Lee Harmon's Blog, page 65
March 19, 2013
Book review: The Myth of Persecution
by Candida Moss
★★★★★
Are the stories of Christian persecution during Christianity’s early years really true? Or should we recognize them as apologetic exaggeration?
Candida Moss takes a hard look at how such stories are derived, and she has high standards for what counts as persecution. Execution for merely refusing to recant one’s Christian beliefs doesn’t measure up (prosecution is not persecution, any more than prejudice is persecution). Yet she makes her point strongly that widespread, repe...
March 18, 2013
1 Kings 22:13, A Lying Spirit, Part II of II
Behold, the words of the prophets declare good to the king with one assent; let thy word therefore, I pray thee, be like one of theirs, and speak thou good.
//Yesterday, I posted a story from the book of Kings, about how God commissioned a “lying spirit” to convince King Ahab to go to battle so that he died. I found the explanation of Ahab’s decision for battle a little unlikely, and promised to weigh in with what I suspect really happened.
According to the Bible, Ahab is a bit skittish about p...
March 17, 2013
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1 Kings 22:21-22, A Lying Spirit, part I of II
And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the LORD, and said, I will persuade him.And the LORD said unto him, Wherewith? And he said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, Thou shalt persuade him, and prevail also: go forth, and do so.
//Just in case your Old English isn’t too good, here’s what’s happening in today’s verse: God needs a plan to kill King Ahab, and comes up with the idea of luring Ahab into a battle he can’t win. But h...
March 16, 2013
Book review: Romance Eternelle
by Lawrence D. Miquelon
★★★
A brief story-in-a-story of a prostitute who feels drawn to church, and meets up with a Catholic priest who is going through his own crisis. More inspirational than instructional, the “romance” of the book is not between the characters, but in their new-found intimacy with God. It’s about being in love with God. The priest’s brush with divine Love so shakes him that he loses his interest in rote church ritual. His informal love story and wholehearted acceptance of a...
March 15, 2013
2 Kings 14, Jonah Dooms Israel
… in accordance with the word of the LORD, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher.
//Ever wonder who the most successful prophet is in the Bible? It’s unquestionably Jonah. Five words—“Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (well, that’s five words in Hebrew)—and the entire evil city repents.
Jonah, remember, is the fellow who runs away from God and boards a ship. A storm comes up, and a bit of divination by the sailors, casti...
March 14, 2013
Exodus 20:13, Thou Shalt Not Kill
Thou shalt not kill.
//This is one of the ten commandments. It’s recorded also in Deuteronomy 5:17, and repeated twice in the New Testament: once by Jesus (Matthew 5:21) and again by Paul (Romans 13:9). Always in the very same, clear language. Thou shalt not kill. Serious stuff.
So strong has this polemic grown that many Christians refuse to bear arms in battle; refuse to approve the death penalty; refuse to celebrate the death of Osama Bin Laden.
Now, I’m not arguing that war is good or that ca...
March 13, 2013
Book review: An Uncertain Age
by Ulrica Hume
★★★★
A story about life on life’s terms, with all its uncertainty. I’m not really much of a fiction reader, and the spirituality of the book is probably too subtle for a religion blog, so I don’t know that it was a good fit for me, really … yet once I began reading, I had a hard time setting it aside.
This story is a quest for purpose, by a middle-aged woman who seems to have lost ties with everything and everyone that once gave life meaning. She toys with religion, on a sort of...
March 12, 2013
John 3:3, Born Again
Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
//Here’s a conversation in the book of John that probably didn’t really happen. Jesus is explaining to Nicodemus how to enter the kingdom of God. But scholars doubt the conversation’s historicity on linguistic grounds.
It’s predicated on a play of words, a double entendre. The Gospel was written in Greek, and the Greek word for “again” in verse three carries two meani...
March 11, 2013
Book review: How To Be An Agnostic
by Marc Vernon
★★★★★
Mark Vernon is a former Anglican priest who flirted with atheism after leaving the church, and finally settled on a “more satisfying” compromise of agnosticism. He found atheism, with its dogmatic certainty and sometime hostility to the beliefs of others, to be no more open-minded than religion. Besides, he says, religion is not just a set of beliefs or a moral code. It is a way of seeing the world and a way of approaching what’s unknown. So, is there higher ground in the...
