Chamblee54

When a new book about religion comes out, the author inevitably pays tribute to mammon. The text must be promoted. Talk shows, print interviews, bookstore appearances… it is part of the game. You render unto Caesar, even when you  say Julius is one of the seven beasts. Which is  what Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation says.
Elaine Pagels is a professor at Princeton University. She appeared on “Fresh Air”, an NPR show hosted by Terry Gross. The web broadcast of the interview is sponsored by America’s Natural Gas Alliance. The listener is encouraged to go to a website, and hear the good news about fracking.
As you might guess from the title, the book is about Revelations. The last book in the New Testament, Revelations is a favorite of those who claim to see the future. According to Dr. Pagels, the book is about the past. .
GROSS:So what do we know about who wrote Revelation and when it was written?
PAGELS:(spell check suggestions:PANELS, PAGERS, BAGELS) Most people who look at this history think that the author – he calls himself John of Patmos, that’s his name – that John was a refugee from the Jewish war that had just destroyed his homeland, Judea. And the center of that whole territory, which was Jerusalem, the Temple of Jerusalem, had been utterly leveled by the Romans in response to a Jewish rebellion against the Roman Empire. So I don’t think we understand this book until we realize that it’s wartime literature. It comes out of that war, and it comes out of people who have been destroyed by war.
As you might imagine, John of Patmos is not fond of the Romans. They sent 60,000 soldiers to his home, and tore up the place.
GROSS: You consider the book of Revelation anti-Roman propaganda. Would you explain why?
PAGELS: Yes, the book of Revelation speaks about the great scarlet beast with seven heads and seven crowns, but it’s a very thinly disguised metaphor or image for the ruling power of Rome, and probably the seven heads of the beast, most people think, represent the emperors from the dynasty of Julius Caesar, Augustus and Tiberius, Claudius and so forth, up to the time John was writing at the end of the first century. So this is – on one level it’s anti-Roman propaganda that’s drawn from the language of Israel’s prophets to say that God is going to  avenge the nations that destroy his people.
GROSS: So 666, the name of the beast – many scholars, including you, think that that refers to Nero, the emperor, the Roman emperor. What would the connection be?
PAGELS: Yes, John says that the beast, whose identity he doesn’t say explicitly, perhaps because it’s quite dangerous to speak openly against Rome, he says the beast has a human number, and the number is 666. And this is a reference to the technique of calculating numbers and letters so that you can take anyone’s name and you have a numerical value of each letter. You add those up, or you multiply them in complicated ways, and you find out what the name is that’s represented by that mysterious number. Many people have worked it out that it could well be the imperial name of Nero, who was notoriously thought of as the worst emperor. Or it could be the name of Domitian, who was actually ruling when John was writing. John would have wanted his readers to understand that – that that number, which is couched in that kind of mysterious code, would be understood to his readers as the name of one of those emperors who had destroyed his people.
John of Patmos has other issues. In the early days of Christianity, there were disputes about the direction of the new religion. (Arguably, Christianity did not exist when Revelations was written.) Some wanted to new movement to stay within Judaism, and follow the laws of that religion. Others wanted to spread the “good news” to gentiles, and not be picky about what they ate. John of Patmos seems to be in the Jews only camp. This might explain some of his stories. 
The book of Revelations  included in the Bible was controversial. As the Roman Empire converted to Christianity, some of the prophecies were thought to have not taken place. As Dr. Pagels tells the story, an influential cleric liked Revelations. The decision was made to include it in the Bible, and to leave other books of prophecy out.
PAGELS: The Revelation of Zostrianos talks about a young man who is in despair because he can’t find any understanding of reality, he can’t make any sense of the world. He goes into depression and despair, decides to kill himself, and goes out to do it. And suddenly a divine being, a blazing light appears and says, have you gone crazy? And then he says he received internally a revelation. He says that I realized that the light within me was greater than the darkness.
Dr. Pagels has one possible explanation for the continued popularity of Revelations.
GROSS: So no matter what you’re doing, you can see yourself as the force of good and your opponent as the force of evil.
PAGELS:` Of course, because if you read it as John intended you to read it, you think God is on our side, we of course are on the side of good. Now, we could be, say, Lutherans fighting against the Catholic Church, we could be Catholics fighting against Lutherans. This is, you know, 1,500 years later. It could be people fighting against Muslims. It could be Muslims contending against, you know, the great Satan of the West. Those images have proved enormously powerful. What I found so remarkable, Terry, is the way that people on both sides of a conflict could read that same book against each other. For example, in the Civil War, people in the North were reading John’s prophecies, they’re reading the Civil War with the terrible destruction of that war as God’s judgment for America’s sin of slavery. “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” resounds with all of those imageries of the book of Revelation. People on the South, in the Confederacy, were also using the book of Revelation, seeing the war as the battle of Armageddon at the end time and using it against the North. And that’s the way it was read in World War II. That’s the way it was read even in the war in Iraq.
Jesus has inspired both sides in many conflicts. Joseph Kony and Invisible Children both draw inspiration from Jesus, who is probably embarrassed.
Dr. Pagels says Christians frequently think she is misguided. One example of this would be saintbubba. (spell check suggestion:paintbrush) He wrote his amazon book review after hearing the NPR interview.
Just heard her on NPR, March 7, 2012 saintbubba
I just finished listening to the author on NPR discussing this book, for a person who is a professor of religious studies I don’t know if she has even read or understood any of the new testament…in her discussion she stated that it was the apostle Paul that came up with the idea of preaching and accepting non-Jews (gentiles) to the church…Jesus clearly preaches and accepts the woman at the well who was not a professing Jew…and was by her own admission living outside of the will of God…she pushes the idea that there was a Gospel according to Paul, a Gospel according to John and a Gospel according to Jesus…the fact is that all of the Gospels and the people who wrote them agree with one another…which is amazing because they were written at different times and locations….if the opinions of the author were true the Bible would have been refuted a thousand years ago…on the subject of the book of revelation I think there is much to be learned and discussed about it…but I don’t see the value of reading something with such a difficult topic when the author doesn’t seem to even have a clear understanding of the basics of the Bible..too bad because the subject manner is interesting…
Pictures today are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”

