M.K. Gandhi And Truth
This content was posted January 14, 2025. … I identify as human @pixfiber “Truth never damages a cause that is just.” · Mohandas K. Gandhi. This item appeared in my twitter feed on January 6. Being an unreconstructed pedant, I went to the Gandhi Wikiquote. “Truth” had too many search results, so I went to “just.” I found a doozy: “I have always held that social justice, even to the least and lowliest, is impossible of attainment by force.” Harijan (20 April 1940) p. 97
Harijan was another word for the untouchable caste in India. “… Gandhi conducted an intensive crusade against untouchability …” Harijan was also a newspaper that started on 11 February 1933, brought out by Gandhi from Yerwada Jail during the British rule in India. Gandhi popularized the term Harijan across the states of India but he was not the first person to use it.”
Archive.org has much of Harijan available online, including the quote above. The quote is in a tsunami of text. Gandhiji was trained as a lawyer, and could crank out a word count. His positions are well thought out and complicated. This material is more complicated than the motivational Mahatma we are familiar with.
If you don’t mind wading through a pile of results, a search for “truth” on the Gandhi Wikiquotes will yield some good thoughts. Bear in mind that these quotes are without context. If you are willing to do the work, and google the source, you might find that the meaning of these thoughts is different from what you might think. The first three quotes in this list are from An Autobiography Or The Story of My Experiments With Truth By: M. K. Gandhi.
“A man of truth must also be a man of care.” Part I, Chapter 5, At the High School
“But all my life though, the very insistence on truth has taught me to appreciate the beauty of compromise. I saw in later life that this spirit was an essential part of Satyagraha. It has often meant endangering my life and incurring the displeasure of friends. But truth is hard as adamant and tender as a blossom.” Part II, Chapter 18, Colour Bar
“My uniform experience has convinced me that there is no other God than Truth.” p. 453
“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.” Young India 1924-1926 (1927), p. 1285 (context below)
“A seeker after Truth cannot afford to indulge in generalisation.”
“Generalisation”, Harijan (6 July 1940).
“If you want to give a message again to the West, it must be a message of ‘Love’, it must be a message of ‘Truth’. There must be a conquest — [audience claps] — please, please, please. That will interfere with my speech, and that will interfere with your understanding also. I want to capture your hearts and don’t want to receive your claps. Let your hearts clap in unison with what I’m saying, and I think, I shall have finished my work.”
Speech in New Delhi to the Inter-Asian Relations Conference (2 April 1947)
“Impure means result in an impure end… One cannot reach truth by untruthfulness. Truthful conduct alone can reach Truth.” Harijan (13 July 1947) p. 232
“[Government] control gives rise to fraud, suppression of truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help…It makes them spoon-fed.” Delhi Diary (3 November 1947 entry)
“It is no use trying to fight these forces [of materialism] without giving up the idea of conversion, which I assure you is the deadliest poison which ever sapped the fountain of truth.”
Mahatma Gandhi The Collected Works Vol 46, p. 203
Wikiquotes has a lively section devoted to quotes that are Disputed and Misattributed. One Disputed entry is especially festive: “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” “The earliest attribution of this to Gandhi … is in a T-shirt advertisement in Mother Jones, Vol. 8, No. 5 (June 1983), p. 46”
Several much loved Gandhisms have a shaky history. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.” “God has no religion.” “We need to be the change we wish to see in the world.”
Young India supplied one of the quotes above. Here is page 1285. “Some Posers: — ‘A well wisher’ sends these lines for my meditation: ‘The Bible can be read in 566 languages. In how many can the Upanishads and the Gita? How many leper asylums and institutions for the depressed and the distressed have the missionaries? How many have you?’ It is usual for me to receive such posers. ‘A well wisher’ deserves an answer, I have great regard for the missionaries for their zeal and self-sacrifice. But I have not hesitated to point out to them that both are often misplaced. What though the Bible were translated in every tongue in the world? Is a patent medicine better than the Upanishads for being advertised in more languages than the Upanishads? An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody will see it. The Bible was a greater power when the early fathers preached it than it is today. ‘A well wisher’ has little conception of the way truth works, if he thinks that the translation of the Bible in more languages than the Upanishads is any test of its superiority. Truth has to be lived if it is to fructify. But if it is any satisfaction to ‘A well wisher’ to have my answer I may gladly tell him that the Upanishads and the Gita have been translated into far fewer languages than the Bible. I have never been curious enough to know in how many languages they are translated.”
