Thread for non-MAGA Christians

breepf said:
Speaking of Sanders, I hope it's not controversial to say that I find Paul very difficult to understand.
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I was actually going to write a paper (that I believed was true) that when the manuscripts of Paul were collected by whomever in the 90's CE, they were more or less lying in people's drawers in places like Corinth and Ephesus, and that when they were copied a number of pages were copied back-to-front...ie, there are hard, inexplicable transitions in the text as we now have it that are likely the result of MSS just being stored and copied in a haphazard manner (there were no page numbers - nor even spaces between words - back then). I think the case can be convincingly made in 1 Corinthians.

That doesn't make Paul "understandable" though. He's still talking out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand, he wants to set himself above and apart from Torah-affirming Christians - and he genuinely believes ritual Judaism is a problem - but on the other hand, he doesn't want to piss off the Jewish Christians in the congregations he's writing to, especially the Romans. "Am I calling the Torah a bunch of bullshit flung in anger by a malevolent deity? By no means!!!" [Yea, Paul, you sorta just did that]

Plus, he was just a phenomenally arrogant person with a mean and violent streak that didn't just magically disappear when he had his vision of the risen Christ. My favorite commentator, Stephen Mitchell, observed that Paul's vision was like getting a little spot of his window clean...he was so proud of that and overwhelmed by it he ignored the fact that the rest of his window was caked with grime.
 
Here's a poem by Stephen Mitchell, from his "Parables and Portraits"

Paul of Tarsus

Stepping from the clear air of the gospel
into your mind,
I found myself hemmed in, darkened,
struggling for my natural breath.
Yes, Brother, I know
what you glimpsed on the road to Damascus:
the sense of boundless freedom
that shot, electric, through every
nerve in your body, and all
the strictures of Thou Shalt Not
gave way, the dead weight of authority
lifted, and your only duty
was to the law
written in your inmost heart.
You were born again. But with
the bloody remains of your former
self smeared over you; ardent
and headstrong as usual, you leapt
from the delivery room table
straight out into the world
to teach the Gentiles your truth.
You left no time for yourself
to remain a child, to grow
inside the kingdom of heaven
slowly and naturally
as a tree grows by the water streams,
then ripens and bears fruit
in its own season; no time
for your dogmatism and intolerance and resentment
to fall away by themselves,
letting you shed your guilt
as your old enemy the serpent
sheds his skin. And so
you remained with a past, a future,
and a now caught between them, in which
God-the-Judge kept watching you
through a one-way mirror, darkly.

I would like to arrange a meeting
between you and the true messiah
(you can call him Jesus if you like).
I would have you sit in my back yard
on a perfect day like today,
with a continuo of birdsong
and a mild breeze stirring the fig tree,
a fresh-baked sourdough
baguette on the picnic table,
three glasses, and a bottle
of a nice California port.
He might not say a word
of the Good News according to summer.
Perhaps it would be enough
to see him, face to face,
as he sips the wine and hands you
a piece of the bread: take;
eat; this is your body.
 
TarSpiel said:
Here's a poem by Stephen Mitchell, from his "Parables and Portraits"

Paul of Tarsus

Stepping from the clear air of the gospel
into your mind,
I found myself hemmed in, darkened,
struggling for my natural breath.
Yes, Brother, I know
what you glimpsed on the road to Damascus:
the sense of boundless freedom
that shot, electric, through every
nerve in your body, and all
the strictures of Thou Shalt Not
gave way, the dead weight of authority
lifted, and your only duty
was to the law
written in your inmost heart.
You were born again. But with
the bloody remains of your former
self smeared over you; ardent
and headstrong as usual, you leapt
from the delivery room table
straight out into the world
to teach the Gentiles your truth.
You left no time for yourself
to remain a child, to grow
inside the kingdom of heaven
slowly and naturally
as a tree grows by the water streams,
then ripens and bears fruit
in its own season; no time
for your dogmatism and intolerance and resentment
to fall away by themselves,
letting you shed your guilt
as your old enemy the serpent
sheds his skin. And so
you remained with a past, a future,
and a now caught between them, in which
God-the-Judge kept watching you
through a one-way mirror, darkly.

I would like to arrange a meeting
between you and the true messiah
(you can call him Jesus if you like).
I would have you sit in my back yard
on a perfect day like today,
with a continuo of birdsong
and a mild breeze stirring the fig tree,
a fresh-baked sourdough
baguette on the picnic table,
three glasses, and a bottle
of a nice California port.
He might not say a word
of the Good News according to summer.
Perhaps it would be enough
to see him, face to face,
as he sips the wine and hands you
a piece of the bread: take;
eat; this is your body.
Click to expand...
Good stuff. I have Mitchell's Gilgamesh translation. Much better than my old Penguin Classic.
 
Batt Boy said:
Good stuff. I have Mitchell's Gilgamesh translation. Much better than my old Penguin Classic.
Click to expand...

Yea, I've been buying Mitchell's books as soon as they roll off the press since I dunno, about 1995. He's just got the Midas touch. He basically introduced me to Zen too, which has been an incredible blessing in my life.

If you haven't read his book on Jesus, "The Gospel According to Jesus," I'd highly recommend it. It's the best book on Jesus I know, IMO much better than Bart's "Apocalyptic Prophet" book. It's deeply insightful...I assign it in my Classical Humanities classes, and all the students, atheist, theist, and agnostic, almost always respond very favorably to it.
 
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