build the Temple for the Lord, the God of Israel, just as King Cyrus of Persia commanded us.”

Then the local residents tried to discourage and frighten the people of Judah to keep them from their work.

The author of Ezra obviously considers the people thwarting the building of the temple to be enemies bent on sabotaging it. However, every story has two sides, and there is an obvious possibility for the second side of this one. Look again at what the people who have been living in Judah are reported to have said:

Let us build with you, for we worship your God just as you do. We have sacrificed to him ever since King Esarhaddon of Assyria brought us here.

Over the course of their time in Judah, over the course of a couple generations, it looks as if these people had at least partially assimilated to the culture of the land they were living in. They consider the religion of the people of Judah, or at least some adaption of it, to be their religion. Thus, they want to participate what they likely see as the greatest honor they can give to the being they now consider their God: they want to help rebuild his temple.

But the returned people of Judah will have no part of it. They want to do this all themselves and, as I believe we will later see, they essentially want to take away from the people living in this land everything they had come to consider their religion. However much truth there may or may not be in the reports of the actions these “enemies” took against those building the temple, it seems likely that they had a legitimate source of frustration.

New Testament

Whenever I read words like Paul’s, words where the speaker is so sure that he truly has understood, or at least partially understood, God’s purpose and spirit, I always come back to the same question: how do you explain all of the other people who are just as sure as you and who have come to completely contradictory conclusions?

This holds a direct relation to my frustration with the idea that all religions are pointing to the same truth. If there is a God, then this idea may have some merit at a high level, but the problem lies in the details. If all religions are pointing to the same truth, then most, if not all, religions are dead wrong about the details. But everyone who believes this sort of feel good message about all religions pointing to the same truth also believes that it is their religion that has the details right.

In any case, that’s kind of a tangent. To bring it back to today’s reading, the problem with the wisdom of God, as opposed to the wisdom of man, is that there seems to be nothing but one’s owns feelings to indicate whether one is actually tapping into the wisdom of God or one’s own brain.

Paul then goes on to talk about how the people of the church in Corinth were not and are still not mature believers. This could be be interpreted as a criticism against the Corinthians, but Paul’s tone does not seem particularly accusing to me. It seems more as if he is just pointing out a fact. I am guessing that in Paul’s time, as now, most believers are immature in their belief and, for the most part, do not know it. For like in any area, those people who are the least mature are often those who are least able to see their immaturity. Seeing that you lack is the first step in seeing how to improve.

Actually, this leads me to another tangent. It seems that the immature believers today are the ones most eager to denounce atheists. Yet I wonder, if there is a God, could he really prefer immature belief to mature seeking, even if that seeking led one to dismiss God, or at least the version of God that seems to be believed in by American Christians today? For it seems that in that situation, the believer’s lack of understanding of Godly wisdom may be just as great, if not greater, despite the fact that one question happened to be answered correctly. (Caveats: No, I am not intending to imply that all believers are immature and all non-believers are mature. Yes, I realize that everyone, including myself, probably considers themselves in the mature seeker category and that most of us are wrong, just like most people consider themselves above average.)

Psalms and Proverbs

I usually make up little tunes to go with the Psalms to make them easier to digest. However, the irregular structure (in translation at least) of the couplets that make up the psalms often make this awkward. Today I tried a more rap-like style, and I had a much easier time dynamically adapting it to the shifting rhythm of the words. Yay!

Today’s second proverb reminds me of Jephthah and his sacrifice of his daughter:

Don’t trap yourself by making a rash promise to God
and only later counting the cost.

Today’s first proverb has some merit, but is also, in some ways, fundamentally distasteful to people like me.

The Lord directs our steps,
so why try to understand everything along the way?

It sometimes is necessary to reconcile ourselves to the fact that we cannot and will not understand everything. But some people, such as myself, fundamentally look at the world and ask “How does that work? Why does it work? What happens when I tweak this or that?”

For people like this, it is not enough to say, “It works, so who cares why?” We need to open things up and look inside. This is how we relate to the world. So to answer the question posed by this proverb, “why try to understand everything along the way?” is that, for some of us, the unexamined life is not worth living. The unexamined world is not worth living in. It does not matter if we come to a final answer (a final answer would probably be a disappointment). We have to keep asking and examining and finding new angles and new loop holes.

Reference links:

Old Testament

We start the book of Ezra today. According to Harris’s Understanding the Bible (Seventh Edition):

The Book of Ezra pictures the difficult conditions that prevailed in the postexilic community of Judah, then a small part of the vast Persian Empire. The Persian emperor authorizes Ezra, a priestly scribe returned from Babylon, to reorganize the restored Judean community according to the principles of the Mosaic Torah. To prevent assimilation with the Gentile population, Ezra forbids intermarrige between Judeans and foreign women.