“As for the second question, too, I must own that the missionaries have founded many leper asylums and the like. I have founded none. But I stand unmoved. I am not competing with the missionaries or any body else in such matters. I am trying humbly to serve humanity as God leads me. The founding of leper asylums etc. is only one of the ways, and perhaps not the best, of serving humanity. But even such noble service loses much of its nobility when conversion is the motive behind it. That service is the noblest which is rendered for its own sake. But let me not be misunderstood. The missionaries that selflessly work away in such asylums command my respect. I am ashamed to have to confess that Hindus have become so callous as to care little for the waifs and strays of India, let alone the world.”
Chamblee54 has written about M.K. Gandhi. 040515 020521 042222 Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in May 1938. “Farmer
Farmer outside the cooperative store. Irwinville, Georgia.”©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Invisible Pink Unicorn
This content was published January 29, 2009. … An Atlanta blogger recently posted “a random list: music artists I can’t stand.” The list: Nickelback, M.I.A., U2, Matchbox Twenty/Rob Thomas, Gwen Stefani, Fergie/Black Eyed Peas, Old Dirty Bastard/Big Baby Jesus, Norah Jones, Bob Dylan/Jacob Dylan/The Wallflowers, Linda Perry/4 Non-Blondes, Natalie Merchant/10,000 Maniacs, Sonic Youth, Kid Rock, T-Pain, Jack Johnson, KATY PERRY, TV on the Radio, Eddie Vedder/Pearl Jam.
The random list makes me feel like an old fogie. This might not be a bad thing. To begin with, I have never heard several of the acts. There is Kid Rock, who got in a fight in a Buford Highway Waffle House. Or Katy Perry, who kissed a girl before she got talking about Jesus. … It is encouraging to see the vastly overrated U2 on the list. Or puzzling to see that not everyone thinks Bob Dylan is fabulous. … But the main reason the list made me feel old was the length of time since I felt hip. When you are an observer, it can be easier to not like something, than to appreciate it.
I had a friend years ago, who we will call Geronimo. He had a lot of influence over my thinking. There were things he liked. Of course, the list of things he did not like, and would ridicule, was even longer. One day, Geronimo started to rant about Jeff Beck. As it turned out, I liked Jeff Beck, and let my pal know it. Eventually, I learned to think for myself.
This was the early seventies. For many like Geronimo, disco was the anti christ. Meanwhile, I started to hang out downtown. One night I was dragged, kicking and screaming, onto the dance floor. I liked it, and enjoyed the music that so many of my friends hated. … The process of learning to appreciate music was a long journey, and is probably still not complete. There was even the time when I stood outside a stadium listening to Black Sabbath … another bane of the 1972 music snob. … Music went into the mtv era, and radio got more and more specialized. I got older and more decrepit, and caught myself enjoying Lawrence Welk.
This content was published January 28, 2009. … There has been talk lately about The Flying Spaghetti Monster. The FSM was originally created in response to the Kansas State Board of Education. The KSBE ruled that alternatives to evolution needed to be taught in public schools, including some contraption known as intelligent design. There was talk about whirlwinds rampaging through warehouses and creating jet engines. … FSM soon appeared, in all it’s meatball glory. FSM is a satire religion, in the footsteps of the Invisible Pink Unicorn. Bertrand Russell wrote of an Interplanetary Teapot, which will provide the beverage for the spaghetti supper.
FSM is often used as a substitute for the G word, or God. In the struggle for hearts and minds, God has an advantage over FSM. The G word is a marketing dream. It is short, and easy to say. Almost everyone has heard someone say God. While people mean different things when they say God, almost everyone knows about the general concept. … FSM has seven syllables. Spaghetti is notoriously tough to spell, and has a silent letter. OTOH, no one says FSM got an underaged virgin pregnant. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in May 1938. “The MacDuffey family. Irwinville Farms, Georgia” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
The Tortured Struggle
This content was published January 9, 2025. … It started out as a joke comment. Thank God for secular humanism. · You’re welcome. I got to thinking, and wondered what the punch line was. Is there a difference between God and man?
Zen and the art of motorcycle repair says that the division of God and man, subject and object, is the dirty work of Aristotle. I am not philosophically grounded enough to know, but suspect that unity is better than division. Is the earth a unified whole, “thou art that”?
Now, the truth just might be that God is separate from man. While unity may sound appealing, it might not be the way things operate. Just because a belief makes you happy does not mean that it is true. Let no man bring together what God has rent asunder.
This content was published January 10, 2025. … X does not like linking to a post. I write a description, and leave a link in the comments. Yesterday, it looked like this: “Is there a difference between God and Man? If so, where do you draw the boundary?
Facebook had a response: “I am so inexplicably bored to tears by that tedious conversation. The only way either side can prove their point is to die. The pictures are nice. Further proof that there isn’t any god, only the tortured struggle between man and his own psyche. Thanks for sharing.”
