Last night I dreamt that I was a superhero. I was attempting to infiltrate the super-villain’s lair. So I decided that I would pretend I was one of them and I volunteered to conduct the registration for their designated driver program. Then, after a while of helping out the drunken folks, I began to realize that I had misjudged the super-villains. They weren’t such bad guys. I mean, they were running a pretty good program.Then I woke up…
I am hoping there is someone out there who can interpret my dream. What is my subconscious trying to tell me?
I know some Native American and eastern religions teach (or taught) that the dream world was more real than this world. If this is the case, what are my super-powers?
On the very slightly more serious side, has anyone heard of this new “Left Behind: Eternal Forces” video game? Apparently, the game is based right after the rapture. You are one of the only Christians left… or converted after the rapture, I don’t know… whatever the moronic story is. You are charged with recruiting and converting an army to the twisted religion of the American fundamentalists. Then you get to go and fight Satan and his evil secular humanist minions. This game sounds more ridiculous than a piñata that is made out of candy and shoots out paper mache for the kinds to eat. Hmm… not my best line… This game brings back the classic call of Christianity: “Convert or Die!”
5 comments:
Here lies my recent confusion and problem: I really like what you wrote in the previous post but am wondering where the Bible has authority. Why did they use the books they used (the cannon)? How do we know what Jesus said if we're not really sure about authorship? Why should we care? ...questions I've all received in the past 4 months!
Reehb -
I will probably post more on my understanding of how the Bible has authority and what kind of authority it has. But my short answer would be that the Bible can only have authority as the kind of book(s) it is and/or was intended to be. The desire within Christian circles is to claim the Bible has ultimate authority on every issue everywhere (which makes the Bible God). But, this takes the Bible as something it is not. This approach to the Bible is like taking an aesthetics textbook as the authority on politics or law.
I agree with all the above statements. I think context is often overlooked by conservative evangelicals. It's sort of a game to some people: "If I can find the magic word I'm looking for in the concordance, and the half-verse that’s attached to it to prove my point, I win!" Example: 2 Timothy on women in office. No one ever looks to the context of the passage they just jump to good old fashioned proof texting and that's it...believe it or be EXCOMMUNICATED! Ha ha ha!!!
The Bible isn't that inapplicable to politics and law. I would hope that a Biblically shaped outlook would shape my politics. Does that mean that I try to push for the legislation of my moral dilemmas? No. But the Bible is relevant on many if not all matters of life, though it is not an oversized rule book. I love you, keep responding.
That video game sounds suspiciously like a video game that Rod and Todd Flanders play on The Simpsons, in which you shoot unbelievers with your Jesus gun and they become Christians, unless you just wing them, in which case they simply become Unitarians.
I have nothing to add to the discussion of Scripture, except to say that, as an English lit nerd, I find it illuminating that God chose to leave us a book full of stories and poems rather than a simple list of eternal, immovable precepts. I've always felt like reading the Bible is like Jacob wrestling with God--like Jacob, you might get a good hold here and there, but you will never be able to pin Him down, because let's face it, He's God. On the bright side, even though you might not get a perfect understanding out of the wrestling match, you might come away from it, like Jacob, with some kind of blessing.
you're linked.
no more whining.
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