Category Archives: Sacred Soaking

The actual rules for Christians and Bible-based folks

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Originally published on Dreamwidth, OCT. 29TH, 2005 01:11 PM.

Okay, I confess. I was raised a Methodist, and got more fundamentalist yet before I pitched the entire thing. But I’ve always been a great believer in measuring people by their own standards rather than by mine.

Here we have many many people in the American government and influencing it that call themselves Christians, and that look to the Old Testament for what they consider to be important.

Myself, I do not think they are doing it right.

In the New Internation Version of the Bible I found 178 entries for the word POOR; following are a few.

Exodus 23:2-7 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

2 “Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, 3 and do not show favoritism to a poor man in his lawsuit.

4 “If you come across your enemy’s ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to take it back to him. 5 If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help him with it.

6 “Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits. 7 Have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put an innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty.

Exodus 23:10-12 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

Sabbath Laws
10 “For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, 11 but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what they leave. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove.
12 “Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest and the slave born in your household, and the alien as well, may be refreshed.

Leviticus 19:9-10 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

9 ” ‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10 Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.

Leviticus 19:14-16 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

14 ” ‘Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the LORD.

15 ” ‘Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.

16 ” ‘Do not go about spreading slander among your people.
” ‘Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. I am the LORD.

Leviticus 23:22 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

22 ” ‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.’ “

Leviticus 25:35-36 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

35 ” ‘If one of your countrymen becomes poor and is unable to support himself among you, help him as you would an alien or a temporary resident, so he can continue to live among you. 36 Do not take interest of any kind [a] from him, but fear your God, so that your countryman may continue to live among you.

Deuteronomy 15:7-8 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

7 If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your poor brother. 8 Rather be openhanded and freely lend him whatever he needs.

Deuteronomy 15:10-11 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

10 Give generously to him and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. 11 There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.

Deuteronomy 24:10-13 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

10 When you make a loan of any kind to your neighbor, do not go into his house to get what he is offering as a pledge. 11 Stay outside and let the man to whom you are making the loan bring the pledge out to you. 12 If the man is poor, do not go to sleep with his pledge in your possession. 13 Return his cloak to him by sunset so that he may sleep in it. Then he will thank you, and it will be regarded as a righteous act in the sight of the LORD your God.

Deuteronomy 24:14-15 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

14 Do not take advantage of a hired man who is poor and needy, whether he is a brother Israelite or an alien living in one of your towns. 15 Pay him his wages each day before sunset, because he is poor and is counting on it. Otherwise he may cry to the LORD against you, and you will be guilty of sin.

Now, check out the things I found among the 109 citations for “alien.”

Exodus 12:49 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

49 The same law applies to the native-born and to the alien living among you.”

Leviticus 19:33 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

33 ” ‘When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him.

Leviticus 19:34 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

34 The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.

The rest of the entries are similar: Aliens (strangers, outlanders) are subject to the same laws, with the one exception of the holiness laws to which only Israel is subject. Anyone who mistreats them dishonors God.

Adulter* got 79 results; Sexual* immoral* got 27 results; prostitut* or harlot* got 108 (of course, that included the symbolic references); divorce got 33 (also including symbology). Homosexual got one reference, and sodomite got none, although it’s referred to in the topical index.

AND note what Ezekial says:

Ezekiel 16:49 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society49 ” ‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.

Finally, check this part out:

Genesis 41 (New International Version)
17 Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “In my dream I was standing on the bank of the Nile, 18 when out of the river there came up seven cows, fat and sleek, and they grazed among the reeds. 19 After them, seven other cows came up—scrawny and very ugly and lean. I had never seen such ugly cows in all the land of Egypt. 20 The lean, ugly cows ate up the seven fat cows that came up first. 21 But even after they ate them, no one could tell that they had done so; they looked just as ugly as before. Then I woke up.