My smartass reaction was that “the tortured struggle between man and his own psyche” was a good description of God. Or, to quote someone more popular than Jesus, “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” But I didn’t want to start trouble, so I clicked “Like,” and went on my way.
One person who talked about that tortured struggle was Billy Graham. The GSU library has a picture of the marquee at the Tower Theater, during a 1954 Billy Graham Crusade. The Tower theater is now a parking lot. “The Tower Theater, previously the Erlanger Opera House, was located at 583 Peachtree Street. It was originally constructed in 1790. In the 1950’s the theater was turned into a Cinerama, and the name changed to Martin Cinerama. The theater would also be known as Atlanta Theater, and Columbia Theater. The building was razed in 1995.”
The Erlanger Opera House was probably not built in 1790. I decided to do some checking up, and began by seeing when the North Avenue Presbyterian Church was built next door. This is where the investigation took a curious turn. “The church was constructed from Stone Mountain granite donated by charter members whose family owned the mountain and were in the granite quarry business. It was occupied for the first time for the Thanksgiving service in 1900.”
“The building program was helped immeasurably by the generosity of the Merssrs. William H. and Samuel H. Venable, who donated the granite out of which the building was constructed.” · “William Hoyt Venable (1852-1905) and Samuel Hoyt Venable (1856-1939) were involved with the Stone Mountain quarrying industry. The Venable brothers were the sole owners of Stone Mountain and much surrounding land which they purchased in 1887 at a claimed cost of $350,000.”
“James Venable (1901-1993) was the Imperial Wizard of the National Knights of the Klan from 1963 to 1987, “which he organized as one of several rival Klan factions nationally.” (NY Times) Venable had but continued the family tradition. As a 13 year old, he attended the 1915 Klan resurgence and rally on top of Stone Mountain. He was with his uncle, Sam Venable, who, as one of the owners of Stone Mountain, also became the secretary of the Klan.” … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. These details are from picture #06665, “Bathing Beauty Pageant, 1925, Huntington Beach CA.” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Divine Intervention
A strange thing happened on my walk this morning. I was listening to this show about David Foster Wallace. It was a dystopian commentary, about a lot of different things. One of the chief problems is the general f***** up nature of the medical industrial complex.
I was about to turn around, and do another lap, when the phone rang. I decided to take a chance, and answer the call. The call was a lady calling from the sleep disorder clinic. Some of the Medicare claims had been rejected. I went back into the house, got my reading glasses, and woke up the computer. I got a new Medicare card last December, and apparently the sleep disorder clinic never got the new Medicare number. It was synchronistic that I would answer this call, and that it would be an illustration of the story I was listening to.
I had a similar experience a while back. I was riding on the exercise bike at the gym, while watching Female Trouble by John Samuel Waters. FT was just so strange. I was being pulled into this narcatonic vortex that JSW induces in people. He will render them mentally incompetent by the facilitation of “Divine intervention.” In this scene, Divine chopped a ladies arm off, and held her prisoner in a giant birdcage. At this point in the procedure, I get a spam risk phone call. I decided what the hell, life is so much fun right now, what’s another spam phone call?
So I answer the call. It’s from Piedmont Care Connect. PCC was this program that my primary doctor wanted to sign me up for. You would pay to have a PCC blood pressure monitor installed in your house. The device would transmit the BP readings to Piedmont heathcare. I was very skeptical of the whole thing. I got even more skeptical when I talked to the people from the program, because they didn’t know what they were doing. I had already told them not to call me again. After I hung up the phone, I learned that Divine was going to prison, for her crimes against hairstyling.
So yesterday went on and on and finally ended. I listened to the last of the story about Dave Wallace. I was pleased to get to the part about gnosticism. I wanted to listen to it again because I thought I might have missed something the last time. Later, I read a piece about Yahweh. (I did not copy the link). It seems that Yahweh was a minor Israeli God, until there was a hostile takeover of the whole system. Yahweh then issued the Ten Commandments, saying that I am the only God. It is very curious that I never heard this. All Christians ever talk about is life after death.
Meanwhile, the gnostics were saying that Yahweh was the demiurge, or the anti-god. If you go by the Old Testament, there may be a grain of truth to this. You don’t really hear much about God in the New Testament, which is mostly about Jesus, the illegitimate son of Yahweh. … The second thing that I find really bizarre about Yahweh is that two of the nicknames for Yahweh are Allah and God. You heard that right … Allah and God are the same thing.
It is now 121225. When I get up and moving … slowly … I turn on the noise machine, to provide background sounds. Inevitably, I will need to turn it off, so I can hear something else. Today, the first turnoff of the day was a 23 second video about how to pronounce bhagavad gita. To pronounce BG, remember that the h should be after the a, instead of before. BAH ga vahd GE tuh. It is similar to saying Bah Humbug. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Jack Delano took the social media picture in August 1942. “Nashville, Tennessee. Welding parts for fuel pumps. Vultee Aircraft Corporation plant” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Did Jesus Go To Hell?
