In those days people used to ask me lots of questions about the order of things. They liked neat little packages - you know what I mean, this is good but that is bad. How could I tell them that life, and the finite universe, really just isn't that simple?
One day a farmer came to me. He was really worried because his neighbour was growing straight bananas and he thought this must be the work of Satan.
What a stupid dick, but I couldn't just come straight out and say that to him because he wouldn't have understood.
Plan B - make up a parable.
"There was a farmer in Corinth who wanted to grow bananas, even though the soil in that area wasn't suited to growing bananas. The neighbouring farmers laughed at him when they saw him planting banana trees. A few years passed and the neighbours started to watch as it was time for his first crop to start growing. One farmer predicted that his bananas would be red, like the devil, but the general consensus was that his bananas would be straight - as a punishment from God. What actually happened was that the trees flowered, but no fruit was produced."
You see, dad doesn't really spend a lot of time worrying about bloody bananas and who grows them. It's just that the soil wasn't right in this area and science won out over religious mumbo jumbo.
Look, I guess the moral is that bananas don't have to be bent, or straight. It's what they taste like that really counts.
There is a lot of shit, in the bible, about a lot of things. People should use their common sense, and their brains. For God's sake! (sorry dad) What's the point of having a brain if you don't use it?
This is a pretty good parable AG.
ReplyDeleteJesus maybe if you mention which parts of the bible you are having trouble with maybe we can help!
ReplyDeleteWell, let's start with The Song of Solomon.
ReplyDeleteI think Second asked me but, yes, let's start there.
ReplyDeleteI found this on a site:
ReplyDelete"
The poem describes two young lovers aching with desire. The obsession is mutual, carnal, complete. The man lingers over his lover’s eyes and hair, on her teeth, lips, temples, neck, and breasts, until he arrives at “the mount of myrrh.” He rhapsodizes. “All of you is beautiful, my love,” he says. “There is no flaw in you.”
The girl returns his lust with lust. “My lover thrust his hand through the hole,” she says, “and my insides groaned because of him.”
This ode to sexual consummation can be found in—of all places—the Bible. It is the Song of Solomon, a poem whose origins likely reach back to the pagan love songs of Egypt more than 1,200 years before the birth of Jesus. Biblical interpreters have endeavored through the millennia to temper its heat by arguing that it means more than it appears to mean. It’s about God’s love for Israel, they have said; or, it’s about Jesus’ love for the church. But whatever other layers it may contain, the Song is on its face an ancient piece of erotica, a celebration of the fulfillment of sexual desire."
But wait, there's more...
ReplyDelete"
The Bible is an ancient text, inapplicable in its particulars to the modern world.
In the Bible, “traditional marriage” doesn’t exist. Abraham fathers children with Sarah and his servant Hagar. Jacob marries Rachel and her sister Leah, as well as their servants Bilhah and Zilpah. Jesus was celibate, as was Paul.
Husbands, in essence, owned their wives, and fathers owned their daughters, too. A girl’s virginity was her father’s to protect—and to relinquish at any whim. Thus Lot offers his two virgin daughters to the angry mob that surrounds his house in Sodom. Deuteronomy proposes death for female adulterers, and Paul suggests “women should be silent in churches”"
The bible is outrageous. But it does not expect us to live in two worlds... one unnaturally 'good' and the other where you can be yourself! No the bible is about unity and reconciliation.One sided interpretations of the bible have restricted it to the 'sacred' or 'devout'.
ReplyDeleteTrue, much of the bible is archaic and exotic. But there is still the superstition that the bible has nothing to do with real life, that it is a sacred book which somehow transports the reader to eternity.
Is the bible good, or full of shit?
ReplyDeleteThat's a pretty good parable, especially for one you made up on the fly. Your years of experience are showing.
ReplyDeleteWell Kellie, people expect more these days. Thanks, I do my best.
ReplyDeleteHey, I just read this Post because Richaed 9of RBB) seems to have gone off the air................................................................................................................................................... I didn't think I'd miss him so much.
ReplyDeletehach
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