It’s very easy to convince yourself that it’s ok to own other people. All you have to do is convince yourself that they’re not really “people”. And maybe that’s hard for you to imagine, too — but it’s really not hard at all, especially if they look different, talk different, etc. I know, because there are plenty of people in my family back home who think that way…

But hey, but the time I was a teenager, I was asking all the questions the youth group leaders didn’t want to answer… and that was the end of church for me.

Can’t imagine what the South must be like… Still can’t get my head around the fact that people owned people and those people who owned other people were ok with it…

Ancient Hebrew people wrote things on scrolls that were later collected and compiled into first the Jewish Old Testament and then later the complete Christian Bible.

It’s a pet peeve of mine. And I really like the Bible.

Even assuming that what we now have written down bears much of a resemblance at all to what was originally written (and scholarship holds that it probably does, although it may not be exact, certainly the sense of it is preserved, which of course is a warning to make sure any Bible-quote is in context, since the smaller the piece you’re talking about, the more likely it is to be misleading), you’re still talking about something written by a person. God himself didn’t personally write much of anything at all

Shoot, lots of the historical bits of the Bible were written by people who weren’t even there. Even assuming that Biblical scholars are right about who wrote what (and while there’s always room for doubt, as far as I understand it the scholarship is fairly solid), Moses wasn’t present at the creation, the fall of Adam and Eve, the flood, the days of Abraham, etcetera, and he’s the guy who supposedly wrote Genesis!

I really wish people would be more specific- instead of saying “the Bible says,” I wish they would say “Paul wrote…” or “it says in the Book of Matthew,” or whatever. the difference is huge. Somehow it’s gotten into peoples’ minds that THE BIBLE tells them something and it’s straight from the mouth of God. That’s ridiculous. even if it did originally come from God, it’s a fairly indirect thing by the time it gets to you, dear Evangelical reader.

Now you may not believe a word Paul says (Lord knows I often don’t), but at least talking about “what the Bible says” in those terms forces a more realistic understanding of what is being said in the first place.

And by the way, I grew up Mormon in Knoxville, Tennessee. To most of my Bible-thumping neighbors and classmates, that meant I was pretty much the worst kind of heretic. At least you pagans had the honesty to not belive in Jesus at all. Us Mormons, far worse, claimed to be Christians when we… worshipped… the… WRONG… JESUS!!!! GASP!