This content was posted December 22, 2008. … Maybe the problem is Jesus. Like many other issues, there are semantics involved. There is the historic Jesus. The legend is that a virgin mother gave birth to Jesus. He grew to be a carpenter, until taking time off to talk about God. Jesus was too much trouble for the powers that be, so he was killed. Later, Jesus rose from the dead. … There is also the spirit, which many call Jesus. This spirit has little in common with the historic Jesus, except for using the name. The best way to know the spirit Jesus is through those who believe in it.
There is some dispute when the historic Jesus was born. As another blogger put it: ”Israeli meteorologists best guess places the real date of Christ’s birth on September 29th, 5 B.C. The Catholic writer Mario Righetti candidly admits that, “to facilitate the acceptance of the faith by the pagan masses, the Church of Rome found it convenient to institute the 25th of December as the feast of the birth of Christ to divert them from the pagan feast, celebrated on the same day in honor of the ‘Invincible Sun’ Mithras, the conqueror of darkness” (Manual of Liturgical History, 1955, Vol. 2, P. 67).” … The truth is, we don’t know when historic Jesus was born. Four days after the winter solstice just seemed like a good time for a celebration.
There is also the spirit Jesus to think about. Since it doesn’t exist outside of the hearts of the believers, it can have any “birthday” it wants. December 25 works just fine. … The idea for this post was a rant about the hurt that spirit Jesus has put in my life. About the harm done to our society by the leadership of the Christian church, and their followers. About the debasement of our government by exploiting religion. This will not change anyone’s mind, and will only make me feel worse. Jesus is a source of misery to me. His birthday … spirit or historic … is nothing to celebrate.
This content was posted December 3, 2022. … A blogger named Older eyes put up a post about Tim Tebow and Bill Maher, who recently had a twitterspat. It went like this. “Maher Tweeted: Wow, Jesus just f—- TimTebow bad! And on Xmas Eve! Somewhere in hell Satan is tebowing, saying to Hitler, “Hey, Buffalo’s killing them” … To Tebow’s credit, he ignored Maher, Tweeting only, Tough game today but what’s most important is being able to celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Merry Christmas everyone GB² (according to Tebow’s website GB²=God Bless+Go Broncos).
I felt obliged to pile on, despite forgiving Denver for Super Bowl XXXIII. I left this comment: “1 – In all probability, Jesus was not born on December 25. The celebration of his birth was grafted onto a pagan festival day. 2 – It sure was fun watching Buffalo run those interceptions back for touchdowns. 3 – There is no good choice here. In both cases, you have the option of turning the TV off, or switching away from twitter. If you are in enforced contact (a work or family situation) with someone who will not shut up, who repeats his obnoxious opinions with disregard for his neighbor, then you do not have this option. 4 – Jesus said, when Satan was through talking to Hitler, please leave me out of this.”
This got me to thinking. If you saw a mushroom cloud rising over Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, that might have been the result. Did Jesus go to hell? The party line is that Jesus paid the price for the sins of mankind. Is forty four hours in a cave enough? When you consider the billions of lies, murders, and fornications, you have to wonder. Maybe Jesus is taking the place of man in hell, paying the price for your sins. … This is a repost from 2012. Tim Tebow’s fifteen minutes are over. Colin Kaepernick’s fifteen minutes refuse to end. Pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library The social media picture was taken March 5, 1954. “Atlanta Car for Hire Association member (?) taxicab” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
If I Were A Poor Black Kid
This content was published December 12, 2023. … There is a fuss going on about an article at Forbes magazine, If I Was A Poor Black Kid. I was reading a facebook discussion of the article, and decided I wanted to read the original. I googled white guy writing about being a poor black kid for freakin’ FORBES, and the fun began.
Angry Black Lady Chronicles tells of the day when her (white) mother took a day off, from her job as a copy editor, to get young ABL enrolled in a tougher math class. Greg Laden’s Blog chimes in with Forbes’ Gene Marks Needs To Check His Priv. The last line says it all … “Or, as in your case, not so smart but privileged.”
If you want to read the denunciations of the Forbes article, open your eyes and take a look. You might want to hurry up. Soon, there will be another article, somewhere, that people don’t like. Maybe you can talk about the War on Christmas. This is an example of Christian Privilege gone awry. It is a safe bet that many of the poor black kids are Christians. Maybe one form of privilege will outweigh another. Or people will learn about a grain of salt.