22 “In my dreams I also saw seven heads of grain, full and good, growing on a single stalk. 23 After them, seven other heads sprouted—withered and thin and scorched by the east wind. 24 The thin heads of grain swallowed up the seven good heads. I told this to the magicians, but none could explain it to me.”

25 Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, “The dreams of Pharaoh are one and the same. God has revealed to Pharaoh what he is about to do. 26 The seven good cows are seven years, and the seven good heads of grain are seven years; it is one and the same dream. 27 The seven lean, ugly cows that came up afterward are seven years, and so are the seven worthless heads of grain scorched by the east wind: They are seven years of famine.

28 “It is just as I said to Pharaoh: God has shown Pharaoh what he is about to do. 29 Seven years of great abundance are coming throughout the land of Egypt, 30 but seven years of famine will follow them. Then all the abundance in Egypt will be forgotten, and the famine will ravage the land. 31 The abundance in the land will not be remembered, because the famine that follows it will be so severe. 32 The reason the dream was given to Pharaoh in two forms is that the matter has been firmly decided by God, and God will do it soon.

33 “And now let Pharaoh look for a discerning and wise man and put him in charge of the land of Egypt. 34 Let Pharaoh appoint commissioners over the land to take a fifth of the harvest of Egypt during the seven years of abundance. 35 They should collect all the food of these good years that are coming and store up the grain under the authority of Pharaoh, to be kept in the cities for food. 36 This food should be held in reserve for the country, to be used during the seven years of famine that will come upon Egypt, so that the country may not be ruined by the famine.”

Have you ever in your life seen a more clear commandment to tax the people when times are good so that you can help the people when times are bad?

Well?

It’s not the gay-pride festivals that brought down retribution on New Orleans and Florida, according to this reading. It’s the tax-cutrs for the wealthy and the benefit-cuts for the poor that did it.

LEONARD PITTS IS DOING IT AGAIN

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Originally published on Dreamwidth MAR. 10TH, 2006 09:58 AM.

I’m gonna have to send that man fudge. An open letter to Donna Reddick reads, in part:

They’re so panicked at the thought that somebody accidentally might treat gay people like people. They run around Chicken Little-like, screaming, ‘Th’ homosex’shals is comin’! Th’ homosex’shals is comin’!” Meantime, people are ignorant in Appalachia, strung out in Miami, starving in Niger, sex slaves in India, mass-murdered in Darfur. Where is the Christian outrage about that?

Well worth reading in its entirety.

I’m embarrassed about my own response to the man, however.

Dear sir,

I was intrigued by your response to Professor Pitts, and, as always, delighted by your prose. But I’d like you to update your response to her invocation of Sodom and Gomorrah. In my experience, people always get that one wrong.

Ezekiel 16:49 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

49 ” ‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.

As you can see, Ezekiel was wholly unconcerned about the sexual sins (which, from my personal reading, involved rape and assault rather than loving nonstandard consensual adult intimacy), and far more concerned about their welfare philosophy.

Which, so far as I can make out, matches fairly strongly to that of the current and the past several Republican administrations.

I’ve been calling President Bush a Sodomite for some time, on this basis.

Respectfully,

*bangs head* Reddick! Her name is Reddick! His name is Pitts!

CHURCH CONDEMNS LESBIAN IVF USE (and gets condemned right back)

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Originally published on Dreamwidth NOV. 19TH, 2007 02:30 PM.

Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor wrote: “The bill proposes to remove the need for IVF providers to take into account the child’s need for a father when considering an IVF application and to confer legal parenthood on people who have no biological relationship to a child born as a result of IVF.

-um, ya mean, kinda like folks calling someone “Father” who not only has no relation to them genetically or legally, but whom the folks answering to that appellation still see as necessarily overriding the folks of the first parts’ own judgment in all kinds of personal and political situations?

Of course, they did say that “The direct and intentional destruction of innocent human life is always wrong and is not just one issue among many, […]It must always be opposed.” I wish they had been holding to that standard there in the 1960s-1990s, when they were asked to defend innocent human life. – Oh, right, they only care about protecting innocent life when there’s a chance of controlling a woman along with it. Because otherwise, as Garry Wills says in his LA Times opinion piece, “The supreme irony is that, properly understood, abortion is not even a religious issue.”