Although Ezra and Nehemiah probably formed a single book originally, the two histories present conflicting information about the sequence of events they record. Part of the confusion arises because we do not know who first returned to help rebuild Jerusalem — the priest-scribe Ezra or the Persian-appointed governor of Judah, Nehemiah.

(Note that although I link the Wikipedia article, I think the summary there is only okay. And no, I don’t feel like improving it right now.)

We start today where the books of Chronicles left off. Cyrus of Persia has let the Jews return to Judah. Which means… more lists! After the lists, we learn that not many people chose to return to Jerusalem. 42,360 people plus 7337 servants and singers. I suppose that after a couple generations, people had acclimated to their new home.

We also read this interesting little story:

Three families of priests—Hobaiah, Hakkoz, and Barzillai—also returned. (This Barzillai had married a woman who was a descendant of Barzillai of Gilead, and he had taken her family name.) They searched for their names in the genealogical records, but they were not found, so they were disqualified from serving as priests. The governor told them not to eat the priests’ share of food from the sacrifices until a priest could consult the Lord about the matter by using the Urim and Thummim—the sacred lots.

Annoyingly, it looks like we never get to learn what happened to these families.

New Testament

There is nothing I can say about this reading without getting bitchy or angering someone else, so I’m just not going to say anything at all. Fortunately, since I don’t actually believe that Paul’s writing has any eternal significance, I am free to just dismiss it as annoying.

Psalms and Proverbs

Today’s second proverb is very similar to one we have seen before:

The Lord detests double standards;
he is not pleased by dishonest scales.

Reference links:

Old Testament

We finish off the books of Chronicles today. We read at length about Josiah’s Passover celebration. Despite having hyped up Hezekiah’s Passover celebration, the author of Chronicles sees no reason to say why Josiah’s was better. Perhaps Josiah’s Passover won more acclaim because more people attended and more animals were sacrificed. But whatever the reason, the author of Chronicles did a terrible job of setting this scene up.

We do, however, have an indication that the chronicler may have been aware of the literary shortcomings:

Never since the time of the prophet Samuel had there been such a Passover. None of the kings of Israel had ever kept a Passover as Josiah did, involving all the priests and Levites, all the people of Jerusalem, and people from all over Judah and Israel. [emphasis added]

The author specifically compare this to the Passovers held by the kings of Israel, not the kings of Judah. Now, perhaps the author here meant “Israel and Judah”, but usually the author of the books of Chronicles seems pretty careful about differentiating the two.

Next week read about Josiah’s death. I noticed that Josiah’s death was very similar to that of evil king Ahab of Israel. In both cases,

• the king goes into a battle the Lord has advised him not to go into
• the king disguises himself
• despite the disguise, the king is hit by an enemy archer
• the king flees and dies

I find that interesting given that Josiah is one of the best kings in the history of split kingdoms and Ahab one of the worst.

After that the end sure comes quickly, at least in the narrative. We go with blinding speed through the reigns of Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah to the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon to the Persian conquest of Babylon and the return of the exiles. The end.

New Testament

We start 1 Corinthians today. Let’s see what our references have to say about it. According to Understanding the Bible (Seventh Edition) by Stephen Harris,

Paul’s letters to Corinth urge the recipients to overcome their serious divisions, abandon competitive behavior, and strive for unity of belief and purpose. The most important topics include differences between human and divinely revealed wisdom, Christian ethics and responsibilities, proper conduct at Communion, appreciation for gifts of the Spirit, and resurrection of the dead.

It was probably composed in the mid-50’s AD and is amongst the earliest of Paul’s letters. Based on scholarly analysis, only 1 Thessalonians is believed to have been composed earlier. Like most of the authentic Pauline letters, this letter to the Corinthians was meant to address specific problems being experienced by that church.

Also, I was disappointed to learn from Harris’s book that Paul’s letters in the New Testament are ordered, roughly, from longest to shortest. Lame! Chronological would be better. (Why? Because I say so.)

Paul starts by greeting the members of the church at Corinth. He thanks God for the spiritual gifts that have been given to the Corinthians for their beliefs. This passage is one of many that implies that Paul believed Jesus’ return would happen soon:

Now you have every spiritual gift you need as you eagerly wait for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will keep you strong to the end so that you will be free from all blame on the day when our Lord Jesus Christ returns.

Paul then goes on to admonish those who would form factions in the Corinthian church. My favorite part of this passage is this, which shows Paul was composing this letter on the fly:

I thank God that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, for now no one can say they were baptized in my name. (Oh yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas, but I don’t remember baptizing anyone else.)

This makes me giggle.

In any case, 1 Corinthians is off to a much less annoying start than Romans.

Psalms and Proverbs

If you insult your father or mother,
your light will be snuffed out in total darkness.