It is ironic that the piece was published in Forbes. Malcolm Forbes was fond of saying that he was loaded with “sheer ability, spelled i-n-h-e-r-i-t-a-n-c-e.” The elder Forbes had a lavish lifestyle, with Elizabeth Taylor as a beard. His son, Steve Forbes, (Malcolm Stevenson Forbes Jr.) was quoted as saying “My father once spent $5 million on a birthday party for himself in Tangiers. Why can’t I spend a few more running for President?”.
This feature was originally published in 2011 It was a simpler time. Pictures today are from the Georgia State University Library. The social media picture was taken September 4, 1947. “Capital Theater Ernest Tubb personal appearance. ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Turn, Turn, Turn
This content was published November 5, 2023. … We are now in a time of war. One side is heavily armed, and slaughters unarmed women and children. The Prime Minister of the heavily armed country uses Ecclesiastes 3:8 to justify mass murder. … I recently published a poem, that includes the line “Ecclesiastical abomination.” When I wrote that, it was just a clever phrase, rhyming with cultural appropriation. In fact, I considered saying cultural abomination/Ecclesiastical appropriation. Now, Bibi Netanyahu has taught me the meaning of Ecclesiastical abomination.
The word Ecclesiastes has a poetic tingle. “Eccy” is in the Old Testament is between the poetry of Proverbs, and the enticements of the Song of Salomon. Richard Brautigan counted the punctuation marks in Ecclesiastes, and found no errors. Ecclesiastes 3 was even the lyrics for a top forty song.
Turn, Turn, Turn is taken almost verbatim from the book of Ecclesiastes. Pete Seeger wrote a melody, and added a line. “There is a time for peace, I swear it’s not too late”. TTT became a hit for the Byrds in 1965, as the escalation of the Vietnam war was in full bloom.
TTT is about the dualities of life, and how there is a place for all these things. When I was collecting rocks from destroyed houses, it was a time to gather stones together. TTT can serve as a companion to the vibrations of day to day living.
Pete Seeger died January 27, 2014. I first heard of him when he was on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. It was during Vietnam, and Mr. Seeger did “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy”. The CBS censors did not allow this the first time he appeared. Many thought Mr. Seeger was talking about Lyndon Johnson when he sang “The big fool said to push on”.
This content was published November 1, 2008. … After finishing breakfast, I made a pot of coffee and went to look at the battery. Prying the cover off with a screwdriver, I saw that there was almost no water inside. I went to the toolshed to get the distilled water, and saw the sun rising over the trees in the backyard. I put three cups of water in the battery, and tried to start the car. The car did not start, but did make more noise than it did last night.
Back to the dialog about war and peace. The only Tolstoy I had read was a short story about a man called Ivan Ilyitch. War and peace are two constants of man’s existence. There had been a feature about W&P in The Aquarian Drunkard. AD is a blog written by a former Dunwoody resident who now exists in LA. The feature focused on Pete Seeger, and the song “Turn, Turn, Turn”. …
I checked the fishwrapper to see when the Georgia Florida game began. While I was there, I looked in on his other alma mater, Cross Keys High School. CK is riding a 28 game losing streak. Halloween night, they lost to Greater Atlanta Christian 66-7. … This text is written like H. P. Lovecraft. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The social media picture is labeled Untitled. It is possibly related to a picture taken by John Vachon in March 1943. “Greenville, South Carolina. U.S. Highway 29 seen from an Associated Transport Company truck” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
The Church Sign
This content was published October 16, 2013. … Religion is very personal.. When you have a miserable experience with Jesus, it will not go away because of glib expressions of “faith”. When you put a sign by the road, you don’t know who is going to see it. You don’t know how they are going to be feeling.
I was driving to dinner one night, when I drove by Briarcliff United Methodist Church. The facility is on a busy road. They have a sign in front, with a message that changes from time to time. This night, I was in a bad mood. I was thinking about people who have humiliated me for Jesus. The sign in front of BUMC said “When was the last time you prayed?”
The concept of prayer is collateral damage in my struggle with Christians. As I became alienated from biblical religion, the idea of a person talking to God seems performative, selfish, and self aggrandizing. (Jesus might agree with me.) There is something about having an angry bully snarling “I’m going to pray for you brother” that makes the concept of prayer repulsive.
There is another thing to consider here. Pushy Christians assume that they have the right to grill you about sensitive personal issues. The idea of saying this to passing motorists is disrespectful. It is none of your business if I pray.
I looked up BUMC on the internet when I got home. They have a modern website. The top tab on the menu said “Prayer Requests.” This is for people who want someone to pray for them. Maybe you can leave a prayer non-request. Ask them to respect discomfort with their religion, and don’t put intrusive messages by the roadside.