I have said before, verbally if not in this forum, that

the damage goes beyond disillusionment with a father figure because the exploiter-abuser was a priest, a “godlike” person, who occupied a position of sacred trust to the youth and his or her family. Furthermore, the victim had not only been violated but his or her source of spiritual support in a time of trouble—the church and its representative—had been rudely swept away.

The authors of this article and writers of the above words obviously (and unknowingly!) agree with me and bring back to the fore the fact that, media skew aside, we are really, really not talking about priests being homosexual predators. On page 56 of this document, they examine the various sources and interpretations of the statistics. But even if only half as many girls as boys get victimized – a statistic questionable on a number of grounds – that still means that a full third of the victims are young females, and their predators thus heterosexual priests. AW Richard Sipe is quoted in that same Boston Globe article as finding that “the numbers change dramatically among late adolescents and adults, with woman victims outnumbering males 4 to 1.”

John Paul II said in his Evangelium vitae of 1995 that

It may be that many people use contraception with a view to excluding the subsequent temptation of abortion. But the negative values inherent in the “contraceptive mentality”-which is very different from responsible parenthood, lived in respect for the full truth of the conjugal act-are such that they in fact strengthen this temptation when an unwanted life is conceived. Indeed, the pro- abortion culture is especially strong precisely where the Church’s teaching on contraception is rejected. Certainly, from the moral point of view contraception and abortion are specifically different evils: the former contradicts the full truth of the sexual act as the proper expression of conjugal love, while the latter destroys the life of a human being; the former is opposed to the virtue of chastity in marriage, the latter is opposed to the virtue of justice and directly violates the divine commandment “You shall not kill”.

I submit that the full truth of the sexual act is a proper expression of affection between consenting adults, and that the total rejection of any sexual permission outside that of a conjugal attempt for reproduction in itself breaks down the attempt by morally desperate but fragile people to understand the rules – which are psychiatric and neither physical nor legal in nature – by which we may sustain a society.

The sexual act between friends – male and female, or female and female, or male and male – does not in itself cause mental agony. The sexual act of a solitary person, like the sexual act between more than two friends, does not cause mental agony.

But a sexual act between an authority figure and a dependent person, whether a child, a legally or religiously submissive person, or a mentally or emotionally fragile or non-competent person, does cause mental agony. It destroys the dependent person’s full capacity for societal participation; it injures and may destroy the dependent person’s full capacity for sexual expression; and it destroys the dependent person’s trust in unconditional love, which has been shown to be profoundly necessary to full moral development.

And a sexual act between people who are not friends, or between people at least one of whom has promised sexual fidelity to one not present, does cause mental agony, to the participants who find their sexual experience to be mechanical or even despairing, and to the person or people not present, who find that their trust in their beloved is unfounded.

There are sexual crimes, oh yes. But I have no ability to hear the words of the authorities of the Catholic church on this matter: their actions are screaming too loudly.

This is not Psalm 2:1.

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Why do the nations tremble? And the people imagine a vain thing? They rage as they dance in the temples, and in fear beat themselves on the high roads. They slaughter the strangers among them, and their neighbors they accuse and burn.

My doings are none of your making, and my actions cannot be thwarted. When I raise up the seas in the morning, or cast the mount into fire, I act that I act and alone. You cannot know my reasons, you do not cause my fury, no pleas of yours can gainsay them, nor penitence retire them.

Shout not at the brilliantly-colored, nor hiss at the idolators. Their ways are not yours to condemn: mine is the judgement alone. Bring no man to the fire, and no child to the whet-sharpened knife: you seal thereby your own fate, which shall be yours alone. I do not punish the nations, nor do I sentence the peoples: on the head of the criminal lonestanding shall be his own reward.