PG was riding back home on Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, and decided to check out the radio. The country station had a song about riding a long black train, and it had a good sound.
Then the singer started his next verse. “There is victory in the lord, yes there is, there is victory in the lord”. PG shut the radio off. While it did not ruin his day, it made him enjoy it a bit less.
There are a lot of Jesus worshipers who like to talk about victory. Only trouble is, their victory is a defeat for someone else. PG has been humiliated for Jesus many times, and knows about defeat for the lord.
How can a G-d of love take pleasure in the humiliation of his children? Just because your ideas about life after death are different from someone else’s. Or because that person is having problems, and covers for them by starting a fight with someone else, using Jesus as a weapon. Is this victory in the lord?
When Buddha talked of the three poisons, he meant anger, greed, and ignorance. When PG sees Jesus, through his believers today, all three of those poisons are on display. Maybe what we need is compassion, generosity, and knowledge. And a truce for the lord. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.

PG left a comment at TwentyTwoWords in August, and thought about it later. Today, after he got back from the river, he set out to find the thread. Looking for a comment at a popular blog can be an act of faith, with no guarantee of results. PG was lucky, and found his comment fairly quickly.
TwentyTwoWords is a regular stop for PG. The idea is to say what you need to say in 22 words or less. The owner of the blog does not enforce this rule, and few commenters practice it. PG tries to be the exception.
The opening serve of this thread was “Do difficult times make you more or less empathetic? For me the answer is both. Some struggles I’ve faced make me more understanding of others. But sometimes I feel like: “I got over it; why can’t you?” (36 words). The comments took on the colors of Jesus Worship, which is to be expected at TwentyTwoWords.
The first Chamblee54 entry was comment number 7. “I feel that way about life after death obsessed Jesus Worshipers. Is there an etymological link between arrogant and air head?”
Christen replied “Speaking of life after death, I’m just starting Randy Alcorn’s book Heaven and very convinced on the importance of being much more focused on our life after death. What did you mean by that, Chamblee?”
chamblee54 says: “I feel the emphasis placed on life after death is mistaken. I disagree with the Jesus worship beliefs on life after death.”
christen says: “Thanks for the reply, chamblee. I think I’m either inexperienced in “the emphasis placed on life after death” debate/issue (?) and “Jesus worship beliefs” or just don’t understand what you’re saying. Either way, I know I can’t wait to be in that place with that person !”
At this point, PG saw the dialog spinning off topic. This was his fault, to a degree, and he felt a responsibility to bring it back into line. The suspicion was that Christen was a Jesus Worshiper, who had never questioned a set of beliefs handed to her. A key portion of this was the life after death issue, which to PG is a fundamental flaw with Jesus Worship Religion. ( PG disagrees with the concept of attaining life after death through holding certain beliefs about Jesus. PG also disagrees with the emphasis place on life after death in Jesus Worship.)
The answer PG came up with was “This is starting to get off topic. I suspect you have never questioned the concept of acquiring life after death through beliefs.” That clocks in at precisely 22 words. The original comment was about acquiring life after death through belief in Jesus.
To bring the comment under the 22 word limit, PG decided to eliminate the reference to Jesus. And there was a realization that the fundamental meaning of the comment was not changed. If the status of one’s soul post mortem can be changed by a belief during life…a highly suspect concept to PG…does it really matter what the belief is?