Further down on the website is an email address (church@briarcliffumc.com.) While not expecting a miracle, I decided to send them an email. Here is the text of that message.
You have a message board in front of your church. The message when I went by was “When was the last time you prayed?” I was offended by this message.
I have had a tough time with religion. I have been humiliated many, many times because of Jesus. I have heard about your scheme for life after death thousands of times, and simply do not agree with it. An intrusive roadway sign is not going to change my mind.
My belief is that my opinions about God are none of your business. If I trust you, then we can have a discussion. Having a rude sign by the road side is not going to help me trust you.
Even though it is none of your business, I am going to answer your question. Even though I was talking to God, and not to you, I am going to repeat what I said. “God please help these people to have respect for their neighbor, and take that awful sign down”.
This content was published
October 24, 2013. … It had been a week since I drove past the Briarcliff United Methodist Church. The church sent a thoughtful email, in response to the complaining message. The traffic on Briarcliff Road was just as rude as ever. I took a look when he drove past the church. The new message this week: “In what missions did U last serve?”
Maybe BUMC didn’t have a YO to spare. Maybe they are trying to appeal to the text message crowd. Maybe a Synagogue borrowed the OY.
When the Jesus worship church talks about missions, they usually mean an effort to convert people to their brand of religion. This is a part of Christianism that many find tasteless. This product promotion frequently turns into a violation of the third commandment … the injunction against improper use of a sacred name. When you create ill will, you are speaking in vain.
When I got home, I decided to create a graphic poem. I did not feel like writing fresh text. A decision was made to use public domain content. A search of the book of Psalms located a short chapter, with a number that is popular at this blog. Hence, the current presentation of Psalm 54.
While this effort was in production, I thought about the mission I was on. The idea was to rescue this text from the improper way in which it is used. The Bible should be a source of beauty, not a weapon to bludgeon people into agreement. Psalm 54 is a text, written by a human being, not a message from God. When you make a God out of a book, you do no favor to either Yahweh, or the book.
In the end, the effort had mixed results. The text has an air of vengeance. God was supposed to get even with your enemies. The idea that your enemies might be the children of God is forgotten.
On June 10, 2018, Briarcliff United Methodist Church held its final Sunday service. The building is currently used by The Globe Academy. Traffic on Briarcliff Road only gets worse. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in February 1942. “Williston, North Dakota. Farmers’ union meeting with the county commissioners to protest the selling of land to corporation farms in Williams County and to discuss the protection of family-size farms” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Be Kind To Your Enemy
Did Jesus say to “Love your enemy?” Some believe this, and do it. Some claim to believe this, and practice the opposite. There are others who claim to love their enemies, but you have to understand what they mean by it. It can be very confusing. This is a repost.
I went to a source for documentation. Oh, the blessed conjunction of copy/paste with public domain. When I entered enemy (singular) in the search engine, 100 verses came up. When the request was made plural (enemies), 237 entries popped up. The last mention of enemies is Revelation 11:12. “And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them.” Loving your enemies does not include bringing them to heaven with you.There is also the star of the show.
Matthew 5:44 “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”
There is scholarly debate about what Jesus did, or did not, say. The words available to modern man have been copied by hand, edited, translated, and interpreted. I do not know Aramaic from Alabama. Like anyone else, I can only read and listen, and think for myself.
In a sense it does not matter what Jesus “really” said. Christians are going to believe what they want to believe. More important, they are going to do what they want to do. As far as the difference between what Jesus “really” said, and what his believers say and do … they can explain.
What follows is a humble suggestion. Did the translators and scribes get it wrong? Maybe Jesus did not say to love your enemy. Maybe what Jesus said was to show kindness to everyone. This is a practice thing, rather than a belief thing.
It is not as much fun to be nice to someone, as it is to scream about life after death. Kindness does not need to be justified by a quote from a magic book. You just need to do it. Pictures today are from Georgia State University Library. The social media picture was taken December 6, 1967. Artistic Beauty Institute (5 1/2 Auburn Avenue, NE) ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Jesus Said To Them, ‘My Wife’
This content was posted September 18, 2012. … Many of you have heard about the video. It was made at a fund raiser, and Willard Mitt Romney said things that got him in trouble. This is not surprising. Many of us already know that WMR is a jerk. … What goes around comes around. Four years ago, BHO was secretly taped at a fundraiser. He said that bitter people were clinging to their guns and bibles. A few said that it was tacky to secretly record a fundraising party like that.
Georgia is so red that it glows. WMR will probably win the electoral votes. Lets take a look at the math. … Lets make a few assumptions. Lets say one million votes will be cast in Georgia. Thirty percent, or 300k, of those voters are black. Lets go a step further and guess that ninety percent of the black votes will go to BHO. That means that BHO has 270k votes. To get to 500k and win, BHO needs 230k out of the remaining 700k. This is 32 percent of the non-black vote. He probably won’t get it.
