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(November 8, 2015 at 2:20 pm)drfuzzy Wrote: As some of you know by now, playing Mass on Sunday always leaves me with posting fodder. Then I log in for a dose of sanity, and drop some of my rambling ruminations into a thread. Take it or leave it, discuss it or not - - just THANK YOU for being here.
Do you make enough money playing for a mass that you can't quit the job. Why continue to punish yourself?
Quote:FAIRY TALES
As I drove to work, I heard an NPR interview of Michael Cunningham. This is a brilliant author who has recently focused on re-writing fairy tales. When you condense his statements about fairy tales in modern times, the meta-message was: we have outgrown them. They no longer make sense to us, because they tend to be built on a very black and white dichotomy. (You have the evil character, the hero, and the princess, in some combination, most of the time.) So I went into the choir loft with "we have outgrown our fairy tales, and secular sources understand this".
We haven't outgrown fairy tales at all. Kids and adults love them. Many "chick flicks" are fairy tales.
Quote:Then I hear a reading from 1 Kings 17. Elijah goes to a widow - she and her household are starving, she only has a handful of flour left to make a cake for herself and her son. Elijah orders her to make HIM a cake first, and trust in the Lord. Because she did so, her jars of flour and oil magically replenished themselves for a long time to come, and her family ate well.
The believers in the pews accept this as a fabulous example of the poor having faith and being rewarded for it. The atheist in the organ loft is saying "wtf???" 1) starving children. But this total stranger usurper jerk had her feed HIM everything they had, taking food away from little ones who don't understand why the adult prophet is eating and they are not. 2) And so the book gives an example of god preventing a widow and her son from starving, because they believed. There are believers starving everywhere - and god could prevent it everywhere, easily - IF the story is true. If this story is true, it only makes god a bigger asshole.
It is a story about about a woman who received from God through her faith in him. Believers starving has nothing to do with the theme of these passages. Jesus told us we would suffer in this life. We all suffer, believers and non-believers alike. If God promised us we wouldn't, it would be a different matter
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Quote:AND A PSALM OF PRAISE, aka LIES, LIES, and more LIES
Psalm 146 (excerpts): "the Lord gives food to the hungry; gives sight to the blind; the Lord loves the just, but the way of the wicked he thwarts"
The believer in the pews sing this with gusto. They revel in the greatness of their god. The atheist in the organ loft is saying that anybody over the age of 10, in any city on this planet, knows that these statements are lies. The believers are not saved from starvation. The blind stay blind. The "just" are often persecuted. And the wicked have the most money and power everywhere on the planet. Nope. I'm not buying it.
Quote:God did and does these things, both for believers and non-believers. Most of Jesus miracles were done for non-believers. Also, in a true sense, revealing himself to people who don't believe is giving sight to the blind. Giving spiritual insight is giving food. The Lord does love both the just and the unjust alike. And he does thwart the way of the wicked, who will be punished for their wickedness, and so to will the just be rewarded for their being just. You and christians alike should listen to the readings with an open mind.
The Bible says that God still hates Esau and no one ever says any prayers for the devil's soul.