That rascal joemyg-d has a weekly feature that looks at crimes with a religious connection. Often, the way the story is told says as much as the story itself. In this review of a review, we will look at both the story, and how the story is told.
This weeks winner takes place in Michigan. The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) claims that some diocese did not do enough to stop a wayward priest. It seems as though Joseph Skelton left seminary, after being accused of entertaining a teenage boy in his room. A few years later, he was ordained as a priest at the Diocese of Tagbilaran, in the Philippines.
This story is reported in Catholicculture.org, which is copyrighted by something called Trinity Consulting. Trinity has an ad above the priest story, where they claim to offer “Truth Based Business Services”.
In Savannah, Georgia, WTOC reports on a man who received a four million dollar settlement from the Catholic Church there. The story is that a priest molested him, more than thirty years ago. Next to this story is an animated ad. It shows a baby in a car seat shaking his head, while the headline says that 9/10 homeowners do not refinance their homes.
In Alabama, a minister got in trouble over a camping trip. In the details, AP reports:(Original spelling is copied.) “Most of the counts involved possession of obsence material. District Attorney Greg Gambril said there were three counts each of sodomy and sexual torture, which he said involved a sex toy.” An ad on this Fox News page offers readers a chance to read “Ann Coulter – Free. Be among the first to read her column each week, right from your inbox. http://www.HumanEvents.com/AnnCoulter.”
Another fox news report is about Michael Joy in Wyandotte County, Missouri. He was a church youth minister, who behaved badly with those underage. The funny part of this story is that Mr. Joy was in prison for child molestation in the eighties. A quote… “Stony Point Baptist Church Pastor Thomas Hamilton said he spoke openly with his congregation about the incident involving one of the church’s youth leaders at services on Sunday. He said Joy confessed he’d been in prison before but lied about why. State records show Joy was convicted of eight counts of child molestation in the late 80s. Hamilton said he feels betrayed and now he and his congregation are working together to move forward and heal.”
The Associated Baptist Press has a tasteful story about the Senior Pastor of the First Baptist Church in Jay, Oklahoma. He had a private service with a fifteen year old girl every sunday for over a year. The site has an ad for “Passport :Summer Camp with a Mission”.
You cannot have a sex crimes roundup without a California story. The pastor of the Koinenia Christ Community Church in Tracy,California, is accused of doing naughty things with underage girls. A fuzzy picture of the accused is displayed, across from an ad for a real estate firm. The realtors display two men, three women, and two dogs. No word is given on which one sells the most.
Down under in Australia, the CathNews has a story to tell, underneath an ad for Office Max. It seems like a young lady, referred to as the “alleged victim”, was abused by a priest. The playmate were recruited by “the nuns”. The attorney of the “alleged victim” has sent a letter to all of the Catholic churches in Victoria, with a request to read the letter to the congregation.
The Archbishop of Melbourne does not want the letter read to the flock. He says that the abuse did not take place in Melbourne, and has been dealt with “under the national protocol”. The Bishop of Ballarat, where the incident was alleged to have happened, said, with certainty, that no assault took place. The “alleged victim” recieved a $12,000 settlement in 2006.
Before anyone thinks that men of the cloth are a bunch of sex crazed perverts, the Belfast Telegraph has this uplifting tale: “Father Norbert Jedrusinski, 37, fled with a £900 haul after threatening staff with a knife at the bank in Szamotuly, Poland, but was arrested when he tried to flee on a bus.” The story was next to an ad from classmates.com.