This content was posted September 19, 2012. … I found an amusing post Wednesday morning. “Yesterday I posted a link to the New York Times article about what is being called “the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife,” and several friends commented on it. This morning my post has disappeared. I did not remove it, nor did I delete any of the comments, which I found interesting. When I tried to repost the article, I got this message from Facebook: “The content you’re trying to share includes a link that’s been blocked for being spammy or unsafe.” The New York Times is spammy or unsafe??? … As a theology geek, I find this new discovery fascinating. But as a Christian, my faith does not depend on Jesus’ celibacy. So if it were to be proven somehow that he was indeed married, it would not retroactively affect the relationship I’ve had with Jesus throughout my life. If anything, it would support the belief that Jesus was fully human as well as fully divine.”
Smithsonian magazine has a feature on this artifact. It is too long for a slack blogger. The NYT article is less than a page, and says enough to base this post on. … Here is the money quote. “A historian of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School has identified a scrap of papyrus that she says was written in Coptic in the fourth century and contains a phrase never seen in any piece of Scripture: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife …’ ” The faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass. Just below the line about Jesus having a wife, the papyrus includes a second provocative clause that purportedly says, “she will be able to be my disciple.”
The word prove is used several times in the article. Perhaps indicate would be a more accurate verb. It is tough to “prove” anything using a 1700 year old papyrus fragment. The last paragraph in the NYT says “The notion that Jesus had a wife was the central conceit of the best seller and movie “The Da Vinci Code.” But Dr. King said she wants nothing to do with the code or its author: “At least, don’t say this proves Dan Brown was right.”
Of course, none of this means anything to most contemporary Christians. They think the Bible is the word of God. This text is inerrant, sufficient, spam free, and safe. Recent discoveries about Revelations are ignored. Like the bumper sticker says, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” … A person’s religion is a one of a kind experience. How you are introduced to a spiritual discipline is much more important than the mechanics of the church. The facebook commenter says that it won’t matter to him if Jesus has a wife. To me, any new information would not block the memory of humiliation at the hands of aggressive Christians.
There was another commentary published recently about the separation of God and spam. It was in New Yorker magazine, written by Hendrik Hertzberg. There was a post about Mr. Hertzberg at Chamblee54 once. I sent an email to Mr. Hertzberg about the post, and got a very nice reply. … The feature in question is about the way politicians think it will help them get elected to talk about God. Some think this is a grotesque violation of the third commandment. The New Yorker feature doesn’t really cover much ground, but has a bangup last paragraph. … “It was not hard to guess what idol, and what institution, the Cardinal had in mind. On the other hand, his reference to “nature and nature’s God” was not so clear. The phrase was there to echo the Declaration of Independence.
But Dolan must know that it is pure Deism—Jeffersonian code words for a non-supernatural God, a God who creates the universe and its laws and leaves the rest up to us. Could it be that we were witnessing an unheard-of political phenomenon, a dog whistle to voters who, whether or not they believe in a rights-endowing Creator, have their doubts about the sort of deity who begets sons, writes books, performs miracles, and determines the outcome of football games? Probably not. That God won’t hunt. “ … This was written like Dan Brown. Pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library. The social media picture was taken November 22, 1967. Home show on WAII-TV ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Was Jesus Really A Carpenter?
Has anyone seen a painting of Jesus holding a saw? The idea the Jesus was a carpenter is seldom questioned. People are taught this, and accept it in sheep-like fashion. Even though the gospels were written many years after the cucifixion, they are accepted as “inerrant” historic documents. Here is what US Catholic says: “Was Joseph of Nazareth really a carpenter? … Only twice is the word carpenter used in the Christian scriptures: when Jesus is identified as “the carpenter’s son” (Matthew 13:55) and “the carpenter” (Mark 6:3.)…”
The passages that say “carpenter” are not complimentary to Jesus. This man appears out of nowhere, and starts to teach at the synagogue. Who is he? Why is a mere carpenter telling educated men how to live? Who does he think he is?
The two texts are similar. Here is Mark 6:2-4
2 And when the sabbath day was come, he began to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing him were astonished, saying, From whence hath this man these things? and what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands?
3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him.
4 But Jesus, said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.
Matthew 13: 54-57 54 And when he was come into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works?
55 Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?