When I cast down the mighty cities, when I throw down the mountains with fire, then shall you flee to safety, and mourn for your losses and dead. Pity yourselves and each other, care for each other with kindness, and comfort each other’s grieving. Pile not new hurts upon old hurts, and accept until knowledge is full.

When I hurl the storm and the thunderbolt, my thought is for the earth, and I act as I will for the ages. Do not brag that this is your doing, nor that I will cease at your pleading. Look about you with dry eyes: the land itself has been altered. The seasons have changed in their courses, and the ice on the mounts is receding.

Yours is to build a new city, to plan it with care and with cunning. Yours is to see to your crops, and to take your flocks to new meadows.

The sexuality summary

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May. 12th, 2006

So, if I’m reading the previous correctly, it goes like this:

1. The highest expression of physical love is the creation of new life within a context where those responsible for creating that life will nurture and raise it.

2. Any physical pleasure which does not meet the above standards dehumanizes the participants, turning at least one of them into a “prostitute” or utility for the convenience of the other.

3. When the possibility of the creation of new life within a context where those responsible for creating that life will nurture and raise it is gone, then those people ought to cease engaging in physical pleasure, whether they are married to each other or not.

This leads to the following conclusions on my part of the logical outcomes of this set of statements:

A. A menopausal woman ought not to have sex with her husband. (Or anyone else.)
B. A man whose wife is menopausal ought not to have sex with her (or anyone else).
C. A woman who is currently pregnant ought not to have sex with her husband (or anyone else).
D. Any infertile person ought never to have sex, and probably ought not to be married.
E. Any unmarried person ought not to have sex at all.
F. No parent should die ever until the youngest offspring is at least 18.
G. Therefore, fertile or not, no one over the age of 50 should have sex, lest they inadvertently die before their offspring are completely raised.

OTHERWISE

The female participants are being devalued and dehumanized and turned into sex utilities.

I think that’s it.

What they mean when they say Gays threaten Marriage.

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May. 12th, 2006

Finally I have read a detailed, comprehensible, in-their-own-words explanation of why the Christian Right is reacting to sexuality the way it is. The following is culled from a nine-page article, which you should definitely read in its entirety. It may still be freely available; otherwise, the registration with the New York Times is free and worthwhile.

Contra-Contraception
By RUSSELL SHORTO
Published: May 7, 2006
The New York Times Magazine
Continue reading →

In what do Christians believe?

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Feb. 1st, 2007

I was just reading an article in The Advocate, a gay-issues national newspaper, entitled Gay marriage re-emerges as legislative issue, written by Brian Lockhart. In it, he quotes State Rep. David Aldarondo, D-Waterbury, as saying: “I am a Christian. I believe in the family, a married man with a woman.”

This got me to thinking: I, a former Christian, indeed a former Fundamentalist Christian, had always thought that Christians believed that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ paid the penalty for their sins, allowing them, on acceptance of the sacrifice, into Heaven without additional sacrifice or time in Hell.

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Who is a [C]hristian, again?

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October 11th, 2011, 02:38 pm

Every once in a while, it’s necessary to revisit this discussion. As a former christian I have a unique view of the question, my own efforts to gain a pure and therefore muscular and supportive version of the religion having been met with a series of increasingly narrow definitions that, eventually, defined me right out.

Yeah, really: I was a teenaged conservative fundamentalist evangelical Christian, halleluiah! God-fearing and Bible-studying, Amen!

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The Harrowing of Elizabeth Fritzl: I dun tol’ you so!

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May 19th, 2008, 01:50 pm

Let us begin with this section from Ephesians:

22Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.

23For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.

24Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

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What the heck is Kitchen Witchery, anyhow?

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Well, I can tell you what I mean by Kitchen Witchery. I cannot tell you if this is the same thing that other people mean by it.

I mean: My spirituality and my priestesshood and my magick are based around the concept that my home is my temple, all in it are consecrated and holy, and each action that I do is a portion of the ritual of my life.

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