PG was waddling through the kitchen, enjoying a quiet time change sunday morning. PG tries to call Uzi before noon, lest PG be considered slack. Today, the G-ds of time standards had given him an hour of technical slack time .
As PG put the leftover potatoes on the pan, there was a faint knock on the door. PG looked in the peep hole and saw a figure standing. Knowing it could be a psycho killer, PG bravely opened the door.
He saw two African Americans with books. It was invading Jesus Worshipers. The lady said ” How are you doing?” PG replied ” In no mood to talk to you” and shut the door.
PG felt anger. The peace of sunday morning had been violated. It was one more reason to know that Jesus hates PG.

One hundred and four years ago, the United States was involved in a war, that did not want to end. This conflict was in the Philippines. Although there had been an official end to the war, guerrillas continued to fight the Americans. The war was a nasty affair, with many atrocities.
The War against the Philippine people was a souvenir of the Spanish American War. There had been a rebellion against Spanish rule in the islands. After the American forces routed the Spanish, the rebellion shifted to the American occupiers. It was a war stumbled into, and difficult to end.
Mark Twain was horrified. He wrote a story, The War Prayer. As Lew Rockwell tells the tale
“Twain wrote The War Prayer during the US war on the Philippines. It was submitted for publication, but on March 22, 1905, Harper’s Bazaar rejected it as “not quite suited to a woman’s magazine.” Eight days later, Twain wrote to his friend Dan Beard, to whom he had read the story, “I don’t think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth.” Because he had an exclusive contract with Harper & Brothers, Mark Twain could not publish “The War Prayer” elsewhere and it remained unpublished until 1923.”
HT to David Crosby and his autobiography, “Since Then“. A book report is  forthcoming.
Getting back to “A War Prayer“, the story starts in a church. A war has started, and is popular. The troops leave for glory the next day. The preacher has an emotional prayer to send them on their way. Unknown to the minister, there is a visitor. “An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there, waiting.
With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal,” Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”
The stranger motioned to the preacher to step aside. The stranger stepped into the pulpit, and claimed to have a message for the worshipers, sent directly from G-d. The preacher’s message was for support in time of war, and implied that G-d and the preacher support the same side in this conflict. There is an unspoken part to a prayer like this. This unspoken part was what the stranger was going to put into words.
“”O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe.
O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-
for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!
We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.”