And this one seems empirically true. In fact, now that we have starlets, I would update it to “A fortune obtained too early in life”.

Reference links:

Old Testament

In yesterday’s reading, Manasseh converted from his evil ways. In today’s reading, he sounds almost good enough to be another Hezekiah.

Manasseh also removed the foreign gods and the idol from the Lord’s Temple. He tore down all the altars he had built on the hill where the Temple stood and all the altars that were in Jerusalem, and he dumped them outside the city. Then he restored the altar of the Lord and sacrificed peace offerings and thanksgiving offerings on it. He also encouraged the people of Judah to worship the Lord, the God of Israel. However, the people still sacrificed at the pagan shrines, though only to the Lord their God.

Manasseh’s son Amon lives up to our expectations for a bad king. He is murdered by his own officials after only two years as king. After that Josiah, the wonder boy of the book of Kings, is crowned king.

But before we get there, I want to point out that Amon apparently was 16 years old when he fathered Josiah. Amon became king at age 22 and was only king for 2 years. Josiah was 8 when he became king. (22 + 2) – 8 = 16.

Josiah’s reign sounds pretty much like it did in the books of Kings; if you go back and compare them, they are fundamentally the same. Josiah starts out good and becomes even better once Hilkiah discovers the book of the law while the temple is being restored. You can read what I wrote before to see what I think about this episode itself.

What I want to comment on this time is how much more the version of this story in Chronicles sucks as literature. Our reading from only two days ago implied very strongly that the law had not yet been lost. Furthermore, the kings do not seem nearly as corrupt in the chronicler’s version of history as they did in the books of Kings. Thus, Josiah’s reaction to all of this and God’s promised punishment seem way out of proportion to what we have actually been shown.

The books of Chronicles have failed to motivate Judah’s downfall. Overall, I have to say that they have distinctly less literary merit than the books of Kings (and they were not always that great either).

New Testament

We finish reading Romans today. It mostly consists of the sending of greetings and an appeal to the recipients to be faithful to the Lord.

Psalms and Proverbs

Good practical advice:

A gossip goes around telling secrets,
so don’t hang around with chatterers.

Reference links:

Old Testament

Hezekiah is threatened by Sennacherib of Assyria but the Lord intervenes and the Assyrians are defeated. It probably didn’t hurt that Hezekiah reinforced defenses and prepared for the siege. I suppose the lesson is trust but don’t forget to prepare as much as you can.

After this, Hezekiah falls ill, is healed by the Lord, becomes proud (we are not told what he becomes proud of), encounters the Lords anger, repents, receives honor, and makes an unspecified mistake with the Babylonians (showing off his wealth? was that Hezekiah? I’m too tired to look it up).

After that, we read about the reign of Manasseh. The author of Chronicles quickly lets us know how terrible Manasseh was. More interesting to the author is Manasseh’s repentance, which we heard nary a peep about in the books of Kings.

This conversion does not pass the sniff test in a couple ways. It was never mentioned in the books of Kings. Maybe that is because the books of Kings had a simplified view of history where good kings were successful and bad kings were failure, and Manasseh was supposed to be a bad king. But then, you would think the author of the books of King would be more than happy to have something they could use to explain the fact that Manasseh, the terrible king, had a reign longer than any other king of Judah.

The second part that does not pass the sniff test is the circumstances surrounding Manasseh’s repentance:

So the Lord sent the commanders of the Assyrian armies, and they took Manasseh prisoner. They put a ring through his nose, bound him in bronze chains, and led him away to Babylon.

Why would the Assyrians take Manasseh to Babylon? As far as I can tell, Babylon was constantly in revolt and would not, I think, be a place where prisoners were taken.

Those things together lead me to think this episode was made up, either by the author of the books of Chronicles or by the author of some earlier tradition that this author was drawing from.

New Testament

We’re winding down on Romans. Paul describes his travel plans and then sends his regards to a number of people. According to Harris’s Understanding the Bible, many scholars believe that chapter 16, where the greetings begin, was actually from a different letter.

Psalms and Proverbs

Nothing strikes me as particularly interesting today.

Reference links:

Old Testament

The author of Chronicles seems to be trying to set things up so that the reforms of Josiah are much less impressive. In this version of Judah’s history, it seems as if the law has not yet been lost. But at this point there are only two more kings  between Hezekiah and Josiah. Now, they are (or were in Chronicles, at least) pretty terrible kings, but still, 57 years is short enough that the law would have at just barely fallen out of living memory, if it even had.

Plus, one of the big things that was supposed to make Josiah awesome was his reinstitution of the Passover celebration. 2 Kings 23:21-22:

King Josiah then issued this order to all the people: “You must celebrate the Passover to the Lord your God, as required in this Book of the Covenant.” There had not been a Passover celebration like that since the time when the judges ruled in Israel, nor throughout all the years of the kings of Israel and Judah.

