I was very excited to learn tonight that The Message, a really great and thought-provoking translation of the Bible, is now readable and searchable online.

If the version of the Bible you grew up with brings back unpleasant memories, pisses you off, contains a lot of thees and thous or all of the above, you might enjoy reading The Message.

What do you do with the Bible if you don’t believe in Biblical inerrancy? I don’t know what my answer is yet, but I can safely say that I’ve been pondering that question for several years now. Maybe I’ll always ponder it.

This excellent piece on interpreting the Bible (warning: not brief) sums up a lot of where I’ve been “living” intellectually the past few years.

If there’s room for outdated cultural assumptions and expectations in the Bible and everyone brings their own baggage with them in interpreting it, what’s left? Is it merely a response to God, as some suggest? Is it a message from God garbled by human fallibility?

I know what I don’t want it to be: a weapon. I don’t think there’s anything in God that would have us use any knowledge to manipulate or belittle other people. The notion that God is full of compassion and mercy rings very true for me, and I think that is ultimately the desire of God for how we relate to each other, too.

More, probably lots more, to come on this topic. Over, say, the next 50 to 60 years, God willing.

Ahem, thank God: conservative Christians are beginning to realize that the GOP might not always represent their best interests.

Unfortunately, they’re concerned that the Republican party is less conservative, not more, than they are. It’s a small list of organizations that fall into the category “more conservative than Republicans.” Don’t worry, though: I’m sure with the election right around the bend, the GOP will return to pandering to evangelicals post haste.

I think it’s interesting, too, that half of those polled in the survey think that conservative Christians have “gone too far in trying to impose their religious values on the country.” I do agree with some of the evangelical platform, but I still believe that honey attracts more flies than vinegar. Trying to stuff religion down someone’s throat rarely works.

President Bush might note that 79 percent of those polled believed there was “solid evidence” for global warming. Or, more likely, he might not.

To paraphrase the Hulk, you won’t like us when we’re angry. Well, according to this story, Nashville is angry, really angry. We ranked as the #5 angriest city in the nation. Memphis followed close behind at #8. The story based its list on incidences of high blood pressure in men, road rage and workplace violence.

Are we a passive aggressive city, then? I ask because we also regularly rank #1 as America’s friendliest city. Maybe we are holding our anger in when we speak to people we don’t know very well and waiting until we can take it out on the highway or on our coworkers. (In my own personal experience, this is a promising theory.) Note that the survey identified that visitors found us slightly more friendly than residents reported. In other words, we know the truth.

I also think it’s interesting that we residents think there is less to do in town than our visitors do. Visitors also think we’re more attractive, although just slightly, than we do.
I get the feeling that we’re being a little hard on ourselves. It’s probably more of that anger surfacing. Group hug, anyone?

Let this one about the new Survivor season smack you right between the eyes before you get all upset about what CBS is doing.

I think this post is dead-on. Ouch, but thanks for pointing all of this out, Sam. You’re right.

Here’s the passage in question for the fired female Sunday school teacher:

11 A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. 13For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15But women^[a] will be saved^[b] through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. (NIV)

Oops. If the Watertown church mentioned in my last post has a board with more than 50 percent women, which it does, those women are “having authority” over the men of the congregation. I have no problem with that, but I think it’s worth noting in the context of this story.

Check out verse 13, too. Did anyone miss the part, a couple thousand pages back in the Bible, where it says we’re all deceived sinners? Shoot, if only Adam had not let Eve’s eyelash batting tempt him to sin, all of us modern day men could reign over women. Oops. Maybe let’s just let anyone, man or woman, teach if they’re qualified to teach on their spiritual and intellectual merits and leave the subjugating to someone else.

I’m a little late in responding to the national news story about the fired female Sunday school teacher. I think it’s worth risking untimeliness to weigh in because this story has been on my mind this week.

My first thought is that the uproar seems a little misguided. Why? Because the big deal made in the news coverage is about her gender, not that she was dumped after 54 years of teaching. In my opinion, that’s the real news here. It’s really wrong to “fire” someone, male or female, who has served that long in a volunteer capacity unless there’s some evidence of inappropriate behavior. (The church has been mum on that topic.)

Furthermore, the church board claims in its recent media statement that 55 percent of the board’s members and 87 percent of the church’s Sunday school teachers are women. If that’s true, then women are teaching men, unless only 13 percent of the church membership is male, so that’s not the real issue here, most likely.

Here’s the thing, though: There are plenty of churches in this country where women are made second-class citizens in terms of the spiritual leadership roles available to them. That, in my opinion, is what ought to be the news here.

I’ve attended several churches over the years with varying policies about women’s leadership roles. Two of the most inspiring and insightful spiritual role models I have known were women: one, a youth minister in a Baptist church I knew for several years; the other, an Episcopal priest I knew for about 20 minutes. Both were kind-hearted and encouraging people who were, if anyone is, looking to connect with God personally and share themselves with others.

I’ll say more about this in another post, but I consider the passage in question (1 Timothy 2:11-13) to be culturally outdated. I fully believe that it is totally fine for a woman to teach men and for a woman to serve as a minister or pastor.