PG went to the Candler Park festival, and spent a lovely Indian Summer day outdoors. This is exactly the right thing to do after obsessing in the dead of night about the hatred Jesus has for PG. Sunday afternoons are a gift, and to waste this gift worrying about religion is wrong.
PG entered “Jesus Hates Me” into google. The search yielded 3,420,000 results in 0.27 seconds. There is a site, Jesushatesme.org, that is “under construction”. There are the lyrics to a song, and the opportunity to download a Jesus Hates Me ringtone to your cell phone.
The song is to the tune of “Jesus Loves Me”. A remarkable feature of this tune is the second line, “for the bible tells me so”. Any name with four syllables can be substituted in place of “for the bible”. By amazing coincidence, PJW has four syllables in his first and last name.
A play has been written with this twelve letter title. The author of this play is a man named Wayne Lemon. One of the googloids is an article written by him. His story is rather amazing. Mr. Lemon attended a screening of “The Passion of the Christ”. One of his neighbors has tourettes syndrome, and provided a running commentary on the film.
Mr. Lemon is the son of a preacher. He talks about that in this feature. It is a miracle that Mr. Lemon is able to function as well as he does. PG thinks that excessive exposure to Jesus is a grotesque form of child abuse.
The other feature on the first google page is from The i***k,( the handle is copyrighted) Michael Spencer. He is a battle veteran in the Jesus Worship blog community. His post was “The Suburban Jesus Hates Me”.
To PG’s understanding, the i***k is saying that someone who follows the real Jesus is not going to be able to preach at a mega church and grow wealthy. PG wonders why i***k’s version of Jesus is better than the wealthy megapreacher. After all, it is the same bible, just different interpretations.
The bible is a book written, copied, edited, and translated by people. G-d does not write books. And even if she did, the Jesus that man screams about today has almost nothing to do with the historic Jesus. Modern Jesus is a man made device, which the first commandment tells us not to worship.

PG woke up unable to sleep. One day, he will learn not to go to bed so early, if he expects to sleep until the next morning. At the moment, the only thing on his mind is the realization that Jesus Hates PG.
This is a by product of the years PG spent at Redo Blue, across the room from Professional Jesus Worshiper. PJW would humiliate PG, then boast ” I never felt better in my life”. Finally, one day, PG was doing his job, while PJW conducted his toxic ministry in PG’s face. Something needed to be done. PG wrote the words “Jesus Hates Me” on a piece of paper, and left it in a place where PJW might find it.
The more PG thought, the more he realized the truth of those 12 letters. Jesus is a man made spirit, a modern day golden calf. Jesus means something different to everyone. PG knew that the best way to know Jesus is through the words and deeds of his believers. And many of these believers showed hatred and abuse to PG. This hatred…both by Jesus and his believers…made PG unhappy. Jesus is a source of unhappiness to PG.
The first commandment says “Thou shalt have no other G-ds before me“. This does not include the so called son of G-d. The practice of Jesus worship is a violation of the first commandment. ( As is regarding the Bible as the word of G-d, but that is a subject for another day) All the unhappiness that Jesus worship causes results from violating the first commandment. And you can’t have Jesus worship without Jesus, nor Jesus without Jesus worshipers.
There probably was a man named “Jesus”, who lived in what is now Palestine. He possibly was an Avatar, or G-d became man. What is known for sure about Jesus is sketchy, which is to be expected for someone who lived 21 centuries ago. This “historic Jesus” has little in common from what is worshiped today as Jesus. Modern Jesus lives in the hearts of his Believers, and this is the force that hates PG.
There is a great deal more that can be said about this. PG entered “Jesus hates me” into google, and got results. It is also a glorious October sunday afternoon in Georgia. A tie dyed collection of people is gathering in Candler Park for an afternoon festival. PG just got the call from Uzi, wanting to know when they were going to go down to the park. The hatred of Jesus will have to wait.

PG hears the word “racist” tossed casually so much, he suspects it has lost it’s meaning. Dictionary definitions are of little use. The meaning of the word depends on who is saying it.
The modest suggestion here is for a seven point scale to measure racism. Zero would be totally colorblind, and six would be metaphysical hate. For the sake of simplicity, this scale, in the beginning, will only apply to white-black relations in the United States.
The model for this is the Kinsey scale. In his books on human sexuality, Dr. Kinsey described a seven point scale. Zero was totally heterosexual, and six was totally homosexual.
PG does not have a clue how to write a test for this scale, or how to score this test. White people see racism differently than black people. White people are affected by racism in different ways than black people. Different cultures view racism in different ways.
How would PG score on this scale? He has black friends and black enemies. Certain parts of black culture are enjoyable, and certain parts make him want to turn the radio off.
PG does not like people that do not like PG. When it is us against them, you need to remember which one you are. How does this register on this racism scale? It depends on who does the judging.