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Rubbish => Preaching and Worship => Topic started by: majingojira on September 05, 2013, 06:51:51 pm

Title: A Bible verse that always bugged me.
Post by: majingojira on September 05, 2013, 06:51:51 pm
Matthew 26:40 "And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, "So, you men could not keep watch with Me for one hour?"

This one gets mentioned a lot during catholic prayers. Jesus is supposed to be the most perfect, most patient, and most gracious, and most humble human being to have ever existed, and yet in this verse he is clearly getting irritated and impatient at finding his friends asleep. Like he's saying "You couldn't have been bothered to stay awake for another hour on my behalf, you lazy bums. You call yourselves my disciples?"

It seems odd that Jesus has the very human trait of getting fed up and making a biting comment to the people that he loves the most. Yeah, true they should have stayed awake for this most important night (BTW were they even told he was going to be arrested), but I've known plenty of nice, patient people who will overlook your mistakes and not say anything. "It's okay, you need your rest. I'll be fine on my own."

What do you guys think?
Title: Re: A Bible verse that always bugged me.
Post by: PosthumanHeresy on September 05, 2013, 07:15:36 pm
I imagine it is the idea that they are his chosen, and they have failed him, their God, their Lord.
Title: Re: A Bible verse that always bugged me.
Post by: davedan on September 05, 2013, 07:54:50 pm
It also implies that Jesus himself fell asleep and that they failed to wake him.
Title: Re: A Bible verse that always bugged me.
Post by: R. U. Sirius on September 05, 2013, 10:01:46 pm
Keep in mind also that a big part of Christian doctrine is that Jesus was fully human. If I were in a situation where I knew I was going to be arrested, tried and unjustly executed, I might be a little shorter with my temper than usual as well.
Title: Re: A Bible verse that always bugged me.
Post by: davedan on September 05, 2013, 10:20:22 pm
Fairly sure the nicean compromise, fully human and fully divine, is just accepted in Western orthodoxy.  I am not sure the Monophysites (Coptics) would agree.
Title: Re: A Bible verse that always bugged me.
Post by: Sylvana on October 23, 2013, 05:47:05 am
This one gets mentioned a lot during catholic prayers. Jesus is supposed to be the most perfect, most patient, and most gracious, and most humble human being to have ever existed, and yet in this verse he is clearly getting irritated and impatient at finding his friends asleep. Like he's saying "You couldn't have been bothered to stay awake for another hour on my behalf, you lazy bums. You call yourselves my disciples?"

Mark
11:13 And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet.
11:14 And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.
11:20 And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots.

In this example Jesus makes an irrational demand on the fig tree and curses it for failing to comply. The scripture itself proves that Jesus was not some perfect being. If anything the entire story from coming into Jerusalem to the crucifixion is Jesus desperately trying to avoid being killed, showing signs of hesitation and fatigue common to someone who knows that an unpleasant end is in store for him.

Personally I am not sure where this idea that Jesus was some kind of perfect being comes from. He never once says he is anything more than a human. His divinity is up for theological debate, but he himself admits to being human, and that in theory includes all the failings of being human.
Title: Re: A Bible verse that always bugged me.
Post by: MadCatTLX on October 24, 2013, 10:38:08 pm
You obviously haven't heard the people having dead serious theological arguments over whether Jesus pooped. No I'm not joking. I think at one point a compromise was reached that he did piss, but did not shit.
Title: Re: A Bible verse that always bugged me.
Post by: Witchyjoshy on October 25, 2013, 07:04:07 am
One verse that bugged me (because just about every fundie I knew ignored it or tried to explain it away - the verse itself was decent) was a verse in Ezekiel that explained that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah wasn't homosexuality, but inhospitality.  In very clear text.  Yet when you present it to fundies, they make up excuses or just outright discount anything you have to say because "you clearly don't have the holy spirit and thus do not understand the Bible."

Since I was a liberal Christian ex-fundie at the time, they were basically accusing me of being a Not Real Christian :/
Title: Re: A Bible verse that always bugged me.
Post by: Dakota Bob on October 29, 2013, 03:23:30 pm
One verse that bugged me (because just about every fundie I knew ignored it or tried to explain it away - the verse itself was decent) was a verse in Ezekiel that explained that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah wasn't homosexuality, but inhospitality.  In very clear text.  Yet when you present it to fundies, they make up excuses or just outright discount anything you have to say because "you clearly don't have the holy spirit and thus do not understand the Bible."

Since I was a liberal Christian ex-fundie at the time, they were basically accusing me of being a Not Real Christian :/

...So God wiped the cities out because they were inpolite?
Title: Re: A Bible verse that always bugged me.
Post by: Witchyjoshy on October 29, 2013, 05:01:18 pm
One verse that bugged me (because just about every fundie I knew ignored it or tried to explain it away - the verse itself was decent) was a verse in Ezekiel that explained that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah wasn't homosexuality, but inhospitality.  In very clear text.  Yet when you present it to fundies, they make up excuses or just outright discount anything you have to say because "you clearly don't have the holy spirit and thus do not understand the Bible."

Since I was a liberal Christian ex-fundie at the time, they were basically accusing me of being a Not Real Christian :/

...So God wiped the cities out because they were inpolite?

Not impoliteness, no.  Though wanting to rape someone's house guests is both impolite and inhospitable.

Rather, think of it this way.  They live in a desert.  Travellers risk their lives by the mere act of traveling, due to resources.  Hospitality to travellers can mean the difference between their life or death.

Sodom, however... didn't really like outsiders.  You could even say they were xenophobic.

Of course, however, there are other problems with the story of Sodom.  Like how God is apparently A-OK with the one nice guy in the city offering his daughter to be raped.  And how apparently, God is A-OK with his daughters drunk-raping him.  And how God hates it when someone who is leaving behind their friends, family, memories, and home might be a little sad about it.
Title: Re: A Bible verse that always bugged me.
Post by: Sigmaleph on October 29, 2013, 09:38:09 pm
Breaches of hospitality (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SacredHospitality) is one of those big taboos you see pop up in old myths a lot. E.g. in the Illiad, part of the big deal about Paris abducting Helen was that he was a guest of Menelaus. In the story of Ali Baba, the leader of the thieves finds Ali Baba's house and pretends to be a merchant to be invited in, but he makes a point of not eating anything with salt, because sharing salt with his host would invoke hospitality.

Or, in A Song of Ice and Fire,
(click to show/hide)
Title: Re: A Bible verse that always bugged me.
Post by: Katsuro on January 21, 2014, 04:13:11 am
The bits that bugged me are the ones that make claimms of any supernatural related event/s.  Which is more or less the whole thing really.
Title: Re: A Bible verse that always bugged me.
Post by: R. U. Sirius on January 21, 2014, 10:25:01 am
Not the WHOLE thing. The Song of Solomon is one long extended poem, with no attempt to claim historical accuracy. ;)