56 And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?
57 And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house.
“In the Hebrew scriptures, the word carpenters appears 11 times, mostly in tandem with the words masons or stonecutters. The Hebrew word used means “carver,” so when building projects were underway, both carvers of wood and of stone were needed. … In the references from the Christian scriptures to Jesus as a carpenter or the son of one, the Greek word used both times is more correctly translated as “craftsman” or “artisan.” Such a person might carve stone or wood as the job required. … What’s evident to scholars of biblical lands is that trees were always in short supply around Nazareth, whereas stone quarries were plentiful. Most structures dating back to the time of Jesus around Galilee are composed of stone—those that survive, anyway. Chances are both Joseph and Jesus did more masonry than carpentry, that is, if they didn’t work exclusively in stone.”
Mark 6:4 is a favorite Jesusism for many people. It is more true today than ever. You do not want to be correct before everyone else. In the McCarthy era, the term “premature anti-fascist” … a person that was opposed to Nazi Germany before 1941 … meant you were a communist. The little boy who criticized the emperor’s fashion statement was severely punished.
“Was Jesus really a carpenter” is an example of asking too many questions. The way “carpenter” is used in Mark and Matthew seems like a generic insult for a common working man. Who is this peasant, who has the audacity to “teach” exalted church elders? We don’t know why the Council of Nicea chose these texts to tell the Jesus story, and why these words were translated as “carpenter.” There is also the attitude of just-shut-up-and-believe-your-elders.
US Catholic says: “Did Jesus have a real job? This is the question behind the question, which sounds a bit dismissive: as if teaching, preaching, and healing—not to mention redeeming the world—weren’t occupation enough!” In either scenario, it boils down to faith and belief … in an ancient text of uncertain origin, which has been translated many times. “God says it, I believe it, and that settles it.”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Marjory Collins took the social media picture in August 1942. “New York, New York. Italian-Americans on [Thompson] Street relaxing on Sunday” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Ten Different Religions
This content was published September 15, 2009. … Those fun lovers at Listverse recently published a feature about “10 extremely weird religions”. This goes along with Hunter S. Thompson’s observation that “when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro”. Back when Chamblee54 was on blogspot, that was the motto. One day, there was a comment that weird was not spelled wierd. What do you expect from someone quoting Hunter S. Thompson? … Back to the “matter” at hand, people have some strange ways of talking to/about/with God. The miracle is that things are not worse.
Number Ten is Scientology. If you want a link to them, you can find it yourself, and might also want to look for professional help. Scientology is only included because commenters would be offended. As it is, the comments that I saw asked about rastafarianism, the flying spaghetti monster, Islam, atheism, and Jesus Worship. The title clearly said that this was a top ten list, and not an encyclopedia. If you want an encyclopedia of religions, try Hinduism.
Nine through Five is pretty boring, as nine to five usually is. There is white supremacy, black supremacy, ufo admirers, burned out hippies, and people who take “Stranger in a Strange Land” too seriously. I thought that “My Favorite Martian” was the best commentary on SIASL. Number four is the Church of the Subgenius. While I have never officially participated in COTS, I admires the consecration of slack. If I can ever get motivated to attend a devival, the world will be a better place.
Number Three is the Prince Philip movement. It seems like the residents of an island somewhere think the Queen’s hubby is a pretty cool dude. It is safe to assume the Princess Diana was not a believer. Number Two…in more ways than one… is the Church of Euthanasia. COE is popular with young people in Korea, aka youth in Asia. Given the popularity of war and capital punishment in the Jesus worship community, the COE may become very popular. They are based in Boston, MA. According to the COE website, the one commandment is “Thou shalt not procreate”. The COE further asserts four principal pillars: suicide, abortion, cannibalism (”strictly limited to consumption of the already dead”), and sodomy (”any sexual act not intended for procreation”).
The number one spot on this list is sometimes called Nuwaubianism. The travelers on this path do not use that term, preferring “factology”, and numerous other terms. The founder is Dwight York, who is currently in prison. The Nuwaubs had a facility in Putnam County, Georgia at one time. The afrocentric beliefs of this group are difficult for outsiders to appreciate. The original post listed eight beliefs, among the man teachings of Mr. York. These three caught my eye.
2. Furthermore, some aborted fetuses survive their abortion to live in the sewers, where they are being gathered and organized to take over the world 5. Women existed for many generations before they invented men through genetic manipulation 8. The Illuminati have nurtured a child, Satan’s son, who was born on 6 June 1966 at the Dakota House on 72nd Street in New York to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis of the Rothschild/Kennedy families. The Pope was present at the birth and performed necromantic ceremonies. The child was raised by former U.S. president Richard Nixon and now lives in Belgium, where it is hooked up bodily to a computer called “The Beast 3M” or “3666.” … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in July 1942. “Hoffman Island, merchant marine training center off Staten Island, New York. Trainees aboard the training ship New York working in the boiler room.” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
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