But if we try to reconcile that with today’s reading where Hezekiah celebrates an impressive, then the impact of the passage above becomes “Josiah celebrated an even bigger Passover than Hezekiah”.

Also, it seems surprising that the author of the books of Kings did not even mention Hezekiah’s Passover when mentioning the rest of Hezekiah’s reforms and accomplishments. Hezekiah’s reign received a pretty thorough going over in Kings, but such an important Passover was not, apparently, worth mentioning.

I look forward to seeing how the author of Chronicles treats Josiah.

New Testament

I have nothing interesting to say about today’s reading. For no particular reason that I can pinpoint, I found it incredibly dull.

Psalms and Proverbs

The buyer haggles over the price, saying, “It’s worthless,”
then brags about getting a bargain!

This is another one of those proverbs where I am uncertain if the author is giving advice, expressing disapproval, or just stating how things are.

Reference links:

Old Testament

Today we read about Hezekiah. Hezekiah instituted reforms to undo some of the damage done by Ahaz. This time around, Hezekiah’s reforms do not seem as impressive. Maybe this is because we know from reading the books of Kings that they will not stick. Maybe it is because from the way the chronicler relates things, my impression is that Judah had a bunch of okay kings scattered amongst a couple bad ones, and having to undo the effects of one of the bad ones seems par for the course.

In any case, Hezekiah reopens and restores the temple (and the chronicler limited himself to only one short list of the people working on that. What restraint!). After the temple is restored, Hezekiah hosts a huge rededication ceremony.

The way this section is written makes it sound like the temple had been abandoned for years and years rather than for the reign of one king. In particular, consider this speech (emphasis added):

“Listen to me, you Levites! Purify yourselves, and purify the Temple of the Lord, the God of your ancestors. Remove all the defiled things from the sanctuary. Our ancestors were unfaithful and did what was evil in the sight of the Lord our God. They abandoned the Lord and his dwelling place; they turned their backs on him. They also shut the doors to the Temple’s entry room, and they snuffed out the lamps. They stopped burning incense and presenting burnt offerings at the sanctuary of the God of Israel. 

“That is why the Lord’s anger has fallen upon Judah and Jerusalem. He has made them an object of dread, horror, and ridicule, as you can see with your own eyes. Because of this, our fathers have been killed in battle, and our sons and daughters and wives have been captured. But now I will make a covenant with the Lord, the God of Israel, so that his fierce anger will turn away from us. My sons, do not neglect your duties any longer! The Lord has chosen you to stand in his presence, to minister to him, and to lead the people in worship and present offerings to him.”

This passage, especially the parts I emphasize, seem very targeted at a post-exile community. Remember that the books of Chronicles were probably written after the exiled Jews had been allowed to return to Jerusalem. My guess is that part of the purpose of the author(s) of Chronicles, especially this passage, was to try to inspire the people to reinstitute temple based worship, which had necessarily fallen aside while the people of Judah were in exile.

New Testament

Paul discusses how not all the believers have to have exactly the same beliefs about what is right or wrong. Not everything is a core belief. Paul’s specific examples focus on diet, but I think he means to make a more general point. In particular, he hints at a more general message in a couple places:

Who are you to condemn someone else’s servants? They are responsible to the Lord, so let him judge whether they are right or wrong. And with the Lord’s help, they will do what is right and will receive his approval.

and

Yes, each of us will give a personal account to God. So let’s stop condemning each other. Decide instead to live in such a way that you will not cause another believer to stumble and fall.

I am going to break my own rule about not talking about current events today.

There are churches and individuals today that conflate religion and politics. Many believers are made to feel that if they want to be religious in the “right way” then they have to vote Republican, even if they only agree with the Republicans on a couple issues that the Republicans have managed to portray as vital to whether or not one is a “real Christian”.

There are churches and individuals today that not only teach hatred of homosexuals and subjugation of women, they also teach that those who do not agree with them on these issues are not “real Christians”. They teach that those people should be condemned and pushed away not just from their church, but from any church.

There are churches and individuals today that try to convince others that science cannot be trusted. That the only valid way to interpret the creation story is literally. They harm science education and they harm their own cause by causing many scientifically literate believers to distance themselves from religion.

Today’s reading condemns all of those people. By conflating religion with particular non-core beliefs, these individuals and institutions are causing others to stumble and fall away from religion. They are not willing to let the Lord judge right and wrong. They feel the need to do it themselves.

Furthermore, and this is why I, an atheist, care, they push all of this into the public arena. Instead of aiming for living “a life of goodness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”, they sow strife, and that strife affects my life. Perhaps they should think about this passage more often.

Psalms and Proverbs

Nothing of particular note.